You coast, you drown: the way of the 2007 Mets
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by Sandra
"I will go down with this ship..."
Last night at Shea, I did just that. I frequent a certain mets bloggers (and readers) chat room (hotfoot.com/chat) and two nights ago there was some serious (well, as serious as it gets in a sports chat room) discussion about whether one of the regulars should go to the game last night. She said she couldn't stand it to see it all finally fall apart, and my first thought was to agree and say she had the right idea not going to the game. But some other chatters were on the other spectrum, saying how this is when we, the fans, were needed most. To come out and throw our support on the team. To throw caution to the wind and continue to believe. We were rational enough to realize that we would have nothing to do with the results, but there was something about being there in person that just would feel like we were taking that extra step towards being a good fan.
So, I got together with another chatter (known as "WrightOn") and we each made our way to Shea last night. I managed to score some seriously sweet field box tickets that we later made sweeter through the courtesy of a very nice usher named Bill who stood by me through many years of losing seasons I spent alone at Shea. We met up with "MetsGal" who, by the way, really is a woman for those in the chat with their doubts, and then we settled in to watch.
It was a fast game. Very fast. Pedro was fantastic, save a few choice hits the Cards strung together to get 3 runs off him. He struck out 8 over 6 innings. The bullpen actually looked decent and didn't give up anything. Only, the offense forgot to come to the party last night, and the mets didn't score at all. I think they got 3 hits the whole game. It was almost spooky because suddenly, the game was over and we had lost.
The thought that kept running through my mind last night as I drove home is how the team was coasting for so long. THERE'S NO COASTING IN BASEBALL kept echoing in my head a la Tom Hanks' quote regarding crying from A League of Their Own. You coast, you drown.
Some staunch believers are still saying that we haven't fallen yet; that we're tied for first place now. I don't care about the standings. I care about the fact that my team hasn't played playoff caliber baseball in a month. I care that they lost the ability to win games, no matter who is blowing it.
I realize baseball is a team sport, and there is no one person to blame. I realize that this is just one season, and it's nearly over so I could start looking to next year. But every season is a ring around my baseball fan tree, and when a blemish like this hits, it causes a knot in my bark I'm not soon going to forget. Something about the Mets that was always so appealing and magical was the sense of "miracle" -- the way they pulled off the post-season and world series in 1969. There has always been an aura around the team that even when they sucked, there was a little hope. This season seems to have negated that whole sense about them. It's disheartening, disenchanting, disappointing. Weird. Uncomfortable. Like a serious blow to the abdomen.
I left Shea last night feeling like it was 2003 again; glad to have experienced a night of baseball, but not sure what had happened behind me. There was a man two rows back who kept screaming at them from the stands (which, as I was only about 25 feet from home plate, I'm sure the players could hear). Some die-hard fans are really, really angry. The bandwagoners have already moved back up to the Bronx. I'm just deflated. I'm ready to sing the version of Take me out to the Ballgame that my brother and I grew up with: "If they don't win... they're the mets." It's almost comical, and somewhat stupid.
I still love this game. Spring can't get here soon enough for me!
-SpringFan
