Memories of Matt Harvey

[G-Fafif]

Harvey...Harvey...oh yeah, the guy who...

[Edgy MD]

For a guy who was supposed to be the man about town, he never seemed as comfortable in his skin as he tried to project. For a guy chasing models, he may have been athletic and semi-rich, but his worried eyes and tobacco lips always seemed to suggest he was miscasting himself as an urbane playboy.

The list of douchey moments is too long to recount. I choose to remember him gushing online about a day spent as the guest of also-fake-playboy Donald Trump at the links. If there's anything sadder than a jock-sniffer, it's a jock who celebrates being sniffed.

And sad is mostly what I think of, while the term "douche" is easy to throw around, I think he had the problem of wanting to be seen as special and interesting (like Derek Jeter) more than he wanted to actually be special and interesting. Jeter was of course, just as phony, but Matt lacked the Yankee shortstop's ability to read the room.

I had a friend named Andrew. A bookish musical theater afficionado. While Andrew didn't excel athletically, basketball, in particular, was not his game. But he found himself in a gym one day in his 13th year playing with a bunch of us. He probably wan't particularly worse than me, but as the good players ribbed the others on their play, Andrew came up with a strange moral calculus. He noticed the guys getting the most shit were the ones who threw up airballs. We were all missing prodigiously, but it was the airball chuckers getting the grief. So he resigned to always hit the rim.

Laser beam after laser beam started flying out of his hands. Ferocious no-arc bricks with no chance to sink, but making a resounding clank off the hoop. As the better players started falling down in laughter, Andrew didn't get it. He was hitting the rim! Didn't that make him no worse than anybody else? Wasn't that enough for everybody? While others saw his violent shots as sincere and pathetic failures, I knew him best, and saw these shots for the misguided attempt at credibility that they were. He just didn't get it, and I felt real bad for him.

It was tough to watch.

Matt Harvey was never the worst guy on the floor. Maybe not even now. But when it came to PR, when it came to his public profile, when it came to his career as a pitch man, when it came to just being a genuine person, a decent teammate, an engaged citizen of the blue and orange, Harvey was continually just hitting the rim, and wondering why it wasn't enough for everybody.

It's been tough to watch.

[G-Fafif]

Ahem.

[Frayed Knot]

Memories of the first 'Memories of Matt Harvey' thread.

[Mex17]

For better or for worse, I just can't get the words "entitled", "millennial", and "Connecticut" out of my head.

Maybe it's me just being jaded from being in the Northeast too long along with me having a really bad case of "grass is greener" syndrome combined with "get off my lawn"-itis. But, for example, Wheeler is from Georgia and he is struggling too, but at least he is not telling the media to f*** off and the team is sticking with him. I'm just speculating on upbringing/environment being a factor here.

Edited May 9, 2018 by Guest

[batmagadanleadoff]

Obviously. Uhhmm, obviously.

[Guest 41Forever]

I remember when he did the video talking to Mets fans on the streets of New York, asking them for their impressions of Matt Harvey -- not realizing they were talking to Matt Harvey.

That first electric season was magic. The All-Star Game start. The World Series ninth inning. The pitch count drama leading up to the Subway Series game that fell apart.


And, well, you've got to remember that there is more to Connecticut than the rich folks in Fairfield County. Can't paint them all with that brush.

[Guest cooby]

Mex17 wrote: For better or for worse, I just can't get the words "entitled", "millennial", and "Connecticut" out of my head. Maybe it's me just being jaded from being in the Northeast too long along with me having a really bad case of "grass is greener" syndrome combined with "get off my lawn"-itis. But, for example, Wheeler is from Georgia and he is struggling too, but at least he is not telling the media to f*** off and the team is sticking with him. I'm just speculating on upbringing/environment being a factor here.

LOVE this.

As much as I appreciate Connecticut’s history as a state, I LOVE this just now

[batmagadanleadoff]

Led Zeppelin said that Cincinnati was the biggest shithole of a US major city they'd ever visited. They said you'd be lucky to get any kind of a meal there after 10:30PM. Of course, that was the 70s. Now that Harvey's gonna pitch there, the supermodel industry will probably relocate to Cincinnati.

[Mex17]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Led Zeppelin said that Cincinnati was the biggest shithole of a US major city they'd ever visited.

But I'm sure that WKRP played their songs a lot.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Now that Harvey's gonna pitch there, the supermodel industry will probably relocate to Cincinnati.

Maybe he finds a nice, normal, midwestern girl and she straightens his head out.

[dgwphotography]

I’m only here to talk about Qualcomm, not any memories I might have of Matt Harvey

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Pretty much a jerkoff from day one. Loaded with bullshit bavado pretending to be heart and fire, a heavy cocaine user, fat, lazy, never got it any more than Lastings Milledge never got it but at least Milledge had the excuse of coming from a small town, fewer economic advantages, not especially steeped in baseball tradition. Harvey was the son of a baseball coach who went to a real university. screw this loser.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Even when he was good-- and very, very good at that-- he didn't even really make the asshole thing work for him. Too tone-deaf to even have fun playing the heavy.

He's like if cocaine was a person.

[Mex17]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: a heavy cocaine user

Source?

[Mex17]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: went to a real university

Being that "real universities" nowadays are just extremely expensive day care centers for older children who never really become adults as a result of their conditioning, I'm not really sure how that rates as a positive on Harvey's ledger.

I actually really do see the demise of this one once promising pitcher as a micronism of much larger societal problems.

Edited May 9, 2018 by Guest

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Mex17 wrote: John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: a heavy cocaine user Source?

[TransMonk]

His douchey-ness aside, his talent in 2013 signaled a light at the end of a 5-year tunnel for Mets fans. It seemed to me that his performances that year were the first time that the fans at Citi Field had the optimistic energy that a fan base can get when they know something special was happening. Him starting the 2013 All-Star Game made me proud as a Mets fan.

That said, for as good as he was in 2013 and 2015, I never expected that his 2016-18 would be so bad. It was time to part ways.

[G-Fafif]

This game story from the AP, July 21, 2013, reads not just like a time capsule, but as a bulletin that things were changing even as we were cheering.

Matt Harvey knew of one way to quiet all the talk about his off-field activities being a distraction: dominate on the mound. The young ace did just that Sunday, striking out 10 in seven overpowering innings to lead the New York Mets past the Philadelphia Phillies 5-0. The 24-year-old Harvey has embraced his fame in his first full major league season, dating a Russian supermodel, appearing in a sketch on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" that poked fun at his sudden popularity, and posing nude in a sports magazine. He also told another publication that Derek Jeter was the player he wants to "model" his dating life after. Much of it drew criticism from the New York media. "I read the articles and obviously I was embarrassed by them. The way I was portrayed is not who I am and not the person who I am," Harvey said. "I'll deal with it on the field and fortunately I was able to do it today." Said Mets captain David Wright: "If this is the most he's going to have to deal with in his career, it's going to be smooth sailing." [...] In his first outing since starting the All-Star game on his home mound, Harvey (8-2) hit a batter with a pitch in the first inning -- just as he did Tuesday night when he nailed Yankees slugger Robinson Cano. But plunking Chase Utley with a 99 mph fastball was about the only mistake Harvey made until Utley singled with one out in the fourth. Harvey also allowed a single to Michael Young in the sixth and a double to Delmon Young in the seventh inning of his 30th career start. "I think Matt was on a little bit of a mission today to silence all of the other stuff that's going on and let everybody know he's here to pitch and here to play baseball," Mets manager Terry Collins said. "I think today he went out there with a little anger." Scott Atchison gave up a single in two innings to complete the Mets' fifth shutout of the year. The Phillies have been blanked eight times. At the All-Star game, Harvey said he was looking forward to meeting Lee. Whether or not the two pitchers spent any quality time together at the chaotic Midsummer Classic, Harvey certainly impressed Lee, who was making his 300th start. Repeatedly reaching 99 mph on the scoreboard radar on Dwight Gooden bobblehead day, Harvey struck out the side in the third and fifth and threw a 100 mph pitch during a strikeout of Domonic Brown in the fourth. Harvey struck out Brown three times, the final one his 10th of the day. The big right-hander has six games with double-digit strikeouts this year. He had his fourth game of at least 10 strikeouts without walking a batter.

I was there that Sunday. It was fantastic despite being essentially par for his course. It was everything we could have wanted from a Harvey Day. It was the season to date in a microcosm. The 2013 Mets who were going nowhere didn't exist when Harvey pitched. They were on another plane. Doc being in the house, featured on the video board waving to the crowd, made it even more special. It was a benediction from one Met pitching deity to another.

And yet.

Those quotes, not even in retrospect, hinted at paradise on shaky ground. Everything with Harvey had been nothing but positive clear up to the All-Star Game. Whatever extracurriculars made it into the press only enhanced his reputation as bigger than life. Suddenly, though, he had to be "embarrassed" and "angry" and have things to "deal with" and "silence" criticism. What criticism? Matt Harvey, from the moment he rose to the majors almost exactly a year earlier to the moment he left the mound that day, was infallible. Yet somehow trouble shared the postgame talk with brilliance.

The two would never quite untangle again, at least not until brilliance fell away altogether. Six more starts followed in 2013. Two were close to as wonderful. Three others were a little off. Not terrible, but not brilliant. Maybe fatigue was setting in. Then, the sixth start, against the Tigers, thirteen hits in six-and-two-thirds (yet only two runs, because Harvey knew how to pitch even without his best stuff). Within a few days of not fully shutting down Detroit, we got the word about the elbow. That was the physical flashpoint. I don't know that I've ever been so deflated by a Mets injury. It was like "what's the point anymore?"

Of course he came back. Of course he pitched some fine games in 2015, the year the rest of the team caught up to him and the overall results were transcendent. But it was never the same as in 2013, and maybe the downfall was inevitable. The later injuries couldn't be predicted, but the sense that something was off could be felt coming that sunny Sunday after the All-Star break when he toyed with the Phillies like he'd toyed with virtually everybody.

I barely connect the Harvey from then with the Harvey of now. I just as soon keep them separate.

[Edgy MD]

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

No. 33 isn't even available in Cincy since outfielder Jesse Winker wears it

[Guest d'Kong76]

Lol, gmta... I should have looked first Edge beat me...

[fimg=375:1kapzsvz]http://www.kcmets.com/CPF/mattred.jpg[/fimg:1kapzsvz]

[HahnSolo]

The two games that stick out to me are:
- The 2013 start at Citi against the White Sox. One hit and 12 Ks. It was one of the most electric starts I've seen.
- July 31, 2015. Trading deadline day; what most fans remember from that day are that we a) traded for Cespedes, and Wilmer hit the walkoff in extras. But Harvey was great that night, pitching into the eighth giving up just one run.

[Guest Rockin' Doc]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: No. 33 isn't even available in Cincy since outfielder Jesse Winker wears it

Apparently, Wenker got the wankers number.

[Lefty Specialist]

It is amazing to think back to 2013, when there was nothing ahead but bright skies for Matt Harvey. I remember him pitching with the bloody nose and saying to myself, "Wow, this guy's a monster." Now it's all dust and ashes.

Just a reminder of how fast it can all turn, I guess.

Also kind of sad that he went to a party in LA and nobody knew who he was. Like a washed up Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. He coulda been a contender........

[A Boy Named Seo]

Smarmy turd-in-training.

[youtube:2sdadkh3]tPTCq3h639c[/youtube:2sdadkh3]

[seawolf17]

41Forever wrote: I remember when he did the video talking to Mets fans on the streets of New York, asking them for their impressions of Matt Harvey -- not realizing they were talking to Matt Harvey.

I thought this was hilarious, and was the only time I remember him showing any semblance of personality.

V0D8V0dCbf8

41Forever wrote: And, well, you've got to remember that there is more to Connecticut than the rich folks in Fairfield County. Can't paint them all with that brush.

This, definitely. He may be a jagoff, but he's from Groton. There's not nearly as much entitlement there, despite being a shoreline community.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Pretty much a jerkoff from day one. Loaded with bullshit bavado pretending to be heart and fire, a heavy cocaine user, fat, lazy, never got it any more than Lastings Milledge never got it but at least Milledge had the excuse of coming from a small town, fewer economic advantages, not especially steeped in baseball tradition. Harvey was the son of a baseball coach who went to a real university. screw this loser.

Also, all of this.

My memory, though, is WS Game 5, which was a microcosm of all things Harvey. Was absolutely electric for eight innings, but couldn't harness it enough to finish it out. Whether the loss is Terry's fault or his is debatable, but that night was magical for a while.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

He obviously went in for a toot between innings. Came out like a maniac and completely lost it.

[Edgy MD]

I have to admit that notion occurred to me too. Does a snootful of coke hit you that fast?

[Benjamin Grimm]

All I know about cocaine is what I see on TV and in the movies and judging from that, it would seem that it has a nearly instant effect.

[Centerfield]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: All I know about cocaine is what I see on TV and in the movies and judging from that, it would seem that it has a nearly instant effect.

I don't know if I believe this. I basically assumed that anyone who amassed that amount of data on the Mets has a pretty active cocaine habit. Come clean.