Letting it sink in: the Mets were in the World Series

Hi!

Happy Thanksgiving!

You haven’t seen me in awhile. A nefarious set of circumstances has kept your intrepid columnist away from the keyboard these past three Thursdays and it’s good to be back. At long last, finally thawed out and recovered from some wintery exercises at Citi Field – among other activities – a post-season recap is in order.

First off, let’s keep in mind that the Mets weren’t supposed to be there. We all know how the regular season went. The Washington Nationals were handed the division at the start of spring training. The problem over there was that somebody forgot to tell them that they would still have to play the games. The Mets took full advantage and left the Nats in the dust in early September. Failing to secure home field advantage for the NLDS vs. the Dodgers appeared to be a blow, but we fans giddily and happily tuned in to the late-night goings on in Los Angeles. You may have read about this elsewhere. As we all know by now, Jacob deGrom threw the gutsiest performance of his life in game five and brought the Mets to the NLCS, a series in which they would have home field advantage against an ancient nemesis, the Chicago Cubs.

The Cubs were a team that made the Mets’ lives miserable in the regular season, whitewashing the New Yorkers 6-0 in games. Well, New York returned the favor in the NLCS, going 4-0 – the first two witnessed in person by yours truly. I can honestly say I’ve never been as cold in my life as I was for those two Cub games. One was loathe to get up for food or to use the rest room, seeing as the winds were calmer in the seats than the howling williwaw with which you were met on the concourse. Fortunately, there was ample opportunity to move my extremities around: there was a lot of leaping and clapping for the beautiful things happening on the field below. There was Matt Harvey’s dominance in game one, a seven and two-thirds, nine strikeout gem in which the Mets really had all the runs they needed after plating one in the first, but they tacked on three more just in case. They did the opposite in game two, scoring three in the first and adding one later on. Noah Syndergaard was the recipient of this largesse, also striking out nine, but in two fewer innings. And through all of it there was Daniel Murphy, continuing his hot run from the Dodger series and swatting nearly everything he saw over distant fences. Beware the Cubs, though: they have the look of a team that will dominate the next several seasons. If they could only develop some pitching…

In any case, it was now on to the World Series, where the two participants – the Mets and the Kansas City Royals — looked extremely evenly matched. Some experts warned that the strength of the Royals was getting the bat on the ball against most any fastball, even ones as formidable as those chucked by Harvey, deGrom and Syndergaard. That would make the Mets vulnerable. We should have listened. This Kansas City team simply would not give up. Not an at bat, not an inning and certainly never a game. The word everyone used was “relentless,” and they weren’t wrong. In the first two games, it almost looked like the teams were playing two different sports. Royals Stadium looked massive, surely a trick of TV and camera angles, but still, the Mets looked puny on that field and the Royals took full advantage, even thought the Mets had the lead in the bottom of the ninth in game one. Jeurys Familia got the first out, then he threw what would turn out to be his only bad pitch of the Series, a low fastball that caught too much plate and allowed Alex Gordon to tie the game. As noted in another report, that shot seemed to set the tone for the rest of the going. By the end, after 14 innings, we just wanted to go to bed and try and bounce back for game two. We didn’t, neither the team nor the fans. So game three loomed as the ultimate “must win,” Citi Field’s first World Series game and the first one ever attended by me. I had been waiting for this since I was eight. I knew that win or lose, holy crap, I get to go to at least two World Series games! It felt like an eight-year-old’s reaction. And so when Syndergaard took the hill in front of another roaring New York mass, we all felt this one was in the bag. It pretty much was, despite the Mets’ losing the lead in the second; they got it right back in the third and kept it. As it turns out, the “and kept it” is the key, because they couldn’t manage to do that in the late stages of games four and five, as we all know. Harvey’s game five performance would have gone down as one of the most dominant in World Series history…if they had won. The Mets didn’t, so it goes on the shelf next to Endy Chavez’s catch in the doomed 2006 NLCS. Ultimately, the Mets were done in by the two things that Sandy Alderson couldn’t fix during the regular season: the bridge to the closer – curse you, Jenrry Mejia! – and the infield defense. As noted above, Familia threw one bad pitch the entire Series; he ended up with three blown saves. His infield – Murphy in particular – betrayed him at the worst possible times.

But it isn’t right to let the bitter taste linger. Let’s keep in mind, the Mets weren’t supposed to be there. From July 31 through November 1, they gave us the most thrilling ride you can imagine. How unlikely was it in March that they would alight in Kansas City for a game one? Who called the acquisition of Yoenis Cespedes at the beginning of the year? Who figured Murphy would turn into a combination of Paul Bunyan and Babe Ruth in the National League rounds? No, this one is to be savored. Unlike in 2000, when we seemingly weren’t allowed to enjoy a pennant due to the noisy, pushy victors from the Bronx, we can surely take this out of the closet and enjoy it, as many of the older of us do with 1973.

Let the build for another begin!

Follow me on Twitter @CharlieHangley.