Yesterday, Benny Agbayani retired from the Japanese major leagues (NPB) where he’d been playing for the last six years, occasionally under the skipper-hood of ex-Met manager/Scratchbomb nerd-heartthrob Bobby Valentine. Benny will always hold a special place in my heart, as I’m sure he does for most Mets fans.
Every fanbase in every sport has a guy like Benny: beloved for performing way over his head, despite a seeming total lack of physical gifts. Benny was built like a fireplug, had a boyish, pudgy face, and ran like he was mad at the ground beneath him. Fans like guys like him because it makes them think that any slob can play the game. Of course, even a guy like Benny has physical gifts better than those of 98% of the population. Regardless, he’s the kind of player whose appearance allows for the amount of identification and self-delusion necessary to be a Sports Fan.
Benny toiled in the minors for five years before finally getting a call up in 1998, thanks to Valentine, who’d managed him at triple-A Norfolk. After getting called up again early in 1999, he blasted 10 homers in his first 73 at bats, a Ruthian pace that, of course, could not be maintained (he waited until September before finally hitting his 11th homer of the season). In the postseason, he was somewhat eclipsed by the emergence of Melvin Mora, but he did have a few key moments. In game 4 of the NLDS, he hit a double to put the Mets ahead, and in game 6 of the NLCS, he got on base to lead off two late innings, and came around to score both times to give the Mets the lead, though his bullpen could not hold the lead in any of these cases.
In 2000, he became a more permanent fixture in the Mets’ lineup, and contributed many huge hits on their road to the World Series (one of which we’ll get to shortly). He also mistakenly tossed a fly ball he caught into the stands, thinking it was the third out (it was only the second) and had to frantically retrieve from the youngster who snared it. Such was Mets’ fans love for the guy that the blunder only made him more loveable somehow.
Unfortunately, loveability does not always equate to ability to play in the big leagues. Benny fell back to earth, as players of his type often do. He was traded to the Rockies in 2002, wound up on the Red Sox briefly, then went to the Far East, where he won a championship with Valentine’s Chiba Lotte Marines in 2005 (along with another ex-Met, Matt Franco).
Apparently, he was just as beloved in Japan as he was in Flushing, as this video will attest. This is footage from a Chiba Lotte Marines game, where the local fans are reciting a Benny Agbayani chant en masse. This is not unheard of in Japanese baseball, where fan folkways are a lot less like their American counterparts and more like European soccer supporters. But the Japanese baseball fans do not develop choreographed chants for everyone.
When I heard he retired, I thought immediately of game 3 of the 2000 NLDS, possibly the greatest game I’ve ever seen in person. I reminisced about that game way back in January of this year. Let’s take a trip back in time, shall we? (Original post here.)
Continue reading “Classic” Scratchbomb: Benny Agbayani, One of the Good Ones
