Nobody knows their body
Roger Cormier ponders aging as Max Scherzer goes on the shelf, Colleen Sullivan has Giant problems with the Mets' next foe, and Jesse Spector sees Sunderland vanquish League One's final boss
Trivia question: The Giants’ mascot these days is Lou Seal, but what was the original mascot in San Francisco, short-lived in the 1980s but memorialized in an ESPN 30-for-30 documentary by Colin Hanks?
The Old Man and the Oblique
By Roger Cormier
Max Scherzer understood his body in 2017. He knew his body well last month. Nobody knows their own body better than Max Scherzer, I kept being told.
Then he strained his oblique, either "moderately" or "big time"ly. He'll be gone for six to eight weeks, at least, the longest he's ever had to not ply his craft during a baseball season.
Ernest Hemingway once wrote that you go bankrupt gradually, then suddenly. I think the same goes for getting old.
I thought I knew my brain. Then I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety.
I thought I knew my body. Then the bald spot appeared. I adjusted (cried).
I thought I understood my body at age 37, before the coronavirus pandemic. Seemingly overnight, but technically over two years, I gained 35 pounds. I started to dry heave after drinking coffee, and since quitting caffeine would mean I'd nap 23 hours a day thanks to my antidepressant medications, I started seeing a physician. When I told him how much weight I gained, his professional opinion was, "Wow."
He ordered tests. I then understood my body to be one with slightly high cholesterol and a deficiency in one of the vitamins (I wanna say D?). My physician, as nicely as possible, suggested exercise. My psychiatrist also suggested exercise, lest I just "wait until the pills work." I complained to my therapist about this. Get this: she sided with them! She too insisted that writing doesn't really count.
I can't remember the last birthday I celebrated where I did not feel ancient. That's only natural. My recent birthday was different. I was now someone with a skeleton that required four different medications, and an individual who doesn't dare leave the apartment without Tums. I used to be someone who wasn't so young anymore. Now I'm getting fucking old.
Max Scherzer throws baseballs really hard for a living and is 37 years old. Gradually, then suddenly, Scherzer got fucking old during the now infamous at-bat against Albert Pujols. He no longer understood his body so much as he understood that tomorrow's knowledge will always be bigger than today's.
Behind Enemy (Base)Lines: San Francisco Giants
By Colleen Sullivan
The second half of the Mets’ trip west of the Mississippi is a three-game series in San Francisco. Notably, the Giants are a team that has significantly fewer mullets than the Rockies. The Mets have yet to sweep a series and, at this point, do we really want them to? Is it a better story if they don’t sweep at all this season? Let’s investigate this after the All-Star break.
What happened last time?
The Mets last saw the Giants back in April and, naturally, the series opener was postponed because April is a terrible time to play baseball anywhere north of Kentucky and the 2022 Mets get rained out approximately twice a week. The first game of the doubleheader was a 10th inning walk-off, courtesy of a line-drive single by Francisco Lindor. The second game saw Max Scherzer take a no-hit bid into the sixth inning in his home debut. The Giants salvaged a game behind Carlos Rodón, and an eight-hit barrage against Chris Bassitt. But the Mets got the series win with Carlos Carrasco tossing 7⅔ innings to outduel Anthony DeSclafani, supported by solo homers from Eduardo Escobar and Lindor.
What’s happened since then?
The Mets have continued motoring through opponents, sitting comfortably atop the NL East at 28-15, eight games ahead of Atlanta and Philadelphia. On the road, they’re 15-7, with exactly once loss in each series they’ve played. Jeff McNeil’s “don’t think, just hit” approach has him leading the team with a .306 average, and trailing only. Pete Alonso and Brandon Nimmo in OPS. Alonso’s 10 homers are one off the National League leadan, and the Polar Bear is tied with Jose Ramirez for the majors’ most RBIs with 37.
That trio of stalwarts, along with Lindor and Starling Marte all are on pace for 150 or more hits. The Mets’ team record is four players reaching that plateau in a single season (three times, most recently 2008), so the depth of the lineup is a big part of how the Mets have been so successful despite not having Jacob deGrom all year, and now Max Scherzer and Tylor Megill also on the shelf.
In some more recent and positive news, Bassitt finally reached an agreement with the team for his 2022 contract, as many arbitration-eligible players have had their negotiations for this year’s salary drag into the season after the lockout. Bassitt avoided arbitration, agreeing to an $8.65 million contract with a mutual option for 2023 worth $19 million or a $150k buyout. Escobar continued his Fogo de Chao lifestyle by treating the team to dinner in Denver to celebrate his 10 years in the majors, and Marte returned from his grandmother’s funeral and hit an emotional homer in Colorado.
Meanwhile, as much as everyone loves Wilmer Flores (clapclapclapclap), it’s not a great sign for the Giants – losers of four straight games – that he’s their OPS leader at .732 this season. While Joc Pederson hasn’t really thrived with his new team, he is leading San Francisco in homers with seven, and the Giants will need all the slugging they can get with Brandon Belt landing on the IL this weekend with a knee injury.
Also, in the “that guy is still playing?!” department, we have Evan Longoria.
ESPN recently ran a piece headlined “Being Gabe Kapler: Inside the mind of the San Francisco Giants' nonconformist manager” and I really thought we were done writing fawning pieces about morally questionable baseball guys. Looks like Tim Keown didn’t get the memo. For those who don’t remember, Kapler initially disputed that he mishandled sexual assault allegations while with the Dodgers organization and then issued a half-assed apology when the Washington Post got involved. This is the guy who peels the breading off his chicken nuggets before he eats them, which should have been the initial red flag of his terrible persona.
Pitchers: We have ’em
The series opener is David Peterson vs. Alex Cobb. Peterson has a 1-0 record and 1.89 ERA over 19 innings, allowing 13 hits and walking 8 in the majors. After struggling in his last outing in Atlanta, the lefty went back to Triple-A Syracuse and threw 11 scoreless innings in two starts, with 14 strikeouts and five walks. Cobb has a 3-1 record, but a 5.61 ERA over 25⅔ innings. The Mets see Cobb pretty well, collectively posting a .290/.306/.380 slash with Escobar and Lindor having faced him the most. (13 and 10 at-bats, respectively).
Tuesday, which is Metallica Night in San Francisco, it will be Bassitt vs. Logan Webb. Bassitt is 4-2 with a 2.77 ERA over 48⅔ innings. Webb is 5-1, and that one loss against the Mets, since which time he’s gone 4-0 but posted a 4.11 ERA in five starts. Bassitt has spent plenty of time in San Francisco over the years, and Tommy La Stella has seen him best over 12 at-bats and slashing .250/.308/.333 against them. Webb has not fared well against the Mets who are collectively slashing .400/.448/.571 over 52 at-bats and only striking out 11 times.
Wednesday for the close is the ever popular TBD vs. Jakob Junis. Junis is 1-1 with a 2.70 ERA over 26⅔ innings, striking out 20 and walking 4. The ex-Royal has a 4.32 ERA in his four starts after working 10 scoreless innings in his first two outings of the year, with the Giants utilizing an opener ahead of him.
It shouldn’t snow in San Francisco and here’s hoping the Mets get their first series sweep so I don’t have to keep my word and remember to do some sort of analysis in July if they continue to eschew the brooms.
Video Vault!
Here’s the opener of the Mets’ August 1986 visit to San Francisco, featuring Darryl Strawberry taking Vida Blue deep.
Sunderland All The Way
By Jesse Spector
Adebayo Akinfenwa is one of the best athletes you’ve probably never heard of. At least, I’d never heard of him before Saturday, when the 40-year-old striker came on for the final appearance of his career, as a late substitute for Wycombe Wanderers in the League One play-off final against Sunderland.
I’m a Sunderland fan, going back long before the Netflix series that chronicled some of the team’s greatest agonies. I never did watch the second season, because it was too painful to re-live a season that literally left me in tears on my birthday after yet another Wembley Stadium defeat. All of that misery has come since my most serious writing about the Black Cats, for Paste Magazine in 2017, when they last were in the Premier League. The title of that piece was “Numbness Replacing Hope.” How innocent I was.
Sunderland finished fifth in League One this season, a fourth straight campaign in the third tier of English soccer. But the quirk of the promotion system is that while the top two teams from League One go to the Championship (the level below the Premier League), the third- through sixth-place teams play two-legged, aggregate-goals semifinals, then a winner-take-all contest at Wembley.
Having beaten Sheffield Wednesday to reach London, and having once again brought enough fans with them to overrun Trafalgar Square, Sunderland led Wycome Wanderers by a goal in the second half when Akinfenwa came on in the 75th minute. The announcer told the story of this man who looked far bigger than his listed 6’1” and 220 pounds (he’s nicknamed The Beast, and runs the clothing line BeastModeOn)... his 206 goals in 695 career games, his team MVP awards with four different clubs, his undefeated record in play-off finals.
This was Akinfenwa’s moment to write a storybook ending, one all too familiar to Sunderland. How could it not be his day? On his final trip to Wembley, having scored goals all over England throughout the lower leagues for the better part of two decades, with a career log that’s a who’s who of clubs that you generally only hear about in the early stages of the FA Cup: Boston United, Leyton Orient, Rushden & Diamonds, Doncaster Rovers, Torquay United, Swansea City, Millwall, Northampton Town (twice), Gillingham (also twice), AFC Wimbledon, and finally, for the final six years of his career, from League Two to the Championship and back to League One, Wycombe Wanderers.
Adebayo Akinfenwa was the final boss of League One, of this four-year horror show where even this season felt like it was off the rails and destined for more misery. Having rallied under Alex Neil after the new manager replaced Lee Johnson, there was a building feeling through the spring that this was no longer Typical Sunderland. Suddenly, they were a team that would steal wins late instead of turning their own victories into draws. Still, years past had plenty of similar mirages – like when Johnson himself took over for Phil Parkinson and led Sunderland to the 2021 EFL Trophy and a first Wembley win since 1973, even if it was at an empty Wembley. The other shoe dropped on Johnson, on Jack Ross, on Dick Advocaat, on Gus Poyet, on Paolo Di Canio (for the best, really), on Martin O’Neill, on so many fast-starting managers through the years.
Now, here was Akinfenwa, ready to be this year’s version of Tom Hopper, who last year reprised the 2019 performance of Patrick Bauer, who himself was only mimicking Andrew Johnson from 2004 – all the playoff killers of Sunderland’s past, all in games that the Black Cats felt like they had it all going their way.
But for once, the worst didn’t happen. In fact, quite the opposite, because four minutes after Akinfenwa’s entrance, Ross Stewart – owner of the fantastic nickname Loch Ness Drogba – made it 2-0 and launched Sunderland, at long last… back to the league below the Premier League.
The last four years have been a return to the early days of my Sunderland fandom, following them online and only getting to see games on special occasions when they were broadcast in America. In the old days, that meant a pub like the Dickens Inn in Philadelphia or old Nevada Smith’s in Manhattan. Saturday, it was ESPN3 on my phone as I nervously walked my dog and definitely got weird looks from strangers as I shouted in delight at Elliot Embleton’s opening goal.
Even after Stewart doubled the lead, it was still a more nervous experience than anything about the game indicated, just because of the years of emotional skewering that Sunderland has taken. You still expected everything to turn on a dime, for Akinfenwa or someone else to suddenly pop in a goal, then Sunderland to collapse and concede an equalizer, and lose on penalty kicks.
But it didn’t happen. It’s only to get back up to the Championship, but sometimes the worst doesn’t happen. Sometimes, it actually does all work out. And this time, it means that Sunderland will be back in what was once known as the First Division. Hit the music.
Trivia answer: It’s Crazy Crab. The documentary was called “The Anti-Mascot.” It was really quite good.
Even better? The Crazy Crab theme song.
Maybe it was in that spirit of antagonism that Lou Seal gave us the finger at the All-Star Futures Game when it was in New York. Or maybe it was that we were mercilessly heckling Lou Seal for not being the far superior Crazy Crab. Who can say?