gut-wrench-ing: adjective; extremely unpleasant or upsetting.
In four days, the Mets will have to endure something that no team before has ever suffered through. A fan base that has sat through its share of heartache will have yet another chapter written and it’s completely out of everyone’s control.
Coming off of an amazing season in which the Mets arrived early, taking the NL East and the NL Pennant before losing to the Kansas City Royals in the World Series, the Mets will relive the latter portion of that roller coaster season on April 3rd, 2016 when they open the season at Kauffman Stadium.
It’s hard to predict history. Major League Baseball released their 2016 schedule on September 8th, 2015. Among the games on the schedule were matchups between former World Series foes like the Cardinals and Rangers, Red Sox and Rockies and Yankees and Diamondbacks. The Mets and Royals were both on their way to winning their respective divisions and about to join that list.
In the very first game of 2016, the Mets will be introduced, player by player along the third base line, in the exact same places they were roughly six months earlier. Instead of the words “World Series,” painted on the field directly in front of them will be the words “Opening Day.”
They will stand and endure the onslaught. The National Anthem. The outfield sized American Flag. The introduction of every single World Series winning player on the Kansas City Royals. They’ll endure the gut-wrenching feeling of seeing a World Series flag blowing in the wind above Kauffman Stadium and the reality that they were that close.
The entire image is surreal.
It seems like torture on top of torture actually. Almost an unfair pantheon of events that would drive the weak minded absolutely crazy.
We’ll learn a lot about the 2016 New York Mets that night. When likely game one starter Matt Harvey climbs the hill, will the Mets break, or will they fight back?
Heart is something that can not be taught and if the Mets are going to start their campaign to get back to the World Series in 2016, they’ll do it against incredibly tough emotional odds, back at the scene of the crime.
Never in the history of baseball have the National League and American League Champions squared off on Opening Day but that is all about to change.
