FALL FROM ACE
To Amazin’s, Dark Knight just another pitcher — and problem
The Mets suspended Matt Harvey a day after he failed to show at Citi Field for Saturday’s game against the Marlins. It’s just the latest Harvey transgression, which team brass seemed willing to overlook when he was dominating, but not so much anymore.
THE SEEDS for all of the surreality that took place Sunday were scattered at random times across the last 5 ¹/₂ years. Though it’s sometimes hard to conjure this image anymore, there was a time when Matt Harvey wasn’t just a concept and a cool nickname. He was the Next Seaver. Seaver was The Franchise? Then Harvey was Franchise 2.0, arriving at a moment when the Mets were desperate to have someone other than Bernie Madoff be the face of the franchise.
He was the goods, never forget that. There were nights he would report for work with a sneer on his face and kerosene in his right arm. That wasn’t hype. That was legit. He was young and brash and he loved New York and supermodels and throwing four-seam fastballs, and Mets fans fell for him so hard they became instantly obsessed that he might take his talents across town to The Bronx at the f i rst opportunity.
And the ballpark ... well, he was the f irst true must-see feature of Citi Field. And not since a kid from Je rs ey named Dennis Scalzitti would bring 27 placards with “K” stenciled on them during all the starts of Doc Gooden’s prime had Mets fans heard a sound like that at home, in Flushing. Again: That’s not made up. That’s not the mind playing tricks on you. Those aren’t pangs of nostalgia distorting the facts. That’s what it was like.
But from the start you could sense he would be a handful for the suits. There was the ESPN Magazine Body Issue. There was the long story where he talked about various fashions that helped make his eyes “pop.” There was a clear attitude inside him, obvious from the moment he arrived and stood up to a veteran pitcher named Jon Rauch, all 6-foot-11 of him, when he’d dumped a bucket of ice water on the rookie’s head. Harvey challenged Rauch to a f ight. Rauch backed down.
At the time, that was part of the legend, a positive part, the part of Harvey that would come after you with 98-mph heat and 92-mph sliders no matter who you were. That’s how things get spun when you’re perched on top of the world. Three years later, with Tommy John surgery behind him and most of his weapons back with him, he all but barreled over Terry Collins to pitch the ninth inning of Game 5 of the World Series against the Royals. That didn’t work out so well, but Mets fans mostly loved him for that, for wanting the ball, demanding it. That, in many ways, was Peak Harvey, Peak Dark Knight. That was the summit.
A month earlier, though, is when the world got a sense of the slippery slope Harvey was tiptoeing down. On Tuesday, Oct. 6, three days before they would play the Dodgers in the NLDS, 24 of the Mets who would wind up on the postseason roster showed up at Citi Field for a mandatory workout. Matt Harvey wasn’t there.
“I was doing some stuff, looked up and it’s 1 o’clock and said, ‘ Oh s--t,’ ” Harvey said, according to Collins, after he finally got around to calling in and was told to not bother to come to the ballpark 90 minutes late.
“Obviously today was not the greatest,” Harvey said the next day. “The last thing I ever want to do is not be with my team. There’s no excuse. I screwed up.”
Privately, the Mets fumed. David Wright, asked about Harvey, shook his head and said: “I’m concerned about the guys who are here. The guys who are here had a great workout.”
But Harvey was still the Dark Knight then. He and the Mets had already engaged in a bitter staredown over his innings limit; after battling the Mets at every turn for two years over their conservative approach to his recovery he turned to his agent, Scott Boras, to do a 180 and express concern that the team was overusing him. But they’d gotten through that. The team believed Harvey was ready to commit.
And then he failed to show up for work.
And the difference between Oct. 6, 2015, and May 6, 2017, exactly 19 months to the day later, when he would again go AWOL, was simple: The Mets clearly no longer feel compelled to satisfy Harvey’s every whim, to satisfy his every mood, to justify his every misstep. The Dark Knight is gone, probably forever, and now seems like the silliest kind of joke. He’s ordinary right now on his good days. He’s had another surgery. Mets fans, many of them, would drive him themselves to Yankee Stadium on many nights.
Harvey is paying for his hubris. But so are the Mets, of course, who allowed this to fester, who clearly learned nothing from this sad saga since they’ ve established the same protocol in coddling Noah Syndergaard.
Nineteen months ago, they fined Harvey a small amount. Collins joked that he’d told Harvey f ive times what time the plane to L.A. was leaving. Then Harvey pitched great against the Cubs in the NLCS, and was never better against the Royals in Game 5.
It’s a simple code, really. Hang zeroes, strike out the world, you can show up whenever you want and getaway with it. You can stand up to a veteran pitcher and be hailed for your self-confidence. You start pitching to a 5 ¹/₂ ERA? That Rauch story might’ve been spun a little differently.
And now, they suspend him three games, knowing — and clearly not caring — that this is bound to fray their relationship, knowing — and clearly not caring — that as a Boras client he likely will file a grievance. They’ve chosen civil war with a player they once couldn’t live without. And it’s hard to find fault with it because the player has spent so much of the past few years trying to light his reputation on fire (when his own body wasn’t doing the same to his career). You really couldn’t make this up. But then: Why would you want to?