Happy anniversary to the Mets’ most recent world championship. May we never commemorate it as such again.
I love the 1986 Mets. You love the 1986 Mets. We all love the 1986 Mets. But we need them to take a chronological back seat to a new driver of the Met historical narrative. Even the 1986 Mets think so [1].
It strikes me that the reaction to a sainted championship team (even one packed with alleged sinners) follows a cycle, particularly if you are not blessed with a satisfying sequel. I believe it’s applied to the 1986 Mets from the moment the confetti was cleared from Lower Broadway.
They are embraced in the immediate aftermath as if no one and nothing has ever been better.
An unconscious uncoupling occurs bit by bit in the years just ahead because you convince yourself resting on your laurels is counterproductive; looking ahead is paramount; and, no doubt, there are more titles to be won.
One day it hits everybody that those who achieved what turned out to be a lone championship have scattered from the scene, willingly or otherwise. Wistfulness infiltrates your thinking and fierce nostalgia for what you swore wasn’t all that long ago begins to set in.
You sense that your magnificent team of yore is no longer given its due, externally or internally, and you begin to take it personally. This team was the greatest — why aren’t they mentioned more?
You leap to your feet when anybody associated with that team starts showing his face in retirement. Somebody notices, so more of those faces become visible.
Ultimately, the franchise leans on the legend associated with that team probably a little too heavily, either as a distraction from how bad things are going or to convince the fans the current team is soon going to match their exploits.
With the passage of decades, that championship season is institutionalized, essentially frozen. The players and coaches went on to do other things in and out of the sport, but nobody much remembers or acknowledges that. Their seemingly singular accomplishment never fully fades into the background and thus sort of hovers in the collective consciousness. Usually this is a positive, because who doesn’t want to be reminded of the happiest of moments? Sometimes, though, it serves to numb the entire experience, because how many times can you hear the exact same stories and not feel your attention wander?
It felt this way as October 27, 1986, approached regarding the 1969 Mets. I loved (and love) the 1969 Mets, as did (and does) everybody who loves the Mets, but we needed a new precedent in our lives. We needed to stop saying some variation on “…since 1969,” just as we need to delete the “since” from 1986.
One championship every year would be fantastic, but nobody wants to sit next you if that’s what you expect.
One championship approximately every five years would keep you from ever legitimately complaining about anything ever again. But we’re born complainers, so such a bounty would probably be wasted on us.
One championship per generation sounds reasonable, though I’m not sure how to measure a baseball generation. If most of the key players from the last time your team won have vanished from your midst, you’re probably living in a new era. In the Met experience, that’s meant you have to wander through the desert for a spell before reaching the land of milk, honey and rally towels. I wish the desert wouldn’t inevitably wait at the end of our rainbows, but that’s apparently how our karmic topography is cobbled together.
The seventeen years between 1969 and 1986 were too long to wait through in real time, though for gathering-around-the-campfire purposes, it was just right. First 1969, then we were pretty good for a while after 1969, then no good whatsoever, then exponentially better…then 1986. It worked.
The third world championship in Met history should have taken place by now. It didn’t have to arrive on the nose in 2003 (and it sure as hell did not), but seventeen years would have been a fair enough neighborhood in which to unpack all our cares and woes. Seventeen is down the block from twenty, not far up the road from fourteen. 2006 and 2000 were prime opportunities to get what we needed. They got away.
After 29 years, all who have been touched by the 1986 Mets — including the “I wasn’t even alive then” fans who have only seen the footage and read the tales — are desperately yearning to be touched in the same way by the 2015 Mets. A similar pattern emerged between 1969 and 1986. You never stop revering your champions. You do grow weary of not having another champion to place on your pedestal. If there’s fatigue surrounding the primacy of 1986 in our shared story, it’s the “since” we’re sick of, as in, “The New York Mets have not won a World Series since 1986.” I imagine it’s the same in Kansas City for 1985 (and would love for it to remain an element of Royalspeak for at least another year).
You don’t realize it while you’re in the middle of a postseason run like this, but when you root your team toward a championship, you’re pre-ordering a mountain of nostalgia. You just don’t know when you’re going to break it out of its box or how it’s going to look to you every time you pause to examine it.
I couldn’t get enough of 1986 in 1986. On some level, I still can’t get enough of 1986. But I’ve had enough of how “since 1986” has endured. It’s lived long enough. “1986” will do just fine flourishing in a sinceless state.
Nevertheless, long live 1986. And 1969. And 2015 on the same plane, we really, really, really, really hope. That’s four reallys for the four victories we seek — but take them one game at a time, of course.
Also, happy birthday to Mets lefty specialist Jon Niese. He was born on the day the Mets won their last World Series, you might have heard, though “second-to-last” would be a much more desirable descriptor. Perhaps Jon and his teammates can do something about that very, very, very, very soon.