I also feel that loss in “88 was the beginning of a down side for this team, to lose with Doc on the mound was just terrible and it wasn’t till the mid 90′s that hope returned to be dashed by Bravos and Jeter in 2000 then the return of good days in mid 2000′s until the called 3rd strike, the Sept swoons, the injuries to pitchers and BP and now we should be coming out of the dark ages hopefully sooner than later but it remains to be seen how the Wilpons/SA are going to remove the shroud that has covered my fav team going forward.

Only the light of good signings and the continued development of Harvey, Wheeler, Ike, Tejada, Flores, etc will tell, I guess.

Yeah, that and the Penndleton home run are probably my two most crushing moments after the ’06 one.

Sigh……THIS^^^^

Injuries and Doc’s problem kind of killed them in ’87. Was so pissed off b/c I had tickets to opening day that year, only to find out Gooden was starting the day in drug rehab.

Really thought they were going all the way in ’88. I still consider that the most disappointing ending to any season I’ve watched so far – even worse than ’06 for me.

The next day Dick Young started his game summary with the sentence “Ron Swoboda, who hits home runs with his bat and triples with his glove…..”

See, a Met fan has to take the losses as well as the wins in order to keep one’s sanity – especially with this front office….

Two of the best times I remember having at Shea were when we on the losing end of the score for it wasn’t so much what was happening on the field as to what was happening with us in the stands or the newspaper write-up.

The first was during the 1969 home opener loss to Montreal when those around me were muttering “sh*t, we can’t even beat an expansion team!”. The other was in 1965 when the Mets lost to the Cubs despite holding Chicago to three hits. The headline in the next morning’s Daily News: “Cubs Three Hit Attack Sinks Mets 7-1″. Lots of walks and errors in that one.

I think we all share the same sentiments you do but I do have to draw the line when it comes to “This is my commitment to Fred, Jeff and Sandy”. Sandy’s commitment has only been to Fred and Jeff and Fred and Jeff’s commitment has only been to themselves. Even if the Mets had been a winner the past few seasons and thus the ticket prices increased instead of dropped since 2009, how many average income fans would have been able to take their families to the ball park for a day like they did years before?

In this case, commitment has to be a two-way street, not a one-way street with restricted entrances.

And when asking them to “Please dont fool me again. Please lead this team to prosperity again” I myself don’t think about that n terms of the heartbreaks of 2006, 2007 and 2008 – for in those cases we weren’t fooled, we just competed and lost – I instead think of it in terms of 2011 and 2012 – when we didn’t lose in a competitive contest we lost because the front office did try to fool us and insulting our intelligence believing we would fall for it.

Again, I share your sentiments completely but if I had known today what I didn’t know 25 months ago, I would have written a letter to the Commissioner instead asking him to please stay out of our problems. That way many of us who left Citi Field after the 2011 opening day loss would have got our wish as we were shouting “sell the team, sell the team”.