In sports, debuts come in all shapes and sizes. Some take place almost unnoticed and are interesting only when looking back. Others occur amid an onslaught of hype that makes it hard for an athlete to breathe, let alone succeed.
Sometimes, a first performance is an accurate indicator of what is to come. Sometimes, it means nothing at all.
When Zack Wheeler, a 23-year-old pitcher and former No. 1 draft pick, took the mound for the Mets in his major league debut last week in Atlanta, there was reason to suspect that he might not immediately live up to his billing. After all, the Mets, eager to get everyone to stop thinking about their woeful record, had essentially shouted Wheeler's name from the rooftops in advance of his first game.
It all felt like too much of a drum roll. And yet Wheeler emphatically shut the Braves down, throwing fastballs they could not touch. In six innings, he struck out seven and did not give up a run. On Tuesday night, against the White Sox in Chicago, he will try to do it again.
This time, the pressure will be a little less because there can be only one debut, whether it is on the mound, or in the batter's box, or at Centre Court in Wimbledon or in a country, and a league, where no player of your nationality has appeared before.
What ties so many debuts together is that it is not just the athletes, or the teams, who remember them. So do fans. And so do writers who were there, who, years later, are still struck by what they witnessed.
One Night in the Majors
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Christian Parker made the Yankees' rotation out of spring training in 2001 but was tagged for seven runs in what turned out to be his only major league start.
Seeing the Wheeler family watch not-so-little-anymore Zack from the Atlanta stands last Tuesday night, I was whisked back to an evening I spent in April 2001 with the parents of Christian Parker, a right-hander starting for the Yankees in his major league debut.
Parker had surprised everyone by breaking camp with the big club. His mother, Sandy, had picked up the phone a few days before and upon hearing her stuffed-up son's voice at the other end, she thought he was sick. "You O.K.?" she said.
"I'm trying to be," Christian said, before delivering the good news. The whole family flew to New York and took their seats in Yankee Stadium's family section on April 6.
Boom! — the Blue Jays' Carlos Delgado slammed a two-run homer in the first. Two more runs scored in the third. Joe Torre yanked Parker with the Yankees down, 6-0, in the fourth, on the way to a ghastly 13-4 loss.
"I'm proud of you, son," Parker's father, Rick, told him afterward in the Yankee Stadium lobby. Christian didn't tell him that his shoulder hurt. Three days later, Parker went on the disabled list. Later he was sent to the minors. He never pitched in the majors again.
But he and his 21.00 earned run average live on at Baseball-Reference.com — as will my memories of that night with his family, when the vagaries of baseball fate made his debut a farewell, too. — ALAN SCHWARZ
A Florentine Massacre
Simon Bruty/Allsport
The U.S. national team's trip to the 1990 World Cup was its first in 40 years. Its 5-1 loss in the opener still stings.
Technically, it wasn't a debut for the United States soccer team in the 1990 World Cup, more like a re-debut. The United States had played in the first two World Cups, in 1930 and 1934, and in 1950 it produced one of the great World Cup upsets, beating England, 1-0, in Brazil.
But in the following decades, American soccer fell into dormancy on the international level. Forty years passed without a World Cup appearance. And then, thanks to a group of college players, the United States earned a seat at the table again. Still, qualifying for the 1990 Cup in Italy was one thing. Competing in the tournament was a quite different matter and one that, at times, turned out to be quite difficult. Every member of that American team made his World Cup debut in the opening game against Czechoslovakia at the Stadio Comunale in Florence on the afternoon of June 10, 1990. Over the course of 90 minutes, the young Americans were slapped, shoved, elbowed, kicked, beaten and humiliated, 5-1.
The result confirmed the lowest projections of the worst cynics, who scoffed at the notion that American college players could stand on the same field with rugged pros from Europe and South America.
"The thing about this is it makes all the oddsmakers look like kings," the American goalkeeper, Tony Meola, said. "It was the U.S. team that made the Czechs look like kings."
The final score could have been worse. Ivan Hasek missed a penalty kick in the 89th minute, perhaps intentionally.
"We are sorry for the score," Hasek said.
It was embarrassing even for the American reporters covering the game; they were received warmly by their hosts but patronized by their international colleagues. But progress came quickly.
Less than a week later, the United States lost by just 1-0 to host Italy, in Rome, and then fell, 2-1, to Austria. The cynics quieted down. The American team has played in every World Cup since. — DAVID WALDSTEIN
Perfect Start for an Imperfect Met
John Bazemore/Associated Press
Kazuo Matsui's arrival from Japan in 2004 raised the hopes of Mets fans.
It's almost impossible for a major league player to have a more perfect debut than Kazuo Matsui did for the Mets in 2004. The rest of his major league career, well, not so great. But that first night, that first at-bat, that first pitch, was sublime.
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