Jesse Orosco, the Mets\u2019 left-handed closer, had the night off. So did Steven McDonald, a New York City police officer, who enjoyed the game with friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the last thing,\u201d McDonald\u2019s son, Conor, said by phone this week. \u201cHe went to the game, got home, went to bed, woke up and went to work. And then everything changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next afternoon, in Central Park, a 15-year-old boy named Shavod Jones shot McDonald three times, severing his spinal cord and paralyzing him from the neck down. McDonald was 29 years old and had been married for eight months. His wife, Patti Ann, was pregnant with Conor, who was born the next January.<\/p>\n
The Mets went on to beat the Boston Red Sox in a thrilling World Series, and when Orosco struck out Marty Barrett for the final out of Game 7, he flung his brown Rawlings glove to the sky. Soon after, he visited McDonald at Bellevue Hospital and gave him the glove.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he was in the hospital, a bunch of athletes were there at the same time and everybody was giving gifts to him,\u201d Orosco said this week. \u201cSo I just decided I\u2019m gonna give the glove to him right there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know I\u2019ve had people say, \u2018Hey, Jesse, why\u2019d you give up the glove?\u2019 And I said, \u2018You know, that\u2019s not what it\u2019s all about.\u2019 I was happy to do that. The time was right. And I mean, it could have been any of us athletes that were there that day that could have done it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Only Orosco, though, had an artifact so symbolic of joy. Mary Murphy, a young reporter from Queens, had been at Shea that night, reveling with her sisters in the upper loge section along the first-base line. She had no idea until years later that Orosco would be integral to a film she would make about McDonald, who died in 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to show that he not only struggled, but that he found joy,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cAnd when I heard about Jesse Orosco giving him the baseball glove that he threw up after Game 7 of the World Series, I said, \u2018We have to have that in this movie. We have to find a way to talk to Jesse Orosco.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Jay Horwitz, the longtime Mets public relations director and now the team\u2019s historian and vice president of alumni relations, put Murphy in touch with Orosco, who lives in San Diego and spoke with Murphy there. The documentary, \u201cSaint of the City,\u201d is in final edits, and Murphy \u2014 who won 33 Emmys<\/a> for breaking news and investigative work at PIX 11 and CBS 2 \u2014 hopes for widespread distribution soon.<\/p>\n ‘Saint of the City’ documentary trailer<\/p>\n Courtesy of Mary Murphy<\/p>\n She held a private screening this month for donors and those who appear in the film, to coincide with the New York Police Department naming its academy<\/a> for McDonald. Orosco was there and met Conor McDonald for the first time.<\/p>\n \u201cI just remember, as a kid, my dad always talking about Jesse Orosco,\u201d McDonald said. \u201cAt three or four years old, before I knew what sports meant to my community and to my family, I knew that this was a special person and he really helped my dad.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was kind of like a myth, you know? He\u2019s a legend. And getting to talk to him and tell him how important that visit was to my dad and that gesture of giving him the glove \u2014 sometimes you don\u2019t get a chance to thank people, because life goes in different ways, and to me it was great just to do that, 40 years later.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a lot of pain and a lot of suffering, and people like Jesse Orosco, just with one visit and a simple gesture, helped my dad survive. The doctors only gave my dad like three years to live, and he lived for 30 and a half years. And that gave me the ability to know my dad and help me become the husband and father I am today.\u201d<\/p>\n McDonald and his father bonded over New York sports, especially the Rangers, Knicks and Mets. The next time the Mets reached the World Series, they went to the final game together \u2014 a loss to the Yankees in 2000. Conor won\u2019t be at the Mets reunion this weekend, though, because his son will be celebrating his second birthday.<\/p>\n The boy\u2019s name is Steven Mychal, after Conor\u2019s father and Mychal Judge, the chaplain of the New York Fire Department. Judge, who was instrumental to Steven McDonald\u2019s spiritual journey \u2014 which included publicly forgiving Jones and corresponding with him<\/a> while he was in jail \u2014 died on Sept. 11, 2001.<\/p>\n For all of the tragedy, Conor McDonald felt a calling to his father\u2019s profession. A captain in the NYPD, he learned this week that he had been promoted to deputy inspector.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my personal opinion, being a cop is the greatest job in the world,\u201d McDonald said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of great people you serve and protect, especially in New York City. It\u2019s a great privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n Five questions with\u2026.Carl Willis, on his five Cy Young winners<\/p>\n As a rookie with the 1984 Detroit Tigers, Carl Willis shared a bullpen with that season\u2019s AL Cy Young Award winner, Willie Hern\u00e1ndez. As a longtime pitching coach for three teams, he\u2019s gotten quite familiar with more modern Cy winners.<\/p>\n Willis, 65, has coached five Cy Young Award winners in his 23 seasons guiding staffs in Cleveland, Seattle and Boston. CC Sabathia (2007) and Cliff Lee (2008) won it during his first stint in Cleveland, F\u00e9lix Hern\u00e1ndez (2010) won it with the Mariners, Rick Porcello (2016) with the Red Sox and Shane Bieber (2020) with the Guardians.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of those guys were just tremendous competitors,\u201d Willis said recently. \u201cI mean, how much confidence they had, the ability to control their emotions, but to pitch with an edge.\u201d<\/p>\n Willis \u2014 a reliever for nine seasons who earned a World Series ring with the 1991 Minnesota Twins \u2014 spoke about the breakout seasons of his five Cy-winning pupils.<\/p>\n Sabathia: \u201cHe started to evolve into a complete pitcher. We started throwing a cutter when we were at the old Yankee Stadium, just on flat ground, and when he took it to the mound, I don\u2019t want to make comparisons to another Hall of Famer, but it was like a Steve Carlton slider. It wasn\u2019t really a cutter. Now, when we told CC that and had him throw the pitch again, it was terrible. And I\u2019m like, \u2018Hey, just think cutter, don\u2019t think slider.\u2019 He still had power stuff, but he had this pitch that he could throw to both righties and lefties, and his change-up was always good. That kind of complemented the power.\u201d<\/p>\n Lee: \u201cThe biggest thing about Cliff (in 2007, when he struggled), up until that point in his career, all he ever wanted to know was, \u2018Who can I not pitch inside?\u2019 He just wanted to bury people inside, inside. And then we\u2019d talk about adding other pitches and things of that nature. And I talked to him about, hey, you know what? Throw some fastballs away. Because he\u2019d get to five innings, we\u2019d have 100 pitches because everyone looked in. In too far: they take it for a ball. Leak in a little bit: foul ball, foul ball. It became just this battle of wills. And all of a sudden, he started to throw some fastballs down and away to move their eyes there. To where all of a sudden he controlled counts and they had to respect the other side of the plate, and when he came in, he beat them. Honestly, nothing in this game is easy to do, but it was so simple.\u201d<\/p>\n Hern\u00e1ndez: \u201cI just remember F\u00e9lix having meetings with the staff prior to a series; there\u2019d be a handful of guys we\u2019d say, \u2018Hey, we don\u2019t want to throw this guy a changeup.\u2019 And F\u00e9lix said, \u2018Well, I\u2019m going to see if he can hit mine.\u2019 But the thing about F\u00e9lix is that he could just manipulate the baseball. He had power as well, but he could do anything with the baseball he wanted to do. He\u2019d be in a battle with a guy and he\u2019d throw him a cutter and he didn\u2019t even throw a cutter. But he\u2019d throw a good cutter. He just had a tremendous feel for the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n Porcello: \u201cI joined the team there in May and I was on a crash course learning these guys. But I\u2019d seen Rick for years with the Tigers and he had a ridiculous sinker. And as metrics evolved with TrackMan and the ability to measure, there was some thought that he had a good four-seam, and he was shifting towards becoming more of a four-seam, curveball and not throwing the sinker as much. And look, I mean, I\u2019m old school, but I\u2019m like, \u2018Wow, this guy\u2019s got a ridiculous sinker. I don\u2019t think you never throw a four-seamer, but throw your strength. Throw your two-seamer down and then when you want, you can beat guys up with a four-seamer. But if you\u2019re just trying to live there, it\u2019s not really who you are. He was able to kind of make that adjustment; he had that competitive spirit, and he was a leader on our pitching staff and in our clubhouse.\u201d<\/p>\n Bieber: \u201cHe threw fastballs away and down that had ride through the bottom of the zone that hit her spot. They were going to be low and out of the zone, and they would hold plane. I remember it so well during that year in Cincinnati and Minnesota as well; he would throw an 0-0 curveball. We talk about dumping in a curveball \u2014 guys don\u2019t swing at 0-0 curveballs, so just dump it in there \u2014 but he\u2019d throw 0-0 curveballs that were like 0-2 curveballs; much like his four-seamer, it would hold plane. He could start it and it had no hump in it and just \u2014 boom, right at the knees, with power. He had such command and feel for that curveball, it was absolutely ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n Off the GridJoe Dugan, 100-run season, 10-homer season<\/p>\n Full disclosure: I had to look this one up \u2014 I didn\u2019t know offhand that Joe Dugan had 10 homers for the 1921 Philadelphia A\u2019s and a couple of 100-run seasons for the New York Yankees. But since it\u2019s trading season, well, it\u2019s a tale worth sharing.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s Aug. 3 trade deadline is as late as it can be under the collective bargaining agreement, which allows the commissioner to set the date anywhere from July 28 to Aug. 3. It\u2019s been around that date for four decades \u2014 we won\u2019t get into waiver complications \u2014 but from 1923 to 1985, deadline day was June 15.<\/p>\n The inspiration was a one-sided deal between the Boston Red Sox and the Yankees, but not the one involving George Herman Ruth. That sale had happened in the winter before the 1920 season. This one happened on July 23, 1922, when the Yankees sent four players and $50,000 to Boston for Dugan and Elmer Smith.<\/p>\n The Yankees were trailing the St. Louis Browns in the American League before the deal, and boy, did this upset the good folks of St. Louis.<\/p>\n As the Associated Press reported on July 25: \u201cLetters of protest, terming as \u2018unsportsmanlike\u2019 the recent New York-Boston transaction by which the Yankees acquired Third Baseman Joe Dugan and Outfielder Elmer Smith were sent to former Judge K.M. Landis, national baseball commissioner, by the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club of this city today.\u201d<\/p>\n Evidently, the Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club had some clout in those days, because soon the Browns persuaded Judge Landis (the K.M. stood for Kenesaw Mountain) to establish a deadline for trades. But that didn\u2019t help the 1922 Browns, whose fans were right to be worried.<\/p>\n The Yankees went 41-19 the rest of the way to win their second pennant in a row, and Dugan hit .286 down the stretch, matching his average across seven seasons with New York. He became especially close with Ruth, who famously confided in Dugan, before his farewell at Yankee Stadium in 1948, \u201cI\u2019m gone, Joe. I\u2019m gone.\u201d<\/p>\n Dugan was a pallbearer at Ruth\u2019s funeral, held on a hot, rainy morning that August. Turning to another pallbearer, former pitcher Waite Hoyt, Dugan said, \u201cI\u2019d give a hundred dollars for an ice-cold beer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo would the Babe,\u201d replied Hoyt.<\/p>\n Classic clipRickey Henderson goes to Toronto, July 31, 1993<\/p>\n It sure doesn\u2019t look like the Toronto Blue Jays will return to the World Series in 2026. The first time they made it, though, Hall of Fame general manager Pat Gillick did all he could to help them get back, acquiring the greatest leadoff man in history, Rickey Henderson, 33 years ago today.<\/p>\n Henderson came from the Oakland Athletics for pitcher Steve Karsay and a player to be named later (outfielder Jos\u00e9 Herrera). He didn\u2019t hit much, but stole 22 bases in 24 attempts down the stretch and had two critical World Series moments against the Philadelphia Phillies: a two-out, two-run single in the eighth inning of Game 4, when the Jays scored six runs for a stirring 15-14 win, and the leadoff walk in the ninth inning of Game 6.<\/p>\n Henderson represented the tying run and moved to second on a single by Paul Molitor. It was his presence that caused Mitch Williams to use a slide step motion while facing Joe Carter. With diminished stuff, Williams served up the home run that won the title, a moment immortalized this month in a statue outside Rogers Centre<\/a>.<\/p>\n Two fun anecdotes about Henderson as a Blue Jay from Howard Bryant\u2019s fantastic 2022 biography: Henderson missed three games with frostbite \u2014 in August. (He fell asleep while icing his ankle.) And when he returned to Toronto, back with the A\u2019s in 1994, the team bus passed a billboard depicting Carter\u2019s home run. As players and staff swapped stories about where they were at that moment, Henderson dropped the mic with a cry from the very last row:<\/p>\n \u201cI was on second base!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,1189,99,364],"class_list":["post-796575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-mets","tag-sports","tag-toronto-blue-jays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_8557.jpeg\")
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