From the Sidelines: Mets' season ends in disbelief

By Daniel Silk

COURTESY THE SPORTING NEWS Despite the mid-season acquisition of superstar catcher Mike Piazza, the New York Mets came up short in their playoff bid.

One of the great things about professional sports, especially baseball, is the way a season can take on a storylike quality with a fairy tale ending. It's similar to the way you suspend disbelief while watching a movie--except in sports, you suspend your belief. You forget that what feels like destiny can collapse like a theater poster-board outside Old Campus. Endings in professional sports are only happy for a few lucky athletes and fans. The rest of us suffer and learn that while sports may be as entertaining as dramas (if you're fortunate enough to be in the position of not caring who wins), they rarely offer star-studded casts, conflicts, and satisfying denouements. In this respect, sports are more like life than movies.

In baseball, as in all sports, teams acquire reputations. The Yankees are the best. The Cubs and Red Sox simply cannot, no matter how close they get, win a World Series. And the New York Mets, who opened their franchise in 1962 with the worst record in baseball history, have traditionally been a bad team. Sure, back then they were lovable (the way slapstick is lovable), but they were so bad for their first seven years that when they won the World Series in 1969, they were re-christened the "Miracle" Mets, a name which all but forgot itself when the team rather unmiraculously sucked in 1970.

After the prosperity of the '80s, a time when a building-size likeness of Doc Gooden guarded New York, miracles were in short supply. A series of awful deals for aging stars turned the early '90s Mets into the ball club equivalent of Ishtar. This resulted in a six-year period where the only thing I can remember other than Vince Coleman going to jail is that there was a year where the Mets had three former Cy Young Award winners and still posted a losing record.

During that depressing period, Shea Stadium was empty. I went maybe once between '93 and '95--not only because I didn't want to watch Bobby Bonilla get paid to adjust his jockstrap between strikeouts, but because something I identified with myself had become so loathsome that to continue to watch would have been self-torture. It wasn't unlike MTV.

The Mets played well in 1997, winning 88 painful, nail-biting games. The team was, if nothing else, exciting again in a kind of "if they come back and win this one, I'm getting drunk tonight" way. The summer of '97 never sobered me: I still don't know how they won 88 games.

So when Mike Piazza came to New York this year and set off a nine-game win streak, the '80s didn't feel like the distant past anymore. The Mets were capable of dominating teams again. Despite a horrendous June, both July and August were dreamlike months packed with ninth inning comebacks. A cult developed at Shea around reliever Turk Wendell. Postseason play appeared an inevitability. It was the Hollywood ending I had dreamed about since I watched with detached and jealous interest as the Yankees filled my block with the greatest display of city solidarity since...1986?

A little over a week ago, the wild card bound '98 Mets left the Houston Astrodome pumped after a torrent of ninth inning New York home runs. It seemed fate that wild card rival Chicago's Brant Brown would drop a ball, the hapless Cubs would choke, and I'd be watching the Mets on network TV this week.

I guess what I'm wondering is why the hell I'm sitting here writing about the cruelty of baseball. It's hardly worth mentioning that the tragic and baffling end to the Mets' season was five dispiriting losses over the course of which they led only once. Had they won just one of the five, they'd have been tied for a playoff spot.

How does a team collapse, one wonders? They certainly couldn't have stopped wanting to win. There is no rhyme or reason to it, but I know because I watched the Mets all season that something was wrong when they went to Atlanta for the final three games. They had defeat on their faces from inning one of Friday night's game, and they proceeded to play like they were scripted to lose. It was as if I had been watching Benji and someone had popped in Old Yeller when I wasn't looking.

"Why do the Mets suck?" a friend asked me this summer during a game the Amazin's would eventually lose. "How come even when they're good, they still suck?" It's a good question, but I think it's a bit like asking why Keith Richards still takes heroin. The real question is, now that the Mets' long, cardiac-arresting season has finally cramped up at the finish line, what am I going to do?

Maybe I'll watch winter ball.

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