Everyone Deserves A Second Chance

Even if they're a baseball team that's coming uncomfortable close to blowing a 7 game division lead held with 17 games to play. Everyone gets a second chance.

It's Mets-Cardinals tonight, at Shea Stadium, with the leaves turning, in a game of extreme significance. It isn't game 7 of the 2007 National League Championship Series, or even the Division Series. We'll see if we make it that far.

For now, we'll just hope for a little revenge

And it's not do-or-die. This is, afterall, not a winner-take-all postseason series finale - there are three more games left in the regular season. But it can probably be classified as do-and-make-it-a-lot-easier-to-not-blow-the-season.

Pedro's on the mound. Isn't that how things were supposed to work out last year, when instead both Pedro and El Duque came up lame before the playoffs, and yet everything still felt as if it was unfairly and abruptly yanked from us? At least potential failure this year will be precipitated, potential success maybe that much sweeter because of the feelings the last two weeks have left Mets fans everywhere.

Anyway, this was supposed to be our year. We came out the first series in St. Louis and played such crisp, vintage new-era Mets baseball. Payback. Heart. Balls. Sweep the team that knocked you out last year. Bite off the hand that slapped you. Especially when they try to slap you again with an overblown, drawn out celebration of their accomplishments the previous year. Anyway. After 3 in St. Louis, everyone true to the orange and blue was ecstatic. Even apart from the arrogant marketing slogan our team had thought of, it really felt right off the bat as though our season had come.

Our season looked pretty promising after we beat up on tipsy Tony and the Cards to start it

I talked about all this in an all-star break post/assessment of our first half. The sad part is that the same issues that were problems then still haven't been corrected - they've only gotten worse. The concern that was our bullpen is suddenly a disaster. Where we lost some ugly games in the first half, our pitching staff right now is profoundly unable to get anyone out - much worse. If we had issues getting our act straight back then, those problems haven't gone away; they've only compounded.

We started fast and had a bad month of June. Bad pitching, no hitting, mental errors...the hitting's been better lately, but I guess the issue is that record-wise at least, we still really haven't gotten over June. Essentially we've been the same, mediocre ballclub since then. Going into tonight's game, we're 87-71, 16 games above .500. On June 1? 34-19, 15 up on .500. We've been one game better than a .500 team for two-thirds of the season. And while we've had our bumps and bruises, we haven't really had any completely devastating injuries. Nothing to warrant this team playing so crappy for the majority of the season, when the reason everyone was so excited for this year was to have the opportunity to watch a team on a mission.

The mission is far from accomplished, and though it might be close to completely going up in smoke, it's still far from that, too. We have a lead in our division with 4 games to play. If we take care of business, we're in. That's been the case for the past two weeks, the whole season really, but it's still true now.

It's been frustrating to watch the Mets this year, no doubt. And it hurts more because it shouldn't be this way. But we're Mets fans. We don't quit. We're failure-hardened, and have seen enough miracles to know that the next one is never entirely out of the realm of possibility. Things are painful right now, sure. It's really not fair that in the same season that, just four short months ago, you thought New York was finally turning blue and orange again, the Yankees still found a way to come back and the Mets are still fighting for survival.

But all we can do is believe. And cheer, and over-analyze, and jeer. Still, this thing is out of our hands - we can lend our beloved Amazins our love, our support - but ultimately it's on them. So it goes being a sports fan. Why do we continue to torture ourselves?

Who knows. All I know is that I love this team, and always will - playoffs, World Series, 71 win season, whatever. If we screw 2007 up, I'll be back for more in '08.

But let's hope it doesn't come to that. Please, Mets, don't blow this. Don't just hand the city back to the Yankees. You guys have shown the strength to battle through tough times like these before. I'm begging you to show it again now.

It's all I can do.

(Pics courtesy newsday.com, about.com, byrnesblog.mlblogs.com)