Valley of the Ashes

Today I had a pleasant and productive meeting in a coffee shop just a fungo shot from the Elysian Fields, that sacred patch of downtown Hoboken where legend tells us the first game of organized baseball transpired. In 1845, lower Manhattan's fields were no longer deemed roomy enough for the Knickerbocker Club, so they ferried across the Hudson and a  year later, took on the New York Nine in what was reputed to be the first game between two rival clubs. Less than a decade later, the National Association of Base Ball Players used the grounds for their new league, and New York Times cricket writer Henry Chadwick wrote this account, before becoming an ardent promoter of the new sport:

"I chanced to go through Elysian Fields during the progress of a contest between the noted Eagle and Gotham Clubs. The game was being sharply played on both sides, and I watched it with deeper interest that any previous ball match between clubs I had seen. It was not long before I was struck with the idea that base ball was just the game for a national sport for Americans."

This account the game's evolution toward professional status has always been a more credible story than the Abner Doubleday "founding" myth from 1876, which had the former Union general from New York formally inventing our pastime. Silly, but then again the Doubleday heirs did own half of the New York Mets until the Wilpons bought them out, so perhaps silly is as silly does.

As I rode the ferry to lower Manhattan (and what a fine afternoon for the ride), it seemed to me that the Mets' story during this long, dark off-season is even less compelling than Abner's mythical founding. The news from Shea is as dreary as this time of year, while in the Bronx the second generation Steinbrenner has resigned A-Rod, and Posada, and Rivera and is in keen pursuit of Johann Santana. The Mets? The big Yorvit Torrealba-Johnny Estrada dance for platoon catcher is all the waltzing we've seen in Queens.

The Mets are moving to also-rans in a division they gave away two months ago, falling behind the Phillies - from Philadelphia, for heaven's sake! Outside of the core Wright-Reyes-Beltran ring of gold, this team is notable for what it lacks, for the gaping holes in its pitching staff. Tom Glavine is back in Atlanta (and good riddance on the lackluster lefty) and the coming stars (the Humbers and the Pelfreys) haven't panned out. Pedro and El Duque are older than Brooke Astor (combined) but more injury-plagued (the grand dame still clocked in the high 80s on the philanthropy gun when she checked out, and hadn't missed a gala start in 82 consecutive seasons), and that leaves two terrific three-four type starters in John Maine and Oliver Perez. The pen, of course, is much worse -it cost the Mets the division title and needs an almost total overhaul.

In the field, outside of the golden three, we've got age and production problems at first, injuries at second, and gimpy 74-year-old Moises Alou in left. Rightfield? Lastings Milledge perhaps, though he remains the team's greatest trade bait - itself a sad story when you're competing for Santana with the young, talent-hungry Twins.

This is a thin year for free agent material and dangling trades of team-changing talent, it's true, but Omar Minaya can hardly use that as an excuse. He has to produce a high-quality team and fast, especially in this last year of Shea Stadium - a thought that depresses me almost as much as darkness at 4:30 in the afternoon. Sure, it's a massive pitted pile of concrete with narrow seats, bad sight lines, and a constant cold wind off of Flushing Bay. Still, I've spent so many pleasant afternoons pondering the deep green grass and Jerry Koosman's prodigious sweat glands, that the notion of the wrecking ball seems like an executioner's song for my baseball childhood.

And then there's the new park. Another short journey last week put me on the train between the city and Great Neck, and I took a gander at the rising stadium. It grows quickly, and the upper deck seating is taking shape.  Citigroup gets the name - to me, it's like spelling the great catcher's name Jeri Grote, but what do I know about brands - and can obviously afford a stadium while laying off up to 45,000 people in the next few months. Which is a hell of an irony because that's exactly how many people the new bandbox will hold! Maybe Citigroup can hold a fired employees day with free tickets as part of its severance package.

The new place is small, and covered in brick. Fred Wilpon thinks of the stadium as a new Ebbetts Field, which was a whole borough over and far away. The rotunda, hard by the Flushing line, will be named for Jackie Robinson, who famously retired rather than play for the Giants. Those were the days - times that flashed briefly during the very early days of the Mets, when Yogi Berra caught and Duke Snider played centerfield. Gil Hodges played a little first base during his last playing days, and later managed the greatest squad in team history, just four years before another National League championship team was graced by the dotage of Willie Mays.

The throwback impulse isn't necessarily a bad one, but the Mets need a perennial contender to pay for it - or they risk being a a kind of Gothamite Seatttle Mariners franchise: nice little team, gorgeous field, never wins it all.

But you know, location is everything in New York real estate and Shea's site - excuse me, Citi Field (shudder) - has quite the literary pedigree. The eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg no longer glare from a billboard near the railroad, but the Valley of the Ashes still shows its smudges at times, especially during rainouts and Aaron Heilman meltdowns. It was here that F. Scott Fitzgerald placed his great symbol of refuse on the ride from East and West Egg (Manhasset and Great Neck) to the city, along the class line from old money to new money to just plain poor. (Has anyone ever plumbed the irony of Arthur Ashe Stadium and its locale?)

These strange connections wander in, given a sports section and bit of time on the railroad to Long Island or ferry from Hoboken. Still, I wonder if the Mets have reached their high point with this particular vintage, if the statuesque pose of Carlos Beltran in the 2006 championship series at its last money will symbolize a team moving into a new stadium with old problems, and older hamstrings. If Citi Field won't be some diamond-shaped nightmarish version of:

"...a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through powdery air."

UPDATE: I should have worked this in higher up, but if you're looking for the best off-season baseball rumor site in the world, click here. 'Tis great.

Comments

[Slappy]

Wow. Wasn't Omar Minaya the man just 4 months ago? Could it really have gone from so good to so bad so quickly? Was it really a sham or is it really not as bad as you think? You are in trouble though with a young Phillie team with a lot of talent. Even if they are from Philadelphia.

"...pondering the deep green grass and Jerry Koosman's prodigious sweat glands..." My favorite line.

I remember Koosman for his baseball card the most. Despite being a Yankee fan, I cherished Koosman's card for having one of the most beautiful looking pictures of a pitcher ever caught in mid-pitch. A great wind up is still the most beautiful thing in sport.

[Tom K]

Nice bit of English major connecting.

Maybe Meyer Wolfsheim got to Willie in September? Or, more likely, to the bullpen? Glavine, that's it . . . he sold 'em out on his way out the door to his true home, the arch rival Braves.

To think -- "that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people – with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe."

Your Ashe among the ashes observations remind me that the Mets will be giving up something that is likely unique in sports by renaming the stadium -- Shea is an anagram for Ashe, and surely there are no other two major sports facilities so close together, serving different sports, that are anagrams of one another.

Citibank, on the other hand, offers less interesting outcomes --

A BIT NICK
CAB I KNIT
BAIT NICK

though it does anagram, encouragingly, to: BACK IN IT

[Travel Guy]

"Still, I wonder if the Mets have reached their high point with this particular vintage, if the statuesque pose of Carlos Beltran in the 2006 championship series at its last money will symbolize a team moving into a new stadium with old problems, and older hamstrings."

I also wonder...
I kind of want to see the new stadium though. :-)