The End

By now, just about every other Mets blogger has said just about everything there is to say about the end of the Mets' season. I'm sorry it's taken me so long. I had to travel back to DC and move yesterday. I can't blog at work. I didn't even get to watch the game yesterday - the post I wrote was the last I saw of it. Maybe that's for the better.


Now that I'm sitting down to say my piece - to give my unique perspective on 2007's humiliating ending for the Mets - how do I even put it into words? How do I distill 6 months of roller-coaster feelings, of love/hate, of doubt, of denial over whether I even wanted this lifeless, pathetic team to win...into any one piece of writing? This sucks. It's devastating. I'm depressed about it. The Mets, my team, a huge part of my life - I'll say it proudly - are going to be laughed at and ridiculed for the next 6 months; longer really because this will hang over them until they actually win anything. 2007 backfilled any inroads the 2006 Mets made into the Yankees' domination of New York.

They could have at least lost in the division series. Then this season would only have been a disappointment, rather than a profound disgrace. Or, of course, they could have actually acted like a team on a mission as opposed to a group of cocky, unmotivated bums who treated the playoffs as a given and were a .500 team for two-thirds of the season.

Screw you, Mets marketing. "Your season has come." The stage was set for this from the day that over-confident, presumptuous slogan was unveiled, revealing the over-confident, presumptuous attitude that hung over this team like a cloud as big as the cloud of embarrassment that now surrounds them. In every successive installment of the season, the Mets played like that part didn't matter and they only had to turn it on for what came next. Remember Spring Training? You don't just go 12-21 in March and have that not be at least somewhat of a dangerous indication of things to come.

It matters

Then, it didn't matter because those games don't count. Errors, sloppy play, weak hitting...you play like you practice; anyone who's ever played a sport knows that. You don't just suck in a scrimmage and turn it on with any sort of continuity on game day. Spring Training is a month-long warm-up for the regular season, and if you play like crap and lack focus from the get-go, that's going to come back to haunt you. I don't care what anyone says. 15-16 in the Spring you can write off. It tells you your minor leaguers blew a few leads. 12-21 is bad. Like I said, dangerous indicator - nobody admits it because when your team is full of talent, getting worked up about exhibition games really does seem and feel irrational.

And it didn't look like it mattered when we killed St. Louis to start the year. Or when we owned Atlanta in that first Friday night game. But maybe that's when it all went downhill. I was feeling a little complacent, certainly pretty good, when our record stood at 4-0 and we'd held outscored our opponents by a combined score of 31-3. Perhaps Spring Training didn't matter. Maybe that's when the team got too loose.

I denied it back in April, and most fans denied it, because we were winning series and that was all that mattered, but all the signs really have been there from the very beginning. We couldn't finish off our opponents or get on any sort of roll. We didn't look quite the same as last year. There was no killer instinct. We couldn't step on anyone's neck. From the beginning of the season, even during our successes, we exhibited the lax play that eventually spun entirely out of control and doomed us in the end. Failure to close the deal in several spring series led to failure to close the deal in a September divisional race.

Which brings me back to the Spring Training thing. We treated March like a joke because it wouldn't matter in April. And we got comfortable enough in April that we decided we'd treat the next 6 months like a joke because as long as we stayed in first place, they wouldn't matter in October.


Well guess what, Mets? Karma just kicked you in the ass. To be fair, the Phillies and Braves played into the Mets' warped mindset. Had the Phils gone ahead in June, maybe we could have gotten our act together. Looks like the Fightins pulled off one big, sick, giant stunt by waiting until the last weekend of the season to make the Mets realize that they weren't quite as much of a lock to win the East as they thought they were. Or we just blew it. I'll go with the latter.

We, and we alone, screwed this whole thing up. It sucks because the Phillies, already cocky, are never going to let us hear the end of this. Neither are their fans. Before this year, they had no platform to stand on but they were still talking smack. Now they've got something to hold on to and don't hold your breath because they won't let go. Ever.

And it's all our fault. The Phillies didn't win this; they capitalized on the fact that we gift-wrapped it for them with an industrial-sized bow. Of course, we're pretty much obligated to commend them for doing so when we couldn't capitalize on Philly pretty much gift-wrapping it for us for the first 5 months of the season. Make that the first 5 1/2.

Everything I've written this year exhibiting any sort of victorious exuberance, excited confidence in the Mets, or condescension toward the city of Philadelphia or its baseball team now makes me look like a fool. But that's okay, because my job as a blogger is chiefly to express my opinions and feelings in as raw a form as possible so that they can accurately convey how I feel as a fan watching my favorite team. I talk. The team is supposed to go out and do. And they didn't.

That's a baseball team celebrating. They're not the Mets.

This one really hurts, maybe because I've been taking the time to sit down 3 days a week and express those feelings for most of the year. I'm new to the blog thing, and as devastated as I was when I sat motionless in a dorm lounge chair and watched the Cardinals celebrate last fall, it's connected me to this team and this season in a way that I've never felt connected to the Mets before. I didn't cry yesterday, because the feelings that used to make me cry about baseball manifest themselves differently now than they did when we lost the World Series in 2000, or when we screwed up 1998 with another horrible final home stand and another unceremonious 88-74 finish.

But the feelings are there. My buddy Nate called me yesterday to apologize about the Mets:

"This is pretty much the worst day of your life, huh?"

Indeed. There are many worse things than losing a baseball game, but it's amazing how until you can summon the capacity to realize this it certainly doesn't seem that way in times like these. I get as depressed about this sort of thing as I do about anything. And yet I keep coming back, and year in and year out I keep tuning out 6 months of taunts from my Yankee fan friends. And the Yankees continue to win, and my friends' parents continue to waste their season tickets in the beginning of the summer while the team's losing, only to cheer as loudly and obnoxiously as anyone when the Yanks end up on top in the end. Still, I keep cheering for my beloved Mets, and I continue to be perennially optimistic despite the perennial heartbreak. So it goes.

But what now? What do we need? How can we not only make sure that this never happens again, but come back with a performance in '08 and beyond that will exorcise 2007's demons? 2007 will always be a part of the Mets, but, and I'm going to quote Robert F. Kennedy, "the future depends on what we do with what others have left us." This happened. It's where we go from here.

And the entire identity of this team needs to change; if nothing else, for the sake of fan confidence - and sanity, really. We can't just bring back 2007's team and give it another crack, looking on the surface like the same group of lame, under-performing losers that we did at the end of this year. It's about the book, but the cover matters too. This is one situation where perception will go a long way toward shaping reality.

The Mets need to be reshaped to look like 2006's fast, exciting club, showing youthful energy with a splash of savvy veteran experience. What a difference a year makes. 2007's team wasn't all that different, but they really came to look like a squad of lazy, expressionless, under-performing vets with a trickle of youthful fire. This team, this Mets look, is tainted.

I won't talk right now about specific player decisions; we know what the obvious ones are (Guillermo Mota can never pitch another game in a Mets uniform), and I can save the rest for the long off-season. As far as the organization goes, Willie Randolph probably doesn't deserve to be fired. But there may need to be new buzz surrounding the team next year that only a managerial change will be able to create. Bring in Wally Backman, or another member of the '86 team. I dunno - just as long as it's not another ex-Yankee. (cough Joe Girardi cough)

Remember what happened when the Red Sox fired Grady Little, not because he had really done anything terribly wrong (Pedro said he was fine) but because a change just needed to be made? Look, I can think of plenty of reasons why Willie deserves to stay, but there's also a strong argument for why he needs to go. You can't fire the entire roster.


I'll examine this more tomorrow, when a decision is likely to be announced. My hunch is that Willie's here to stay, and if he is, more power to him. If he stays, I hope his laid-back managerial style is validated once again and he genuinely leads the Mets into the period of success and dominance that that was supposed to have begun last year, that this year was supposed to continue. If he goes, I also think that's a good decision with sound reasoning behind it.

We'll see, but I'm keen to move on from all this. I'm intent on staying excited about the off-season, about what Omar might do, about how we can rebound from 2007, rather than mope more about how much this whole thing sucks. I have said my piece. And I feel better now.

I'm going to have a hard time watching the playoffs; I'd love to root for the Red Sox and Cubs but I don't know if I'll be able to turn the games on. We'll see. I'll be rooting for the Phillies to fail, and the Yankees to screw up, but that's nothing new. My Mets just won't be a part of the equation.

And as hard as that is to swallow, I'll be alright. With any luck, my Mets will be too.

(Photos courtesy nypost.com, mindspring.com, mcb.mcgill.ca)