THE final tease and the final indig nity collided at the same time, at 5:05 in the afternoon, when an old Mets farmhand named Matt Lindstrom threw a fastball that Ryan Church centered on his bat and sent soaring out toward the big top hat in right-centerfield.
Lindstrom is the kind of live young arm the Mets sure could have used at some point in the last six weeks, but he has been a Marlin since November of 2006. Church is the kind of live bat the Mets sure could have used for more than 90 games and 319 at-bats, but he spent half his season trying to recover from a couple of concussions.
For an instant, Shea Stadium wanted to believe, tried to will the ball to the top hat, tried to squeeze a little more baseball out of a dying season. But the baseball wouldn’t be coaxed, it settled in Cameron Maybin’s glove, and the Marlins had a 4-2 victory. The Mets would not get the 90th victory they needed to buy one more day of summer.
“Right to the end,” Jerry Manuel said, “I thought we would get there. I really believed it. And I’m just sorry I wasn’t able to help push these fellows one game further.”
Manuel is one of the few members of the organization who can awaken proud of himself this morning, because all across the past two weeks he has tried to cajole every last bit of life, strength and hope out of his baseball team. Not all of his moves worked, but enough of them did, enough to keep hope flickering until the very end.
It is right that he will apparently lose the “interim” from his title and be allowed to take this team into CitiField next year and see what he can do across 162 games, to build on a 31/2-month tenure that did see the Mets play 18 games over .500. He is the one Met, from the Wilpons at the top to the dregs of the bullpen below, who gets a passing grade for 2008.
The rest? They all bear responsibility for the most horrific sequel since “Psycho 2.” They all wear as badges of dishonor these past two years, and these past two weeks, authoring an unprecedented back-to-back choke, the residue of which has to be solved, and resolved, by this time next year if the franchise doesn’t wish to forfeit whatever competitive credibility it has left.
“This team, it is better than this,” said Carlos Beltran, the one member of the Mets’ offense who showed up for work yesterday, his sixth-inning home run the lone buffer between what would have been a humiliating final-day shutout. “I believe this is a playoff team. I believe that we have the core to be a championship team.”
Omar Minaya yesterday sounded like a man who certainly believes that, who kept referring to the “core” of this team, wanting to emphasize the point that if these past two September collapses go on their permanent record – as they most assuredly do – then so does the fact that in 2006 they were a game away from the World Series.
What goes unsaid, of course, is that even that 2006 season, a joyride from April 1 to around Oct. 15, ended just as miserably, and just as inexcusably, as these past two seasons did. At the very least, it hints at a fundamental flaw in the foundation of the team, something that goes beyond the rash of injuries that have haunted them for three years, starting with Duaner Sanchez’s ill-fated cab ride.
The four-man core – Johan Santana, David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran – has been declared untouchable in the past, and should probably remain so. But the biggest challenge facing Minaya is identifying if it is something in that core – Wright’s ineffectiveness in the clutch, Reyes’ so-so Septembers – that infects the rest of the operation.
“We are a high-80-win team that should be better than that and will be better than that with these players,” Minaya said, and that is something to be proud of only if you still use the Art Howe Era as your measuring stick.
The Mets should be beyond that now. They should be getting ready for their third straight playoffs. The fact that they’re not screams that something is wrong, screams that something needs to be fixed. Quickly.