Thoughts on the New York Mets

For any of you goddamn foreigners reading this, the Mets are the other professional baseball team playing in New York.  They are in baseball's post-season right now and threatening to beat the L.A. Dodgers to advance to the next round.

Now, they're history is interesting. In 1962 they got their start and were one of the worst teams ever. In that year the Mets went 40-120. They lost a hundred and twenty games. But it was still fun and funny. They're manager, old baseball hand Casey Stengel once asked in desperation, 'Can't anybody play this game?' In school we learned this song, a parody of the official team song:

Beat the Mets
Cheat the Mets
Step right up and defeat the Mets
Bring your kiddies
Bring your dog
Come on out and eat like a hog.

This is actually a a parody of the Mets official team song:

And they sucked for a while, till 1969 that is. That was the year of the miracle Mets. Led by Tom Seaver, the greatest pitcher since WWII the Mets beat the mighty Baltimore Orioles, winners of a hundred games, in the World Series.

They got the World Series again in 1973, another miracle season captured with the slogan 'We Believe'. The Mets lost the World Series in seven games to the Oakland Athletics.

The Mets had a few more good seasons but by 1976 they were a bad team. The next season they traded Tom Seaver and by 1980 they were a terrible team. They were losers, not in the fun 'let's see how they'll blow it today' way the '62 team was. They just stunk.

But with new ownership the Mets rebuilt, contended by 1984 and won the World Series in 1986. This was an interesting time. For the first time in city history the Mets dominated New York. Jerry Seinfeld was a Mets fan:

The '86 Mets were bullies and the best team in baseball. Interestingly they were still in touch with they're old identity, the spunky, 'we believe' miracle team. After all only one cycle had passed since that era.That all began to change though in the late 1980s.

In 1988 the Mets lost in the playoffs to the L.A. Dodgers, an inferior team that got lucky because the Mets were overconfident and couldn't get out of their own way. The next season the Mets made some baffling trades. 1990 was their last good year but by 1993 they were once again the worst team in baseball.

Meanwhile, in the Bronx the Yankees were resurgent and won the first of four World Series in five years in 1996. By then Seinfeld was Yankees fan:

This was the era when the Mets lost their 'miracle' feel. No more were they the spunky little team that could. The decade embittered the Mets fan. He was jealous at the Yankees' success. George Steinbrenner, owner of the Yankees, rubbed their nose in it, signing former Mets stars like Dwight Gooden and Daryl Strawberry. The Mets and Yankees even met in the World Series in 2000. The Yankees won in five games.

The Mets collapsed soon after and would only make the playoffs once in the next decade.  In fact in 2007 and 2008 they had a pair of epic end of the season collapses, losing their division after being 7 games up with 17 left to play in 2007, and 3 up with 7 left to play in 2008.

Its been a long hard slog for Mets fans ever since.

Really, the franchise hasn't been the same since 1990.

The current team a crop of youngsters really, has a bit of the old miracle Mets feel, but it will take a lot of winning to overcome the last 25 years.