Opening Day Traditions

The Mets should try to do what the Royals did ... and that's win the World Series:

"So it starts up again on Sunday night in Kansas City, just over five months — just that — from when the Mets didn’t make it back to Kansas City for Game 6, five months after Eric Hosmer broke for home and Lucas Duda’s throw went sailing towards Manhattan. We start to find out tonight, the beginning of a trip to October that sometimes feels longer than a Presidential campaign, if the Mets can do what the Royals did:
Not just make it back to the World Series, but win it all the way the Royals did, 30 years after the Royals had last won a World Series in 1985. The last time the Mets won the Series also happens to be 30 years ago, in the loud and amazing and unforgettable baseball season of 1986."

So do what the Royals did? Just wanted to confirm.

Oh, and this has nothing to do with the Presidential campaign, but good cultural reference.


"I am standing with Mattingly at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter this spring, as he watches his Marlins take the field, two decades after his playing career ended for him with that last, loud roar against the Mariners. We are talking about his back, and I mention that everything changed for him with an awkward swing on a cold night in Milwaukee.

Mattingly shakes his head, and says that his back problems began all the way back in high school, but that he played at a time when nobody told you that too much time in the cage and too many swings could catch up with you, and your back, at the back end of your career.

'When I was a kid, I’d just go to the chiropractor,' Mattingly says, and he’d just pop it back in.'"

Soooooo ... what does Don Mattingly have to do with the 2016 Mets? Who are trying to win the World Series? Like the Royals did?


"It is stenosis that now informs Wright’s career, and what is left of it for the captain of the Mets. It is stenosis that has stolen some of his bat speed and some of his prime, and requires hours of preparation just to get him on the field. If you are a Mets fan, you know how high you can grade on paranoia, even in the best of times. But anybody who’s sure how many games David Wright plays at third base this season, raise a hand."

David Wright had 17 RBIs last year and is a career .198 hitter in the playoffs. I don't think any Mets fan expects more than, say, 60 RBIs from Wright this season. The Mets can make the World Series without David Wright ... they already did.

Is this just a convoluted way to connect this story to Don Mattingly?

Just so you can tell the world that you had a conversation with Don Mattingly?


"Even with those questions about their captain, the Mets don’t just bring promise to Opening Night, and as much excitement to a new season as they have had since 1987."

Perhaps. I know you write the same Opening Day article every year, so it's hard to tell when you're being sincere.


"There is an old baseball expression that covers this, and not just for a team as promising as the ’16 Mets: Stuff happens, even when you have Harvey and deGrom and Syndergaard and Matz, and have Zack Wheeler coming back."

Yup, that's an old baseball expression. "Stuff happens, even when you have Harvey and deGrom and Syndergaard and Matz, and have Zack Wheeler coming back."

Leo Durocher popularized this particular old baseball expression, and nobody knew what he was talking about. Because Harvey, deGrom, Syndergaard, Matz, and Wheeler hadn't even been born yet.


"We now officially know how the Royals came all the way back from the disappointment of October of 2014, all the way to their own big 30th anniversary celebration. Now the Mets try to do the same. The team the Mets play Sunday night is the team they want to be."

That article was as long as a Presidential election and as stiff as Don Mattingly's back.