Defining Matt Harvey’s complicated Mets relationship as he retires

MIAMI — Matt Harvey will always have three moments at Citi Field that he will be allowed to keep with him, locked away in his memory and in his heart, forever. Hopefully, for his sake — and those of us who were there to witness the comet that was Harvey’s early career — those will be enough to override whatever fissures of regret that will accompany his announcement Friday that he’s walking away from baseball for good.

The first came on the evening of Friday, April 19, 2013. There were 26,675 people on hand at Citi Field, braving the cold, knowing they were coming to see one very good baseball team, the Washington Nationals, and one very bad team, the bound-for-74-88 Mets. But they were there for another reason. 

For the very first time, that day was Harvey Day. 

Harvey had pitched well as a call-up the previous summer but he’d bolted out of the gates that spring, winning his first three starts, pitching to a 0.82 ERA, fanning 25 across his first 22 innings. Mets fans had been craving for a reason to go back to Citi Field with the new of the park having faded quickly. Harvey gave them that reason. 

Paired against Stephen Strasburg that night, it was a phenom-vs.-phenom duel and by the seventh inning, after Harvey had allowed one run and struck out seven and coaxed his way out of a bases-loaded jam, Citi Field turned its attention to Strasburg, who’d scuffled that night, and delivered a throaty message after it was done giving Harvey a loud standing ovation:

“HARVEY’S BETTER!!!

“HARVEY’S BETTER!!!

“HARVEY’S BETTER!!!

“The kid is special,” Mets manager Terry Collins crowed afterward. “It’s like he craves the big moments, like he was built for them. I can’t wait to see what’s ahead for him.”

Four hundred and ninety-one days later, Harvey and Collins were sitting in the dugout at that same ballpark. It was Nov. 1, 2015. It was a different Mets team; they were playing Game 5 of the World Series. And it was a different Harvey: he’d gone away for a year and change to get Tommy John Surgery. He’d come back to enormous fanfare and pitched well that year but a fraction of the old magic was missing even as he’d gone 13-8 with a 2.71 ERA. 

He’d begun to act a little differently, too, even as he began to fully embrace all the possibilities — and temptations — New York City offered a young star. He recoiled when the Mets tried to limit his innings early in the year, and then in September reversed course and hinted he might sit out the postseason to safeguard his arm. There’d been some blowback since the Mets had tried to convince him to play it slow in May and July so he’d be fresh in the fall; he stubbornly resisted. Then he’d blown off the workout before the Mets’ first playoff series with the Dodgers, an unexcused absence that cost him credibility in the clubhouse. 

Still, that night, he’d pitched with heart and fury and a ferocious will, eight innings, nine strikeouts, zero runs. Collins went over to shake his hand and congratulate him on a job well done. Harvey had other ideas. 

“You’ve got to let me go out there,” Harvey told his manager “This is my night, this is my game! I’m fine, you got to let me have this game.”

To this day, Collins wishes he’d stood his ground. But as another old baseball lifer named Johnny Keane once said of his ace with the St. Lou’s Cardinals, Bob Gibson: “I made a commitment to his heart.”

“You got the first two batters,” Collins said. 

And when Harvey emerged from the dugout,  three outs away from sending the 2015 World Series back to Kansas City for a Game 6, the roar of thunder at Citi rivaled any such burst in the yard’s 14-year history: the final out of Johan Santana’s no-hitter, the final at-bat of David Wright’s career. It was a magnificent moment. 

Harvey never did get those two hitters. The Mets never did make it to Game 6. And now, Harvey is an ex-ballplayer, his last hurrah a brief but effective hitch for the Italian team in the World Baseball Classic, his message on social media a simple one:

“To the fans, most importantly the NY Mets fans: You made a dream come true for me. You are forever embedded in my heart. Goodbye, Baseball. And thank you.”

The fall from the moment he finally handed Collins the ball that night has been steep and well-detailed. He hurt himself again in 2016, this time his shoulder, but he’d already begun to pitch ineffectively and act erratically. He was exiled to Cincinnati, moved to Anaheim, then to Baltimore, a string of bad teams for which he could do little to reverse his career. Rock bottom came on a California witness stand, admitting he’d provided his late teammate Tyler Skaggs oxycodone.

The last time he pitched at Citi was May 12, 2021. When he took the mound and again when he took a turn at-bat, the Covid-limited crowd of 8,035 somehow made the place sound like it did in the old days, bookend thanks-for-the-memories ovations that Harvey allowed to shower over him. 

“What the fans gave me out there was pretty incredible,” Harvey would say afterward. “I was holding back tears, I’m not going to lie about that. It reminded me of a lot of the good memories and was very special to me. It was something I’ll never forget.”

By then, Harvey had endured one more beating, seven runs and eight hits in 4 1/3 innings. His voice hinted that he knew he was close to the end. Friday, he officially got there. The record books will show he finished with a 50-66 lifetime record and a 4.42 ERA. 

But if you were there on April 19, 2013, or on Nov. 1, 2015, or even on May 12, 2021 — or any of the days when he was young and so were you, days you greeted friends with a “Happy Harvey Day!” text … well, you are reminded that, sometimes, numbers can seem like the worst kind of liars.