Pedro, Carlos and Omar: Last Year Was Then

(Please note. Sip has a post on Fantasy baseball leagues, the way they should be, below this post)

What’s up guys, A Friend of Mr. Glass’ here. I’ve been threatening to write a review of Adam Rubin’s book about the 2005 Mets for the past two weeks and change, and now, after much heel dragging, the time has finally arrived.

Rubin’s book was released amid fevered anticipation from Mets fans. At least one fan camped out outside the Barnes and Noble on 82nd and Broadway on that fateful evening in early-March, the day before the book was released.

Judging from his unshaven face, his tattered clothing, his shopping cart full of odd objects, and the unfortunate smell, this was one die-hard fan of the orange and blue who had been willing to camp out for weeks, maybe months or years at a time in order to get his copy.

So I’ve got nothing on that guy, but there I was on March 7, not the first in line, but there soon enough to pick up my coveted copy of Pedro, Carlos and Omar: The Story of a Season in the Big Apple and the Pursuit of Baseball’s Top Latino Stars.

Title rolls right off the tongue doesn’t it?

Rubin, a writer for the official newspaper of Yankees 2000, The New York Daily News, has produced an odd little book here, one that I ultimately found unsatisfying.

Part of that dissatisfaction may not be altogether fair. Compared with the two other Mets books I’ve read, George Vecsey’s classic Joy in Mudville and Jeff Pearlman’s The Bad Guys Won, Pedro, Carlos and Omar had two strikes against it before it ever stepped to the plate.

Strike 1 is the simple fact that whereas Vescey’s and Pearlman’s books celebrated championship clubs, Rubin’s did not. Assuming the author’s optimism for the immediate future of the Mets for a moment, reading Rubin’s book is a bit like reading a book about the 1985 Mets. It’s interesting, but at the end of the day you can’t help but feel a little disappointed, or that you want to ask who the hell cares?

The truth is that a lot of people do care, and lord knows I’m one of those people. I absorb virtually every piece of information about the Mets that I can. I’m a junkie for the little details, the little personality traits or quirks that define individuals and the team itself.

And that leads us to Strike 2, which is the real trouble with Rubin’s book – it goes into exactly the wrong kind of detail. Where Pearlman’s book charmed us with details that we didn’t already know (Rafael Santana putting his purportedly massive dick on Tim Teufel’s shoulder on an airplane for example), and where Vecsey’s book recalled conversations with the eminently quotable Casey Stengel, Rubin’s book recalls the story about Pedro running through the sprinklers that you’ve already heard about countless times. It’s not that it’s a bad memory, it might even bring a smile to your face, but one thing it’s not is it’s not anything new.

In fairness, there were some new little factoids I learned from Rubin’s book. For instance, all season long I wondered why the announcers referred to Dae Sung Koo as Mr. Koo. Fran Healy was especially fond of referring to the Korean junkballer by the Mr. Koo moniker.

Turns out there was actually an explanation. As Rubin reports on page 74, Koo simply preferred to be called Mr. Koo by his teammates, and Healy et al extended that preference to themselves. Now you know.

I also learned that Ramon Castro “conspired with the usually reserved Beltran to draw a face on a watermelon and leave it in Cliff Floyd’s locker, placing Floyd’s hat on top for maximum effect” (Rubin, 162).

In case you’re not howling with laughter, the reason is probably that that story simply isn’t that funny. And that’s kind of the theme of a lot of the behind the scenes stories Rubin relates.

It’s plain he wasn’t trying to write a sequel to The Bad Guys Won, but hey, baseball’s supposed to be fun, we know these guys aren’t saints, what’s the harm in relating a few stories about who put the moves on Anna Benson at the company party?

The disappointment of what’s not in the book is only compounded by a lot of the content that actually did make it in there, and therein lies my chief complaint with the book. Rubin spends an extraordinary amount of time giving play-by-play breakdowns of games that happened at various points last season.

I don’t care how big a fan you are, on some level these recaps are bound to be boring. The sensation is a lot like reading a months-old (or in some cases, a year-old) newspaper. You know everything that happened that day. You know everything that happened in the immediate aftermath. You know everything that happened for several days on end.

It’s just not really interesting to recall that D’Angelo Jimenez broke open the Mets’ third game of the year with a 2-run double, or that Tommy Glavine might have had a better result the night before if he hadn’t been squeezed by home plate umpire Chuck Meriwether.

More importantly, none of these are things that you didn’t know already if you paid attention the first time around. And as was mentioned earlier, that’s the real failing of Rubin’s book: so much of the book is devoted to recounting details that you already know.

And yet these are the details that flesh out Rubin’s narrative. Are these recaps excruciating? No. Are some of them enjoyable? Yes. But ultimately the question I asked myself most often was why? Why did Rubin decide that this book was a good idea? Why was this book allowed to be written?

The answer should be encouraging for Mets fans. There is an underlying sense throughout Pedro, Carlos and Omar that 2005 was a precursor to something greater. Rubin clearly believes it was. He closes his book with those memorable words from Beltran’s introductory press conference: “The New Mets had headed in a different direction – the right direction – the direction of winning” (Rubin, 210).

Perhaps Rubin and the good people at The Lyons Press thought that 2006 would be a watershed year in terms of interest in the Mets (they could very easily be right, incidentally). Maybe they thought a championship was forthcoming, making a book about the 2005 season, the table-setter season, decidedly relevant. But that’s a very large gamble to make, and if there is no pay-off, this book becomes more and more of a head-scratcher.

Taken for what it is, Pedro, Carlos and Omar isn’t a bad book. It's not poorly written, it’s just that it’s so limited. It’s basically a chronicle of the 2005 season. The ups and down of Beltran, the zaniness and electricity of Pedro, the development of Wright – it’s like, yeah man, I know.

If you’re one of those people who’s got a Mets-themed clock on your wall, you should pick up this book. If you’re anxious to relive the past season of Mets baseball, pick up this book. If you think you can’t understand 2006 without understanding 2005, pick up this book.

But if you’re hoping for a behind the scenes tell-all about the 2005 Mets with no punches pulled, leave this one on the shelf. It’s not that it’s altogether uninteresting, but if you know your Mets, you already know everything there is to know about Pedro, Carlos and Omar.

- A.F.O.M.G.