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THE WIMPINESS AWARD
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Whatever happened to playing through the pain?
By MAURY ALLEN
of TheColumnists.com
I always won the
attendance award in grade school.
I wasn’t the smartest kid in class or the tallest or the
best athlete or the most handsome or the funniest or the best
singer. As far as singing in the school chorus, I was known as
a listener.
What I could always do was show up.
Woody Allen once wrote that showing up was 95 per cent of life.
I had that part of my persona down pat. Not even a broken finger
suffered in a sled accident or a concussion suffered in a stickball
accident when I was 12 kept me from school.
Neither rain nor snow, nor darkness of days kept me from school.
My parents had a small business they ran together. They left
for work at 8 in the morning. We left together. I was a latch
key kid before we had latches. I could drop my school books on
my porch and play in the nearest neighborhood lot until dusk.
By then one of my parents would be home.
I could have my milk and cookies then, do my homework, listen
to my favorite radio programs (Yes, Virginia, there were radios
then), play with my model planes or stamp collection, eat dinner
with my folks and older brother, read a newspaper my father brought
home from work, go to bed and prepare for the next day.
What does all of this have to do with the 2009 version of the
New York Mets?
They aren’t showing up for work.
The latest to go down for the count was All Star third baseman
David Wright who took a pitch on the cocoanut and is now resting
comfortably on the Mets disabled list.
Despite a huge payroll and the acquisition of some great free
agent stars, the Mets are out of the race. The team they put
on the field for the September finish would have trouble winning
a Triple A title.
In the past two seasons they blew pennant leads in the last could
of weeks and were maligned for choking. This year they can be
attacked for not showing up.
The injuries, maybe unavoidable, have happened to their best,
middle and worst players, including first baseman Carlos Delgado,
All Star outfielder Carlos Beltran, team table setter Jose Reyes,
free agent pitcher J.J. Putz, veteran Tim Redding and reliever
Billy Wagner, a carryover cripple from last year.
Now Wright, through no fault of his own, is out, at least, until
early September and maybe beyond. Maybe the full impact of a
concussion won’t be known until he faces fastball pitching
again.
A future Hall of Famer with the Brooklyn Dodgers named Joe Medwick
never was the devastating, aggressive hitter he had been after
a beaning in the early 1940s. Few of them ever are again.
Most of today’s star players have contracts guaranteeing
them millions of dollars for four, five, six or more years. There
is no rush to get back in the lineup after serious or even minor
injuries.
Another famous Hall of Famer named Dizzy Dean rushed back after
an All Star game injury to his foot, damaged his arm and had
his career ended early. Of course he got into broadcasting and
made famous the line, after some grammatical criticism, “That
a lot of people who ain’t saying ain’t, ain’t
eating.”
This is not to say the Mets are the wimpiest of teams. That’s
just the way baseball and all sports seem to go these days. Get
injured and take time off. Rehab in Florida. Play against minor
league teams.
It just seems to be showing up more around the Mets than around
any other team because of the blown pennants in recent years
with nobody to blame. This year they can blame the injuries to
their stars and soak the fans for those expensive seats again
at Citi Field next year.
In another time players played through injuries because they
had one year contracts, the competition for jobs was brutal and
macho mania was part of the scene.
The Yankees of 1949 won the American league pennant under rookie
manager Casey Stengel despite something like 79 major injuries
during the year, especially the heel injury to Joe DiMaggio.
He sat out the season until a June series against the Red Sox,
destroyed them in four games and led the Yankees to a title.
Of course, he had to play the last two games of the year with
walking pneumonia.
The Mets last won a World Series 23 years ago. It is hard to
imagine them winning another with their new history of chokiness
and wimpiness.
©2009 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Aug. 24, 2009.
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