By Mike Trovato
The 2008 New York Metropolitans were a resilient team that never went down without a fight.
What seemed bleak after a 34-35 start, the Mets revived their season under interim manager Jerry Manuel, scrapping back to the top of the division in July.
But after a three month battle with the Philadelphia Phillies, the Mets took a turn for the worse and succumbed on Sunday, September 30th, the last day of the season. Some suspect the culprit was their heart. Many point their fingers at the lackluster bullpen. Still others believe, ironically, that it was a matter of execution.
“We have to kind of look at the team and see where we failed, why we failed,” Manager Jerry Manuel reflected in the wake of a second straight season lost. Members of the Mets team could only describe their feelings as “disappointed,” and “heartbroken.”
Shortstop Jose Reyes further expressed his sadness by saying, “it’s kind of hard to swallow this one. I don’t want to go home.” And speaking of home, with the season also lay to rest the home the Mets have known for 45 years. The family must leave in the past the somber memories of Shea Stadium’s final days. It is survived by Citi Field, the shadow of which will overlook Shea’s ashes.
As for the team and its disheartened fans, Manuel’s message is simple. “Stay with us. We’re gonna get this done,” were Jerry’s words to WFAN’s Mike Francesa this past Monday. “We have gone through the midnight hour, but morning will come. Morning will come, believe me.”And so, for the fans in wait of that morning, the mourning has begun.
Ok, so this isn’t really an obituary. But it might as well be. The Mets are dead, so to speak.
They’re not really dead. They’ll be back next year. But as with any loss we experience in life, we all tend to go through Kübler-Ross’ 5 stages of grief. After missing the postseason for a second straight year, Mets fans have likely even begun going through what I like to call “The Met fan’s 5 stages of grief.” Follow me on this one.
Stage One: Denial. “Oh no, they’ll be fine. This can’t happen again.” If you’re a true Mets fan, you said it. It’s okay, I said it too. It practically became my personal motto this September. And I believed it. I believed so much that it wouldn’t happen again that I put it in writing. For those of you that don’t follow my articles, I concluded my article two weeks ago by saying, “come October, I will be writing about the 2008 New York Mets in the playoffs.”
So much for that.
Stage Two: Anger. “Why? It’s not fair! No! No! No! No! No!” I want to apologize to my neighbors, who likely heard a less family-friendly version of that rant through our common walls as the season slipped away. I can only hope they weren’t studying for tests yet this early in the semester.
Stage Three: Bargaining. Whatever deals you tried to make with the higher power or being of your choice, that’s not for me to say. All I know is that I even considered being a little bit nicer to my Yankee fan friends if it meant the Mets could be in, and that wasn’t even enough.
Stage Four: Depression. All season long, my AIM profile had “Mets” in it, as I tracked their record. As this whole debacle unfolded, I got so upset that for a 24 hour period, I replaced “Mets” with “Rays.” Childish? Of course. But at the time of their 28th blown save, I felt like, “what’s the point?” (I put the Mets back in there the next day.)
The last stage is something of a gray area, because we all deal with acceptance in our own way. If you’re an emotionally invested Mets fan, this is going to take a while to come to terms with. I personally handled this whole thing with as much class, grace and maturity as many seventh graders handle breaking off their so-called relationships…
The black jersey emblazoned with Mets blue and orange, the number 5 centered beneath “WRIGHT” in back. The white Jose Reyes jersey I wore to bed that final week, like a toddler wears his Superman footy pajamas. The two hats, one boasting Nelson Figueroa’s autograph freshly inscribed on the brim’s underside from batting practice of the last game I will have ever seen at Shea. All of that is gone from sight, lest it serve as a painful reminder of how cold this autumn is going to be.
The reality is that although it is sad, frustrating, disappointing, heartbreaking and whatever other adjectives you’d like to add in there, it’s over. And although New York will turn its attention to football, we cannot ignore baseball and the compelling storylines that still exist despite the absence of our beloved Mets and Yankees.
If it makes any difference, Chicago has joined in New York’s misery. Apparently 100 years wasn’t enough for the Cubs, who will endure yet another season void of a championship. The White Sox, who needed a 163rd game to beat out the Johan Santana-less Twins, ran out of gas in the ALCS.
And how about that club they lost to? Those Tampa Bay Rays? They are a remarkable story. The Rays, a league-worst 66-96 last year, stormed into the postseason fueled by the “9=8” philosophy of manager Joe Maddon. The idea was that if 9 players played well for 9 innings every night, the reward would be one of 8 spots in the playoffs. Maddon figured that to play in October and leapfrog the AL East, Tampa needed to win 27 more games than the then franchise-best 70.
Given that Boston claimed the East last year with 96 wins, Maddon’s logic was in theory, right on. But to ask a team to win 27 games more than it has ever won before seems… seemed absurd. 9 more wins from the offense, 9 more wins from the defense and 9 more wins out of the pitching staff were just what Maddon prescribed, and have landed the Rays in the ALCS, against who? The Boston Red Sox.
Here’s one more enticing scenario. When the smoke cleared after all the BoSox-Yankees drama, after “Steinbrenner snubs Joe” in the Bronx, after the “Manny being Manny” show went sour in Beantown, Joe Torre and Manny Ramirez are united in Los Angeles. And how amazingly paradoxical it would be to see those two in the World Series at Fenway Park. If you were to lock all of Hollywood’s best writers in a room together and feed them nothing but genius pills for eight straight weeks, they couldn’t come up with a better script.
Yes, New York baseball has been laid to rest, and 2009 will be a fresh start with new stadiums and even higher expectations for both teams. But let’s not put the entire season to bed altogether. Baseball is still very much alive, despite New York’s absence. As hard as it may have been to watch the Phillies and Brewers steal the Mets’ postseason role, there are still plenty characters in the remaining cast. worth tuning in to see.