Putting right what once went wrong...

A couple of nights ago, MLB Network ran the 2000 episode of Baseball's Seasons.  I watched the first 20 minutes or so with a sense of dread, as I knew what was coming: the single incident in my history of Mets fandom that makes my blood boil the most.

When it comes to fan-driven emotion, I've never been as steamed as when Roger McDowell and Lenny Dykstra were traded, but to be fair, I was only about 16 years old at the time.  I've gotten over that.

The bottom of the 2nd inning of Game 7 of the 1988 NLCS pissed me off so badly, I didn't even watch the middle innings.  I think I turned the game back on around the 7th or 8th inning.  Seriously, how do you play somewhere in the neighborhood of 1400 defensive innings and save your absolute worst one for Game 7 of the LCS?  But there again, I was subject to the jacked-up emotions of a teenager, and the sting subsided with time.

No, the Mets moment that still sticks in my craw more than any other is the infamous Piazza-Clemens incident from Game 2 of the 2000 World Series.  Roger Clemens THREW A FREAKIN' BAT SHARD at a baserunner and got away with it.  And not just any baserunner, either: Mike Piazza, the guy who absolutely owned Clemens prior to Clemens throwing a fastball at his head earlier in the summer.

I started to put my thoughts on this to the (now only proverbial) page right after I watched Seasons and relived the rage yet again, but quickly found something else to do.  However, having just read Faith and Fear's venture into alternate history, I just can't help myself from venting a bit.

Above: Bat-Sh*t Crazy Mother-F***er

First off, why in Hades was Clemens not ejected?  Was it because his aim was off?  Had the bat actually struck Piazza, would it have been handled differently?  And what's up with his lame "I instinctively thought it was the ball" explanation   Since when in MLB is throwing the ball at the baserunner a thing?  Was Clemens also simultaneously having a flashback to playing schoolyard wiffleball?

But let's put those questions aside for a moment.  For whatever reason, no umpire darted over to Clemens and tossed him.  So now we have the face-off between Clemens and Piazza.

Right here is where at least some small measure of satisfaction could have been achieved.  Never mind changing the outcome of the game or the Series, I'd give anything to go back in time and see Mike Piazza knock the hell out of Clemens with a right hook to the jaw.  Would the Mets still have lost the Series?  Probably, but I wouldn't be nearly as mad about it 14 years later knowing at least some justice had been served that night, rather than Clemens going down in history forever as the winning pitcher on the night he acted like the 'roided up jackass he was.

I'm not saying Piazza didn't do the right thing.  By all standards of decency and sportsmanship, he did.  He was the bigger man and walked away.  However, the "right" thing isn't always the "necessary" thing.  I still maintain to this day that moment--Clemens committing an atrocious act toward the Mets' franchise player and getting away with it--firmly and permanently established the Yankees as the all-powerful bully in that Series and left the Mets intimidated beyond repair.

Piazza did the right thing, and the Mets lost in 5 games anyway.  Suppose he doesn't do the right thing, and for one brief moment in time, Roger Clemens is lying on the Yankee Stadium turf with the Mets star standing over him like Muhammad Ali over Sonny Liston.  The message is definitively sent that the Mets aren't taking any crap.  Of course a brawl would have immediately ensued, resulting in multiple suspensions.  Maybe Bobby Valentine even pulls a Tommy Lasorda/Jay Howell move and gets Piazza's own suspension reduced to nothing, and the invigorated Mets make the most of the chaos for the remainder of the Series.

Eh, probably not.  But again, the Mets lost in 5 anyway.  It sure would've been nice to at least have had that one glorious moment of satisfaction.

A guy can dream....

Oh, how I hate the #$%@ing Braves...

So there I am, about to log off of Twitter for the night after yet another marathon Mets game, and I come across a re-tweet via Metszilla from none other than one Larry "Chipper" Jones, who had this stream of consciousness happening:

Really?  REALLY?

Someone who spent his career in a Braves uniform is complaining about an umpire, specifically, said umpires inaccurate strike zone?

Well, let me be the first to welcome you to our world.  You know, the one where for about 5 years, Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux could get a strike call so long as the ball was within about 6 inches of the plate in either direction?  Glavine became so accustomed to friendly calls, that when an automated system to judge pitch locations was being implemented to keep umpires honest, his career went to crap until he figured out how to pitch honestly again.

Even if Angel Hernandez isn't the best umpire, so what?  Heaven knows other teams (ahem) have had their issues with him (hat tip to @LaurieInQueens).  It's not like he has a special strike zone dedicated to screwing over the Atlanta Braves, but that's pretty much been the standard mentality of the Bravesiverse since the team found success 20 years ago: entitled and paranoid.  By gum, the Braves winning is a birthright proclaimed from the heavens, and if it doesn't happen, it's obviously due to some meddling shenanigans on the part of someone else or some other unfairness of inexplicable cosmic origin.  I have to listen to that crap for at least 9 innings every time the Mets play the Braves and those stupid territorial broadcast rules force me to listen to a couple of chuckleheads who describe no-doubters hit by the opposition as weak fly balls aided at the last moment by a hurricane wind and lame ground balls to the other team's shortstop as screaming line drives that would surely have been a hit were it not for a Gold Glove-worthy robbery.

For criminiy's sake, get over yourselves.

BTW, it still blows my mind that an pitcher could somehow be suspended for racial insensitivity while playing on a team that encourages fans to wave their foam tommyhawks while doing an Injun war chant, but I guess I need to take that one up with Bud Selig.

Collins: "I have no explanation." Nieuwenhuis: "AAA coaches fixed me."

Just sayin', people....

MetsBlog: In 20 innings, Mets were hitless with runners in scoring position yesterday

ESPN New York: Kirk discusses return to Mets

My Rebuttal to MetsPolice's (and everyone else's) Hand-Wringing:

My home internet has been on the fritz for a couple of days and didn't get fixed until a couple of hours ago, so maybe I'm a little late on this by web standards, but it seems that Shannon over at MetsPolice--whose work I otherwise adore, of course--is still playing a defeatist game of "What if?" in regards to Johan Santana's no-hitter one year ago tonight.

I began typing this response in the MetsPolice comment section, but as I realized a) it was getting a little long-winded, and b) sadly, I haven't been this fired up about anything Mets-related for a while, I decided it belonged better here.  So without any further ado, here's my response:

Stuff happens.

The greatest orthopaedic surgeon on the planet said the injury was of a degenerative nature.  Given that, it didn't matter if Santana made those 134 pitches all on one night or spread them out over 4 different starts.  They were going to be thrown, and the injury was going to happen eventually, sooner rather than later, at that.  The clock was honestly ticking before he even threw his first bullpen at Spring Training. 

To that same end, he suffered the very same injury the first time around without any complete-game no-hitter around to take the blame.  It's kinda hard to say "a" leads to "b" when "b" has already occurred once before without "a."  Clearly, something about the way Johan Santana throws just isn't conducive to a healthy anterior capsule over time.  For all we know, it may be the very same thing that made him a two-time Cy Young Award winner, albeit one with a somewhat disappointingly early expiration date.

You can't say Collins left him in too long and let him throw beyond a reasonable point of fatigue--thus contributing to more stress on the capsule--either.  Santana's fastball during the last out was only a whopping 1 mph slower than the one Beltran hit down the line in the 6th.  That is in no way indicative of someone whose rotator cuff has run out of gas.

All that out of the way, let me make a more general and more raw statement as a fan.  Let's assume just for kicks that the no-hitter is what caused the injury and quite likely ended Santana's career (which it wasn't, btw).

Give me a choice between a) watching Johan Santana or any other pitcher throw a complete game no-hitter at age 33 or b) watching him hope to make it through the 5th inning on a good day as he continues to stay "healthy" into his 40s, and I will without hesitation choose the no-hitter.  Every.  Single.  Time.

Nobody is going to pitch (or play any other position, for that matter) forever.  The nature of professional sports is that careers are fleeting, and as a fan, it's all about quality, not quantity.  If anyone honestly believes there is a single start Johan Santana could've possibly made this season that would have a prayer of being bigger than the one he already made a year ago, they're nuts.  If his time with the Mets ending one year earlier was the price of the first no-hitter in the history of the team (which it wasn't, btw), then so be it.  It was totally worth it.

Is it just me, or...

...has listening to Bobby Ojeda in the post-game show ripping on the team's shoddy play and second-guessing Terry Collins' decisions become infinitely more entertaining than watching the games themselves?