The good news is, for many years, Jon Niese has been paid millions of dollars to throw a baseball. The bad news is seemingly everyone despises him.

While he was never one of my favorite Mets, the hostility towards Niese is bizarre. The only thing remotely offensive about him is, according to a 2013 New York Post article, he pumps himself up on game day by listening to Jason Mraz.

Nobody should feel sorry for Niese. This past week, he signed a minor-league deal with the Yankees for $1.25 million if he makes the team as a middle reliever/spot starter, plus the opportunity to earn $750,000 in incentives. Not bad for someone who would primarily be hanging out in the bullpen. We should all be so lucky.

In fact, the Dave Day (banjo player for the ‘60s proto-punk band The Monks) look-alike appears to be blessed and cursed by luck. He was born on October 27^th, 1986, the day the Mets last won the World Series. Good timing. When Niese made his debut with the Mets as a highly regarded pitching prospect in the fall of 2008, Rickie Weeks Jr. of the Brewers homered off him on just his second pitch. It was the first time in Mets history that a pitcher gave up a home run to the first batter he faced in his career. Bad timing.

For the rest of his tenure in Queens, he was a solid, unspectacular contributor, eventually made expandable by the Mets endless supply of stellar starting pitching. Back when the Mets traded him to Pittsburgh in December 2015, Niese complimented the Pirates defense. Quite a few Met fanatics got offended by the comment, and subsequently did what irrational people in the 21^st century do best: unleash their anger on social media. Some choice examples from the last 14 month’s include “Jon Niese is the Zika Virus,” “Hope he stinks as he stunk,” “More like Jon Piece of crap,” and the old reliable “Fuck Jon Niese.” Believe it or not though, there are worse things than being compared to excrement and a disease that causes death and makes your testicles shrink.

What looked like a fresh start for Niese turned out to be the worst year of his career, as if the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme music took human form. It got so bad even Pirates General Manager Neal Huntington regretted receiving Niese from the Mets for second baseman Neil Walker, saying publicly, “In hindsight, maybe the two fringe prospects and trying to figure out where to reallocate the money might have been a better return.” That’s right, not prospects, fringe prospects. This was said when Niese was still on the team. It’s one thing to be roasted by anonymous people living lives that are profiles in stupidity and cowardice. But from the guy that actually traded for him?

Making things worse, Walker, a fan favorite, team leader, and Pittsburgh native, was putting up one of his best seasons before a back injury shut him down for the year in August. Meanwhile, Niese was buried in the bullpen, got traded back to the Mets in August, and soon after was also done for the year after getting knee surgery.

Yankee fans once booed Derek Jeter, someone so beloved I saw a grown man repeatedly chant “DEREK JETER!” for no apparent reason during a Rush show at Jones Beach. So realistically, it may not be too long before Niese hears his first “YOU SUCK!!” However, this Mets fan wishes him the best in the Bronx. At least up until they face the Yankees this summer. On that occasion, to quote a recent one-word assessment of Niese on social media, “STINKS!”

Matt Leinwohl

In retrospect, our firm commitment to the mullet was somewhat baffling. As teenagers in the late ‘80s, my friends and I rode our bikes around Long Island, confidently rocketing through Sunrise Highway like Mötley Crüe on their motorcycles in the “Girls, Girls, Girls” video, awful hairstyles be damned. In the summer, we’d play stickball at the back of St. Agnes, pretending to be the New York baseball icons from that time: Keith Hernandez, Don Mattingly, Dwight Gooden, Roger McDowell, Dave Winfield (who attacked the ball like it was someone he detested), and Darryl Strawberry (best know for hitting colossal home runs as casually as making a sandwich).

In the summer of 1988, my friend Joe added George Michael to the pantheon of heroes. Faith had come out the previous fall, and subsequently became a major soundtrack during freshman year of high school, with “Monkey” being the latest huge hit. When MTV wasn’t showing Remote Control, chances are they were playing “Monkey,” or any of the other countless videos from that album. Throughout the whole George Michael phenomenon, Joe was carefully taking mental notes on his man-crush. One afternoon, a few of us went to his apartment and were greeted by Joe in a dark, wide-brim hat, tight jeans, and a 15-year-old’s unsuccessful attempt at a beard, which mainly consisted of awkward patches. He’d seen the “Monkey” video one too many times.

Gathered in his room, he put Faith in the CD player, immediately went right to “Monkey,” and proceeded to blast it at an unnecessarily high volume. Shouting over the music, he essentially gave a dissertation on the song. It was apparent Joe obsessively studied it, like how college students from the ‘60s and ‘70s pored over Dylan lyrics. In between droppings of knowledge, he would emulate some of Michael’s dance moves from the video, punctuating his observations with spin turns and elbow thrusts. On the stout side, Joe’s hat and red scraps of facial hair (featuring more beard than moustache), made him resemble a round, dancing, ginger Amish guido. Somehow, we never laughed.

While I liked Faith, other records from that time commanded more of my attention, like Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love, Document by R.E.M., The Cult’s Electric, Robbie Robertson’s self-titled first solo album, U2’s The Joshua Tree, and the mighty Appetite for Destruction, Guns N’ Roses full-length debut. My equivalent to “Monkey” was “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” a radiant love song that’s also a dynamic, six-minute guitar odyssey with a melodic bass line you can sing along to. Another tune that owned the summer, it replaced “Monkey” as #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 as autumn was about to take over.

This pattern of Michael getting lost in the shuffle started in 1984 (one of the greatest years in music/pop culture) with “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” his American mainstream breakthrough. While a fun, bouncy song, it seemed a little too lightweight. About a decade later, I started to appreciate those jazzy organ breakdowns after the chorus, and realized the song was a stellar Disney/Motown combination that could’ve been from Smokey Robinson & the Miracles.

However, back in fall ’84, I was preoccupied with other things, including the Mets first pennant chase in years, Marvel and DC, the dawn of Miami Vice, Billy Ocean’s “Caribbean Queen,” Paul McCartney’s “No More Lonely Nights,” Deep Purple’s comeback single “Perfect Strangers,” and “Hot for Teacher” from Van Halen. (The video inspired my friends and I to go as “young Van Halen” that Halloween. As an 11-year-old guitar fanatic, I was Eddie, and had a cardboard guitar that kind of looked like his iconic Frankenstrat. Emphasis on “kind of.”)

“Last Christmas” came out soon after. Already saturated with melancholy before Michael’s passing on Christmas day, it’s a synth-pop soul classic that manages to be heartfelt minus the sappiness, with short, affecting Christmas bell-like keyboard solos that get at the heart of the song’s loneliness. It’s up there with Michael Jackson’s “Rock with You” for best use of keyboards in a pop tune. Having spent the last three decades welcoming us at our local drugstores every holiday season, adding sublimity to mundane activities, you can easily take “Last Christmas” for granted.

As a writer/producer/arranger, Michael’s ear for melodic nuance is what made him such an exceptional artist. That captivating sax in “Careless Whisper” always seems like it’s about to be accompanied by Robin Leach waxing poetic about the French Riviera. While a sad song, the music has an appealing ostentatiousness reminiscent of ‘80s touchstones like the aforementioned Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Dynasty. The exotic, downbeat acoustic guitar and his use of falsetto harmonies in the “Now that you’re gone” section take it into a whole other stratosphere. He sang everything, so the back and forth between the lead and background vocals comes across as a brief interior monologue. Marvin Gaye, David Bowie, and Chris Cornell have done this as well.

Michael’s talent for nuance was again spotlighted on “Everything She Wants,” even down to the distinctive synth squiggle that precedes the second verse. Overall, the keyboards share a similar early hip-hop/science fiction sound as the one’s used in Chaka Khan’s version of “I Feel for You,” which came out at the same time. There’s also those ethereal wordless vocals in the chorus that Michael has as the main melodic hook, comparable to how Van Morrison uses “la la’s” in “Caravan.” As one of the elite singers of his generation, he could actually get away with “Ah-ha-ah, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, uh-huh-huh, ah-ha-ah, ah-ha-ah, doo doo doo, la la la la la.” Not too many people can make “doo doo” and “la la” sound suave and sensual.

Those last two words accurately describe “Father Figure” and “One More Try” from Faith. They’re the kind of stunning ambient synth ballads that seemed to have come out on a daily basis in the ‘80s, like Roxy Music’s “Avalon” and The Cure’s “All Cats Are Grey” (also from an album called Faith). At a Patti Smith/Television show I saw at Roseland in 2004, Smith did a cover of “Father Figure,” giving me a new appreciation for it. Five years later, “One More Try” was playing at the Bon Vivant Diner in Union Square, while everyone inadvertently did their impression of Hopper’s Nighthawks. The song was a pleasant surprise. I didn’t recall it being that good. But it was on the towering level of his legendary performance of Queen’s “Somebody to Love” at the 1992 tribute concert to Freddie Mercury.

Despite Joe’s stupid hat and embarrassing dance moves, turns out he was on to something.

Matt Leinwohl