A rain delay anecdote
Due to the nature of the New York Penn League schedule, I only get one chance to see the Brooklyn Cyclones each year (technically three if you count individual games). When rain threatens to cancel one of those games, I have no choice but to tough it out and hope things clear up. In 2013, that didn’t work out so well. 2014’s second Cyclones game in Lowell was shaping up much the same way.
The nice thing about the rain is that it keeps the binder people at bay. You know the ones, lining the railings before games with binders filled with cards to be signed by the dozen. Do people actually buy those things? I don’t understand it, but they must make enough to justify being there. Except in the rain. On this day, there were only two or three people waiting by the dugout, so I slipped in on the off chance that someone might show up on the other side of the railing. That person ended up being Casey Meisner.
Meisner was in the middle of a breakout season with Brooklyn. Within a year, he would be considered the #10 prospect in the Mets system. Earlier in 2014, he had his first certified autograph cards in 2014 Bowman. He was scheduled to pitch the third game of this series, which was a camp day (morning start for a stadium filled with kids). I don’t do camp days. This was the most I would see of Meisner at this level.
He came out into an empty dugout, everyone else back in the clubhouse or whatever minor league teams have under the stands. Except for the few of us standing at the end of the dugout, the seating area was empty. And so he came over to chat, probably just looking for something to do until the status of the game could be decided. He signed autographs while he was there and offered a glimpse into the mind of a young professional athlete.
He had wanted to change his signature. Now, I’ve seen a lot of signatures; I own thousands. Meisner’s wasn’t bad, you could mostly make out individual letters. It wasn’t exactly Michael Cuddyer, but it wasn’t Jordany Valdespin either. It worked as a signature but it wasn’t as flashy and distinctive as some of the others on that team. My previous day’s spoils included Amed Rosario, Marcos Molina, Jhoan Urena, and Michael Conforto. Meisner wasn’t at that level.
There are plenty of reasons for a change – distinctiveness, ease of repetition, or just marking the change from amateur to professional. Whatever Meisner’s reasons, he hadn’t gone through with it before Bowman came calling. Thousands of autographed cards later, it looked like this might be the signature he would be stuck with for his entire career.
They say change happens when you least expect it. The Mets certainly didn’t expect to have the NL East handed to them in 2015, so it fits that several changes followed. With the team floundering and at risk of blowing a tremendous opportunity to reach the postseason, several pitching prospects were dealt away for the pieces needed by the big league club. Meisner was among them, sent to Oakland for Tyler Clippard, a move that looked more sensible once Jenrry Mejia’s second positive PED test was announced just two days later. When Clippard underperformed in the postseason, even critics of the deal could only shrug. The Mets had lost, but they lost in the World Series. If dealing a promising pitching prospect on a gamble that doesn’t pay off is part of that, you would gladly take it.
For Meisner, the deal represented a new set of opportunities. Breaking into the Mets rotation sure doesn’t look to be easy for the foreseeable future, even if you’re next on the list. But Oakland is another story, more closely resembling Mets teams from a few years ago. A change of scenery provides an opportunity to reinvent yourself. And so, when Meisner had his second certified autograph card in 2016 Bowman, we got a look at his new signature.
Now, I can’t say home much of a part, if any, the trade to Oakland had in shaping the new signature. I suppose I could ask (he is active on Twitter), but maybe the mystery adds to the story. After all, we’re just taking a few hacks during a rain delay.
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