Photo by Harry How/Getty Images
Not expecting the Mets to win is the cardinal rule for fans. I broke it.
This is a guest piece from Scott Rogowsky. Rogowsky is a comedian and the former host of HQ Trivia. He’s a lifelong fan of the New York Mets. You can follow him on X at @ScottRogowsky
The Mets lost, and it’s my fault.
They didn’t lose Game 6 of the National League Championship Series on Sunday night because starting pitcher Sean Manaea gave up five earned runs in the first two innings. They didn’t lose because the bullpen gave up five more runs across the remaining six frames. They didn’t lose because their offense left 13 men on base and went 2-for-9 with runners in scoring position. They didn’t lose because the Dodgers were simply “too good.”
The Mets lost Game 6 because I bought tickets for Game 7.
To my fellow fans: I’m sorry. I let Grimace get ahold of me. I couldn’t take Candelita off repeat. I got lost in the Big Mozz sauce and convinced myself this team would keep “Weinning more for Seymour.” So when the Amazin’s, with backs against the Hyundai-sponsored wall and elimination on the 7 line, amazed me once again on Friday night with that 12-6 thumper at Citi Field, I jumped on StubHub and snagged a pair of Dodger Stadium upper deckers for what I believed would be the sure thing. The comeback of all comebacks for a magical Mets team that had kept coming back and coming back and coming back and coming back…
But buying those tickets was a Shea Bridge too far. In my sinful optimism, I ignored the cardinal rule of Flushing fandom: DO NOT. EXPECT. THE METS. TO WIN.
If there is anything I’ve gleaned in my 30-plus years of cheering for The Boys in Blorange and my downright rabbinical study of their 60-plus year franchise history, it’s this: the instant you think, “They’ve got this,” they’re done for. The second you feel confident about their destiny, you’ve condemned yourself to disappointment. The moment you buy into the Hot Stove hype that they’ve signed the elusive slugger, inked the elite ace, locked down the lockdown reliever, promoted the top prospect, secured the final piece to all but guarantee a winning team — let alone a winning dynasty the likes of which we were forced to bear witness from across the river at the turn of the millennium — it’s over before it’s even begun.
The Mets are the living, breathing, baserunner-stranding embodiment of that wise old adage: “expectations are premeditated resentments.” I’d be writing into next Opening Day if I were to recount every example of the Mets brass breaking the bank to build a team that only serves to break our hearts. Names like Bonilla, Bay, Perez, Porcello, Cedeno, Cespedes, Castillo, Coleman, and Lowrie will make a Mets fan shudder or snicker, depending on mood.
But let’s take the most recent example of the 2023 season when the Metropolitans broke camp boasting the most expensive roster in the history of Major League Baseball, headlined by future hall-of-famers Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander reaping a quarter of the $320m total payroll (which added another $100m in luxury taxes). How did the team respond to the frenzied, frothing fanticipation for this surefire fast-track to the Fall Classic? By finishing 29 games out of first place and dumping their shiny new 1-2 punch at the trade deadline.
Between the two of them, Scherzer and Verlander had accumulated six Cy Young Awards — given each year to the league’s best pitcher — across their distinguished careers, and fans comfortably held the expectation that either would add another to his mantel during his Queens tenure. Instead those expectations only added paving stones on the road to perdition.
Now compare ’23 to ’24. Did I expect anything from the new 1-2: Luis Severino coming off “the worst year of his life” by his own admission, and Sean Manea whose ballooning ERA cost him his starting privileges for likely the first time since Little League? The only thing I expected from Manea was his cool hair — AND HE CUT IT IN SPRING TRAINING. But by the grace of Gary Cohen, those two got into the New York groove and combined for a 3.68 ERA over 364 innings. As for our old friends Scherzer and Verlander? They managed fewer than 40% of that load while giving up nearly an additional full run per nine.
Are you starting to see how things work in Mets World? When we expect Cy Young, we get Anthony Young. Incidentally, our last two hurlers to take home hardware were a converted shortstop drafted in the ninth round out of an obscure Florida university with a hat for a mascot, and a 37 year-old journeyman knuckleballer making 1/20th what the Mets paid Scherlander, whose previous claim to baseball fame was tying the record for most wild pitches in an inning. Unheralded is an understatement.
It’s only when Mets fans don’t know what to expect that the Mets will win — or in the case of this freshly concluded season, when fans couldn’t pretend to possibly know what could even conceivably be expected after the team whiffed on their first five games out the gate, then put up dubs in 10 of their next 13, then lost two-thirds of their next 40. How else to explain their reeling off the best record in all of baseball after that baffling beginning?
Certainly no one in their right mind expected the Mets to win heading into the 1969 season. After setting an all-time modern baseball record for futility with 120 losses in their debut as an expansion team in ’62, they continued cellar-dwelling in the National League for the next six seasons, finishing one game ahead of Houston to avoid last place in ’68 — and 24 games behind pennant-winning St. Louis. But manager Gil Hodges mustered his young men to shock the nation by capturing their first league championship and then upsetting the Baltimore Orioles 4-1 in the World Series. That team earned the moniker “Miracle Mets,” because surely nothing short of God’s hand could have shepherded such a turnaround.
Four years later, an 82-79 Mets team became the “losingest” team to win a pennant, flirting with last place as late as August 30 before overcoming Cincinnati’s heavily-favored “Big Red Machine” in the NLCS and stretching Oakland to Game 7 in the World Series. Another miracle, made possible by faith and faith alone, crystallized in reliever Tug McGraw’s famous rallying cry: “Ya gotta believe!”
Just after midnight on October 25, 1986, the Mets found themselves in a decisive Game 6 of the World Series, down 5-3 with two outs and no one on base in the bottom of the 10th at home, twice being one strike away from becoming the answer to the trivia question “Who did Boston beat to break their 68-year-old Curse of the Bambino?” The Commissioner’s Trophy and a case of champagne had already been sent down to the visiting team’s clubhouse. A couple of the Mets own players had headed for the showers. A premature “Congratulations Boston Red Sox, 1986 World Series Champions” had even accidentally blinked on the Shea Stadium scoreboard. But then, well, google Bill Buckner. That was a miracle, too.
These 2024 Mets should also be remembered as the “Miracle Mets.” I would argue all 11 of the 63 Mets teams to earn a postseason berth in franchise history are the “Miracle Mets.” I would go even further to say that every time the Mets win, it’s a miracle. Hell, it’s a miracle they exist in the first place! Had the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers not decamped for California following the 1957 season, there would have been no need for a new National League club in New York. There would have been no septuagenerian Stengel on the cover of Sports Illustrated. No Marvelous Marv. No homecoming for Duke and Willie. No Doc and Darryl. No Wright and Reyes. No Timo and Shinjo.
Rooting for the Mets has rooted me in spirituality and grounded me in gratitude and appreciation. I appreciate that the Mets had the original Frank Thomas, the only Benny Agbayani, and a string of Korean pitchers in the early 2000s not named Cha Sung Baek, Jung Bong, or Sun Woo-Kim. I appreciate Landrith to Lindor, Nolan to No-Han, Alfonzo to Alonso. I appreciate that Bartolo Colon got them to the World Series, but Scherlander couldn’t. I appreciate that of the two professional baseball players my high school has produced in its 140 year history, one of them is Harrison Bader. Most of all, I appreciate watching the Mets play well. It’s pure ecstasy! It’s divine euphoria! And when they go on a run like they did this October, it can only be compared to witnessing water turn to Rheingold.
Spirit carried the Mets to this NLCS, as it’s done to for every postseason since 1969. Spirit guided Swoboda’s diving snare, marshaled Mookie’s bouncing ball, lifted Endy and his elastic glove over that left field wall… Is it a coincidence that I booked Spirit Airlines to fly me to LA for the Game 7 that never was? No, it was simply the most affordable option. And now that my tickets were refunded, and I’ve got some cash to burn, meet me at the corner of Rose and Lincoln where Venice meets Santa Monica. Tacos on me. I can expect them to be good.
