Daniel Murphy: Is he the new Suzy ChapStick? Photograph by Keith Allison
Well, I guess everything really is up-to-date in Kansas City.
The Kansas City Royals thrashed the New York Mets four games to one in the World Series. Really, the games were never as close as they sometimes seemed. The Royals, who were on a quest for Series glory ever since losing to the San Francisco Giants in a heartbreaker last year, reminded me a lot of the late-1990s New York Yankees – down by five runs in the seventh, up by six in the eighth. Not to mix sports metaphors here, but it’s like playing Novak Djokovic: When your opponent does everything solidly, you have no margin for error. And the Mets made plenty of errors, mentally and physically. The Royals had their oopses, but they were able to transcend in a way the Mets couldn’t.
That said, the Mets played valiantly and gallantly, congratulating the Royals and coming out after the fifth and deciding game at Citi Field to thank their fans. There were other beautiful moments as well – Billy Joel, who sang the National Anthem at the start of Game 3, being serenaded by fans with his “Piano Man”; Tony Bennett and a choir singing “America, the Beautiful” in Game 5; the rookie Michael Conforto hitting two home runs in Game 4, the third youngest player to do so behind Tony Kubek and Andruw Jones; the captain David Wright, struggling with spinal stenosis, belting one in Game 3.
But there was some ugliness as well. What was Noah Syndergaard doing throwing at the head of first ball-hitting Alcides Escobar in Game 3, then denying he did it and then admitting he did? You never do that and, if you do, you don’t admit it, because that’s a sure way to fire up the opposition for retaliation.
And then there’s second baseman Daniel Murphy, whose cool bat and errant glove contributed to the Mets’ blown chances. Murph, however, is also a conservative Christian with a “hate the sin but love the sinner” approach to homosexuality – a patronizing, disingenuous stance that in effect says being gay is wrong. This in turn led to some serious, childish schadenfreude on the part of Mark Joseph Stern, who wrote a column for Slate titled “I’m Glad the Mets Lost. Their Onetime Wonder Daniel Murphy is Noxiously Anti-Gay.” (As opposed to be beneficially anti-gay?)
That "Neah, neah, na neah, neah" attitude serves no purpose. What about Murphy’s teammates and the Mets’ fans? What about the Westboro Baptist Church that pickets every military funeral, applauded Murphy yet picketed the Mets in Game 2 in Kansas City because they come from New York, the American Sodom and Gomorrah?
Should gays reject the Mets because Murphy is their second baseman or embrace the Mets as victims of anti-gay prejudice?
You see how unnecessarily complicated life becomes when you hate?
Whatever happened to love your neighbor as yourself?
Whenever people speak with prejudice about New York, I always respond as one of my characters does in my forthcoming novel “The Penalty for Holding” – that on a day that saw the worst of humanity, 9/11, New Yorkers showed the best. They acted with courage and purpose and without self-pity or regret.
A city that could survive being bombed can certainly take a World Series defeat. God knows we’ve been there before, up and down, with the Yankees alone, many times. The Mets will live to fight another day. The 1976 Yanks were humiliated by the Cincinnati Reds in the Fall Classic only to win the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers in ‘77 and ’78.
As for Murphy, I find him overrated along with outfielder Yoenis Cespedes and reliever Jeurys Familia (no Mariano Rivera he). Hitters will always be streaky. Fielders can’t afford to be. The fact that Murphy reached for the lip balm after a costly error suggests a nervousness that you don’t want to betray to the other team.
Free agency is welcome to him.
Needless to say the Twitterati had a field day with that one.
“Daniel Murphy’s fielding may not be smooth,” Scott Morrison quipped. “But I bet his lips are!”