The Mets’ World Series trip is taking an unpleasantly familiar route

The 2015 World Series is all of two games old. The Mets have lost both of them. These are irrefutable facts. We fans always look for what it all means going forward. We look for portents, patterns and trends. If you ask most Mets fans in the aftermath of being nickel-and-dimed to death in game two, most would tell you the trend line is downward. The offense has gone into a shell we haven’t seen since mid-July, and that includes a game in which they were no-hit. The vaunted starting pitching – in the persons of Matt Harvey and Jacob deGrom – has been torn to shreds by the Kansas City Royals’ annoying habit of hitting everything that comes near the plate, either for a single or a foul ball. deGrom threw 94 pitches in game two and the Royals swung and missed at three of them. That’s not a typo – t-h-r-e-e. That effectively neutralized the plan of attack on which deGrom’s – and the entire Mets’ starting staff’s, really – successful 2015 was built. Choose your metaphor: the Mets were either killed by a thousand paper cuts or deGrom drowned in six inches of water. But taking a step back from the events of the individual contests and looking at the whole picture, the seasoned Met fan has seen this before. Twice, in fact.

Every coin has two sides. Depending on what you call when it’s tossed, you’ll either be thrilled or disappointed. So, let’s call…oh, I don’t know…heads. The coin is flipped and heads it is. In our example here, heads is the 1986 World Series. The Mets had won 108 regular season games and just come off a reenactment of War and Peace, disguised as the NLCS against the Houston Astros. They were heavy favorites to make short work of the Boston Red Sox, who were surprised to win their AL East title, let alone find themselves on the biggest stage of all. In game one, the Mets and the Sox battled to a 0-0 tie through six innings. In the top of the seventh, Ron Darling walked Jim Rice to lead off, then threw a wild pitch to advance Rice to second. After a groundout back to the mound, Rich Gedman hit a routine grounder that second baseman Tim Teufel pulled up on and the ball went right through his legs. Rice scored and the Red Sox took game one, 1-0. In game two, a marquee pitching matchup between Dwight Gooden and Roger Clemens, the Sox lambasted the Mets 9-3. We know the rest. Lenny Dykstra, Al Nipper, Gary Carter, Mookie Wilson, Bill Buckner and Ray Knight all conspired – hair-raisingly at points — to get to a seventh game, which the Mets ultimately won.

Going back to our coin, let’s say it comes up tails instead. Tails is the 2000 World Series. The Mets won the still-relatively-novel NL Wild Card, while the New York Yankees huffed and puffed to hold on for their third straight AL East crown. The Mets caught a huge break when the St. Louis Cardinals dispatched their ancient rivals, the Atlanta Braves in the NLDS, while the Mets won their half in five thrilling games with the San Francisco Giants. The Mets blew through the Cards in the NLCS, setting up this latest iteration of the Subway (World) Series. In game one, the Mets’ Al Leiter faced off against Andy Pettitte and enjoyed the better of things for most of the game, heading into the ninth on the road with a 3-2 lead. Only an epic base running gaffe by Timo Perez had kept it that close. In that ninth, though, the Mets’ unhittable-in-the-regular-season closer, Armando Benitez, issued a one out walk to Paul O’Neill, singles to Luis Polonia and Jose Vizcaino and game tying sacrifice fly by Chuck Knoblauch. The Yankees would prevail in the twelfth on a wormy single by Vizcaino. In game two, the Mets spent most of the game getting trounced, trailing 6-0 going into the ninth. In that ninth, they made a valiant attempt at a comeback, homering twice, but ultimately, Mariano Rivera saved the 6-5 Yankee win. Of course. We know the rest. The Yankees went on to lose a game at Shea Stadium, but had basically outclassed the Mets and won the Series, four games to one.

So in 2015, which way will the coin fall? There’s no way of knowing, of course, until after the weekend, three games at what promises to be a raucous Citi Field. But at first flush, fresh off the desultory events of last night, sorry to say it looks like the coin is gonna come up tails. But you know what?

Ya gotta believe!

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