It doesn’t take much to placate a Met fan. After winning four games of five in Philadelphia and moving within one game of .500 Met fans were ecstatic. I heard Evan Roberts of WFAN fame say he was prepared to celebrate by popping champagne and tossing confetti when his beloved Mets reached the .500 plateau by taking at least two of three in Chicago. Met fans everywhere relished the thought of watching relevant baseball in JULY.
Forget about it! When your everyday roster lacks relevant pieces the chances of playing sustained relevant baseball is a pipe dream. And, in 2014 a pipe dream is all New York Met fans are going to get. “Wait Till Next Year” the time worn refrain of the old Brooklyn Dodgers is now the sole property of the Mets with Met fans singing it’s refrain before spring turns to summer each June.
Really, I shouldn’t be a wimp. I don’t know why I’m complaining. On June 7 of 2013 our Mets were already 10 games under .500 at 23-33. Five games down at 28-33 has to be considered forward progress, right? Somehow it just doesn’t feel that way.
I’ve listened as some Met comrades have argued that we’re almost there, that this year we’re losing more competitively, that in most cases it would take only one hit or one flip-flopped play to turn things around. They’re right. 18 of our 33 losses have come by two or fewer runs. Turn around just 6 of them, one out of every three, and we’e be sitting at 34-27 in first place, one game ahead of the Braves.
That only makes the pain more acute for me. It makes our lack of situational hitting, our butchered defensive fundamentals, and our simple lack of grit at the plate in clutch situations more acutely painful and sometimes almost too hard to stomach.
I know the pain and the suffering and the annual unfulfilled expectations are all part of the DNA that comes with being a Met fan. I know that rooting for the Mets is supposed to help you ‘buck up’ and develop the toughness and resiliency to face all the challenges and all the crap that comes with life. It doesn’t help.
Simply stated, Met fans deserve better than this.
