SHOOTING FROM THE LIP
Collins has instilled a belief ethic in the Mets that was once more on display Friday night
It is the first week of spring training games, about an hour before Johan Santana is about to make his first start for the Mets in Port St. Lucie. Against the St. Louis Cardinals. And Terry Collins, who never bought into one-sided coverage that told him he shouldn’t even bother to play this season, or that he was nothing more than some kind of front man for a going-out-of-business sale, is sitting behind the desk in his office.
Collins is talking about Santana, how he believes that Santana is going to pitch well this season, the manager of the Mets poking his finger at the dates on a big calendar on his desk, showing you all the extra rest he can get for Santana in April after he pitches on Opening Day.
That is the place on the calendar he keeps hitting good and hard, April 5, Citi Field, Mets vs. Braves.
“If he pitches that day,” Collins says, “then we got five days before he has to pitch again.” Then Collins is showing you on the calendar how Santana can have four starts in the books before he is pitching with only four days’ rest.
Then Santana goes out that day against the Cardinals, two months before he will no-hit the Cardinals on one of the great nights the New York Mets have ever had, certainly the best they have had at Citi Field, and throws a couple of innings where he looks like Santana. Gets a nice double play. Strikes out Yadier Molina — who hit that ball that sent Mike Baxter crashing into the wall Friday night — on the kind of changeup he uses to strike out David Freese, World Series MVP, for the last out of the no-hitter on Friday night.
Only Terry Collins, who has done such a tremendous job managing the Mets, who turned out to be such a tremendous hire by Sandy Alderson, wasn’t just talking about Johan Santana before Santana’s first spring start. He was talking about believing in his players, and that means the best in his players, at a time when it was practically against the law around here not to think the absolute worst about the Mets, their owners, all of it.
And if you didn’t believe the very worst about the people running the Mets, didn’t join the piling on, then you were a rank sucker. If Bud Selig didn’t take the team away from its owners, he was supposed to be half-a-criminal, too.
After losing Game 7 to the Cardinals in ’06 — there is a lot of St. Louis in this story — and then collapsing in September of ’07 and ’08, everything had fallen apart. It turned out Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz lost half-a-billion the day Madoff went down. So somehow it became the same story, on the field, off the field, in the court filings. If the Mets were this kind
of bad baseball team, the owners had to be guilty.
Or “willfully blind,” as the Madoff trustee, this guy Picard, said they were. That charge, by the way, was officially dropped this week before Santana dropped in that changeup against David Freese in the top of the ninth at Citi Field.
In Florida, first week of March, Terry Collins says: “We talk a lot about belief around here. I tell our players all the time, if they don’t believe in themselves, how can
I believe in them, how can the organization believe in them, how can our fans believe in them?”
Terry Collins believed Santana would pitch Opening Day for him, and Santana sure did that, all those shutout innings against the Braves. He believed he had enough offense to compete in the NL East, believed David Wright would be a star again, believed that the Mets were allowed to play the season even without Jose Reyes.
His belief became his players’ belief, no matter how many backups he ran out there, finally carried everybody right through the magic of Friday night’s game. That is when Collins believed that his come-backing starting pitcher could finish off a no-hitter at Citi Field.
Of course this doesn’t mean the Mets are in the clear, nobody could think that looking at the way just their own division lays out right now. The set-up men in the bullpen aren’t going turn into stars all of a sudden because Santana pitched a no-hitter.
A brutal June schedule does not become less brutal because Mike Baxter caught Yadier Molina’s ball before he went crashing into the wall and Carlos Beltran’s fair ball was called foul.
Or because Adam Wainwright, who threw that curve to Carlos Beltran to end Game 7 in ’06, didn’t have his best stuff on Friday night against the Mets. The Mets still gave themselves and their fans a night. Citi Field’s first great night.
Still such a long way to go. But look how far the Mets have come. Team that was supposed to be going out of business very much in business by the close of business Friday night. Still with a better record in that moment, Santana’s grand moment, than the Yankees.
Kind of amazing, isn’t it?