As the year comes to a close, we decided to highlight our Top 5 Fan Shots of the 2015 season. There were so many great ones this year, but these five really stood out for us during this incredible Mets season. Enjoy and keep those Fan Shots coming!
An MMO Fan Shot by Eric Heller
If “The ‘15 Mets” takes on that special status we give to those magic teams, like “86” or “69”, I think you can point to a very specific, mostly overlooked moment from an excruciating July game that transformed our frustrating, dead-end year into one of the most exciting regular seasons we’ve had since….well, since a very long time.
I’m not talking about “Wilmer’s Tears” or “Cespedes for the Rest of Us” or all the other soon-to-be (hopefully) legendary moments from this (hopefully) legendary year.
Let me take you back to that brutal, toss-your-shoe-at the-TV game against the St. Louis Cardinals. It was July 19. Eighteen innings. Remember that? Six hours of agony. Our crappy team was 1-26 with RISP that day, and I was about ready to shoot myself.
It was the top of the 13th. The Mets offense was particularly offensive… As it had been for weeks. Yes, there was that winning streak in April, when we had first place by a mile, before we gave it all back by June. Now it was July, and the Mets were on their way to another “Just Wait ‘Till the Year After Next Year” year.
And then, something happened that changed them in a deep and profound way. Curtis Granderson hit a single, an actual hit in extra innings. That was miracle enough, but as he rounded first, he decided to try for an extra base. I really believe it was his way of saying “enough of this bullshit.” I swear, you could see the idea light up his face as he decided to do it. That’s how I remember it, anyway. Here’s the actual moment:
That’s right, a Hustle Double. I sat right up, and I said, “Whoa! Who are these guys?”
And then Kevin Plawecki did this:
Okay, they also left a bunch of runners on in that inning. And yeah. the Cardinals would go on to tie the game, and it took a few more innings for the Mets to score again and finally win the damn thing. They battled hard that night. That win against the Cardinals showed the Mets had some pent-up fire in them after all.
It took the trades, and the tears, for things to really take off, but I think you can point to Granderson’s Dash as the moment this team woke up. The moment when they became The 2015 Mets… The team we’ve all fallen in love with… The team we’re about to ride into October, and maybe even November. That moment stands out for me as the turning point to all of it.
And the rest, we can hope, is history.
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This Fan Shot was contributed by Eric Heller. Have something you want to say about the Mets? Share your opinions with over 30,000 Met fans who read this site daily.
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