10 Summers Ago in Queens

While looking for a photo of a different Met from the 2013 season -- I'll explain who and why later on -- I landed on the game of August 26th, and discovered three young players all in Flushing pinstripes, whose careers are still going strong a decade later.  Of course, none of them now call New York home.  Just a random night when the 6-7-8 hitters were (top to bottom) Wilmer Flores, Travis d'Arnaud and Justin Turner.

Teammates on the 2013 Mets -- not a very good club, finishing 74-88 -- and still productive major leaguers today: Flores with the Giants, d'Arnaud with the Braves and Turner, in the midst of a nice bounce-back year with the Red Sox. Could anyone have predicted that on this night in '13 where their baseball journeys would take them -- and that all would find their best years in cities other than New York?

Now onto that other Met, the one whose photo I was looking for... it was Matt Harvey (below).  He didn't pitch that night.  The star-crossed hurler made his last 2013 appearance two nights earlier on the 24th -- with the Mets soon to announce that he'd suffered an elbow tear and would have to undergo Tommy John surgery.

But there was a more positive reason to spotlight Matt Harvey: on July 26th, 2012, he's made his big league debut with a splash.  The Connecticut native worked 5-1/3 shutout innings, struck out 11 and, in the pre-DH National League, had two hits in two at-bats against the Diamondbacks in Arizona.  That made him the first MLB pitcher since 1900 to record at least 10 strikeouts and two hits in the same game.