I'll start by saying this is a salve to stave off the sadness from a Mets season gone asunder.
Since the final scene from last Sunday that sealed the team's fate, I've stepped away from surfing the various stories starring the franchise of my youth to consider what truly defines success. The Mets franchise were barely teenagers when I was born at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, New Jersey. They'd experienced a couple of memorable seasons to that point but were in the midst of a severe slump.
Nearly a decade later, I convinced my mother to let me out of school so we could cross the George Washington Bridge and I could attempt to balance from a sign as the Mets paraded down the street. There are certainly more specifics from the 1986 celebration, but I was too young to recognize them or am too old to recall.
That was the final time the Mets were the last team standing after surviving a season that dominated the calendar year. There were more than 80 days left in 2022 when Starling Marte grounded out against San Diego's Josh Hader, meaning the Mets had played 165 games over roughly 180 days. Starting on Opening Day, manager Buck Showalter sent out Marte, Brandon Nimmo, Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso at the top of the lineup. That foursome set a foundation then (5-for-18, two runs, two RBI in a 5-1 win over Washington) and built off it throughout the season, so much so that three of the four made the All-Star Game.
Showalter's team finished with the fourth most wins in the league but has been called failures by fans and media outlets. Honestly, I can't say for sure. As I said earlier, I've shuttered myself in, avoiding routine daily stops at The Athletic, Jersey Sporting News, SNY, and New York Post sports. But the cry of failure had long been sounded, the tears of shame falling as fans focused entirely on the moment and forgot how it all started.
We are not so far removed from cries of 'meaningful games in September' as the symbol of success. That officially changed with the switch to Steve Cohen as owner in 2020, but it didn't stop the social media posts of "LOL Mets" and other sad attempts to disparage our fan base. Unfortunately, many of those calls were coming from inside our own home.
The comment boards for almost any Mets article are filled with passionate fans, all of whom were ready to move on from the Wilpon family. But the hatred generated by the former owners never dispersed. It sat and stewed, sinking deep into a flawed 2021 team managed by Luis Rojas, who, despite early season success, always awaited the elusive three-run home run and couldn't control the eventual collapse.
On July 1, 2021, I was at Truist Park in Atlanta when Jacob deGrom struck out 14 in seven innings and saw his ERA rise to 0.95 after allowing three earned runs. I watched him retire 18 Braves in a row, then exit. He would start one more game, then subside to an unusually fatigued right forearm that would eventually end his season.
"I have to take a lot of responsibility for [the Mets] falling short," deGrom said to Anthony DiComo of MLB.com months later. "I'm not running out there every fifth day, and I feel like I can help the team win. So going down and not being able to go out there and pitch, it's definitely a letdown for me. But it's also a letdown for the team. So, I do take a lot of responsibility for that."
The team was let down because the foundation wasn't sturdy, stuck in a three-true outcome mindset that didn't play to the team's strengths. But that's a separate discussion. We are deciding whether this season was a success. That word was featured in the title, has been sprinkled about this article three other times, and finished the last sentence. It's also a word that suddenly couldn't stop being said, at best sarcastically, about a team that was exactly that - a success by almost any measure.
On his podcast, Tony Kornheiser of ESPN's Pardon the Interruption recently cited a mantra by Hall of Fame and New York Giants legend Bill Parcells to "un-prejudice yourself against these things that you've held to be true for a long time." That means that at the start of the 2022 season, the goal was not to erase the taste of last year's failures but to aim for a worthy accomplishment. They achieved that goal by finishing with 101 wins, the second most wins in franchise history. That win total was more than the Miracle Mets of 1969 and the National League East winners from 1988. The sands of time and so much more are slowly washing away what I can correctly recall, but I know David Cone was the ace, and in any reasonable season, his 20-3 record with a 2.22 ERA and 213 strikeouts would have been more than enough to earn a Cy Young.
I remember and agree that Orel Hershiser was better (23-8, 2.26 ERA, 15 complete games, eight shutouts and a save for good measure). What I didn't remember was that Cincinnati's Danny Jackson also had 23 wins and finished ahead of Cone in the Cy Young voting. Maybe the best season of a 15-year pro with two World Series rings isn't worth remembering by me, but what will you remember from this Mets season 30 years from now?
It's hard to un-prejudice oneself so close to the event in question; that's why I stopped reading Mets articles and columns. I wanted to expound with as little influence as possible beyond the 165 games I watched and/or listened to. I watched their final three games on ESPN but couldn't hear Cone, Karl Ravech and Eduardo Perez, choosing to listen to Howie Rose and Wayne Randazzo on 880 WABC despite a 20-second delay between the video and audio.
The lack of delay between the end of the regular season and the highly entertaining Wild Card best-of-three series meant Mets fans couldn't truly step back and think about a season with numerous high points and standout moments. However, what I think made it a success was the overall sense of calm that seemingly permeated throughout the whole team. Yes, it's silly, but knowing a ground ball will be fielded by our shortstop is calming. That productive outs will be made to move runners over and sacrifice flies to bring them in. And that Buck Showalter had this team smarter than the opposition and ready to take advantage.
Yes, it's sad; but when you've devoted 3/5 of your calendar year towards an almost daily dedication that is suddenly stripped away, I'll take whatever happiness I can find. This is it, and that's the truth.
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