It couldn’t have been scripted any better. After the agonizingly long subway ride from Far Eastern Queens to Lower Manhattan, I walked upstairs to find it pouring rain while still having a good 10 minute walk in front of me. For those of you who’ve never been on a city (any city, really) subway, think of it like this. Normally, it’s a packed with people who have a sullen look on their face, desperately trying to not make eye contact with another human lest the other human either a) try to start an inane conversation with them or b) snap like Ken Shamrock in a WWE title match. This is why books and newspapers are all the rage on subways; it’s easy to ignore everyone if you have something else to look at.
Tonight the sullen look of “please God, don’t let them look at me” was replaced with a look of pure shock, like the city had collectively just been nutpunched at the same time. Really, this isn’t true as 60% of the city is Yankee fans, but I was taking a subway back from Shea Stadium, so it was nutpunched galore. It was a look of disbelief at what had just occurred, similar to the one Yankee fans wore in 2004. While this defeat was quite as improbable as that one, it was still insanely frustrating on its own levels. Some of which I’ll get in to.
So, as I walked up the subway steps, onto a dark, empty Manhattan street (yes, you can have a creepily empty street downtown) I made that symbolic long walk home alone through the rain, contemplating how the best $140 I’d ever spent morphed into the worst $140 I’ve ever spent. I thought about how quickly the $10 I’d dropped on a program so I could get a scorecard turned into kindling. I thought about how the ticket stubs I’d been collecting all year just became waste material. I thought about the Fan Photo my friend and I posed for and how I would certainly not be sending them some inane amount of money for a print. In my previous post I said I felt a giddy sort of confident terror. Walking into the Stadium, the energy was amazing. It was a jumpy electricity that I’d never felt before. I was just glad to be a part of it.
Which is what makes the loss so hard to swallow.
The worst part of the whole thing is the problem didn’t even come from where everyone expected. Here we are, one of the most productive offenses in the National League this season. On top of that, one of the most productive offenses in Met history. Our worry? Handing the ball to a rookie and a question mark, both of who were picked up as “the other guy” in trades for bigger players. Meanwhile, John Maine and Oliver Perez were handed the ball in four games and pitched their way into the Mets rotation next season, combining for an ERA somewhere in the threes. And where did our problems end up coming from? Why, the vaunted offense of course.
For the Mets, the 2006 NLCS will go down in history as a comedy of missed opportunities. They’ll show film of this series for generations to educate people on what not to do. Game 2 isn’t important? Not giving up the lead twice means the Mets aren’t playing for their lives in Game 7. The Mets managed to leave the bases loaded twice (11 LOB total) before Beltran goes down looking on a strike to end the season. I haven’t seen the pitch on TV yet, but I’m sure even if it wasn’t down the center it was far too close to take.
And so really went the Mets through a lot of this game seven, and really through the series. The left bats on their shoulders an awful lot and got called strikes left and right. It’s really apropos the season ended on one.
I’m going to go stream of consciousness here for a minute so bear with me. I’ve often said I believe it’s fully possible to root for more than one team in a given sport, even if the two teams are “rivals.” This stems from my rule that I refuse to care more about a given team than the players, coaches, and owners of said team. That being said, I’ve rooted for the Braves in the playoffs for the last six or seven years, because I’m a huge fan of John Smoltz. Always have been, and always will be. When the Braves inevitably lost their playoff games, I never felt personally affected by it. I never actually felt miserable when the Braves lost. They were gone, and I’d watch whatever two teams finally made it to the World Series, not really caring who’d won.
When Tim Welke called strike three, and I heard (and felt) the collective shocked exhale of 56,000 people, it was a feeling of loss unlike anything I’d ever felt outside of deaths in the family. I’m saying this without hyperbole and without exaggeration. The vacuum of silence as the Cardinals rushed out of the dugout to celebrate was the first time I’d ever been in the middle of a deafening silence. It was awful. Not even watching the Giants crash and burn against the Ravens in 2000 compared. For the first time in I don’t know how many years, I have no desire to watch the World Series. Not even a little.
This is what it means to be a fan of sports. This crushing defeat that every team but one feels at the end of the season. It makes me wonder, not for the first time, why people do it. Why people emotionally invest themselves in something in which they only have a 1-in-30 chance of winning every April 1st. I guess the answer is for moments like Endy Chavez’s homerun stealing catch. At those moments, you feel like anything is possible. It feels fantastic”¦ even if it doesn’t end up the way you want it to.
As the lights go down on Shea Stadium for another season I understand something that I’ve never really understood before. Maybe it really isn’t possible to hold more than one team in your heart. Maybe it really isn’t possible to allow yourself that crushing defeat more than once a year. Maybe you don’t really know who your team is until a loss affects you like the way it affected me today. Then, all the smug in the world doesn’t keep you safe.
And that’s why I’m staying in bed with the shades drawn tomorrow. I don’t have the energy, or the desire, to face the world.
And, if anyone would like to email about how happy they are that both New York teams were eliminated because New York sucks for [insert stupid reason], please kindly go light your balls (or vagina) on fire.
