One step forward, two steps back

I will refer to Mets fans as “we” in this column, and to Yankee fans as “they,” short for “they who must not be named (full credit to J.K. Rowling).”

It is time for us to once again reinvent our identity in Flushing. Gone are the aggressive “quick fix” tactics of former GM Omar Minaya, in are the intricate sabermetrics of Sandy Alderson, possessor of the ultimate blueprint to build from the “bottom-up," embracer of the painfully slow process that comes with it.

Gone is former manager Jerry Manuel, he of the quick wit and “salt n’ pepper” beard. In is Terry Collins, a stern, clean-shaven, Midwestern man who couldn’t shake the tag of “drill sergeant” in his previous two stints as a major league manager.

Worry not, Met fans, Collins intends to have more “fun” this time around. He has implemented “Pizza and Bowling Night” on Thursdays, attendance to which is mandatory for players and expected of family members (not sure if K-Rod’s father-in-law has RSVP’d yet). Collins and his wife already have matching “Mets” bowling balls (hers is pink), ready to go in a specially made Mets bowling bag which reads “Him” and “Her.”

The Mets will attempt to morph into a “small market” team, and ask that you not notice the price on your ticket, or the “NY” on the front of the jerseys worn by a slew of disgruntled “superstars,” whose only resemblance to the title is in the checkbook. The Mets will be a team that crosses its T’s and dots its I’s, one which watches the ball all the way into the glove, and uses two hands once it’s there. One which might actually plate the runner standing on third with one out. A “high character” team which excels at the “little things” that don not show up in the box score.

But being an overachiever is not so sexy in this city, not when they are across town.

In a town where patience wears thin well before rush-hour, there is little tolerance at CitiField for a work-in-progress once 7pm rolls around. The term “rebuild” is taboo around here, as long as they are across the way ready to rub it in our face.

Before we reluctantly step into a new era, the only thing going for it is the fact that it can’t possibly be worse than the last, let’s take a minute to reflect on the past, specifically the past half-decade.

Fact: Omar Minaya made mistakes.
Fact: Hindsight is 20/20.

Minaya dug his own grave in 2007 with the inexplicable 4 year, $32 million contract he handed second baseman Luis Castillo, a man in his 30’s who has not hit a ball to the outfield since his 20’s. Minaya lay in that grave the following year, with the 3 year, $36 million deal he gave Oliver Perez, an erratic left-hander who, at the time of the deal, sporadically located the strike zone from sixty feet, and since has failed to hit it with a hundred foot pole.

The only contract in the universe capable of making Castillo’s look good is the one given to Perez. But remember the strut we had in our collective step on our way to work the morning of December 13th, 2004, in search of the nearest newsstand to confirm that Pedro Martinez was indeed a Met? Who cared that it was “I’m in my thirties, 90% of the cartilage in my shoulder has gone AWOL” Pedro, it was Pedro none the less. Suddenly, the Mets mattered.

Soon after, Carlos Beltran was on the way, which marked twice in the same month we had stolen the back-page from them. The fact that super-agent Scott Boras charged us the going rate for two Beltrans rather than one? Irrelevant.

Fast forward a couple of years. Did we not tolerate the day’s worth of nagging from the wife to sit inside on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon and watch Johan Santana’s first game against the Yankees? As we turned on the television, did we not dare allow ourselves to entertain the fact that our crown jewel may just be better than any of theirs?

Before we discovered K-Rod held his father-in-law in the same regard as a drunk at the bar in need of a lesson, did we not think we actually had a closer in the bullpen rival what they had going on over there?

We may have ended up void of an excuse to get out of the family events the past four Octobers, but for the most part, we always limped into September vaguely relevant, our team still playing “meaningful” games.

“Meaningful” only if the glass is half-full, but meaningful nonetheless.

For much of the past five seasons, there was an audible tenseness in the tone of Mets play-by-play announcer Gary Cohen. You knew it actually mattered when Jose Reyes tried to add a little pizzazz to a routine infield play and botched it, because the rest of the baseball world was watching.

As dysfunctional as the past decade has been, I am not so sure I would want it any other way.

The Yankee fan would say the previous statement is Exhibit A of the crippling effect being a Met fan has on one’s mental state. Then after a few dim-witted, clichéd Met jokes, insist that there really is no rivalry at all, because in order for a rivalry to exist, an opponent must elicit feelings of spite rather than pity. That is to say, the opponent must be good.

The Yankees are good. We hate them. It’s a rivalry to us.

As a second-class citizen in the New York baseball world, I cannot even set foot in Yankee Stadium. I feel the looks of contempt from the Yankee diehards, average Joes from 9am-5pm, but after that opening pitch, chests pumped out as if each of them is equally responsible for the 27 World Championships as Mantle, or Jeter.

As a second-class citizen in the New York baseball world, I steer clear of Yankee Stadium. While supporters of other franchises may view themselves as “upper class” in the sport fan kingdom, Yankee fans are unanimously the royal family.
Of course, in order for one extreme to exist there may be another.

I have spent the past two years at a small university in rural western NY. Out here, the Buffalo Bills are the only game in town. It is the Bills, or it is nothing, and though it is often a close call, the Bills are better than nothing.

Despite a decade in which the Bills alternated between mediocre and just plain bad, the fan base remains the most loyal, albeit delusional, I have ever seen.

The team labored through half a season before it picked up its first win. Moments after the final whistle, J.P. McCombs, a classmate of mine and Bills fanatic, recited a scenario in which Buffalo, 1-8 at the time, could win its final seven games, finish at .500, and (with help, of course) make the playoffs. He kept a straight face throughout.

“Anything’s possible,” said McCombs.

If the job market is as bad as all of the grown-ups say, I can always open a psychic stand in Buffalo and predict a Bills’ loss each week. An inevitability, but in Buffalo I’d be regarded as the ninth wonder of the world.

And that is not to insult the Buffalo faithful. I admire the loyalty. Part of me even yearns for the innocence. After all, ignorance is bliss, right?

In the sport fan kingdom, and many aspects of the real world, the lower class is out of touch with the upper from a day-to-day basis. As Met fans, and members of the kingdom’s middle class, we know there is something else out there. We need only take a quick peak across the Harlem River to see it. And one of the early lessons we discover is that no matter how hard we try, we cannot have it.

So we do the next best thing. We loathe it. We don’t necessarily want to be who we are, but we’re glad we aren’t them. We must clean our own mess, and in doing so we vow to never hire someone to do it for us. We could never be so out of touch with reality, never turn our back on our roots.

So, we must look in the mirror and ask ourselves, do we really want to be them?

As middle-class fans, it is the ability to be in-touch with both ends of the spectrum that gives us such character. We don’t really want it all, because we wouldn’t quite know what to do with it, and we certainly don’t want nothing. In a sense it was the relative underachievement of each “former All Star turned contract albatross” that made him one of our own, a true Met.
So let us for a moment admire the past half decade of Mets teams. We assembled the parts which allowed us to dream of a day in which Goliath existed not only across the river, but in our very own ballpark.

Alas, each part was a bit defective, and it seemed every “momentous” victory one night resulted in a ride on the 7 train to witness a blowout loss the following afternoon. But isn’t that what makes us who we are? Enough to dabble with the big boys for a day or two, followed by a dose of humility, necessary for us to truly appreciate the spurts of “privileged” living. Deep down, we wouldn’t trade that trip on the 7 train for anything.

On that note, let’s give one last shout-out to the Mets of the Omar Minaya era. Flawed as we were, we went down swinging.
Except Carlos Beltran. Game 7. He went down looking.