Commentary : With Ruffling of Feathers, Mets Look Like Another Lame-Duck Champ

What do the New York Mets need to become the first team in nine seasons to repeat as world champions?

Darryl Strawberry definitely needs an alarm clock. One recent Saturday he slept through a morning workout, then, angry at a $500 fine, skipped the next day’s game and got nicked for another grand.

“Can’t Darryl afford an alarm clock?” chirped Gary Carter.

“All of us would like to sleep till noon every day,” said Ron Darling. “He gets paid a lot of money. The least he could do is show up.”

Dwight Gooden needs a police-band CB. Gooden’s lawyer says Tampa police are harassing Doc, trying to hassle him out of his home town.

“What goes on with me and the cops is unbelievable,” says Gooden, who got pulled off the road last month “for no real reason” except a license check. The police say Gooden, on two years’ probation after pleading no contest to two felony charges, is naturally under scrutiny.

Davey Johnson needs to read, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Strawberry says he’s “fed up” with his manager, and “if he wants me to go, I’ll go for good.” New York tabloids are calling Johnson “The Great Non-Communicator.”

Mookie Wilson isn’t happy Len Dykstra’s been given Wilson’s outfield job despite a .150 average. At least Darling and Johnson are speaking again; probably about Strawberry.

“I communicate better than a lot of those managers who chatter all the time and say nothing,” says Johnson. Oops, now Tom Lasorda’s mad.

Darling and Tim Teufel need a Miss Manners etiquette tome. They are off probation for their bar scuffle with Houston gendarmes, but their images are scratched. Ronnie, darling, what’s an Eli doing in court for rowdiness?

Carter needs financial advice. He was one of several athletes who was a front-end money man in an illegal pyramid-type investment plan.

If somebody had given Ray Knight, World Series MVP, a pocket calculator for Christmas, he might have deduced that the one-year, $800,000 contract the Mets offered was better than the two-year, $800,000 deal he got from Baltimore. Now the Mets are looking at 57 flavors of third basemen, including Howard Johnson.

General Manager Frank Cashen could use a case of extra-strength Tylenol. His millionaire lads, who play the Phillies at Washington’s RFK Stadium in an exhibition on April 5, lead the league in PR nightmares. Still, he says, “out of every adversity comes opportunity.” Then the Mets are opportunity’s darlings.

Cashen and Johnson think their camp is full of smoke but devoid of fire. “I wish these things didn’t happen,” said Cashen, musing in the Mets dugout after Thursday’s rainout. “But ... the time I’d worry is if everything was peaches and cream. I come from Baltimore, where somebody was fighting with Earl Weaver every week.”

This camp, from a pure baseball standpoint, has been “gloriously routine” for Cashen. Mets brass now distinguishes problems from controversy-perhaps assuming too blithely that they’re different.

“We don’t have any problems here,” says Johnson flatly. By which he means that Gooden’s curveball isn’t on probation and Strawberry isn’t oversleeping when he sees a fastball.

Cashen has convinced himself that a rocky road was inevitable: “Kathleen Windsor said, ‘America loves success and hates successful people.’ ” That desire to debunk the mighty seems redoubled in New York, baseball’s Babylon.

“Look at the A’s, Orioles, Reds in the ‘70’s,” said Cashen. “They had confidence, dash, elan. They thought they were the best and acted like it. When we have that in New York, they change the definition and call it arrogance ... It’s lucky for Pete Rose he never played in New York.”

Cashen has analyzed those eight straight World Series winners who failed to repeat and, in every case, diagnosed an identical weakness -- “holes in the pitching. That could be me, too, but I don’t think so. ...

“There are three ways to beat yourself when you’re on top. Overconfidence, greed and complacency. You sure wouldn’t think we’d be complacent.”

As Johnson puts it, “Maybe we better get used to being under attack. There are going to be some people mad at us, so we might as well return the favor.”

What really concerns the Mets, and rightly, is that great success can, by a sad and unnecessary marriage of internal stress and external nagging, lead to the death of spontaneous joy.

“Ballplayers don’t have as much fun anymore,” said Cashen. “Call me an old fogey, but I’ve told some players, ‘You are young, rich, healthy. You play for a world champion in New York. I promise you, this is as good as life gets. Try to enjoy the game more, will you?’

“People knock Gary Carter for being so enthusiastic, but I always see him goofing around, having a good time.”

The last defending champ to arrive in spring training grumpy, under fire and internally tormented, was the New York Yankees of Billy-George-Reggie-and-Thurman in 1978.

Those “arrogant” New Yorkers, who couldn’t stay off the front pages of the tabloids -- but who got along tolerably among themselves and played the game with proud passion -- were also the last champions to repeat. Though, it might be added, with enormous difficulty.