It’s Mets… Just Mets

Welcome to the Mets blog.  All Mets, all the time.

In the May 17, 1961 edition of The Sporting News, The Base Ball Paper of the World, the headline read: “It’s Mets”.  Not “Metropolitans”.  Mets.  Just Mets.  Yes, the corporate name of the franchise holder is Metropoltan Baseball Club, but the team nickname is Mets...Just Mets.

I have been a Met fan my entire baseball loving life - since I was about 8 and started stinking up Little League.  Tom Terrific and Bud Harrelson.  Jerry grote and Rusty Staub - Le Grande Orange.  Tommie Agee, John Milner and Cleon Jones.  And, of course, Willie Mays.

People sometimes talk/write of what a “shell of a player Mays was” when he came to the Mets.  To an 8-year old, he was just Willie Mays.  The Willie Mays.  It was just cool to be a fan of the team with Willie Mays.  Then the 1973 season came along, and it was chasing down the pennant.

I can still recall watching the 1973 playoffs.  Pete Rose and Bud Harrelson getting into it at second base.  Wayne Garrett jumping on Rose after Pete cold-cocked Bud.  Then the World Series - I had a wager with my best friend Tom, an A’s fan, over the outcome (6 packs of baseball cards!).  Matlack, Koosman, Seaver.  It was great, and then they lost.  It was still great.

The Mets were not great, but entertaining for the next few seasons, and then one hot summer day, June 15, 1977, the worst happened.  It’s still upsetting to think about.  It was stunning.  It was an event you can’t believe happened.  Today, it would be the equivalent of the Yankees trading Jeter in 2006.  As a 13 year old, I was really upset and angry.  But so goes fandom.

The dark years really settled in after that.  The Mets didn’t win 70 games for the next SEVEN years.  How bad is that?  Even the two expansion teams of 1977 - the Mariners and Blue Jays - improved better than that.  The Devil Rays made it to 70 wins over the last seven seasons.  I suffered through middle school (although there was no separate middle school, just K through 8) and all of high school *and* my freshman and sophomore years of college before the Mets got off the deck. 

But oh how they got off the deck!  Doc, Straw.  The trades for Keith and Gary Carter.  I can imagine the Expos fans felt just as terrible after Carter was traded as I did in 1977.

The 1984-90 Mets made for a fun seven seasons, doing the complete turnaround from the previous seven seasons, averaging over 90 wins a season.  Davey Johnson is a brilliant manager. 

The best thing about the Mets seasons from 1991 to 1998 was the fact that Jerry Seinfeld is a Mets fan.  He kept a Mets hat on his nerf hoop above his desk where the computer was.  After the Mets really started stinking in the mid-90s, even Jerry changed the hat to a Yankees hat briefly.  He also had an autographed picture of Keith up in his apartment before Keith made his appearance.  It was during the summer of 1993 that I got my “NY” tattoo. 

And then the Mets were back in the playoffs, and back in the World Series.  Armando Benitez is a choker.

2006 is the best team the Mets have assembled since the 1986 team - stars all over the field, young and old.  Any Met fan can proudly say:

I’m back, baby!