Keidel: Mets Make It Clear -- Dodgers Have 2 Pitchers And They Better Both Be Great
By Jason Keidel
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If this series had a soundtrack, then the first two games played to the nuanced beauty of Bach and Beethoven. And then Game 3 was the hard blast of Black Sabbath.
Or maybe we keep it local, to another thicket of unproven, unshaven artists with wild hair and a booming sound -- the Ramones, who spawned their musical magic in Queens obscurity. Like the Ramones, a true garage band before it became chic and the name of trendy Apple software, the Mets have risen from nowhere to come within one game of the NLCS, with their typical riff of sweet-sounding pitching.
Yet the only instrument the Mets couldn't play Monday night was their priceless pitcher, the invaluable limb of their renowned superhero.
Matt Harvey, perfectly rested, tested, and contoured to pitch the pivotal Game 3, at home, where his Dark Knight visage is beamed into the Gotham sky, was supposed to slam the lid on the Los Angeles Dodgers, who are hardly a murderer's row of hitters.
But the playoffs are funny like that, often with eternal disdain for the orthodoxy. Jake Arrieta was Superman against a potent Pirates lineup. Yet he burped four runs against the injury-ravaged Cardinals.
Harvey was the hottest pitcher east of Arrieta. Yet it was the Mets' largely dormant bats that made thunderous noise Monday night, inside an atypically raucous Citi Field. The crowd summoned images from the old-world chaos of the 1980s juggernaut that played hard, partied harder, and pummeled opponents into submission.
Harvey was in a position he hadn't known in months, his head snapping back to watch another base hit drop onto the outfield grass. The light-hitting Dodgers swatted Harvey's fastball all over the yard, the diamond morphing into a turnstile of runners spinning around the infield.
After falling behind 3-0, there was a palpable sense of foreboding. Sure, the Mets shocked the baseball world by beating the biblical arm of Clayton Kershaw, but now world order would be restored, the baseball gods putting the forlorn Mets in their place, safe and securely home long before Halloween.
After all, Queens hadn't hosted a playoff game in nine years. It's been so long since the Mets played meaningful baseball, their stadium was still called Shea. The current, cozy iteration hadn't even been hatched on an architect's easel.
Didn't matter. Once they survived the rubber arms of Zack Greinke and Kershaw, they were able to swing away at the underbelly of the LA rotation. The Dodgers couldn't survive the car wash of bats the Mets wielded. Their runners formed a conga line around the bases. When they were tired of slapping singles, they turned to Yoenis Cespedes -- as always -- who hit a ball that boomed into the Flushing sky, joining the starts for a magical moment, before sinking into the stands.
For some perspective -- not only on the Mets' newfound fame and burgeoning ball club, but also how epically futile they've been over the last decade -- the last time the Mets even made the playoffs was 2006. All their fondest playoff memories came from men who played before most of today's players were even born.
Mets fans remember and recoil at the fall of 2006; Carlos Beltran froze while Adam Wainwright's spellbinding curveball dipped into the catcher's glove. That would be Yadier Molina, renowned Met-slayer, who hit the homer that gave the Cardinals the lead in that infamous Game 7. Only David Wright is left from that somber night. Only the Mets could employ the most clutch hitter in baseball (Beltran) and watch him limp from the batter's box with his bat still glued to his shoulder.
When we take a wide lens to the Mets and Dodgers, you look leftward for success. The Dodgers are the glamour squad. The beach. Palm trees. Koufax. Hollywood. Mannywood. The nostalgia and historical currency of Jackie Robinson and Ebbets Field and Brooklyn, USA. By contrast, the Mets have Mr. Met, Bernie Madoff, Generation K, and a sordid litany of failures, sprinkled with the fleeting glory of Tom Seaver and Doc Gooden, who got them their only, lonely titles since 1962.
Now the Mets are the upstarts, the kids who don't know any better, with the meager payroll, underdog capes, and three young, wildly talented and wildly underpaid pitchers. Now it's the Mets who can tweak their lineup and toy with their rotation, and can now ponder Steven Matz or Jon Niese or whomever they like. Even Bartolo Colon, who has graduated from old school to Old Testament, was dealing at the Dodgers with impunity, the oldest hurler in MLB history to strike out the side.
Now it's the Dodgers who are the troubled aristocracy, their LucasFilms payroll producing very little in recent autumns, and their beleaguered manager, Don Mattingly, squirming on the hot seat.
Perhaps the most beloved Yankee of this generation, Mattingly now manages the enemy. And isn't managing too well right now, each loss one more Rolaids moment, a rung toward his termination.
Like his team, Mattingly's season is swathed in irony. As is his career. He's the only iconic, lifelong Yankee never to win a World Series. And here he is, back in the five boroughs, trying to do with the Dodgers what he couldn't do in pinstripes. And, like his brilliant but aching years in the Bronx, he could end his career on the same, city soil sans a World Series ring.
The Dodgers have tortured New York teams over the last 35 years. In 1981, they thwarted the Yankees after the Bombers sped out to a 2-0 World Series lead. Then we had 1988, the Year of Orel. Though the Mets spanked the Dodgers 10 times in 11 regular season games, and were exponentially better than Los Angeles at almost every position, the Dodgers somehow muscled past the Mets in seven games, behind the divine limb and sublime pitching of Hershiser. Toss in the improbable 1955 Brooklynites, perhaps the worst of all those resplendent Dodger teams, somehow ending their 20th Century hex from their crosstown tormentors on River Ave.
The last irony is most insulting, though accidental. The Mets have long been laughingstocks, not only for their dark deeds on the field, but also away from their charming new ballpark. This is the club that was clubbed hardest by Madoff, their payroll gutted by the financial buzzard. Then they build a ballpark for the Mets and dedicate it to...the Dodgers. The first statue built by the team was of Jackie Robinson. A noble gesture, to be sure, but you'd like to think the Wilpon family would consider a Met before a Brooklyn Dodger.
Making the irony more biting, Don Mattingly and his sullen band of ballplayers must walk by the patron saint of the Brooklyn Dodgers before entering their potential demise, a space called the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, where Citi Field could mutate from charming baseball museum to baseball mausoleum. Not a pleasant sound for Donnie Baseball, whose surely not ready to sing the team's September Song.
And now Mattingly, the Dodgers' conductor, must choose between Kershaw and Greinke, Bach and Beethoven. And hope one has one more masterpiece left.
Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel
