TO: Mets fans of all colors, creeds and intestinal for titudes.
FROM: Your friendly neighborhood columnist.
RE: Maintaining sanity during insane times.
At the top, I have to salute your sense of humor. These are times that don’t only try men’s souls, they convict, sentence and execute them, too.
There is no way to reasonably deal with the prospect of rooting for the first team in baseball history to hand away a seven-game lead with 17 games to go, while simultaneously watching your hated crosstown foe all but glide into the playoffs, without getting a laugh or two out of it. I applaud you for trying.
I applaud whoever it was that played Weird Al Yankovic and came up with this wonderful parody of “Meet the Mets” which made its way around the Internet yesterday morning faster than a Britney Spears YouTube clip:
Beat the Mets, beat the Mets,
Last place teams defeat the Mets.
Hanging sliders, minor-league speed, guaranteed to waste a seven-run lead.
Because the Met bullpen keeps fading away, October baseball won’t be at Shea.Mota . . . Sosa . . . every game is now in doubt.
Can anyone who’s on this staff get three men out?
That’s a good start, it really is. Now, here are a few extra nuggets of advice for you to make it through the rest of the weekend, no matter what happens tonight, no matter where the Mets happen to sit whenever you happen to read this:
Do not spend the weekend acting like the most persecuted fan base in sports.
Remember, the Mets were the beneficiaries of the only two true recorded miracles in baseball history: the 1969 Miracle Mets, and Game 6 of the ’86 World Series. Just because you don’t have as many titles to brag about as Yankee fans do, you don’t root for the Cubs. Or the Phillies for that matter.
This came from Matt on the nypost.com Mets message board: “Not time to jump ship yet. Get out the brooms and bring this baby home!!!!!”
The fact is, no matter what happens tonight, there is still a baseball season remaining for the Mets. And baseball is a funny, funny sport.
The Phillies look unbeatable now. The Mets look like they may never win another game. Maybe those things hold true through the weekend. And if they don’t? And what if the collapse happens?
Nobody suffered worse than Dodgers fans in 1951, because not only did they blow that huge August lead, they lost the pennant in excruciating fashion to the hated Giants.
And you know what? The Dodgers came back and won five pennants the next six years, including a championship. They bounced back.
Bottom line: You don’t believe this. Certainly, an e-mailer named “JoeP” doesn’t, because he wrote me yesterday: “After this, I’m done, who needs to invest in this heartbreak again?”
But you’ll be back.
Baseball is a testy, teasing mistress. If the Mets finish their swan dive this weekend, you’ll be bitter for weeks. But you’ll be back. Scarred. Aggravated. But you’ll be back.
WHAT THE FANS SAY
“We’ve had our time to sob, but now it’s time for something else. Now it’s time to let out all the emotions, all of our frustrations, and all of our angst in a positive way. It’s time to back our team like never before.” – Kevin Collazo, Take the 7 Train (mvn.com)
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“This is do or die. There is no other way to put it. The Mets cannot lose any more games here. Period.” – DiMartino, hotfootblog.com
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“With things going this bad, you start looking over your past for moral failings, superstitiously asking what you could ever have done to deserve this.” – Sam in Queens, samsmetsblog.com
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“I haven’t given up, but I’m definitely tired. Tired of the crummy pitching and the untimely hitting and the head-scratching managerial decision-making.” – Eric Simon, amazinavenue.com
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“Someone needs to step up and really be a hero for this club.” – Mike Steffanos, mikesmets.com
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“I said to my daughter before the game we should have bought a sign that said, ‘We Still Believe – almost.’ We were thinking of getting a chicken and sprinkling some blood in the dugout.” – Mindy Gleimer, Oceanside, 56, out at Shea
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“Due to their own stumbling and bumbling and generally sloppy and lackluster play down the stretch, the Mets, after 159 games, find sitting on their doorstep on the final weekend of the regular season exactly what they weren’t looking for – a pennant race.” – Eddie C. http://www.wfan.com
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“Most of us have probably bitten our nails down, broken out, maybe even pulled out some hair.” – Matt Kaufman, globalnym.blogspot.com