So Very Low

I walk the streets of Brooklyn during game time, trying to find a bar -any bar- that actually has the Met game on one of their many high definition television sets. I hit my limit and find myself literally negotiating with the bartender of a local dive, which, like all the other bars, is only showing the other New York team's game. The back and forth is familiar, as I have been down this road many times before. After I ask him if he could put the Met game on, he shrugs his shoulders and says, "I don't know, I'll have to ask." He heads to the back and I push my position, "there are five people in here and you have four T.V.'s!" "Yeah," he states as he looks back at me, "but I don't even know if we get the Met channel."

As the bartender is engaged in a conversation at the opposite end of the bar with someone I presume is his boss, I wait and the local patrons look me over until their eyes fix on my Met hat. They whisper to each other. I feel awkward; like Obi Wan and Luke walking into the Cantina. Despite these menacing vibrations I hold my ground; for I know that if they want to start all I have to ask is for them to name a player on "their team" pre 1996- other than Mattingly. This usually shuts them up.

The bartender returns and, as if he is doing me some huge favor, tells me he'll put it on "that one", pointing to the 1987 13 inch Zenith hanging in the back corner. I sheepishly say, "thanks, I appreciate it", order a beer, walk to to the back of the bar and sit down. As I sit there I grow angry; instead of thanking him the more appropriate reaction would have been to tell him to fuck off and storm out. But, this is what it has come to. This is how far down the depths of irrelevance a team that at one time ruled New York has fallen.

What makes me particularly angry about this is that in 2006 it looked like things would start to change direction. I'll never forget the feeling I had when a friend and I walked into a Met friendly bar to watch the Mets finish off their three game NLDS sweep of the Dodgers. As the game was about to come on the Detroit Tigers were finishing off what looked like a very old and washed up New York American League baseball team. As the other New York team's fans were dejectedly walking out amidst a swarm of Met fans walking in, there was a feeling that this was the beginning of something special. Like Hunter S. Thompson once wrote, it felt like "we had all the momentum; we were riding the the crest of a high and beautiful wave." But, as Thompson would go on to conclude in his famous passage, "now less than five years later . . .with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back." And where was that place? Well, it came just a few weeks later on October 19, 2006.