Immoral Victory

At eight games under .500 and 358 games behind the Phillies, it’s hard to call a win anything other than a win that brings you one day closer to the end of the season. When you consider what brought the Mets good fortune on Wednesday, it’s hard to get really excited. Nick Evans had a huge day with a three-run HR and three hits. It isn’t going to bring Nick Evans any closer to being on the team next season. Mike Pelfrey had a quality start. It isn’t going to bring Pelfrey closer to the good graces of Met fans. Besides, I’m not sure if I’d call nine hits, two walks, and a hissy fit at Placido Polanco “quality”. (More on the hissy fit later.)

Now Bobby Parnell pitching the ninth? That’s hopeful. This is the chance that he should have received last season under the Jokey Smurf Administration. And I loved the way he responded to his walk to Chase Utley to lead off the inning. But I get the feeling that even if Parnell converts every save from now until September 28th, there will still be questions heading into next spring (mostly because spring training’s purpose for us is to make up questions where there are only answers, but still.)

But any victory over the Phillies is meaningful … even if it doesn’t spoil anything for them (let’s face it, the Phils are the 2011 N.L. East Champs if they have to play the rest of the season with Cliff Lee and the Lakewood Blue Claws roster. Because beating a good team is satisying. More than that, beating a team full of sanctimonious hypocrites is delicious.

The latest example comes from Phillies broadcaster Gary Matthews Sr. (a former Phillie and Cub nicknamed “Sarge”) during Pelfrey’s argument with Polanco where Polanco started to lean into a pitch and then turned away at the last minute:

“That’s why these guys lose anyway. They’re a bunch of crybabies.”

What an interesting theory. I thought it was the years of mismanagement, the financial problems, the bad free agent signings, trading for Gary Matthews Sr.’s son who hit .015 as a Met, the 55 season ending injuries a year … but apparently, no. Gary Matthews, who gets paid by the Phillies to analyze baseball, analyzed five seasons of Mets misery by calling them crybabies. And that’s the sad part of it all … he gets paid for that.

Now if it had just been on the air then it would have been under the guise of “entertainment”. But he kept this up after the game:

Afterward, Matthews told a Daily News reporter: “Tell them Sarge said it—the Mets are crybabies. That’s why they lose.” Matthews then chased down the reporter and made crying motions with his fists under eyes. “Make sure you have tears, like this,” Matthews said.

Wow. That’s just rich coming from anybody connected with the Philadelphia Phillies, perhaps the sorest winners in the history of pro sports (though the Vancouver Canucks gave them a run for their money last season). Consider:

Cole Hamels, who had been in the league for ten minutes, criticized Paul Lo Duca for flipping his bat and pointing to the sky at home plate after hitting a home run.

Larry Andersen cried that “someone should put one in Jose Reyes’ neck” after Reyes hit a home run and raised his finger past the Phillies’ imaginary celebration line somewhere just past first base.

Jimmy Rollins whines at every opportunity when asked about the way the Mets celebrate.

But the Mets are the crybabies, according to Private Matthews.

Now let me make this clear with you: Pelfrey should have kept his mouth shut. Earlier in the season Justin Turner won a ballgame by doing the exact same thing as Polanco did in the fifth inning, leaning into the pitch and then turning away to show the umpire that he made an effort to get out of the way. It’s a baseball trick, and it’s perfectly fine. That makes Pelfrey a bit of a hypocrite himself. And I’ve said it before and I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face: If you don’t like what Polanco did, hit him in the back. Send a message. That’s what the Athletics did with Turner the day after he won the game on a hit by pitch. Stop with the lectures. Send your message the old fashioned way and move on.

If Private had criticized Pelfrey, he would have been right. Pelfrey has had three such incidents now (Cody Ross, Chase Utley, and Polanco), and my rule of thumb is that if one person is involved with multiple people via the same drama, then maybe it isn’t them, it’s you. So criticism of Pelfrey is warranted (though I still can’t stand the sight of Cody Ross.) But the Mets are crybabies? How does analysis like that set anybody apart from a typical internet commenter? This is what Gary Matthews gets paid for? Does Private have inside information from his son who, again, played for the Mets at the start of the 2010 season and hit -.039 in his time in Flushing? Did Junior relay some stories that only insiders would know about? If so, tell us Gary. Earn the money the Phillies pay you instead of just waving the pom-poms and being fan boy. Because for all the Mets problems, for all the things they could be legitimately criticized for, I can’t think of any instance where they could be classified as “crybabies”. And I’m really racking my brain trying to figure this out. Maybe the biased side of me has blocked them out, but people that know me know well enough that if the Mets were crying I’d kill them for it. Maybe all of Snoop Manuel’s whining about how everyone was hurt? I honestly can’t think of anything else.

I write about this not because anybody with the Mets “gives a f**k” about it, but because this is going to barely make a ripple because Matthews works for a team that wins, and he kicked a losing team while they’re down albeit with no basis. Because that will be the best pro-Matthews argument anybody can come up with: “Dude, Mets suck. Deal with it.” If Wayne Hagin had called the Phillies “crybabies” yesterday? Oh the humanity! It would have been Tuesday’s earthquake all over again. But Matthews can do it because his people love it and people here will barely care. But it drives me nuts … winning unfortunately will mask a lot of stupidity. Just as it did with Hamels, Andersen, and Rollins, it’ll do the same with Matthews.

But the next time the Mets are good and the Phillies suck, whether it’s three, six, or ten or even twenty seasons from now, and people ask me how I can take pleasure in a first place team constantly beating the snot out of a last place team, I’ll link to the Phillies shirts on sale at Cooperstown last week. Then I’ll link to this post. Same reason I take pleasure in the moral yet purely meaningless victory on Wednesday.