For New York Mets fans at Citi Field and scattered around the country, the Mets’ first Old-Timers Day since 1994 was a smashing success before the first alums even jogged on the field last Saturday afternoon.
A family near the Jackie Robinson Rotunda entrance stopped and examined the inscribed brick it had purchased — but had never seen — along the Fanwalk, which debuted along with Citi Field in 2009.
“Here it is,” one said.
“Holy (smokes),” said another. “I’ve been looking for this for 10 years.”
A few strides away stood two men, gazing at the bricks-surrounded plaque honoring the Mets’ 10-run eighth inning comeback against the Atlanta Braves on June 30, 2000, when Mike Piazza hit the go-ahead three-run homer.
“I remember where I was for that,” said one, beginning to recall the apartment in which he watched the comeback.
Even just seeing the names of the players returning to Citi Field generated plenty of smiles and released plenty of nostalgia-related endorphins. When the Mets announced the roster, I sent a screenshot to my best friend, a lifelong Mets fan. His reply? “Aside from reanimating (Tom) Seaver, I don’t think it’s possible to do a better job than this.”
Said Steve Trachsel, who pitched for the Mets from 2001 through 2006 and was among those taking the mound for the three-inning game: “I was actually shocked that they hadn’t been doing it for that long. I just assumed every team did it. I didn’t realize that almost nobody does.”
Past and present. pic.twitter.com/i8NeSftrlW
— New York Mets (@Mets) August 27, 2022
The execution lived up to expectations. Longtime Mets broadcaster Howie Rose introduced 63 alums — along with children or grandchildren representing the late Seaver, late Mets manager Gil Hodges, late first base coach Bill Robinson and popular infielder and former manager Bud Harrelson, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2016 — to a seemingly never-ending ovation during a 40-minute pregame ceremony.
Those 63 former players represented every era of Mets baseball — from Jay Hook, who recorded the Mets’ first win on Apr. 23, 1962 to Daniel Murphy, the MVP of the 2015 NL Championship Series and a former teammate of current ace Jacob deGrom, who occupies the locker Murphy once had at Citi Field.
10/15/2015 In a must-win game, Daniel Murphy records three hits and Jacob deGrom pitches into the sixth inning as the Mets advance to the NLCS for the first time since 2006. pic.twitter.com/lXUrWF5Ljm
— This Day in Mets History (@NYMhistory) October 15, 2021
Hall of Famer Mike Piazza and Mets legends Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, each of whom once seemed on a path to Cooperstown, were greeted as warmly as Steve Dillon, a Long Islander who appeared in three games with the team during the 1963 and 1964 seasons, and Benny Agbayani, whose popularity upon his breakout 1999 campaign cannot properly be explained to anyone who didn’t witness it in those pre-social media days.
But the task for Mets owner Steve Cohen wasn’t making many thousands of people happy. It was making those 63 men — and their more than 1,100 peers — happy and finally making them feel welcome within Citi Field and the Mets’ family, as imperfect as it can be.
Or, as 1986 World Series MVP Ray Knight put it ever so bluntly: “I love the New York Mets. I don’t like the Wilpons.”
Under the Wilpon family, the Mets mastered the art of the Facebook family — only displaying the perfect images, never showing anything else — long before Mark Zuckerberg enrolled at Harvard.
“There are so many guys that I wore a uniform with who didn’t win a world championship and kind of felt that, well, we really don’t count because we didn’t win a world championship,” said Bobby Valentine, the manager of the 2000 NL pennant winners who fell to the crosstown Yankees in a five-game World Series. “It was only ’69 and ’86.”
— Tim Ryder (@TimothyRRyder) August 27, 2022
Any round-numbered celebrations of the 1986 team felt hard-earned and embittered because of the what-ifs surrounding a squad whose dynastic path was derailed by the off-field issues encountered by its stars — and the desire of ownership to break up a hard-living yet uniquely cohesive team.
“People stopped showing up,” Knight said with a rueful grin, referring to player-organized reunions of the 1986 team. “People who were in jail.”
On Saturday, Knight recalled how general manager Frank Cashen offered him a take-it-or-leave-it one-year deal at a small raise just minutes before the parade down the Canyon of Heroes days after the World Series win. Knight signed with the Baltimore Orioles.
“I didn’t even enjoy the parade,” Knight said. “The hurt never went away.”
When Gooden signed a wall at the Ebbets Club — one of the many features at Citi Field that paid homage to Fred Wilpon’s beloved Brooklyn Dodgers at the expense of the team he actually owned — in April 2009, the Mets almost immediately announced it would be painted over.
Even the clean-imaged yet prideful Seaver — the symbol of the miracle 1969 Mets and by far the best player in franchise history — was not exempt from becoming embroiled in disputes with the Wilpons. A standoff regarding a statue for Seaver lasted until he retired from public life due to Lyme’s disease. The statue was commissioned under the Wilpons but wasn’t unveiled until April, 20 months after Seaver’s death and at the start of Cohen’s second season.
“This organization is totally different than when I was here,” Knight said. “The way the team is run and the way that the owners treated players and made them feel a part of everything — I feel it, I felt it today. Mr. Cohen came in the clubhouse. I mean, he’s the new kid in town. No doubt about it.”
There was an urgent and poignant importance, equal parts collective and singular, to Cohen uniting Mets generations and getting everyone back under one roof to relive their good times and the connection they have with one another.
“Today was different — it was just a different deal to be able to be around all of these great players and know that we all have put on the same uniform,” Knight said. “It’s a fraternity and it’s strong and you’re sitting in there and it’s almost like you’re a little boy again. It really is. I’m 69 years old and I still get that feeling of, hey, man, this is fun. How lucky are we?”
It’s one thing for the rest of us to take an occasional stroll of our high school hallways or college campuses. It’s quite another for those who were once among the best players in the world to jog on to a major league diamond again, with the muscle memory as strong as ever even if their skills have mostly evaporated and their bodies are no longer cooperating.
(Except you, Bartolo Colon)
📸 Asked if he could still get outs in the big leagues today, 49-year-old Bartolo Colón, through an interpreter, said yes… though, "I have some age on me." pic.twitter.com/mSDUCw8kI5
— Anthony DiComo (@AnthonyDiComo) August 27, 2022
“Still got the splitter — that’s about all I’ve got,” the 51-year-old Trachsel said with a laugh. “I definitely don’t have anything else. Can’t do a changeup off of 60 (mph).”
The 60-year-old Strawberry, dealing with chronic knee problems, didn’t even take batting practice. Jay Payton, the 49-year-old centerfielder on the 2000 pennant winners, played in the game but said he’d likely need neck surgery at some point in the near future to go along with the elbow and shoulder surgeries he underwent as a player.
“The biggest thing that I saw was the smiles on their faces (and) how much fun they were having,” said Mets centerfielder Brandon Nimmo, whose leadoff homer Saturday fueled a 3-0 win over the Colorado Rockies. “Just kind of made me get perspective for how fortunate I am that I get to play this game as my job and that it does go away at some point and we don’t all get to choose when. You could tell that everyone that was there wished that they could go back to those days.”
Murphy, the youngest Old-Timer at age 37, said he was still wearing his uniform at a postgame press conference because he eschewed a shower in order to spend time visiting with members of the Rockies, for whom he played in 2019 and 2020.
“But I could tell you I don’t want to peel it off, something like that,” Murphy said with a grin.
The undefeated and unforgiving nature of Father Time also underlined the importance of making Saturday’s reunion a reality. The ability to directly link the Mets team from their founding in 1962 — Hook threw the first pitch to Piazza prior to Saturday’s game against the Rockies — to the current edition will not last forever. Only four members of the 1969 champions were in attendance Saturday.
The 1986 champions and 1988 division winners have already mourned the deaths of Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter as well as first base coach Robinson and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre. The 2000 NL champions lost Darryl Hamilton in 2015, while bullpen coach Al Jackson died in 2019 and hitting coach Tom Robson died in 2021.
John Stearns, a popular player for the Mets in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s before he became the bench coach in 2000, was in attendance despite battling prostate cancer. Stearns, leaning on a cane, stood behind the cage for batting practice and sat along the third base line during introductions, where Robin Ventura — the third baseman on the 2000 team — hugged him upon being introduced by Rose.
“To me, that’s special, because you never know how many times we’re going to see each other again,” Ventura said. “So that becomes really touching and special.”
In the end, nothing is more important than family — baseball and otherwise — even and especially when it’s imperfect. And which family is perfect? Which family doesn’t have people who disagree and perhaps no longer communicate via social media but are still able to broker peace at holiday dinners?
Among those on the field were Piazza and Keith Hernandez, who sparred with one another over Hernandez’s comments at the start of the latter’s broadcasting career in 2002. Wally Backman and Edgardo Alfonzo, beloved former players who used to be minor league managers with the Mets but are managing in the independent Atlantic League after being passed over for jobs further up the Mets’ chain, were also in attendance Saturday.
“If you’re sitting home at the end of your career still holding grudges against the teams you played for, you wasted your career,” Trachsel said. “There’s no point dwelling on that stuff. When (longtime Mets public relations executive) Jay (Horwitz) called, I was like ‘I’m in.’ He said ‘I don’t know the dates yet.’ I’m like ‘I don’t care about the dates. I’m in. Whatever it is, I’m there.’”
Knight lingered in the press conference room following his cathartic press conference, not wanting to let go of a moment he, his fellow alums and thousands of fans had waited decades to enjoy. He noted he receives annual Christmas cards from the other four teams he played for — the Orioles as well as the Cincinnati Reds. Houston Astros and Detroit Tigers.
It seems likely there will be a card from the Mets in his mailbox this Christmas — one more reminder of a perfect celebration for an imperfect franchise.
