Opening Day naturally would have been glorious, and we’re all the poorer for not experiencing its vaunted, annual traditions: The baseline introductions. The ceremonial first pitch. The military flyover.
The Mets victory.
True, Major League Baseball possesses no known rule mandating that the Mets win their first game of the season. However, in an eccentricity consistent with their status as one of sports’ most colorful franchises, the Mets possess baseball’s best Opening Day record. They would’ve entertained the Nationals on Thursday at Citi Field, if not for the coronavirus shutdown, with a 38-20 all-time mark, a .655 winning percentage, in Game 1.
Even more perfect? They can boast of such dominance despite losing their first eight openers. As the club’s beloved radio broadcaster Howie Rose put it, winning Opening Day “is something they didn’t do until they won a World Series!”
“Even with some of the worst teams they’ve ever had, they won on Opening Day,” Rose said. After all, the team’s overall regular-season winning percentage, by virtue of its 4,448 wins and 4,808 losses, stands at .481.
Consider that Joe Torre became the Mets’ manager in the middle of the 1977 season and held the job through 1981. He guided the club to a 286-420 record … and 4-0 on Opening Day. In fact, of the 18 men who have managed a Mets Opening Day, an astounding seven went undefeated. Joe Frazier, George Bamberger, Jeff Torborg, Jerry Manuel and Mickey Callaway all posted 2-0 marks, and Buddy Harrelson prevailed in his one opportunity, 1991.
When you know they’re going to be terrible, they let you dream for a day before the losses start accruing. When you think they might be good and it turns out you were over-optimistic, you at least savor the one-day tease. And when they’re actually competitive, they validate your faith from the get-go.
You can point to one historical through line: The Mets’ strength more often than not has been starting pitching, so they’ve often been able to go toe-for-toe in Game 1 with studs like Tom Seaver, Dwight Gooden, Tom Glavine, Johan Santana and Jacob deGrom, who won his Opening Day debut last year and was set to start again on Thursday. Even in the lean years, however, they’ve found success from less glorious names like Pat Zachry, Bobby Jones and Jon Niese.
The way many of those happy recaps came to be, too, rank among the best Mets moments. Jay Horwitz, the Mets’ vice president of alumni public relations and team historian, mentioned his fond memories of 1983 at Shea Stadium, when Seaver triumphantly returned to the team after 5 ¹/₂ years with the Reds and drew a massive pregame standing ovation when he trotted from the bullpen to the dugout, and 1985, as Gary Carter punctuated his Mets debut with a 10th-inning, walk-off homer off former Met Neil Allen. Moments later, Carter became a guest on the iconic postgame show “Kiner’s Korner,” and the host Ralph Kiner introduced him as “Gary Cooper.”
Gooden picked up six Opening Day wins, tying him with Seaver for the franchise record, and it’s very Mets-esque that he — and probably most Mets fans, too — remembers his last such victory most of all. At a chilly Wrigley Field on April 4, 1994, Gooden prevailed in a 12-8 slugfest despite allowing seven runs, five earned, in 5 ²/₃ innings. Including three solo home runs to Cubs leadoff hitter Tuffy Rhodes, who ended his big-league career with 13 homers.
“After the first two homers,” Gooden recalled to The Post on Tuesday, “I said to myself, ‘The third time up, I’m gonna drill this guy. But I don’t want to make it too obvious, so I’ll bounce a curveball and then drill him.’ Then I hung the curveball and he hit it out.”
Gooden started eight Opening Days for the Mets, second only to Seaver’s 11.
Submit questions on your favorite New York teams to be answered in an upcoming mailbag
“Opening Day to me, I loved pitching Opening Day,” Gooden said. “The sellout crowds, more media coverage, it had a different feel than a regular game.
“It always had that playoff atmosphere. I was always pumped up for the game, But I had no extra sense that we knew we were going to win.”
It makes both no sense and all the sense in the world that the Mets own Opening Day. Here’s hoping they receive the opportunity to put this legacy on the line at some point in 2020.
Source: Read Full Article