Baseball. And Better Stuff.

By John Lowe
Posted Friday, November 23, 2007

It’s going to be okay now.

It’s been eight weeks , give or take – an appropriate grieving period by any sports standard – and I’ve taken my time digesting the disappointment of the 2007 season as every baseball fan with a computer has vented to his or her satisfaction, berating one player or another coach, searching for an explanation better than the obvious one; we just won too few games. Two too few, to be precise. But even armed with that naked truth you can’t simply gloss over the tragic circumstances of the season which will be remembered, hopefully, as the worst September collapse in Mets history.

So it’s about twenty past bedtime, and my wife and I are in the adjacent computer room when Asher calls out, simply, “Daddy”. That’s me; “Daddy”. Quietly, in I go. “Come here”. “What’s wrong, Happy?” I ask. “I want you to stay with me ….. until it’s light”. Lying in a small boy’s bed, and ready to crash myself, I counter with “Well, you’re bed is little and who’s going to sleep with Mommy?”. Keep your comments to yourselves. “Why do you think you want me to stay with you, Hap ?”. “Because I don’t want to have a bad dream”This was, by any definition of the word, an historic collapse. Seven games up with 17 to play …… it’ll go down with the worst of them. Unprecedented, right? Well, yes and no. It took some time, but my brain was able to uncover the forever-embedded electrical pathways to the memories of a season long since forgotten. Or so I’d thought.

Taking Demographics into account, many of you probably have a good recollection of the final throes of death of the mid-eighties-to-ninety dynasty that never was. Specifically 1990; another season that could’ve been.

The Mets entered September in the midst of a seven-game winning streak which had elevated them to a narrow half-game lead over the Pirates when play ended late September 3rd. The Mets would then lose five straight games by a combined score of 16-3, including a 3-game sweep by the Pirates in Pittsburgh to fall to three and a half back. They would follow by winning six of eight including a mini-sweep of Pittsburgh at home to once again find themselves just a half-game back when play resumed on September 16th. Mid-September, and “it’s déjà vu all over again”.

People say that everyone dreams; that if you sleep, you dream. Whether or not you remember them right away is another matter altogether. Personally, I seldom remember dreams, and although I haven’t slept more than five hours in a row in five years, I know I have to be dreaming at least once in a while. I just can’t tell you what about.

Different story, I suppose, for a small boy who is scheduled for eleven-ish hours of uninterrupted sleep, with a mind full of stories from countless books and movies to provide fodder for what must be on occasion some pretty nerve wracking shit. I expect the worst, and am preparing the “but those things aren’t real” defense to the “bad dreams” opening, to gratuitously use a chess reference.

It seemed at first to be a waste of time.

The Mets would lose the last four games of the home stand, and the following night in Chicago, to fall to three and a half back and that, as they say, was that. Down four in the final tally, the Mets would split their final 34 games after August 31st as Pittsburgh went 20-12, and the run of competitive seasons was over. Pittsburgh came and got it; the Mets were average. So close, again, yet so far.

The next seven years were great for watching Northern Exposure and Friends, and we’ll leave it at that. Living in Denver by now, I got to at least see the team on each visit to Mile High Stadium, and later Coors Field, but the teams of Harrelson, Cubbage, Torborg, and Dallas Green never had a chance. They were, inexplicably, very bad, and as the 1996 season approached its conclusion the Mets replaced the aforementioned crusty pitcher-killing manager with everybody’s second-favorite living ex-Met manager, Bobby Valentine.

Things had to get better. He looked so darned happy.

“The dog puppet comes out of the Jack-in-the-Box and chases me into the hole”. I’m thinking “Okay, what we have here is a blending together of his Baby Einstein hand puppet, used liberally earlier that evening, and the Johnny Depp masterpiece, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, when Veruka Salt gets tossed down the trash chute by a swarm of enraged, but essentially benign, nut-shelling squirrels” I know, tt’s a bit dark for a kid's movie but he loves it so we watch it. Over and over.

Veruka, as you may remember, was a bad nut. She had to go.

“Well, you know Asher, Veruka was a bad nut and –“. “NO! It was an ant hole”. “What? Like in Ant Bully?”. “Yes” “Well, Peanut made a lot of friends down there and –“. “But he was scared, and then I went in another hole and another hole and another hole and another hole and I kept getting out”. “Well, that sounds a little weird, Asher, but not so bad … what else happens?” As if trained, he paused. “I was looking for you”. It was looking right there as though I was downsizing from a California King to a shared twin for the night.

Armed with these revived memories of my Summer of ’90 in beautiful Savannah I paid a quick visit to one of the invaluable baseball resources on the internet, baseballrace.com , and began to check in on previous seasons. While only mildly interesting, I spent an hour of my time looking this shit up so you’re going to damn well hear about it. Some.

First-place finishers a mere five times in 46 seasons the Mets have, thanks to that newfangled Wild Card thing, been a playoff team seven times. Surprisingly, ten second-place finishes, to include the WC seasons of 1999 and 2000, also show on the resume. I concentrated on those and a few others, to investigate if, in addition to 1990 and 2007, the Mets had held a September lead and not finished first. There were three other seasons, in fact. You guess while I …….

“Looking for me?” I think to myself. “Where’s this coming from? How can this be so? I’m everywhere. I’ve missed four bedtimes in fifty-one months …..” … no, make that five. “Remember when you went to visit Big Papa in the hospital?” Go figure, I had actually spent a night away from home – my first - two weekends prior while visiting my hospitalized Dad in Gainesville. Well prepped for such a first, he still had a tough night I was told. Or maybe more than one. Last time I ever (ever) leave without him. Until he’s twenty.Comically and famously bad in the early years, the Mets nonetheless logged just one sub-.500 season between the years 1969 and 1976. Joe Torre fixed that, but I digress. Of those good Met teams, always stocked with enough pitching to be hopeful that they could play meaningful games in September, the ’70 squad actually held first-place for two days, the ninth and tenth, before finishing 7-12 and six games back.

Coming off a World Championship the year prior, that hurt for an eight year-old like me. Probably for about ten minutes; I didn’t even know what OPS was at eight.

I acted quickly. “Hey, Asher, did I tell you that I spoke to Big Papa today?” A look, a pause, and “Well, well, what did he say?” “He said he’s feeling very well now, and will probably get to go home pretty soon and his legs are even going to work!” I said. “W-w-well that’s great!” said my son with genuine enthusiasm. “Are you going to go see him again?”

“Not without you, Happy. Big Papa wants to see you next time”.

Now, when Mets fans talk of the darkest years in franchise history, they’re generally referring to the various collections of players assembled to wear the blue and orange between the seasons 1977 and 1983. These guys just mostly sucked, and that’s that, but a new owner whose great-grandfather may or may not have had something to do with inventing the game had been carefully overhauling the tragic state of affairs of the Met minor league system, and when Keith Hernandez was acquired on June 15th of 1983 the Mets were still number six, but with a bullet. A big bullet.

This was my last season as a New Yorker, and I went to Shea at every opportunity as though I actually had money. Ha! I attended the historic six-games-in-four-nights set against the Cards and even got the tee-shirt. I wish I had it still. Nonetheless, with Strawberry, Hernandez, and many talented youngsters already in New York, and Dwight Gooden in Norfolk, the future was bright.

The 1984 season brought electricity to the city that I was able to feel all the way out in Tucson, Arizona. Fortunately for me, they were the darlings of USA Today and ESPN had its finger on the pulse of the country’s sports fans – large markets not excluded, of course – and the Mets were everywhere. They were popular. Expected to compete, they did just that, hanging tight and actually holding first place as late as July 31, but it wasn’t to be. On June 13th, with the Cubs and Phillies each a half game behind the Mets, Chicago acquired Rick Sutcliffe – who was so far getting rocked in Cleveland – in a blockbuster trade.

Sutcliffe would do nothing less than post a 16-1 record in 20 starts, and although as close as a half game on August 3rd, the Mets would lose six straight, including a four-game sweep by the Cubs in Chicago. Dwight Gooden would be named NL Rookie of The Year, the Mets would finish six back in second, and I, for one, was proud to be a Mets fan again. The tide had turned.

1985 would produce another September dogfight, with the Mets sitting in first place as late as the 13th, but the Cardinals would hold on as the Cubs had the previous season, yielding another fristrating winter for Met fans after all was said and done. But one season later, when Mookie Wilson’s ground ball squibbed underneath the glove of Bill Buckner, and again the following night, I was in the barracks of the 24th Attack Helicopter Battalion on Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia, and the Mets were champions again.

I remember who was there. Dana and Angela, Mervyn, Zarrella. And while we were all pulling for the Mets, only I was a Met fan. The local ladies, each Braves fans, Mervyn from Detroit – a Tigers fan – and Zarrella, if I recall correctly couldn’t have given a damn about baseball. He had a thing for Angela. So many thanks to Sid Fernandez, Gary Carter, Ray Knight, and the rest but for me it’ll always be the ’69 team. Savannah and age 24 was a lifetime away from Greenpoint and being seven. And it wasn't the same.

And that’s all the time I had that night, Friday, November 2nd. It had been a pretty long day keeping a four year-old entertained, engaged, and moving in the forward direction as his uppity school took back an allotted but unused hurricane day, but we did lots of good stuff. It was cool. It’s always cool. We went to the “far park” for a long while and then to the library to make a replica burrowing owl out of a pine cone, some cotton balls, and two ice cream sticks; later we went to the park down the street where I got the shot of him running the bases at the Little League field. We took naps. They’re scary fast, those days.

And the Mets couldn’t have been further from my mind, despite the washed-out blue “NY” bucket cap I donned. I already have bad hair; bad and windblown we can’t have. I always opt for the hat. Long day aside, I knew I wanted to write a column and since it would be my first contribution since ….. You know ….. I felt obligated to take my turn at addressing 2007.

Man, did that suck or what? What a choke.

And I’m done. It was a pretty fair season, all in all; one of the better ones, truth be told, but some people will be bothered by the nature of the failure until their last days. They’ll tell their kids and grandkids about it. Still, it wasn’t exactly the first time that the Mets had missed the party by a narrow margin.

It’s becoming harder and harder with time to distinguish between the individual bouts of suffering inflicted upon Mets fans, courtesy of the Braves, by the 1999 and 2000 teams. These were the Wild Card Mets of Bobby Valentine, Mike Piazza, Al Leiter, Robin Ventura, John Franco, Todd Pratt, and Armando Benitez. And although they each enjoyed playoff successes without winning their division – the 2000 team finishing with a poor showing in the biggest World Series attraction ever – each also had ample opportunities during those two seasons to break the Atlanta Braves’ stranglehold on the National League East. Each failed in September.

The scorecard will clearly reflect that the 1999 Mets finished a clear second-place to the Braves by a margin of six and a half, and yet tell nothing of the story. Having engaged the Braves in a season-long dogfight, where the two teams would eventually swap the top spot no fewer than six times after August 1st, it came down to the last two weeks; one game behind, thirteen left, with the Braves six times. The Mets never knew what hit them, losing seven in a row and five of six to the Braves over nine days. But they backed in. They couldn’t beat the Braves even though for all intent and purposes they were, for the first time in nearly a decade, on equal terms. Second place. They would win a wicked cool playoff series over Arizona and then, on queue, lose a not quite thrilling enough LCS to Atlanta. End of ride.

In 2000 the team actually made it more interesting in a positive way. Starting their final six-game homestand the Mets trailed Atlanta by four and would host the Braves and Expos for three each. Atlanta would win game one of the series to extend the lead to five games, leaving the Mets to hope for a tie, but with the Wild Card spot long since firmly in hand. And it almost happened. The Mets took the next two from the Braves and swept Montreal while the Braves, with their lead down to two, managed their lone win of the season’s final five games with Tom Glavine beating the Rockies in Atlanta, clinching the NL East for the sixth consecutive time with one to play.

The slide would leave Atlanta dazed and confused and they would be swept by St. Louis as the Mets won a nail-biting series over the Giants culminating in Bobby Jones’ one-hit shutout. With momentum on the Mets’ side, St. Louis folded up neatly and it was, well, in the end, just another year that could’ve been. Good times, though. Good times.

And again, the darkness came.

So we talked about dreams, he and I. Me, the one who almost never dreams, and him, a four year-old boy to whom these nighttime visions were “certainly” real. And I just listened mostly. And in the end, it actually came to pass that the “Reality Defense” was the correct response after all. From the ant hole to the Horse-in-the-box(?), the friendly shark with the big teeth to surly dragons, all I could do was let him know that none of it is real, and that we all dream, and if we don’t like it we just wake up and make a new one. I also told him that since Mommy holds the Guinness Record for the World’s Longest Invisible Umbilical Cord his room is still wired for sound and I can hear him pass gas from a dead sleep and can traverse my home in scant seconds. Okay, I didn’t rag on Mommy because, truth be told, I like it just as muchArt Howe and Steve Phillips have been replaced with Willie Randolph and Omar Minaya. Al Leiter and Steve Trachsel with Pedro Martinez and Oliver Perez. Ty Wigginton and Jeff Duncan with David Wright and Carlos Beltran. John Maine for Pedro Astacio. Et cetera, et cetera. These truly are good times for Met fans, and if the season were to start in two weeks with whoever is already under contract, they would still be a contender because they are as good a team is there is in the N.L. They just need a tune-up, not a makeover.

So I’m finished with 2007. I’m done with it. There’s news for baseball fans in the papers every day; fans of all teams wishing, dreaming, of the next 162-game elimination round that is a baseball season anymore. No team has yet gotten so much better or worse so as to see a big shift in power in the league. Yet. The Braves have added Glavine but lost Renteria and Andruw. The Phillies got one starter and one reliever better by acquiring one player – nice move - and the Mets have made some quiet re-signs and added a catcher, Johnny Estrada, just today while divesting themselves of the traffic accident which had become Gee-you-suck Mota, so there’s always hope; room to dream.

And it worked out. And once he was all at ease, and we had our second round of ‘good night’s , I just really didn’t care about baseball or the Mets enough to finish what I had started. Another time, maybe, but as Woody Harrelson says in Natural Born Killers; I was a totally different person then. So this sat.

No longer, it seems because, well, you know, I have a password here and I do as I please when Deb and Gary say its okay to do so, sooooooooo, what? Do I have a point, exactly? Well, I did. It was probably obtuse and self serving but I sort of felt as though “you know what? Who cares that the team took one of its own torpedoes right in the loins, it’s only baseball, for Pete’s sake!” But as I painstakingly looked over each of the team’s September finishes on that brilliant pennantrace.com, and followed along in another browser with retrosheet.org, checking boxscores on corresponding dates, I found myself - more and more - remembering the circumstances of my life at those times. Whichever city I was living in, in whichever decade, I followed each of those heartbreaking finishes with one dream in mind; 1969.

And when, in 1986, it came, it wasn’t as good as the first time. So, to be blunt, they need another; my son’s first. That will be special. In the meantime I’ll have the same dream as every Met fan that attends a game or follows the season from somewhere far from home and, admittedly and ashamedly, the results of one of these childrens' contests can still actually change my ….. disposition for a short time, just not like in the old days. I have different stuff going on now.

Better stuff.

To no one’s surprise this year, Thursday is Thanksgiving. Myself, Stacey, and Asher will make the drive across Florida’s relatively unspoiled interior to St. Lucie and spend a couple days with my Mom and Pop. It’s a special Thanksgiving this year because Pop is just recently in town after seven weeks at Shands Hospital in Gainesville for a laundry list of life threatening conditions and surgeries, any ONE of which would have probably killed me, the guy next door, and eleven people on a beach in Indonesia. He’s a hero, and he’s in St. Lucie and will probably be in his own home very soon. So Thursday I’ll watch Jets football with Pop and Asher, as I pray, or dream, I will again next year, and the year after that, and again and again.

Happy Thanksgiving and may all your dreams come true this Holiday season. Which reminds me, Holiday was robbed, man, robbed!

Johnny B.