Matt Harvey: Awesome Pitcher, Probably Wouldn’t Be My Friend

Long, enjoyable Men’s Journal profile of Matt Harvey that makes me reasonably certain that, despite living in the same city, we will not be running into other.

This is not to say that Matt Harvey doesn’t seem like a decent enough guy, but, uh, I was on the math team in high school.

Harvey lives in a bachelor pad in the East Village, a downtown neighborhood known for its raucous bar scene, which he indulges in on occasion. “I’m young, I’m single,” he says. “I want to be in the mix.”

I live in a one-bedroom apartment with my wife in Midtown, a neighborhood not known for its raucous bar scene, or maybe it is but I’m not paying attention. I can’t remember the last time I was in a bar. It definitely wasn’t raucous.

With two hours until Harvey has to be at Citi Field in Queens, he decides he has time for some quick shopping. “Do you know the store John Varvatos?”…. Harvey eyes a linen blazer with about a million buttons running along the seam and a funky, upturned collar – a baroque garment more befitting a general in Napoleon’s army than a ballplayer. “Think I can pull this off?” he asks.

I think the last new piece of clothing I have is a polo shirt my wife bought me off the sale rack in Banana Republic, maybe a year ago. I did buy some new undershirts a few months ago. Does that count as shopping?

“Dirty martinis and music – that’s the big motto in our family,” he says, describing his extended Italian-American clan as a rowdy tribe, fond of letting loose as often as possible. “We get the booze going, and the music starts playing. Always old-school hip-hop. Jay-Z. Tribe Called Quest. The Pharcyde. My parents love that stuff.”

There’s half a bottle of red wine in the back of my refrigerator, and 7/8 of a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream. The wine has been there for an amount of time that can be measured in months, is surely well beyond undrinkable, and probably wasn’t all that drinkable in the first place, since we bought it for $4 at Trader Joe’s. But I really can’t tell the difference. The Bailey’s was a gift the last time we had a party. I used a few tablespoons of it to make ice cream, and can’t think of anything else to do with it. When I crank up the Pandora, there’s a pretty good chance James Taylor starts singing.

Harvey mostly hangs with finance and marketing guys in their twenties and thirties.

That sounds terrible.

Still an awesome pitcher though.