Writing About — and Rooting for — the Mets

I was in Junior High School in Queens '69.
Still remember the full page color spread on the cover of the NY Post.
So much fun lovin the Mets!

I AM SHOCKED . . .

A clear conflict of interests. What would the old grey lady say?

Huh?

There is an old maxim that sometimes the best trades are the ones you DON'T make. The Mets did that old saw one better. The trade that the General Manager made, with the owners' approval, was to return Carlos Gomez to New York, in return for Wilmer Flores and Zack Wheeler (a power arm obtained for the rental of Carlos Beltran in his walk year, now revovering from, natch, Tommy John surgery). That trade would NOT have precipitated a run to the pennant. The Brewers backed out of the trade, which, before nullified, led to the infamous Flores tears, followed a day or so later by a walk off home run. It also resulted in a call from Wheeler imploring Alderson NOT to trade him. For once, the Mets were earning good karma. It was the collapse of that trade that required Alderson to go to the mother of all Plan Bs, the trade for Cespedes.

This run, for which this lifelong Mets fan is eternally grateful, is a renouncement of a Branch Rickey adiom. Here, luck was NOT the residue of design. Instead, it was the luck of a blind squirrel stumbling across a huge cache of acorns.

I'm sorry, man. "Suffering fans?" Really hard to read for this lifelong Cub fan and NYT subscriber who grew up a mile from Wrigley. If you want to study defeat and loss, there is one and only one place to go. Mets fans are only "suffering" by comparison to Yankees fans. Cubs fans have suffered in a way even Red Sox fans, whose team actually won pennants, played in World Series, and remained otherwise good for long stretches, cannot possibly fathom. "Suffering fans?" I have nose hairs older than the last Mets World Series win. Last time my team was IN a World Series was 70 years ago. Last time my team WON a Series, there was no radio, the Model T was 13 days old, no human had ben to either Pole, 90% of the world was ruled by seven emperors, and Mark Twain and Leo Tolstoy were alive and writing books. THAT, my friend, is suffering.
But good luck in the Series. Hope the layoff doesn't cool your incredibly hot pitching the way the shift to frigid Citi Field cooled ours.
(Well...maybe I don't hope it THAT hard. 107, now 108 years of suffering takes you somewhere beyond bitterness. "Loss is invariably more revealing," and you - nor any fan of any other team in the history of sport - haven't lost the way we have.)

Let's go Mets!

You're a fan, Michael, but you've never been a homer. More often than not, you've expressed the inborn (or, more accurately, the ingrown) pessimism of lifer Met fans. It's fair, right now to exult. KC and Toronto are tough teams. I'm still proud of the '73 Mets even if thru lost to the great A's team in 7. And this team is better.

Prof Pete