The seeds for all of the surreality that took place Sunday were scattered at random times across the last 5 ¹/u2082 years. Though it’s sometimes hard to conjure this image anymore, there was a time when Matt Harvey wasn’t just a concept and a cool nickname. He was the Next Seaver. Seaver was The Franchise? Then Harvey was Franchise 2.0, arriving at a moment when the Mets were desperate to have someone other than Bernie Madoff be the face of the franchise.
He was the goods, never forget that. There were nights he would report for work with a sneer on his face and kerosene in his right arm.