The Dark Fall of a Knight

I started writing this much earlier today, got distracted by that amazing game, and didn't get around to finishing it until it became completely irrelevant. But just for the record...

You know, I don't know that it's a good idea to get too much into the business of the other team in this town.

Save for the occasional taunt, it's difficult enough being the all-seeing experts we are when it comes to one major-league franchise, without getting into another.

It's just not appropriate, like a Genovese remarking on the acumen of the Gambino family.

But the fall of the Dark Knight—or rather, how his fall has been stage-managed—leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Yeah, yeah, I know he used a naughty word in replying to a reporter—even after the reporter asked him for a third straight time just how it felt to see his career and his dreams going down the drain, and refused to take two, polite "not nows" for an answer.

Yes, I know he liked to party a lot, and held out for big bucks when he was first signed, and wanted to rehab in the big town, not the Metsies' Florida training complex, and all the other terrible transgressions that he along with almost every other ballplayer alive has been guilty of.

Yes, Matt Harvey was hubristic. He was every bit as egotistical and arrogant as we all want our aces to be. As the Mets wanted him to be.

The real story here is that the New York Mets destroyed Matt Harvey's arm because they saw a chance to steal a World Series in 2015.

They had real medical experts saying this was a bad idea, coming so soon after his operation—that he would be better off skipping the postseason. The Mets said no. When Harvey dared to mention this aloud, to reporters, the Mets—and the reporters—sneered at him, ridiculed him, called him a prima donna, and hung him out for the fans to use as a piñata.

This is a very old New York tradition. They did it to Babe Ruth, back when he had some mysterious ailment and missed most of the 1925 season. Jimmy Walker, the crookedest mayor we ever had, admonished him for not being a good example to the kiddies.

They did it to Joe DiMaggio, when he dared to ask for a little more money in the middle of the Great Depression. Jacob Ruppert and Ed Barrow made out like he was taking bread out of the mouth of The Forgotten Man. It embittered DiMag for the rest of his life.

And then they did it to Harvey. Goaded him into going out there again and again in the postseason. Goaded him into demanding the ball for the ninth inning in Game Five of the World Series, when he had no business going back out no matter how his arm was.

And that was that. He was never the same pitcher again. Never.

But on the Metsies' personal channel, SNY, there was the sports jacket brigade from the press box again the other night, blaming it all on Harvey's "attitude." Saying he had created "a distraction."

A distraction? How? Oh, because now they themselves would now ask everyone else in the Mets' clubhouse, over and over again, about his terrible thing he did.

Ah.

Here, we like to make out that we control time, space, and reality with our minds. For fun, we do this. To amuse ourselves. Up in the press box, they really believe it.

Hell, the other day, there was another "Knight of the Press Box," as Ted Williams liked to call them, saying he thought the trouble all started with Harvey when he was allowed to rehab in New York, not down in Florida, back in 2013.

The guy partly blamed himself, because he had written in his column at the time that he thought that should be all right.

And Harvey is the guy with the hubris problem?

The sports jacket brigade actually thinks it creates reality. And whenever it feels insulted, it does its best to make that the case.

Teams like the Mets let them, because it draws attention away from the fact that this is a very badly run franchise, that regularly ruins its best players.

It should be a good lesson for us to remember, in that overpaid as the modern ballplayer is, irritating and boorish as the modern ballplayer can be, this is still stardust. This is still lightning in a bottle that these guys catch for a little while, even with the best of them, and then it's gone.

If the owners or the writers don't appreciate this, there's no reason why we have to help them in their crass destructiveness.

All in all, exasperating as our own capos can be, I'm just as glad to be a Genovese.