Harsh Realities and Angry Musings of A Trying Era

Wainwright to Beltran. It is as devastating a moment as any Met fan will have ever lived through. Yet at the time we had no reason to believe it would be the moment that would define this current group of Mets. We had no reason to believe that this awful moment was actually a symbol of everything that these Mets are.

2006 looked as if it was the beginning of something special. As the Mets, with their mix of young home grown talent and proficient veterans still in their prime, rolled through the National League it looked as if Omar Minaya would be presiding over an era of premium grade baseball played in Flushing, Queens. We had no reason to believe otherwise, as the Mets dominated with a certain swagger we had not seen since . . . well, you know when. That is why for the Met fans of my generation, this has been such a trying time; in fact, it has been the harshest time since we chose to embark on this path at an age where we were too young to comprehend the consequences.

Sure we lived through Vince Coleman, firecrackers and "The Worst Team Money Could Buy." And we watched David Cone be shipped away for a career minor leaguer and second baseman whose fans hated him as much as he hated them. And we were given a harsh lesson in reality about prospects when "Generation K" continued to fail time and time again. But we came to expect nothing from those Mets; we understood that they were awful and learned to accept that reaching .500 became a major goal in itself. Don't get me wrong, we cared as much as ever, but we learned to "manage our expectations" amid all the incompetence.

As we moved deeper into the 1990's we watched as Bernanrd Gilkey and Lance Johnson proved to be a one year tease; and we attended Opening Days where Alberto Castillo was the starting catcher and Tsuyoshi Shinjo was hitting clean up- all the while a great darkness was rising in the Bronx. But at that point we were far enough removed from our childhood and began to understand that any expectations of success were not grounded in any sense of reality as we were relegated to the unenviable "little brother" status of New York City Baseball.

We agonized over the inability for the Bobby V- Piazza Mets to beat the Braves and suffered through a worst case scenario World Series loss. But with those teams came some Amazin' Moments. After years of a Wilponion Imposed "No Star Player Policy" we finally had one; and what a star he was. And maybe he didn't have the greatest supporting cast around him, but they were still pretty damn good. More importantly, they played a competitive and griddy brand of baseball- qualities we had not seen in almost a decade. And while they never did get "over the hump", nobody really expected them to. Their grit and determination, exhibited even in losses- most notably in Game 6 of the 1999 NLCS- was enough for us to take a certain amount of pride in.

Then came the Howe years and with it one of the worst trades in Met history. In other words, expectations were once again at their minimum.

But with these Mets it was different. With them we truly had expectations. BIG expectations. We believed '05 to be a sort of '85 and '06 a new '86. It was a fitting scene at Shea Stadium on August 19, 2006- the night the Mets honored the 20th Anniversary of the greatest Met team of them all- when over 50,000 jubilant fans celebrated the past, as well as the present. With Mex, Straw, The Kid, Wally, Mookie, and Nails in the house we cheered as the current group- seemingly worthy successors to our greatest era- beat the Colorado Rockies and maintained an insurmountable NL East lead. We threw confetti and danced on the 7 train in celebration of the Mets clinching the NL East on September 17, 2006- 20 years to the day the '86 version achieved the same thing. I remember walking out of Shea that night, led by a drunken vagrant who, with fist raised from one arm and beer held in another, eloquently chanted "THIS IS OUR FUCKING YEAR!!" And we all followed him, for we knew he was right.

And while 2006 was devastating WE BELIEVED we would be back. We actually bought into Willie Randolph's "We just weren't ready yet" dogma. As the off season went on and time dulled some of the pain, we were ready for a new season. So maybe 2006 wasn't our 1986. We'll look back on it as 1985, because there was no stopping us in 2007, the young home grown foundation would be a year older and the veteran's would be that much hungrier.

2007, however, was not meant to be. Little did we know that these Mets would not yearn for greater success after coming so close, but would instead remain content with what they had accomplished- which we as fans felt was absolutely nothing. The Mets of 2007 walked around with a sense of entitlement reserved only for champions, as evidenced by Carlos Delgado's 2007 statement that "We're just so good that sometimes we get bored."

We still believed though. Or at least wanted to. We wanted to believe the 2008 Mets would learn from the previous years disastrous ending. But it was more of the same, even though we were rearmed with, at the time, the best pitcher in the world. And when Jeff Wilpon attempted to categorize the last season at Shea as not one ending in a collapse, but one in which his team proudly fought to the end, the reality of our own expectations were revealed. Through his comments Wilpon admitted a certain level of expectations he had for this team; and they were much lower than what our own had been since Beltran's knees buckled. And who knows, maybe Wilpon saw that moment for the symbol it really was. Shame on us for not seeing it sooner.