Today’s big baseball story is that Matt Harvey is going to have Tommy John surgery that will almost certainly cause him to miss the entire 2014 season.
Funny how the Mets try to bury bad news by announcing it late on a Friday afternoon, isn’t it?
Except this particular bit of bad news isn’t really much of a surprise, and I’m not even convinced it’s all that bad.
No matter what Sandy Alderson says, it’s unlikely the Mets are going to be playoff contenders in 2014. Isn’t it better for Harvey to get the surgery now than put it off, pitch for a while and then have his ulnar collateral ligament finish tearing?
(To someone without any kind of a medical background – and especially with the Mets’ fortunes – that seems like something that would definitely happen somewhere down the road. If anyone does have the appropriate expertise, please correct me if I’m wrong.)
I’ve seen a few people saying that they have no reason to watch the 2014 Mets without Harvey pitching for them.
I say we don’t even know who is going to be a 2014 Met yet. It’s time for Alderson and Terry Collins to give us a team that shows some visible progress, but I still have enough patience to wait until next spring before I even think about writing the season off.
I like the way Joe Giglio is looking at the Harvey situation:
Bonus item if you’ve read this far – we found these Mets tickets from 1974 in my father’s dresser. The tickets are a bit faded, so you can’t really make out the price in the scan. It cost $2.75 ($2.57 plus $0.18 tax) to sit in the Mezzanine Reserved area at Shea Stadium. Adjusting for inflation, that would be $13.05 today. (Just try to get into Citi Field that cheaply for a Saturday afternoon game.)
I wish I had a time machine to go back and watch that game – aside from the chance at running into my dad before I was born, it must have been a gem. Jon Matlack pitched a shutout and the Mets won 4-0 in one hour and 58 minutes. Cleon Jones and Wayne Garrett both homered for the Mets, and Matlack allowed just one hit on the day – a third inning single by St. Louis starting pitcher John Curtis.
PaulHadsall.com 
Paul,
It’s very likely that ALL pitchers, at one time or another, will get hurt during their careers and miss at least some time. So, if this is Harvey’s really serious injury for his career (and I hope it is, though he’ll probably complain of stiffness or some such and miss some starts down the road), then let’s get it over with now and make sure it’s properly repaired.
Besides, the Mets likely weren’t going to do much in 2014 anyway and it gives them another year to look at the top minor leaguers and see exactly what holes they have to fill. I honestly hope Alderson DOESN’T go shopping over the winter–unless he can find a sucker to pay more for Ike Davis than he’s worth which, right now, is a pizza and a six pack.
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Oh, and about that ticket from ’74… My father used to run print production at BBDO and would get tickets from some of the folks he did business with. One had a field box behind the tarp at first base–Box 101A, right behind the railing. This is late ’60s, maybe early ’70s. The tickets were paper (not the cardboard you had) and the face value was $240 per seat, or about $3 a game.
Stupid things I remember. Yet, I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday. 🙂
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Those old tickets are nice pieces to save and collect, Paul, especially the unused one on the left.
When I became old enough to begin going on my own to Shea (circa 1980), I would occasionaly scavenge and save any ticket stubs in good condition that I would find on the ground at Shea (or any ballpark I visited, for that matter). The ones from field boxes or postseason games were usually nicer, with both the Mets and visitors’ logos printed on them, and often on glossy card stock. In 2013, the Field level tickets are very much collectible items with uniquely designed player photos on each one.
I’ve since selected about two dozen Met ticket stubs I have from over the years (1969-present) and framed them. They make a nice display in my basement.
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Those ticket stubs are sitting in a coffee mug on my desk with a few other baseball ones from September and a ticket from the Spider-man musical. (The older ones got moved to a photo storage box when the cup got full after two or three seasons.) It’s neat to see how they’ve changed over the years.
The only bad things is I see the day coming when we don’t have real tickets any more – those computer printouts are convenient, but I don’t really feel any compulsion to save them as a collectible.
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