The Bad News Yankees

We hadn’t been in our seats for very long when Dad pointed out the changes Yankee Stadium underwent during its renovation in the mid 1970s. Over there was where the Yankees bullpen was, Dad said as he pointed to an out-of-place nook behind the rightfield fence. Right there is where me and my grandfather sat when he took me to Yankees games when I was your age, Dad explained as he pointed to a section of empty seats in dead centerfield that were blacked out and blocked off, serving as a batters’ eye. Dad also pointed out the changed outfield dimensions and the monuments beyond the leftfield fence, which Dad said used to be located in centerfield, where they were in play. I stared at the retired numbers painted on the wall out by the bullpens in leftfield; there were so many of them.

I was a budding baseball fan on that night in 1989, two days shy of my tenth birthday, but I was already acutely aware of the storied history of the New York Yankees. I wasn’t even a Yankees fan, choosing to root for the New York Mets like Dad, Mom, Grandpa and nearly everyone else in my family who mattered. Yet, I couldn’t help but be awed thinking about all of the great players who roamed Yankee Stadium’s lush green grass. However, I was too young to remember the last great era of Yankees baseball; I was a fetus when the Yankees won the last of their record 22 World Series, in 1978, and I was two years old when the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Yankees in the 1981 World Series, their last postseason appearance. The Yankees had been marked by discord, dysfunction and a revolving door of players and managers ever since George Steinbrenner became their majority owner in 1973, but they’d always won, their drama not adversely affecting their play on the field. But, that was starting to change.

Ever since their last World Series game, the Yankees had been competitive, but not good enough to get over the hump. Their teams were marked by high payrolls and very good offenses, but also by inconsistent play and mediocre pitching. And, the Yankees certainly didn’t play like a well-oiled machine on this overcast June night. They committed six errors, leading to 12 unearned runs for their opponents, the Baltimore Orioles. Four of the errors occurred in the first three innings. Two of the errors were committed by first baseman Don Mattingly, the franchise cornerstone and winner of multiple Gold Gloves for his fielding acumen. The Yankees were down 7-0 in the top of the third inning when manager Dallas Green pulled starting pitcher Andy Hawkins. However, two batters later, Steve Finley – a rookie I’d never heard of – hit a grand slam off reliever Chuck Cary. Rain was in that evening’s forecast and many of the fans in attendance began opening their umbrellas and chanting for rain to wash the game away during the Yankees’ disastrous top of the third. Much to their chagrin, the rain stayed away all evening as the Orioles cruised to a 16-3 victory.

By the end of the 1989 season, the Yankees had suffered their third losing campaign since Steinbrenner’s reign began. Not surprisingly, the year included a managerial change, with Green being replaced by Bucky Dent in mid August. Meanwhile the Mets – the redheaded stepchild of New York City baseball for much of their history – continued to capture the hearts and minds of New Yorkers with their young, brash ballclub and dominant pitching. The Mets finished second in the National League East in ’89, but they were a year removed from a division title and three years removed from a dominant season that ended in a World Series triumph. Clearly, the Mets’ star was rising while the Yankees’ star was falling.

The biggest problem the Yankees had in those days can be summed up in two words: starting pitching. The ’89 season fell in the middle of a stretch in which the Yankees had a different Opening Day starting pitcher for nine straight seasons. That year Tommy John – a 45-year-old who wasn’t expected to make the team – took the hill for the Yankees in the opener. John won on Opening Day, but was released less than two months later with a 2-7 record and a 5.80 ERA; he never pitched in the Majors again. In 1985, the Yankees opened the season with 46-year-old knuckleballer Phil Niekro on the hill. 1991’s Opening Day hurler was journeyman Tim Leary, who’d lost a league-leading 19 games the year before. In 1990, Dave LaPoint, who had a 5.62 ERA in ’89, got the ball in the opener; he was released the following spring training and saw action in only two more Major League games after the ’90 season. Hawkins wasn’t one of the many Yankees Opening Day starters of that era, but he was signed to a hefty contract as a free agent, only to disappoint. Even when he wasn’t disappointing, Hawkins was still losing; in 1990, he threw a no-hitter in Chicago against the White Sox, but the Yankees committed three errors in a four-run eighth and Hawkins and the Yankees lost 4-0. The next start, Hawkins tossed 11 shutout innings against the Minnesota Twins, but allowed two runs in the 12^th and lost 2-0. It’s pretty hard to go 0-2 over a two-start stretch that includes 19 consecutive innings without an earned run, but Hawkins and the Yankees were able to make that happen (to add insult to injury, in 1991, Major League Baseball ruled that Hawkins’ performance in Chicago would no longer be officially recognized as a no-hitter because he only threw eight innings. That wasn’t Hawkins’ fault; since the White Sox led after 8 ½ innings, they didn’t have to bat in the bottom of the ninth).

But, the Yankees didn’t miss only on veteran pitchers. In 1984, the Mets began the season with 19-year-old phenom Dwight Gooden in their rotation and the Yankees, not to be outdone, put 18-year-old Jose Rijo on their season-opening roster. Rijo wasn’t a phenom, bouncing between the Yankees and Triple-A in ’84 before being traded to the Oakland Athletics after the season; Rijo later became a solid starting pitcher with the Cincinnati Reds, whom he helped to a championship in 1990. In 1986, 23-year-old Doug Drabek spent most of the year in the Yankees’ rotation before being shipped to the Pittsburgh Pirates, where he became one of the best pitchers in baseball, winning the National League’s Cy Young Award in 1990. Hard-throwing lefthander Al Leiter had great stuff, but struggled to throw strikes. Nevertheless, the Yankees refused to limit his pitch count. As a 23-year-old in ’89, Leiter threw 163 pitches in a start in which he walked nine, struck out 10 and allowed five runs; two starts later, Leiter walked seven and allowed four runs in a 130-pitch effort. Shortly thereafter, Leiter was dealt to the Toronto Blue Jays, where he had arthroscopic shoulder surgery before becoming a rotation mainstay and an integral part of championship teams with Toronto and the Florida Marlins.

The Yankees weren’t much better with position-player prospects. First baseman Kevin Maas – whose batting stance resembled someone sitting on the toilet – set a record by hitting 10 home runs in his first 79 Major League at-bats, but his performance went in the toilet after that. Outfielder Oscar Azocar liked to set fire to his bats, but he didn’t set the world on fire with his hitting. Hensley Meulens was nicknamed “Bam Bam” because of his prodigious power, but that moniker became a punch line as the outfielder struggled to make consistent contact. The Yankees had promising power hitters Fred McGriff and Jay Buhner in their system in the 1980s, but they traded both away. Both became All Star sluggers with other franchises.

I felt fortunate that I decided to latch onto the Mets rather than the Yankees. Sure, the Yankees had all that tradition, but they were a mess. Meanwhile, the Mets were winning with talented young pitching – Gooden was only 24 in 1989 and he’d already won a Cy Young Award – and scrappy position players scored runs in bunches in a lineup anchored by Darryl Strawberry, perhaps the National League’s best power hitter. The Mets finished second again in 1990, but at least they didn’t lose 95 games like the Yankees, who finished last for the first time since the Johnson Administration. But, Strawberry departed as a free agent after that season, Gooden struggled with injuries and drug abuse and the Mets started a freefall into mediocrity. Meanwhile, the Yankees seemed to have figured it out all of a sudden, making some savvy trades and free agent signings just as their farm system started to bear fruit. By the mid 1990s, the Mets were the rudderless ship and the Yankees were becoming dynastic again. To add insult to injury, both Gooden and Strawberry found themselves in Yankees pinstripes, where they redeemed their careers (Strawberry’s bouts with drug addiction became public after he left the Mets) and helped the Yankees win championships.

Nowadays, the Yankees aren’t quite as good as they were in the 1990s, but they’re still one of baseball’s best teams year after year. A generation of baseball fans has come of age knowing nothing but Yankees success. However, I remember an era when the Yankees seemed incapable of doing anything right and the Mets owned New York City. Where have you gone, Andy Hawkins? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

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No No-No? Not Anymore

When you grow up a New York Mets fan, you get used to the near-no-hitters. Despite an impressive array of pitching talent throughout its history – 14 pitchers who’ve won a Cy Young Award have donned the orange and blue – Mets fans learn to accept the fact that their organization is star-crossed when it comes to no-hitters. There are, on average, two no-hitters thrown per season, but none of them have been thrown by a Mets hurler. Sure, the Mets have thrown a record 35 one-hitters in their history, but no no-nos. Call it an inconvenient truth or an unfortunate reality, Mets fans grow up knowing that not seeing one of their pitchers throw a no-hitter is their fate.

I grew up watching Mets games on a portable, black-and-white television with a four-inch screen  in my bedroom and, on April 28^th, 1992, I watched David Cone mow down the Houston Astros with ruthless efficiency at Shea Stadium. Cone was the Mets’ ace and I was used to seeing him pitch effectively, but that night was different. Even my 12-year-old eyes could see that Cone’s great splitter and slider seemed to have a little more bite, his blazing fastball a little more juice. The Astros couldn’t touch him and, after Cone kept them hitless through five innings, I started to get excited. After six no-hit innings, I convinced Mom to turn the color, 30-inch television in the living room to the Mets game, which was on WWOR that night. Cone got through the seventh with no problem, once again retiring the Astros without allowing a hit. The Mets were already ahead 4-0, and I was rooting for a quick bottom of the seventh so I could see Cone continue his run toward baseball history.

The eighth began with Casey Candaele grounding out. Cone then walked Eddie Taubensee, missing with a 3-2 pitch. The pitcher’s spot in the order was due up next and Benny Distefano was summoned to pinch-hit. The Brooklyn-born Distefano had never hit much at the Major League level, spending most of his career in the minors; the Astros called him up from Triple-A Calgary just three days prior and he was getting just his second Major League at-bat of 1992. Cone’s first pitch to the lefthanded hitter was a ball. The next pitch was a good pitch, a breaking ball down and away, and Distefano managed to hit it off the end of the bat. The baseball rolled slowly down the third-base line where Mets third baseman Dave Magadan watched helplessly; there was no way Magadan was going to throw out Distefano and he had to hope the ball rolled foul. It didn’t. Distefano had his first Major League hit since 1989 and the Mets were still without a no-hitter in their history. Cone settled instead for a two-hit shutout. Even though the Mets won, I remember feeling empty after the game. David Cone was so close! I thought to myself, as I lie awake in my bunk bed that night. And, of all people, Benny friggin’ Distefano was the one who ended it? Who the heck is he? It’s hard to fall asleep when you keep shaking your head.

I had a different feeling on September 29^th, 2007 when I watched the Mets battle the Florida Marlins in the season’s penultimate game, accompanied by my girlfriend, a friend of ours and his wife. My 10-year high school reunion was in Manhattan that evening so, through connections cultivated thanks to my job as the radio broadcaster of the Mets’ Double-A affiliate in Binghamton, New York, I was able to snag field-level box seats down the first-base line for that afternoon’s game at Shea. John Maine, a very talented righthander who was having a very good season, was having little problem with the Marlins’ young lineup. The Mets’ lineup had few issues with the Marlins pitchers, knocking out Florida’s starter in the second inning and building an 8-0 lead after three. I’d kept score at every Major League game I’d been to over the previous decade or so but I didn’t keep score that day, content to spend a relaxing afternoon with friends and show my girlfriend around Shea Stadium, which she was visiting for the first time. I even broke what had been one of my cardinal rules and left my seat while the game was in progress because I wanted to take my girlfriend to the Nathan’s Hot Dogs stand and have her partake in their legendary crinkle-cut french fries (she was a vegetarian at the time, so no delicious Nathan’s frankfurters for her). I noticed Maine was keeping the Marlins hitless, but I was conditioned; neither Maine nor anyone else for the Mets was ever going to throw a no-hitter, so no big deal.

My friend wasn’t feeling well, so he and his wife decided to leave during the seventh inning. Just before they departed, he turned to me.

“He’s going to get it,” my friend said.

“No. No he’s not,” I responded.

“Yes he will. It’s going to happen.”

I shook my head. My friend didn’t grow up rooting for the Mets, so how could he know? I hoped he was right, but I knew he’d be wrong.

Maine started the eighth by retiring the first two hitters. Maybe he will do it, I thought. He’s only one out from eight no-hit innings. Maine got ahead in the count against Marlins catcher Paul Hoover, a 31-year-old, September call-up who was playing in just his 15^th Major League game. Hoover then beat a 1-2 pitch into the ground and up the third-base line; the ball didn’t go more than 50 feet. However, neither catcher Ramon Castro or third baseman David Wright would be able to get to the ball in time to throw Hoover out at first base. And, once again, the Mets were denied a no-hitter. Mets manager Willie Randolph pulled Maine after that hit, and the fans gave him a rousing ovation. The Mets bullpen didn’t allow a hit in the 13-0 win and I went on with my day and to my high school reunion that evening without giving a second thought to what I’d just seen. I’d long ago accepted that Mets pitchers don’t throw no-hitters, no matter how talented or dominant they are.

That changed on Friday.

I’m not much of a New York Mets fan anymore. I still like them and still want them to do well, but the strong affinity I had for them as a youngster has dissipated, a victim of my career covering baseball for a living. But, on Friday, I became a Mets fan again.

I was at Kauffman Stadium, covering the Kansas City Royals, who were hosting the Oakland Athletics, when I saw on my Twitter feed that Mets pitcher Johan Santana had thrown five no-hit innings against the St. Louis Cardinals at Citi Field. Then six no-hit innings. Once the seventh inning began, I was following along on my iPhone, using Major League Baseball’s At-Bat app. When Santana got through the seventh without allowing a hit, I knew At-Bat would allow the eighth inning to be broadcast free of charge – you normally have to pay a fee to watch the television broadcasts of games – because a no-hitter was in progress. I watched the eighth as a clearly out of gas Santana worked around a walk, but still prevented the Cardinals from getting a hit. I thought Santana – who underwent shoulder surgery that prevented him from pitching in 2011 – would be pulled in the ninth inning in favor of a fresh arm from the bullpen. You don’t like to see pitchers removed when they have a no-hitter going, but I thought that would be the prudent move in this instance.

But, I continued to watch on my iPhone as Santana went back out for the ninth. I breathed a sigh of relief when Matt Holliday lined out. Allen Craig’s lineout was followed by a fist pump. David Freese swinging over an off-speed 3-2 pitch for the final out got me out of my chair and led to more fist pumps. Santana did it! He threw a no-hitter!

And, then, I stood in disbelief. Not only did Santana throw a no-hitter, but he threw a no-hitter for the Mets. This wasn’t Tom Seaver and Dwight Gooden, the two greatest pitchers in Mets history, throwing no-hitters after they left the Mets – adding insult to injury, Gooden threw his no hitter for the crosstown Yankees. This wasn’t Mike Scott and Nolan Ryan, two hard throwers who never figured it out with the Mets, going to other teams and tossing no-nos – Ryan throwing a record seven no-hitters after departing. This was Santana, whose surgically repaired shoulder hadn’t thrown more than 108 pitches, tossing a career-high 134 pitches and running on empty over the last couple of innings. There were no journeymen catchers or light-hitting utility players to spoil Santana’s moment, the Mets’ moment. The Mets had finally become like every other team (except the San Diego Padres, who still don’t have a no-hitter). Now, when a Mets pitcher takes a no-hitter deep into the game, Mets fans will believe it’s possible for their pitcher to get 27 outs without allowing a hit and, if that pitcher loses the no-no, Mets fans won’t think it’s because their team is cursed. If Johan Santana can do it, then any Mets pitcher can do it.

But, man, why couldn’t Benny Distefano’s ground ball have rolled foul?

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They Can Still Be Heroes

The first New York Mets game I attended ended with Mets slugger Darryl Strawberry hitting a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning, giving the Mets the win and making me a Darryl Strawberry fan at five years old. Once I became immersed in baseball a few years later, I became an even bigger Strawberry booster. He was a man of prodigious talents who was fun to watch whether he was hitting a baseball 400 feet or swinging and missing at a pitch in the dirt – and he did both often. Strawberry was a very good player in the clutch, but he was also prone to lengthy slumps. He had the tools to be a great defensive player, but he seemed uninterested in the field. However, none of Strawberry’s shortcomings muted my ardor for him because I understood he, like every other athlete, has flaws. But, as far as his baseball skills were concerned, I felt Strawberry’s positives far outweighed his negatives.

I was still a fan of Strawberry’s after I learned he was a drug and alcohol abuser, which helped explain his streakiness. Even though I was disappointed to find out about Strawberry’s off-field problems, I still loved him for his on-field excellence. At a young age, I saw Strawberry for what he was: a great athlete and a troubled human being. And, no matter what, I was always in awe of his on-field excellence while bemoaning his off-field issues.

Over the years, I’ve wondered how I developed the rare-for-a-youngster – but healthy – concept of admiring athletes for their playing abilities without expecting them to be flawless. I think it’s because of where and when I grew up. In New York City, two things sell newspapers and get people to watch the news more than anything else: sports and scandals. And, those two things were far from mutually exclusive when I was growing up. Two years after a magical season that won him the 1985 National League Cy Young Award, Mets pitcher Dwight Gooden checked into a drug rehabilitation clinic after testing positive for cocaine and relapses would be common throughout his career. New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor was one of the most feared and dominant players in NFL history, but he had several run-ins with the law and his problems with drugs were an open secret. Heck, even New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner got into the act, getting banned from baseball for 2 ½ years after hiring a thug to dig up dirt on outfielder Dave Winfield, one of the Yankees’ star players. And those are just a few examples of sports scandals involving New York City athletes and sports figures during my formative years in the late 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s. Combine a potential sports scandal with the insatiable and competitive New York City media and no stone revealing an athlete’s bad behavior is left unturned. New York City media aren’t above fabricating or embellishing a scandal either. Thanks to them, I grew up in an environment that looked to tear athletes and sports figures down, rather than build them up and/or keep their misdeeds quiet.

In other words, I grew up in a much different place than State College, Pennsylvania, home of The Pennsylvania State University.

One of the biggest reasons the allegations of child molestation and sexual assault levied against former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, and the subsequent cover up – in which Joe Paterno, Penn State’s legendary former head football coach, took part – have gotten so much attention is because Paterno is a hero to many in Central Pennsylvania and beyond. Not only has Paterno won a lot of games, but he seemed very committed to the growth of his university as a whole, donating millions of dollars to Penn State and graduating his players at a higher rate than most big-time football coaches, all while helping Penn State develop into a nationally-recognized university academically and athletically. Some have argued Paterno is the most important figure in Penn State’s history, an argument that would be nearly impossible to make for any other college coach, past or present, at any other university. And, unlike many sports heroes – including my beloved Strawberry – Paterno was always very accessible. He and his family have lived in the same modest house in State College, Pennsylvania for decades and, for many years, Paterno would walk from his home to Penn State’s Beaver Stadium on game days. Many Penn State fans felt like they knew Paterno and felt he was a man of unimpeachable integrity, which made the revelation that he chose not to go to the authorities when told of possible inappropriate contact Sandusky had with minors in the Penn State football facilities that much more galling.

No sport provokes more passion, pride or unabashed idolatry than big-time college football – a sport that’s virtually nonexistent in New York City. College football’s invisibility on the New York City sports scene is in part because there are no big-time programs with long track records of national championships or yearly bowl-game appearances in or near the five boroughs (Rutgers University’s football team has had success in recent years, but they’re barely a blip on the New York City sports scene). The invisibility is also in part because unabashed idolatry just doesn’t jibe with the majority of New Yorkers and New York City isn’t a market where media will go out of their way to praise athletes and sports figures or hide their transgressions. It would’ve been impossible for a cover up like the one that occurred at Penn State to occur in New York City, where the media would’ve put pressure on Penn State to  remove Sandusky in 1998, the first time a police report alleging Sandusky molested young boys was filed. The combination of sports and scandal are an irresistible pull to New Yorkers and the New York City media.

Because of when and where I grew up, I never had a romantic, rose-colored-glasses view of sports, but that certainly didn’t dim my passion for sports or for athletes and others involved in sports. And, while I’m not a cynic, I do follow – and, nowadays, cover – sports with my eyes wide open. I admire what I can see and don’t jump to conclusions about what I can’t see. I understand most people involved in sports are good, well-meaning folks, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be corrupted by money, prestige or power, just like anyone else. I’ll always enjoy the games but I always keep in mind they’re just that – games. And those participating in those games are just as human and as flawed as everyone else.

And, no matter what happens, Darryl Strawberry will always be my favorite athlete.

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