A New Generation

By John "Metstradamus" Coppinger
Posted Friday, March 23, 2007

I’m sure you were excited when Mike Pelfrey locked down his spot in the Mets rotation by giving up one run over five innings against Baltimore on Tuesday night. Well, I was too.

In fact, I’ve been abundantly excited about the trio of Pelfrey, John Maine, and Oliver Perez lately. At least during the spring, these three have sent visions of Seaver, Koosman, and Gentry dancing in our heads (for you younger fans like myself, it would be visions of Gooden, Darling, and Fernandez).

But the baseball lords don’t want us to get too excited, and they found a funny way to give us a small reminder the very next day…simply to let us know that the wolf is always at the door. Because you remember the last trio of pitchers that put those visions in our heads and made us dream of a decade of dominance, right?

Surely, you remember Generation K?

I’ll give you all a moment to cringe at the mention of that phrase. The same phrase that gave us a warm and fuzzy feeling of anticipation about thirteen years ago now induces vomiting and actually has been known to cause cancer in laboratory rats.

Generation K.

One day after the best prospect we’ve had in a number of years let us breathe a little easier about our rotation issues, a prior blue chip prospect of ours was released from the Cincinnati Reds. And if it is the last time he gets released, he will end his career with a 40-58 record, hardly befitting a number one overall pick.

Paul Wilson was the best of what Generation K had to offer. Jason Isringhausen was a good prospect, too. Bill Pulsipher was the wild card lefty of the bunch.

But Paul Wilson? Oh my Lord, he was fantastic! He was the number one draft pick in the nation, tabbed to be the Seaver of the bunch. Wilson could get you out high with the fastball, or could fool you low with his slider, and with his 6’5” 210 lb frame, he had the ability to be a workhorse. To boot, he had the intangibles to play in New York City. (The scouting reports on Wilson back then almost sound eerily like the scouting reports we hear on Pelfrey now.)

Wilson came up in 1996 at the tail end of Dallas Green’s managerial rule .......... so who knows if Wilson suffered due to Green’s tendency to overthrow his starters, just as Izzy and Pulse suffered. But Wilson endured injuries nonetheless. Lots of them.

First, it was a shoulder during his rookie season, when he went 5-12. Then an elbow which ruined 1997. Then the same elbow which ruined 1998 and 1999. In 2000, when Wilson was supposed to be just rounding into his prime and leading the Mets to the World Series, he was instead watching that World Series from his living room as a member of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays after being the dreaded “throw-in” in the Rick White trade. "The best laid plans ...." comes to mind.

And now, one day after a Mike Pelfrey’s career really gets started, Paul Wilson’s career may very well have come to an end, at 40-58. It’s a subtle reminder from the deities of baseball to always temper our excitement; that nothing is ever as it seems and that sometimes fancy nicknames and monikers don’t mean jack squat except for the pain they cause when fans like me are left wondering “if only”. Hopefully, Pelfrey represents a new generation; a generation without injuries, a generation without pain.

A generation without a nickname.

For more sad words of tongue and pen (the saddest of all being “what might have been”, of course), come join my alter ego at http://metstradamus.blogspot.com, where making fun of Paul Wilson, Dallas Green, and Rick White is not only encouraged, it’s required.