Mets fans are feeling bad about their team right now, bad about their lot, bad about their principal owners, bad about their future. Maybe the fog lifted a bit Thursday when David Einhorn agreed to write that $200 million check, but the prevailing feeling among the faithful is forlorn.
Here’s the bad news: The feeling is probably justified.
Here’s the good: Nothing lasts forever!
In fact, in the vast history of New York City baseball, what Mets fans are enduring isn’t close to the worst stretch of bad road. Let’s take a look at what should be considered the city’s true valleys of darkness — and we won’t even include the 1962-68 Mets, whose average record was 56-105 yet still kept the customers happy just by being, and who outdrew the Yankees five of those seven years.
So here we have the best (at being the worst):
1. Mets, 1977-83 (average season: 66-96)
How bad was it? Pretty damned awful. Tom Seaver was traded June 15, 1977, ushering in an era of uber-dreadful baseball. The only spasm of hope came in 1980, when they crawled within one game of .500 on Aug. 13 (56-57) . . . and then lost seven straight and 25 of 28. Rock bottom was 1979, when attendance bottomed out at 788,905 — an average of 11,111 for 71 dates at 55,000-seat Shea Stadium.
How’d it end? Keith Hernandez and Darryl Strawberry arrived in 1983, Dwight Gooden in ’84, Gary Carter in ’85 and the Commissioner’s Trophy in ’86.
2. Yankees, 1965-73 (average season: 79-82)
How bad was it? We tend to remember this era as far more cataclysmic than it was, but the Yankees HAD won 29 of the previous 44 AL pennants and never finished closer than six games out in these nine years. Horace Clarke, poor man, is this time’s mascot. The clear low point: Sept. 22, 1966, a 4-1 loss to the White Sox, 413 paid customers at Yankee Stadium.
How’d it end? George Steinbrenner bought the team. Next!
3. Mets, 1991-96 (average season: 73-89)
How bad was it? Vince Coleman throwing firecrackers. Bobby Bonilla threatening to “show the Bronx” to a reporter. Bret Saberhagen squirting bleach. Rape investigations. Media boycotts. And some of the worst baseball to ever infect the city. Too many lowlights to count.
How’d it end? Bobby Valentine was hired in 1997. Mike Piazza arrived in 1998. By 2000, the city had a Subway Series for the first time in 44 years.
4. Yankees, 1989-92 (average season: 72-90)
How bad was it? This bad: Stump Merrill managed the team. So did Bucky Dent. Even the model Yankee, Don Mattingly, got fed up when he was forced to get a haircut. The low point? Surely July 30, 1990, the Yankees winning a forgettable game over the Tigers, 6-2, word spreading among the crowd of 24,037 that Steinbrenner had been suspended, and the resulting chant.
How’d it end? It started July 30, 1990. With Steinbrenner in exile, Gene Michael initiated the slow return to dynasty.
5. Superbas/Dodgers/Robins, 1904-1913 (average season: 59-95)
How bad was it? Maybe the most desultory stretch for any baseball team, Brooklyn’s love affair hadn’t yet begun, and these guys were bums, small “b.” The 1904 Superbas drew all of 214,600 to old Washington Park, or about what a four-game Yankees-Red Sox series would draw now.
How’d it end? Ebbets Field is built in 1913, Wilbert Robinson becomes the manager in 1914, the first-ever pennant is captured in 1916.
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Vac’s whacks
* You can forgive a Knicks fan if he saw some of the ways the Thunder and Bulls lost this week and thought to himself or herself, ever so briefly, “Be grateful for quasi-competitive first-round sweeps.”
* Every now and again, someone asks me what it’s like to work where I work, and I usually wander off into some poorly crafted elegy about the glories of city journalism; from now on, I will simply hand them a copy of “Tabloid City,” Pete Hamill’s latest novel, and tell them: It’s in here.
* Is there another sport besides baseball where someone like Curtis Granderson could look as woeful as he looked last year and as unstoppable as he looks this year? Maybe there’s hope for Nick Swisher yet . . . in 2012.
* Has anyone noticed how well Buck Showalter’s baseball team has been playing (at least on those nights when they aren’t playing the Yankees, anyway)?
Whack back at you
Ben Testa: The most telling Wilpon stat: The Mets are on their sixth general manager over the last 20 years. There has been mostly failure since Frank Cashen retired in 1991. I hope they have to sell. They have no right owning a MLB team, which is a public trust, which they have failed at so miserably.
Vac: “David Einhorn” doesn’t have the same number of syllables as “Joe DiMaggio,” but Mets fans are still turning their lonely eyes to him all of a sudden.
Don Stohrer: There have been a few saviors since I’ve been a Mets fan . . . Cashen, Keith, The Kid, Bobby V, Piazza, Pedro, Jose Reyes, David Wright. And now there’s a new one who I’m rooting for now to save my beloved Mets: His name is Irving Picard.
Vac: Of every opinion I’ve heard in the last week, this one is shared by the majority of the angry Mets fans — who probably would just settle for an announcement that the Wilpons are selling, in truth.
Frank DeMaio: Why don’t you stick to reporting the news, instead of playing God?
Vac: Because it’s longer hours but better pay?
James Hommel: Tiki Barber is so full of himself it’s pathetic. His comeback is not about the money. It’s not about “having that fire again.” It’s about a narcissistic egomaniac that just can’t stand being irrelevant.
Vac: I just wish he would train for his comeback and wait until he makes a team somewhere before opening his mouth again. That would be helpful all around.