What's New?

By Dana Brand
Posted Thursday, August 23, 2007

More has now been written about the peculiarities of this year’s Mets season than had been written on any subject before the year 1700. Hell, we are approaching the point where more has now been written about the peculiarities of this year’s Mets season than is written about Michael Vick in the course of an average hour. It is a subject that has generated an almost infinite number of bytes from me, from you, and from everyone we know.

The only reason I am writing about it yet one more time is that I have what seems to me to be a new idea about the central mystery of the season: why we aren’t more excited, thrilled, confident, and hopeful about the 2007 Mets considering that they are, by objective standards, like the number in the win column, doing quite well, about exactly as well, in fact as most of us had anticipated.

The reason came to me as I was re-reading my book in preparation for my interview on the MetsBlog podcast this week. (You can listen to it by going to MetsBlog or by clicking on the link on my book website.) About thirty pages of my book are devoted to the events and players of the 2006 Mets season, as an illustration of what a good Mets season feels like. As I read through those pages, I realized that what may be the defining thing missing about this season is not necessarily some very-difficult-to-prove impression like “a lack of fire,” “lackluster play,” “they don’t seem to want it, etc.” I mean, that may be part of it, but I can’t put my finger on definite instances of these things. What’s missing the most, I think, is novelty.

I’ve already argued, along with everyone else, that part of the problem is that our expectations have shifted because last year was a breakout year and a great year. I’ve already observed, along with many others, that the improvement in the Phillies and Braves this year makes things closer and obviously makes us look less dominant. What I’m thinking now is that the reason why we the fans are so limp and disengaged compared to last year is that last year was filled with revelations.

Last year, Jose Reyes bumped up from a very-promising-but-still-not-that-great-player to a promise-fulfilled-the-kid-is-a-hall-of-famer player. That was incredibly exciting to see and this transformation was an important part of the novelty and fun of the 2006 season. It is still exciting to see him play at such a level, but it is not unexpected anymore. We expect our young shortstop lead-off man to hit .300, to hit between 10 and 20 homer and 10 and 20 triples, to steal 70-80 bases, and to get pitchers really nervous and to make spectacular plays in the field. That’s what he does.

Carlos Beltran was a revelation last year. Or more like a resurrection. That added a lot of horsepower to the fan’s response to the 2006 team. Carlos Delgado was a revelation too. He’d never played for us before and there he was, he was great. Paul Lo Duca was a revelation, a totally unexpected .318 hitter and team leader. Endy Chavez was a revelation. Xavier Nady was. Jose Valentin was. Revelations were everywhere. It was practically Biblical. David Wright had hit 20 home runs and 74 RBIs by the All-Star break. That gave us dizzying dreams of what he might be capable of. We didn’t get quite the sense of promise and surprise this year that we got last year. Turns out that he’s more of a .310 – 28 HR - 110 RBI guy rather than a .330 – 40 HR – 130 RBI guy. Oh well. Kid’s got a nice smile.

What I’m saying is that if we got the 2007 season from this bunch in 2006, we would have been climbing the walls and cheering. Instead, we’re shrugging. The seasons are backwards.

It’s not as if we don’t have new things to be happy about this year. The fact that Wright and Reyes have another season at this level shows how for-real they are. Perez and Maine are having fine seasons without which we would probably be in second place. But we had already developed unreasonably high expectations for those two because of their gutsy surprising play in the playoffs. Ed Duque looks fabulous this year but he looked fabulous last year. Glavine is the same as he was last year, which is fine, but it isn’t news.

The closest thing we’ve had to a revelatory surprise is the sloppy but stunning play of Lastings Milledge since the All-Star break. This is why all the sage and sober fans who poo-poo hip-hop and slap-slap have come around to him. The kid may or may not be great. But he looks new. He acts new. He plays new. To get really excited about a team, you need something new.

We have a good team this year. They’ll win 90-95 games and I hope that they’ll have a spectacular finish that will enable us to forget all of this lethargy. But right now, we don’t have enough surprises. We don’t have enough revelations. We don’t have enough news.

Dana Brand is the author of the book Mets Fan, a book which has just been published by McFarland. Please check out his book site at http://metsfanbook.com and his blog at http://metsfanbook.com/blog/ You can contact Dana Brand at danaabrand@yahoo.com.

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