Back Off the Ledge!!!

Bases-loaded walks. In some sick sense, they’re the type of back-breaking events that define a 20-year-old’s life as a Mets fan. There was the Kenny Rogers one that ended the Mets’ epic first postseason run of my life. This past Sunday night, there was the two-out, bases-loaded walk to the opposing pitcher that launched a 9-run-rally against Johan Santana – and, for that matter, this blog.

Mets fans are an interesting type. We’re unique, knowledgeable (perhaps to a fault?), and always waiting for the other shoe to drop. We desperately want to have some reason to believe – after all, Tug McGraw gave us a moral imperative to believe some 37 years ago. Mets fans long to make their voices heard. These are all undisputed facts.

However, this blog seeks to argue that, above, all, New York Mets fans are the most emotionally-charged mood swingers in all of American sport. We, as a fan base, despite our acute sense of reason with regards to baseball in general, refuse to let anybody look at the Mets as “just another baseball team”. We are at the point in our history where we can tolerate losing – just not irrelevance. (We remember, after all, what the late 1970s and early-to-mid 1990s looked like, and we refuse to let that happen again.)

Perhaps this natural defensiveness and overpowering emotion (fans on the other side of town might call this an “inferiority complex”) is why the Mets are so popular in talk radio and the blogosphere. These mediums certainly seem like they were created for and are without question sustained by this hungry fan base. When the Mets are winning, there is nothing but peace, joy, and love in Metsdom. Mets fans take New York by storm. When the Mets are losing, panic and fear take to the streets. Mets fans live only in extremes. Mediocrity is simply not available in the colors of orange-and-blue.

This blog seeks to find the cure to the bipolar nature of Mets fandom. It wants to keep things simple – it is about the simple game of baseball at the end of the day, you know. It seeks to keep people humble when the Mets go 9-1 on a homestand and demolish the Phillies on a Friday night by that same score. It also tries (perhaps futilely) to stop people from doing harmful things to themselves when the Phillies put up two huge innings against the Mets’ two best pitchers the next two days and take an early May series (hence the title of the blog, “Back Off the Ledge!!!”).

Slowly, you’ll get to know me as a Mets fan and as a human being. I consider myself to be a reasonable thinker who can watch each pitch yet still be immune to the emotional roller-coaster of every single 9-inning (20-inning?) baseball game every single day from April to October. I will try to use this blog as an effective way to combat that roller-coaster. But I think for now there’s only one place to start: Shea Stadium, May 26, 1996.

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I was born in October of 1989, the month that directly followed the final curtain falling on the should-have-been Mets dynasty of the 1980s. The Mets would go on to win 91 games in 1990, but the winter of 1989-90 saw the departure of Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter, two men who represented the heart-and-soul of the Mets’ transformation from laughingstock to world-beaters. The following season, Davey Johnson was canned and Darryl Strawberry suited up in orange-and-blue for the final time. It was clear that this once-great organization was solidly moving in the wrong direction. In 1991, they slipped to 5th place in the NL East, losing 84 games. In 1992, they were a 90-game loser, despite the additions of Bobby Bonilla and Eddie Murray. And then they reached their nadir in 1993 with an early-‘60s-esque 103 losses. By May 26, 1996, the Mets as a baseball club were irrelevant in New York.

There was, of course, one baseball team in New York who wore blue pinstripes on their home uniforms and would reign as champions of the baseball world five months later. A long drought would be ended and joy and ticker-tape would fill the streets of Lower Manhattan. They were a team that would capture the hearts of young baseball fans for years to come. It was the perfect fairy tale beginning for a young boy’s life as a baseball fan.

That fairy tale, of course, does not belong to this young boy. On that damp and dreary Sunday at a dark, dingy, and mostly empty stadium at the north end of Flushing Meadows Park, a young boy experienced the moment of a lifetime. It’s the defining moment so eloquently described by J.R. Moehringher in his 2008 tribute to Shea Stadium:

“You walk through the long dark tunnel, you burst forth into that vista of sunlight and cool grass -- that's the moment you become a fan. It's as irrevocable, as seminal, as when you come through that other long dark tunnel, into the arms of a doctor who grabs your ankles and slaps your ass. And you have just as much choice in the matter.”

In that moment and on that day, as I emerged through the tunnel on the first-base side of the Shea Stadium mezzanine, I was born into it. And I still haven’t forgiven my mother and grandfather for that.

Those 1996 Mets did something that day they did only 70 other times that year – they won. Bobby Jones pitched 8 strong innings backed only by a first-inning Bernard Gilkey home run, which I actually missed because we were stuck in traffic on the Grand Central Parkway. What we didn’t miss was my first true ninth inning as a Mets fan. Immediately I understood what Bob Murphy meant every time he implored us, “Buckle your seatbelts, folks, we go to the ninth… on the WFAN Mets radio network.”

Two words: John Franco. Every Mets fan knows where I’m going with this one. He simply found a way to make every ninth inning interesting. In some ways, he was a master magician – he actually found a way to escape most of them. Somehow, this day would join the ranks of Johnny Franco's Great Escapes.

With two outs and a runner on first, Franco yielded a base hit and a walk. The tying and go-ahead runs were in scoring position for San Diego. The lefty was about to blow my first game. Yet, ever-so-miraculously, Franco escaped, striking out the final batter, and eliciting a sigh of relief from the 20,000 patrons who bothered to show. I had my 1-0 win. I had a team to call my own. I was officially born into Metsdom.

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In the blogosphere (if not on the field), Mets fans have proven very effective. Even when the Mets shouldn’t matter (70-92 a year ago), they matter. There are a half-a-million Mets blogs out there, and each and every Mets fan has a different perspective on the team we all can’t seem to stop rooting for no matter how hard they (and Mike Francesca) try to get us to go away. I hope this blog can capture the feel of a franchise and its loving fan base, while also staying within the Light of Reason over the course of the long draw that is a 162 game season.

It is so easy to be cynical nowadays, especially as hungry, young baseball fans who have never seen their beloved ballclub win it all. But to give oneself the title of “New York Mets fan”, one must remember to always believe. Let’s Go Mets.