Opening Day, as we all know, tells you a great deal about what the season will be like. It tells you a lot about the team you’ve put out on the field. From yesterday’s game, it sure looks as if Johan Santana is going to give us what we’ve paid for. We’ve got plenty of offense, (five doubles!) with Wright and Beltran picking up right where they left off. Jose Reyes looked as if he is offensively right back on track, and it also looks as if we’ve got a potent tail end of the lineup with Church and Pagan. I have to admit, though, that I’m a little worried about Delgado and Schneider. They sure didn’t show much at the plate yesterday. But we may not need them as badly if we’ve got that bullpen. How about that bullpen? Our bullpen wasn’t so good last year, but from what I saw yesterday, it appears that we’re solid in that department again. I got a real sense, watching them I the dugout, that the team is loose, confident and hungry. They played solid baseball. Willie managed well. Maybe I ought to raise my predicted total of 95 wins. Looks like we’ve got a great team off to a great start, a team that will wipe away our memory of last year’s historic collapse.
Sigh.
You’d have to be an idiot to write what I wrote above. But face it, on Opening Day, every fan is an idiot.
Opening Day, alas, tells you no more about what a season will be like than any game you could pick at random out of a season. It tells you less, in fact, because at least on Opening Day, you have your ace on a mound, and if you’re a good team, you’re probably playing a not-so-good team. Sure Santana looked good, but if he had pitched badly, would that mean he wasn’t good? I hope Jose is back on track, but you know that it will be weeks before we know whether he is or not. I’m hopeful about Church and Pagan and sure there are reasons to worry about Delgado and Schneider. But one game is one game is one game. If somebody told you that game 100 of the season was really going to show you what this team is like, wouldn’t you think that they had lost their mind? I don’t have to tell you that we don’t know anything yet about how the bullpen will perform. You spent a few hours watching the Mets yesterday and you don’t know squat. And yet you may very well have read what I wrote at the top of the post and thought, “Yes indeed. That’s what I think too.”
Opening Day is an interesting illusion. So much has built up inside of you. You are so anxious and so curious about what this season will bring that your eyes feel like microscopes. Here is your sample. Bring all of your interpretive powers to bear on this artifact as if it’s a rock from Mars. What does it say? What does it tell you? You’re so anxious to know something concrete about the Mets 2008 season that you throw all caution to the wind. You believe because you saw something good, just as you would be shaken if the Marlins had blown the Mets out of the water, just as they have once or twice, in your scalded memory.
We don’t know anything. But take heart. You had no idea at any point last season how the Mets season was going to turn out. You didn’t even know after 161 games.
WESTCHESTER FANS!
This is just a note to tell you that I have two Westchester “events” this week. At 7:30 pm on Wednesday, April 2, I’ll be giving a talk and a reading at the Chappaqua Library and at 9 pm on Friday, April 4, I will be the guest on John Vorperian’s great baseball interview show, Beyond the Game, on White Plains Cable TV channel 76.
