TAMPA — Like the two proverbial ships passing in the night, the Yankees and Mets completed their mystifying home-and-home, end-of-spring series at Steinbrenner Field Wednesday and then went their separate ways.
Literally and figuratively.
To say the Mets were less-than-thrilled to be spending the final day of the Grapefruit League season in Tampa, barely 24 hours before they would be opening up the real season at Citi Field, would be a gross understatement. This was a bad joke, and everybody in the Mets caravan — after having to schlep across the state from Port St. Lucie, on a three-hour bus ride, behind the orange trucks, through the wilds of Route 60 the night before — had no recourse but to grin and bear it.
Still, they had every right to ask: Whose idea was this, anyway? Whose idea was this to tack these two games on at the end of the spring training schedule, precluding the Mets from the customary workout day prior to the opener? And an especially important workout day this season, wouldn't you think, in that the Mets might have liked to have had an opportunity to acclimate themselves to the newly reconfigured outfield walls at Citi Field? Instead, they would be winging it Opening Day, after an early wake-up and a 9 a.m. reporting time. (It is worth noting, too, the Opening Day opponents, Atlanta Braves, were in New York ahead of the Mets.) And win or lose, there would still be more miles to go before the Mets slept, as, after the game, there was the matter of the obligatory "Welcome Home" Dinner.
I'm told that GM Sandy Alderson apologized to the team for this spring-ending insanity. Presumably, it was out of his control, too — a decision from above, all designed to replenish the Mets' empty coffers with the proceeds from one last sold-out exhibition game at Digital Domain Park in Port St. Lucie Tuesday. According to MLB sources, when the Mets' higher-ups learned the Yankees were scheduled to make a rare trip to the east coast of Florida at the end of spring training to open up the new Miami ballpark, they asked if they would consider extending their Sun Coast stay an extra day to play a game in Port St. Lucie.
Sure, the Yankees said, as long as the Mets agreed to make it a home-and-home situation so that both teams could ben efit from one additional spring training sellout. It apparently mattered not to the Mets that the only available date left on their schedule was the last one. After all, what's a little inconvenience to Terry Collins and his players compared to an extra million dollars in spring training revenue, derived from hiking the ticket prices for the Yankees game — which, despite the fact the Yankees sent only three regulars, Brett Gardner, Nick Swisher and Andruw Jones, still drew a record crowd of 7,644? And weren't the Yankees doing them an extra favor by moving up the start of Wednesday's game to noon?
Before the game, Collins gave an "it is what it is" shrug when I welcomed him to Tampa — saying only that he wished he had at least been consulted when this decision was made.
"All I can say," he joked, "is that I told my players I'm imposing $50 fines for every time they take a called strike."
If true, then Ike Davis' three-run homer on a 2-1 pitch from Freddy Garcia in the third inning set him back fifty bucks.
Unfortunately, after Andy Pettitte made his Grapefruit League debut with a nifty 13-pitch, nine-for-strikes scoreless sixth inning, the scrubeenies who proliferated the lineups for both sides didn't share the same sense of urgency, and as a result the game dragged on, much to Collins' dismay, for two hours and 49 minutes.
Barely 30 minutes afterward, the Mets' bus was beating a hasty exit for the airport and their trip home — where another early wakeup beckoned, as well as an unfamiliar home ballpark and a season with decidedly low expectations. As for the Yankees, they could look forward to a leisurely trek across the causeway to St. Petersburg for a brief workout at Tropicana Field, followed by another night on the town Thursday before opening their season — with considerably higher expectations — against the Tampa Bay Rays Friday.
Such was the tale of our two locals. For what it's worth to the Mets players, when their bosses called looking for a favor, the Yankees were only too happy to inconvenience them.
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