As I mentioned in the Notes feed yesterday, my wife and I went to New York to visit my parents for Easter weekend. Before celebrating my wife's and my father’s birthday on Saturday night, we hopped on the Grand Central Parkway to see the Mets play the Marlins at Citifield.
With first pitch at 4:10 p.m. it was a lot chillier than it needed to be when we settled into our seats on the field level along the third base line. Why this wasn’t a 1:00 p.m. start I’ll never know. And once you sit down, it’s impossible not to notice the new Jumbotron that dominates centerfield. You find yourself looking at it all the time, and the effect is a lot like the one at AT&T Stadium, where the screen hanging underneath the scoreboard is so big, you’re liable to catch yourself watching it instead of the game. To get a better idea of how much more real estate the new screen takes up, here’s a shot of the old scoreboard.
I’d describe the effect as borderline between making the ballpark feel cozier, at least not when it felt claustrophobic. But hey, it’s the era of Steve Cohen in Queens and bigger is always better. And believe you me, I’m not complaining.
We got lucky when it came to the rotation as Kodai Senga started the game. He scattered three hits in six innings and struck out six, including all three batters he faced in the third inning. He put every batter away in the thrid with his “ghost fork” pitch that made him famous in Japan. The only blemish for Senga on the day was a leadoff home run in the sixth by Jazz Chisolm (or Chazz Jisolm if you’re Keith Hernandez having a senior moment).
The Mets bullpen gave up another run in the three innings they needed to fill in, helping to salt away a 5-2 win for the home team. I projected earlier this month that the bullpen was a “crapshoot,” and that’s what we’ve seen so far, though getting bashed by Milwaukee and hardly challenged by Miami isn’t large enough of a sample size to pass judgement yet.
But the real surprise came as we exited the park after the game. It was then, just a few feet from the stairs that lead down to the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, that I ran into Brian McDonough, a person I hadn’t been face to face with in almost 40 years. In four years of high school at Archbishop Molloy, I doubt we ever had a class together, and certainly didn’t run with the same crowd. But thanks to the magic of alphabetical order, I sat behind him in homeroom for four years.
So when you look at it that way, Brian was my single serving friend every school day from 1981-85. As shocked as I was at running into him, Brian and his family seemed absolutely bemused. He asked me how in the world I had recognized him when I reminded him we were friends on Facebook. It’s a meeting that would never have happened in an earlier era. We shook hands and given the rapidly dropping temperature, parted ways as quickly as we had met. Thanks to Brian’s family for tolerating the unexpected interruption.
Getting back to the Mets, on Monday night at CitiField, Max Scherzer took the mound for the first time since his disastrous start in Milwaukee last week. If you take a look at the line in the box score, the start looked pretty good: 5.0 IP, 1H 0R 0ER 3BB 6SO. Scherzer threw 97 pitches, and even though it’s still early, the Mets would like him to get to six innings at this time of year so they don’t stress the bullpen. And after a game where Scherzer admitted he was having trouble getting outs with two strikes, he took eight hitters to a full count. So while we’re seeing progress, I don’t think he’s out of the woods yet. Keep an eye on this.
In the locker room after last night’s game, Scherzer said he wasn’t broken, and that he’s headed in the right direction. I sure hope so. Scherzer might not be at the metaphorical 18th hole when it comes to his baseball career, but he ought to be able to see it from where he is right now. When a pitcher is 38, the end can come suddenly. And with 40-year old Justin Verlander still on the injured list and not expected to return to the club during an upcoming 10-game West Coast road trip, the Mets need Scherzer to hold the rotation together until Verlander returns to make his Mets debut.
I hope everyone enjoyed Friday’s essay about “Travis Lane,” an old friend who disappeared in the early 1980s never to be heard from again. While I spent most of my evenings last week writing the piece, it’s been in my head for about a year. I hope I did the story justice. As fate would have it, we drove through Travis’ old neighborhood in Elmont, N.Y. on the way home on Monday morning.
Off camera to the right is the site of Alva T. Stanforth Junior High School. The school is long closed, but the athletic fields behind the building are still owned and operated by the Sewanhaka Central High School District, a collection of high schools that gave the world Heisman Trophy Winner Vinny Testaverde, Olympian Al Oerter and actor Telly Savalas. My Dad got a “Who loves ya baby?” from Savalas as he was leaving the Stop 20 diner on Hempstead Turnpike.
Off camera to the left is the site of St. Vincent dePaul Roman Catholic Church and Elementary School. The school there is also long closed (I spent first and second grade there) and the parish, like a lot of Catholic parishes in and around New York City, has changed radically since the pews were populated by the mix of working class Irish and Italians that were my classmates in the 1970s. The church has since been designated a Syro-Malankara Catholic Cathedral and serves a thriving parish of recent immigrants from India who call Queens and Nassau County home. I’m glad to see the church full — my wife has attended services there from time to time — and am happy that it’s being used rather than auctioned off by the Diocese of Rockville Centre.
As we headed down the block that Travis used to live on, the houses there had changed so much I couldn’t remember exactly which one he lived in. It seemed fitting.
Eric McErlain lives and works in the Washington, D.C. area. He blogged at Off Wing Opinion regularly from 2002-2009. In addition to writing at Off Wing, his work has appeared at The Sporting News, AOL FanHouse, NBC Sports.com, Deadspin, The Hockey Writers and Pro Football Weekly.