It Ain't Easy Being a Met Fan

I suppose the title of this post says it all. I've been a fan of the New York Mets my whole life, and sure, there have been some great moments, the legendary Miracle Mets of 1969 being the pantheon. There was also the '86 championship, and the Bobby Valentine teams that made it into the postseason in back to back years, and the "ya gotta believe" '73 National League champs, and some other nice years. There was the joy of watching the development of some future Hall of Famers like Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan, and the disappointment of seeing some other potential Hall of Famers crash and burn, like Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry.

For the most part, however, being a Met fan has been a long, painful experience. The team's history is littered with horrible trades (Nolan Ryan for Jim Fregosi is only one of many), young talent given up too soon (Amos Otis, Ken Singleton, Scott Kazmir), old talent coming to the team far too late in their careers (Mickey Lolich, Eddie Murray, Gil Hodges), poor management, and the ever-present domination of the cross-town Yankees. For the most part, the story of the Mets has been about underachievement and disappointment.

GM Omar Minaya was supposed to have changed all that. He hired Yankee favorite and local product Willie Randolph to be his manager. He persuaded Pedro Martinez to come to the Mets in a move that gave the organization credibility. He brought over Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado and Billy Wagner, and he added a good young nucleus (Jose Reyes, David Wright) to the veteran mix. They were the best team in baseball in 2006, dominated their division, and should have won it all. But somehow they were out-played by an inferior Cardinals team in the LCS, and those of us who have suffered with this team our entire lives will never forget the image of million dollar man Carlos Beltran looking at a called strike three in the bottom of the ninth of game seven with the bases loaded and two outs and the Mets down two runs to the Cardinals. Looking back, the team has never recovered from that moment.

Much has been written and said about last year's collapse. I've talked about it before on this blog, and I don't need to get into it again. As painful as the end of the '06 season may have been, nothing matched last year's humiliation. It was a new low for Met fans, just when we thought there could be no new low.

In retrospect, Willie Randolph probably should have been fired after the season. Of course, he wasn't to blame for the collapse, but he was to blame for being too blase about what happened. The team needed to be called out, screamed at, shaken and stirred. Willie doesn't do those kinds of things, and so the inevitable happened, and one of the worst (if not, the worst) collapses in baseball history resulted. The team basically needed an overhaul, at least at the top, and it didn't happen.

Which brings us to this year. To put it bluntly, the Mets have sucked. The pitching has been woefully inconsistent and the offense has been abysmal. The team is way too old, and it is clear that players like Carlos Delgado, Moises Alou, and Luis Castillo are finished. Carlos Beltran is a major disappointment, and will join a long list of players who have flourished elsewhere but bombed in New York (a list that is, of course, headed by Nolan Ryan, notice how that name keeps coming up in this post). Jose Reyes is losing his way and needs a fiery, young manager (former Met and current Twins manager Ron Gardenhire?) to kick his ass and get him motivated. It's been obvious, at least to me, for weeks now that Willie Randolph's days were numbered. I thought he'd get the axe after the team gave up the lead in all three games against the Diamondbacks last week and lost two out of three. But I was wrong about that.

No, the Mets' management had something different in store for Willie Randolph. It wouldn't be enough to merely fire him, they had to allow the team to go to Anaheim, allow Willie to win the first game of the series, and then fire him in the middle of the night (3 a.m. Eastern time) and then let the rest of the world find out by email. How petty. How chickenshit. Whose idea was this? Fred Wilpon's? Jeff Wilpon's? Omar Minaya's? Can you imagine Joan Payson doing something so cowardly? And not only was Willie fired in this manner, but Rick Peterson, the pitching coach who had done so much with John Maine and Oliver Perez, was also guillotined. Shameful.

No, it's never been easy being a Met fan, and I suppose it never will be. But today, in the wake of this disaster, it's just a little bit harder than ever before.