Source: Keith Foulke Hero: A Lesson for Matt Harvey?

When the news broke that Matt Harvey was opting for long-term preservation of his career as opposed to the short-term potential of postseason glory with a charmed Mets team, I was unpleasantly surprised. By no means am I Mets fan, but I do live in the New York Metropolitan area and understand how fans would react. They excoriated him, which should have surprised no one except for Harvey’s agent, the baseball anti-hero/villain Scott Boras.

While the success of the Mets has no greater impact on my life than picking the right house on House Hunters, I do appreciate the significance of sports. I’m a Red Sox fan, and have been since the mid-1970s when I lived in Massachusetts and later Connecticut, so I appreciate the frustration of being tantalizingly close to success or just flat out being awful. In the mind’s eye of an avid fan, Harvey’s actions represented betrayal. How could he not want to jeopardize the opportunity to make an amount of money over the next 10-15 years that we couldn’t hope to compile in a lifetime of Monopoly games? There’s a chance that this Mets team could make it to the World Series and a hefty portion of those hopes ride on the surgically repaired, and recently so, right arm of Matt Harvey. There’s also a chance he could follow the career arc of Dan Marino; a great post-season run in year 2, followed by many years of regular season success and not much else.

I don’t support Matt Harvey, but I do think back to the example of Ketih Foulke and the 2004-2005 Red Sox. What I experienced as a Red Sox fan in the 2004 postseason seems fictional a decade later, but it happened and I have an excess of memorabilia to prove it (as well as support assertions of my arrested development). What I recall from that magical run in October of 2004 was that this idiotic band of talented rogues refused to cave and played inspired baseball that kept me up ridiculously late and made a region of pessimists believe. Truly believe. And the two greatest figures were a larger-than-life David Ortiz whose massive frame was matched by his massive clutchness (not a real word, but Papi was bigger than language), and a relief pitcher who was my age at the time (32) and kind of average size, Keith Foulke. All he did was come out to a creepily awesome Danzig song, throw pitches that really did look hittable to batters who couldn’t score against him and do something that Bill Campbell would have done in 1978 had Don Zimmer not overworked him the previous year: save big games. He gave up one earned run in 11 games and threw so many pitches that it seemed his arm would fall off.

Turns out, Foulke’s arm probably should have fallen off. After 257 high-pressure pitches in 14 high-pressure innings, Foulke was hoisted into the air by Jason Varitek and entered the off-season, rightly so, as a baseball hero. When he entered the 2005 season, he was, rightly so, damaged goods. He struggled with velocity, bad knees and the Boston press. After struggling mightily, the guy whose guts and right arm helped end 86 years of baseball emptiness suffered a greater indignity than eroded abilities: he was booed. The Boston faithful booed Keith Foulke. This isn’t Calvin Schiraldi (grossly overmatched), Rod Beck (a lot of guts but not much left in the tank), Bob Stanley (once pitched 168 innings all in relief, and it caught up with him) or Jim Bouton (not fair, but still). This is the guy who flipped the ball to Doug Mientkiewicz. He killed his career for the ring and the fans killed him for being awful the following regular season.

If Harvey does lay it on the line for the Mets on 2015, will that be remembered if he struggles in 2016? Will the Mets or an evil neighbor to the north still endow him with preposterous riches if he guts out insane innings and derails his career, or will he wind up like Foulke and end up driving a bit to the east and latch on with the Ducks? Even if I am insanely jealous of his impending riches, I don’t envy his decision.