“You're a winner! Teddy knows!”
—One of the three clichés spouted by the Executive Teddy Bear my mother gave my father on his 50th birthday
82 Wins!
Eleven wins better than 2004!
First winning record since 2001!
We are over five-freaking-hundred once and for all!
And one win from clinching at least a third-place tie in the only division in baseball where nobody will have a losing record!
If there's a bigger story [1] in New York baseball this morning, I'm not aware of it.
Oh all right, there's another team playing another series of some consequence, but I don't see the Yankees and Red Sox as more important than the Mets and the Rockies. I don't. I'm not kidding. That's not meant to be snide or ironic or snironic (or, in deference to our new network, SNYronic).
All year long, thanks in great part to my encampment in the 'sphere, I have been so focused on the Mets and so oblivious to everything else that whenever I hear a TV or radio voice start to tell me that the Yankees are playing a big game, I reflexively say, “Who gives a shit? Nobody cares!” It's almost a mantra. So Friday afternoon, when there was a live broadcast from Fenway Park to hype the game that was to take place there Friday night, I said the same thing. And I meant it.
It took me a moment to realize, oh yeah, somebody probably does care.
But not me. Not more than secondarily. My primary concern? The Mets. Always the Mets. Game 1, Game 100, Game 160. Doesn't matter.
In Game 160, our team — the only one we've got — had the cool, clear eyes of a seeker of wisdom and truth, yet there was that upturned chin and that grin of impetuous youth. Oh, I believe in them. They've succeeded in baseball [2] in 2005.
The Mets are a winner. Everybody should know.
NOTE TO OUR LOYAL READERS, THE BEST BLOG READERS IN ALL OF BASEBALL: Faith and Fear in Flushing will see you through that first difficult week of Mets Withdrawal with our Year-End Spectacular, running Monday, October 3 through Friday, October 7. After the briefest of hiatuses (hiatii?), we will return to this space on a recurring basis throughout the offseason in attempt to make the winter go away as fast as possible.