Dipping Into The Archives Vol. 31
2002
If nothing else, the Mets’ 2002 season was proof that 2001 was no fluke. This club sunk even further into the abyss, finishing way back in 5th place in the NL East. That would be last place for those keeping score. In addition, the team made 2 trades to bring in high profile veterans, neither of which paid off well. By the time all was said & done, Bobby Valentine would be removed as manager at season’s end and it was time for the team to move in a new direction.
The club had gone into the offseason trying to figure out which was the real team - the 2000 overachievers or the 2001 underachievers. As a result there was a wild amount of roster maneuvers made, including complicated three team trades and moves in a which an acquired player was flipped elsewhere before the season started. For example, Robin Ventura was traded for David Justice, but there’s a reason why no one remembers that Justice was a Met; he was dealt away a week later. The total return for Ventura was Mark Guthrie & Tyler Yates? That’s nothing compared to the multi-pronged trade that sent Todd Zeile, Benny Agbayani, Lenny Harris, and Glendon Rusch elsewhere. By the time that game of musical chairs ended, the return haul was basically Jeromy Burnitz and the oft-injured Jeff D’Amico.
As for the big moves, the team rebuilt the right side of the infield by acquiring Mo Vaughn & Roberto Alomar in separate deals. Vaughn was a huge gamble; he had missed the entire previous year due to injury and he wasn’t getting any younger - or lighter. He predictably struggled; players his size generally age poorly.
Alomar was the much bigger puzzle. 20/20 hindsight shows that 2002 was his age 34 season, so it stood to reason that his best days were behind him, but he was still at the top of his game in 2001. There’s no reason his production should have cratered so quickly. There is a fine line between an explanation & an excuse, and he had once mentioned that Carlos Baerga warned him that the dreary atmosphere at Shea Stadium would drain the life out of him. It’s possible that there’s some validity to that, but it still doesn’t fully explain how a player that good should have aged so rapidly. The gist of this is that there’s a reason why Alomar’s HOF plaque does not depict him with a Mets cap.
This was an era in team history filled with guys who fall into the “It’s easy to forget he was a Met” category. This was Pedro Astacio’s first year with the team. It was David Weathers’ Mets debut. Roger Cedeno came back for his second goaround at Shea. It was also the time of Shawn Estes’ brief yet memorable tenure. He was the starter who had the honor of facing Roger Clemens. It was notable because in 2000 Clemens had beaned Mike Piazza in a regular season game and then infamously threw a broken bat shard at Piazza in the World Series. This season Clemens finally faced the Mets in a game at Shea, meaning no DH, meaning Clemens would have to hit. Would the Mets search for payback? If so, Estes failed in one sense. Instead of plunking Clemens, he threw a pitch behind his back. He got some revenge anyway, as later on in that game he hit a home run against Clemens in what turned out to be a Mets blowout victory.
Every once in a while a team seems to have one of those perpetual prospects; a guy who annually appears at the top of prospect lists or whose name pops up in multiple trade rumors yet never makes any type of major league impact. Jorge Toca was the Mets version of that. He had brief cups of coffee in 3 different seasons, but never played in the major leagues after 2001 even though he bounced around multiple organizations after the Mets finally cut ties with him. I could be wrong, but I believe the Mets still attempt to include him in trade proposals even though he has not been part of the team for more than 20 years.
One quick note before closing; as you can see a new face has been added to the broadcast team. Keith Hernandez was only a part timer at this juncture, but the Age Of Keith had now officially begun.
2002 may have been rough, and the Art Howe Era wasn’t much better, but this down period in Mets history was actually much briefer than what has been the norm for this franchise. As we can see, at least one of the major faces in the next wave of success was already making enough waves in the minor leagues to warrant a photo in the yearbook.
SNL Recap
The Christmas episode should be graded on a curve. The purpose is for everyone to have a good time and send all to the holiday break in a good mood. Kate McKinnon fulfilled the job requirements well. She clearly loved to be back; the cast enjoyed working with her, and as expected returning alum joined in on the fun. There were a lot more return bits than usual, as well as recycled premise templates. But so what? Don’t be a Scrooge, just sit back and revel in the good vibes. Plus, Che & Jost continued their holiday tradition, & it may have been their best one yet.
One such template is what was used for the cold open. This was the type of sketch which allows the entire cast to come in for their one joke and leave. In this case it was a Christmas Awards show, with categories such as worst gift and most unwanted guest. Nothing extraordinary here, but at least it gave everyone something to do. Which was a good thing, because as the episode progressed the returning alumni took up a lot of screentime.
Which began with McKinnon’s monologue. As she sang I’ll Be Home For Christmas she was joined by Kristen Wiig & Maya Rudolph. This would not be their only appearances of the evening. They also joined McKinnon & Bowen in an infomercial for an ABBA Christmas album, as well as a music video featuring several of the female cast members (joined by an additional guest star in Paula Pell) singing a folkie tune in a rustic setting. The punchline would be revealed showing the setting as a Tampon Farm, complete with the characters yanking the sanitary napkins out of the ground as if they were carrots & carefully separating them by size.
I’m not sure what it says about me, but for the second week in a row my favorite sketch featured some nightmarish imagery. It was a commercial spoof featuring Chloe & Andrew opening their Christmas gifts only to be disappointed not to receive the puppy that they wanted. Parents Sarah & Mikey explain that a dog is too much work, but they tell the kids that there is one more gift underneath the tree. The gift turns out to be Pongo, some bizarre pet that is easily cared for because it doesn’t eat or make noise or poop. It quickly descends into horror movie scenario. Very well done & Sarah really nailed her part perfectly.
As I said, there were plenty of recurring sketches this time. Kenan returned as Reese D’What for another edition of Cinema Classics, this time showing outtakes from Meet Me In St. Louis as the director used sadistic techniques to extract emotion from his child actor. We had another edition of North Pole News; this time with a pod of orcas attacking Santa’s workshop with McKinnon as the panicky witness. Not a recurring bit, but I liked the Yankee Swap sketch. It took some nice, dark twists.
Billie Eilish was the musical guest. She doesn’t have a current album to promote, but she does have a song from the Barbie soundtrack that she is eager to promote during awards season, and to help her out Greta Gerwig stopped by to introduce her first song. Eilish was joined by Finneas in both of her songs. The highlight of Eilish’s hosting stint a couple of years ago was the sketch in which she invited Kate’s lonely neighbor over for Christmas, so I was looking forward to seeing them work together again. It turned out to be the sole return of one of McKinnon’s classic bits - Whiskers R We. That’s one of those premises that never fails; all you need is a few cats & absurd punchlines and all is good. This time, instead of flirtatious banter between McKinnon’s character & costar, it was revealed that Eilish was portraying her long lost daughter.
With so much time devoted to the returning heroes, there wasn’t a lot for the regular cast to do this week. I’m almost tempted to award the star of the week honor to the cast as whole this week as a Christmas gift, but in reality it belongs to Che & Jost. Once again they ended year with their joke swap - writing jokes for the other to read sight unseen with the express purpose of completely humiliating their costar. The added twist this time is that Che brought aboard a fictional civil rights activist to sit next to Jost as he recited the tasteless material that Che gave him. It was pure gold.
It was great to see McKinnon return and the episode served as a reminder of just how good she was on the show. That’s it for 2023; the show is taking a slightly longer than normal holiday break and returns on January 20. (Rumors are that a couple of cast members are about to depart, so it could be that the extra week off is to give the show a little more time to make the transition a bit smoother. Then again, it’s possible that there’s absolutely nothing to those rumors and everyone simply wished to take a nice long break) Jacob Elordi will host. This should be a good test. The show has been on a nice mini run; time to see if that momentum can continue with a first time host.
The Countdown Continues
Newcomer #4 - David Wright. OK, this one hurts. For a fan, in the first several years of his career Wright provided everything one could hope fun. Not only was he a home grown prospect who rapidly rose through the minor league ranks, but he was born and raised in the part of Virginia where the Mets’ Triple A team was located for years, which had made him a lifelong fan of the team that drafted him. Then, he made an immediate impact upon his promotion to the major leagues.
He never led the league in any significant statistical category, but he was always right up there. His OPS numbers consistently ran in the 900 range, and he annually flirted with the .300/.400/.500 triple slash. He could be counted on for 25-30 home runs and 100 RBIs, & had one 30-30 season. All this in addition to providing strong defense at third base along with heroics in the 2013 World Baseball Classic, earning him the Captain America nickname. All told, he appeared to be on a Hall of Fame path if everything turned out right.
But if there’s one thing that Mets fans have learned, it’s that we can’t have nice things. First, the original dimensions of CitiField worked against him. The fences were either too deep, or too high, or both to benefit a player with his skills. He would be visibly frustrated to see so many deep fly balls die on the warning track. Worse, he would eventually be diagnosed with spinal stenosis which largely kept him off the field as he hit his thirties. There simply is not enough volume in the back end of his career for Wright to be a legitimate candidate.
Holdover #4 - Gary Sheffield. It’s almost unfortunate that Dave Parker had dibs on the nickname The Cobra. That moniker would have been so applicable to Gary Sheffield, a man who uncoiled one of the quickest bats ever seen. He played just before the Statcast era; I can only imagine what his exit velocities must have been. All I know is that I would have been very uncomfortable as a third baseman or a third base coach knowing that an absolute laser would likely be headed my way.
He was a force in the batter’s box. The 509 career home runs are his most obvious accomplishment, but it was much more than that. He had 5 separate seasons with an OPS above 1.000, and it what is practically unheard of for a power hitter in the modern era, he finished with 300 more walks than strikeouts. Even taking into account that he played in a high scoring era, those numbers stand out.
He does have a couple of major negatives on his ledger, however. He was an atrocious fielder. As I’ve mentioned I don’t entirely trust defensive metrics, but it does speak volumes to see how brutal his defensive measurements were, and those numbers were consistent no matter which position he played. There was also his involvement with BALCO. I’m not holding that too heavily against him. I believe him when he claimed that he didn’t know what he was taking. He was always vocal against PED use, and I don’t think he could have easily faked the level of anger he displayed when his name was caught up in that story. He just misses out for me; I probably wouldn’t vote for him if I had a ballot, but I would have no issues were he to be elected. I just think that defense was so bad that it moves him to the bad side of the cutoff line.
Coming Soon To A Streaming Service Near You?
This was unexpected. Over the weekend David Simon tweeted that NBC is working on clearing the music rights so that Homicide: Life On the Street can finally be available for streaming. If that is in fact the case, it’s a complicated process, so don’t expect it to happen immediately. But this is encouraging news. The terrible tragedy, of course, is that Andre Braugher’s death is what it took to reignite interest in the show.
The chief roadblock for shows such as Homicide is that for any service to spend the money for music clearance it needs to be economically worthwhile. It doesn’t make much sense to spend all that cash unless a library show would have a large audience. For example, a few weeks ago I wrote about the show Ed. There simply are not enough people clamoring to watch it nowadays, so it’s sitting in limbo, whereas there was sufficient demand for Moonlighting to finally make it to Hulu.
It really sucks that the renewed interest in Homicide is due to the worst reason possible. But, fingers crossed, here’s hoping that the parties can make this happen. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the show was more than just great; it’s legitimately in The Wire/Sopranos/Breaking Bad territory. It was that good, and its unavailability leaves a huge void in our cultural infrastructure.
Closing Laughs
May all of you who are not required to fork over $148 million in damages have a wonderful week. Thank you all for reading, and see you on Wednesday.