I grew up in the journalism era where
the first paragraph of every article you either read or wrote started off with ‘who,
what, where, how, when’. You could not move on to paragraph two unless you
accomplished these objectives in paragraph one.
There was no crazy headlines on the back
page of New York’s local tabloids, the News and the Mirror. Those kind of
headlines could only be found on the local newspapers in London. The headline
for last night’s game would have stated that the Mets lost another game and the
headline would refer to the page where you could find the story. It wouldn’t
say that the Mets were inept or stunk or even sucked. Just the score, the fact
they lost and the page number for the story.
I don’t know which is the correct
approach in 2017. I know for a fact that the players don’t read, as one told
me, ‘this crap every day’. Mets baseball reporters to them rank somewhere in
between Hillary Clinton and Kim Jong Un. But frankly, both the fans and the
writers deserve better than the final result we are getting from these games
recently.
The Mets game was on national cable
television yesterday, but I found no immediacy to turn it on. When I did, they
were already down three runs to the Nats so I moved on to another channel. I
don’t get a lot of Mets games down here in South Carolina and, as you know, I
write about this team. Still, I found no desire to watch the game yesterday, I
first for me in many years.
The writer’s here on Mack’s Mets are
going to be addressing what’s going on during their posts this week,
culminating with a Friday question asking ‘where do we go from here’. I get the
honor of asking the questions so I don’t have to include an answer, but I
thought I would move some posts around today and slip this one in.
Calm down.
The season is young.
Some players will heal while others will
go down.
All the Mets can do is put the best
players they have, at game time, out on the field.
Eventually the Mets will win two or three games in a row and the headlines will calm down.
@MetsTwitter never will. Don't follow it.
And most important, Mack's Mets will continue to sort all this out and give you the best online coverage of the team we sometimes hate but always love.
I have crawled back in from the ledge :)
ReplyDeleteI can't decide if the taste of arsenic or cyanide is better. Then again, what good what it do for me to mix it into my cocktail when the root cause is the on-the-field manager who is unable to motivate his players or take corrective actions that differ from what hasn't worked in the past? A good leader would voluntarily fall upon his sword and accept responsibility for his ineptitude. Wait, there's precedent. http://articles.latimes.com/1999/sep/04/news/mn-6818
ReplyDeleteI don't feel that the manager is all to blame in this matter. It's my belief that the whole organization is the blame for their philosophy on hitting, taking pitches, and an obsession with power hitters and not enough focus on contact hitting and putting the ball in play.
ReplyDeleteGary
ReplyDeleteSo true.
Hitters hit in all different and strange ways.
You can go from a Paul Molitor to Wade Boggs to Juan Gonzalez.
The Mets Organization hitting approach under Alderson served the purpose of maximizing results for players that are not natural hitters.
That served its purpose during the dark ages of the Madoff Shadow Tears.
Those days should be in the past.
Mets should and should have moved on from that approach.
There is a reason batting average was so important for sooo many years.
Reese -
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to take you on regarding Terry Collins. He's your broken record to play.
Pot, meet kettle! How many times can you keep repeating "the mgr is to blame for everything"? I'm waiting for you to blame him for the Holocaust and 9/11.
ReplyDeleteWhen you can show some semblance of balance in your opinions, they may have credibility.
It wouldn't be surprising if this year crumbled upon itself due to age and injury and poor roster construction.
ReplyDelete