The funny thing is, I had this series circled on my calendar a long time ago — with an accompanying sense of dread.
The dread was that Pete Alonso would hit at least one big home run and the Mets would fall to the Orioles, with the series loss enough to push them out of serious playoff contention. The dagger, if you will.
Ah, I was so innocent back then.
Check on the at least one big home run, check on the Mets falling to the O’s, check on a lineout drawn through playoff contention. But my scenario played out as more farce than tragedy, what with “serious playoff contention” having left town somewhere around Memorial Day.
The finale of the series was very much a “Do we have to?” affair. Alonso smashed another long home run, but that was just one in a barrage surrendered by hastily recalled Xzavion Curry: If Samuel Basallo wants the ball he hit back, he’ll have to wait a few years and negotiate with a triumphantly returned taikonaut. The Mets, meanwhile, did little to disturb Chris Bassitt and the relievers who followed him, some of them familiar names in their own right — Alonso was the headliner, but the number of Old Friends checking back in for this series was startling.
As for ESPN, their wall-to-wall Polar Bear Fest might have been cute if it had been the opening game but was grating as accompaniment for the third, at least for me. Oh look, it’s Pete mic’ed up in the field! It’s Pete wearing a Go Pro! It’s Pete and the ESPN crew touring the Big Apple on a bicycle built for four! Subtlety isn’t exactly ESPN’s thing — by the time the broadcast was done, the Alonso homecoming horse was not only dead but had been hammered into little floating drifts of powdered bone.
(Mild news from the broadcasting booth, I suppose: Asked if he’d be interested in managing the Mets, David Ross — who employed Andy Green as his bench coach in Chicago — didn’t exactly turn tail and run. But that’s an off-season story.)
Anyway, I’m glad that’s over and we can get back to trying to wreck things for the Phillies, honoring Carlos Beltran and saying farewell to Howie Rose, and then extracting whatever fun there’s to be had from a last road trip. And perhaps when next we meet this particular band of Old Friends, fortunes will be different.
Final thoughts: Any long-time Mets fan has suffered through more than their fair share of humiliation and embarrassment. L’Affair de Polar Bear Pierre is now on the Top Ten List. I still have not heard one legitimate reason as to why he is not a foundational piece of this team anymore. Why was concern about the back-end of his Five Year deal more worrisome than the impact on this season, next season and the one after that? Effective GM’s like Dave Dombrowski play for the season they are dealt, and worry about the back-end later, with the expectation that they will think of something. Would Pete not have been a difference maker on this team? Conceding the near future to the Dodgers is and was not a viable strategy. The jury is not out on their decisions, it is back and the verdict is in: complete mismanagement of assets, guilty as charged. Play the kids. Which brings us back to the enigmatic Alvarez. How does someone with so much minor league promise not progress? His lazy defense and endless thoughtless plate appearances do not augur well, but we could have said the same thing about D’Arnaud before he left the building. Reluctantly, a little more patience is probably in order here, but somebody (Andy Green?) should read him the riot act about the crossroads he is at in his career, and what he needs to do to improve, or else….