The Mets are now 33-30, 3 games out. In 1999, after 63 games, they were 33-30, 4 games out. In 1973, they were 29-34, 8 games out. At this exact time last year, the Mets were 30-33, 7.5 games out. As you may remember, if they’d won one more game last year, they would have been in the playoffs. If you look at these facts, you might derive some degree of encouragement.
You might also be interested to know that although the Mets had a record of 35-28 at this point in both 1969 and 2000, they were 5 games out at this point in 1969 and 5.5 games out in 2000. So in any fair accounting of the situation, the Mets are in decent shape after 63 games. I’d go so far as to say that the Mets have had a decent season so far, and may even be considered to have had a remarkable season given the length of their disabled list. The heroics in this first half of the 2009: the play of Wright, Rodriguez, Santana, and Beltran; the stepping up of Cora, Sheffield, Hernandez, and Santos; will deserve to be remembered by lifelong Mets fans. Whether or not they will be remembered will depend on how this all turns out.
If you know something about medieval pilgrimage traditions (I don’t know much but I know a little because my wife is thinking of writing a book about them), you know that there is a portion of the pilgrimage trail that is the real killer. It comes somewhere in the middle and it is the bleakest, hardest, hottest, most barren part of the trip. If you make it through the roughest part, you can feel okay about your chances of making it all the way to the end. This portion of the trip is the analogy to all of the wastelands people have to wander through in the Bible before they can get to the Promised Land or enter Jerusalem.
The Mets, fortified by their respectable performance so far, are now about to enter the hardest stretch of their pilgrimage. After this game tonight in Baltimore, all the teams the Mets will play between now and July 16 currently have a better record than they have. This is pretty extraordinary when you think about it. This will not be easy. We are not likely to emerge unscathed. We are three games over .500. If we get to the end of this stretch with a .500 record, I will be satisfied.
What???!!!!! (You’re thinking). .500 at the All-Star Break and he would be satisfied. Yeah. Go to the Mets website and click on the schedule. Look at the second half of July and the months of August and September and tell me whether you would or wouldn’t be satisfied, especially considering we’re going to get at least some of the wounded back on the roster. We could win this thing. The combination of the early injuries and the unbalanced schedule could produce the most dramatic Mets season ever. But we can’t lose hope in the next month. We must fear no evil.
If any of you are going to Metstock tonight (6/18 at 7) on the Lower East Side, I look forward to meeting you there. This event, whose name commemorates the two most culturally significant events of 1969, will be a great opportunity to meet the authors of these three fine Mets books: Faith and Fear in Flushing by Greg Prince, A Magic Summer by Stanley Cohen, and Mets by the Numbers by Matt Silverman and Jon Springer. Anybody who enjoys this blog will enjoy these books.
