When I am asked, I often say that rooting for the Mets is like being in a dysfunctional relationship. There’s a lot of pain, tears and misery, and you know on many levels that it’s bad for you and you’d probably be happier with someone else, but you just can’t break away. To be sure, there are moments when the significant other is lovely, charming and a delight in every way. And there are also times, like the end of this Mets season, when the S.O. is like Britney Spears on a meth-and-Twinkie bender and needs to be sent to rehab stat.
Feh. If you were to take all the gall of these past few weeks and roll it up into a stone, it would be about as big as the Rock of Gibraltar. There’s the shame of the greatest September collapse in baseball history — from now on, whenever the ’51 Dodgers, ’64 Phillies or ’78 Red Sox are disinterred, the 2007 Mets will be dug up as well as all-time Lords of the Choke. There’s the dishonor of proving Jimmy Rollins right — his Phillies were the team to beat in the NL East this year. (But it will do no good to vilify the Phils. They were hot at the right time, while the Mets were as cold as Ted Williams’ cryogenically preserved noggin. And because of the collapse, Rollins is likely to win the MVP over David Wright, who was about the only Amazin’ who didn’t stumble down the stretch.) There’s the sickening realization that Kaz Matsui, for cryin’ out loud, will be playing in October and the Mets will not. And there’s the crow-eating sensation of watching the Yankees, who looked to be dead and buried while the Mets were riding high, surge their way back into the playoffs for the 13th straight season powered by a supernal performance from A-Rod and timely relief from a Gossage-esque rookie pitcher named after a Hutt. The excruciating Chinese water torture nature of the collapse was, I imagine, something like being tied to a chair helpless while watching your favorite household pet get slowly strangled.
Why, God, why, we Mets fans ask, our unbelieving and teary eyes cast heavenward. People who know more about baseball than me are more qualified to answer that question, and at emotional times like these, it’s more therapeutic to assign blame than coolly consider facts. So, blame GM Omar Minaya for failing to put together a sturdy enough bullpen to make up for the superannuated and erratic starting pitching, and for adding a few more ill-considered transactions to the lengthy list of dumb Mets trades. Blame manager Willie Randolph, whose inability to get his team going in its hour of peril makes one wonder if the Mets wouldn’t be better off with a firebrand skipper like Lou Piniella, Bobby Valentine or, hell, even Morris Buttermaker. Blame the Injury Bug – much of the outfield spent at least some time on the DL, Carlos Delgado was at 100 percent maybe for three at-bats the entire year and a few more wins from Pedro Martinez might have made the difference. Blame the players themselves, for their collective failure to escape from the feedback loop of despair fed by the loss after loss after life-draining loss.
But blame only takes one so far, and it cannot change the past. Sadly, the future is not terribly appealing either; aside from a nucleus of undeniably stellar players, the Mets have more question marks than The Riddler’s longjohns. Minaya will have plenty of opportunities to redeem himself in overhauling the team for its final season at Shea, and while I would be content to never see Randolph (or Tom Glavine or Guillermo Mota) in a Mets uniform again, he is likely to be at the helm when pitchers and catchers report some 130-odd days from now.
Baseball pain is a different kind of pain. At the time it’s being inflicted, it hurts quite intensely, but goes away soon enough for most of us and leaves few, if any, permanent marks. A few hours after the Mets’ doom was sealed Sunday, I switched to Ken Burns’ The War on PBS. Those people had real problems, I thought, and seeing the Giants kick the crap out of another Philadelphia team Sunday night helped too. And even with the Mets out of it, this year’s postseason is looking to be a real humdinger.
In the end, the Mets are my team and I am their fan, a bond as indissoluble as it is mysterious, and there is no Mets fan who does not believe there is nobility in suffering. So, sometime next spring I will, in a metaphorical sense, pick my sweetie up from the treatment center and fall in love all over again. You and me, baby, we’ve got the teamwork to make the dream work and ’08 will be our year. Twinkie?
(Dan Barton is an editor with Ulster Publishing)