The blog for Mets fans
who like to read

ABOUT US

Greg Prince and Jason Fry
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.

Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.

Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.

Got something to say? Leave a comment, or email us at faithandfear@gmail.com. (Sorry, but we have no interest in ads, sponsored content or guest posts.)

Need our RSS feed? It's here.

Visit our Facebook page, or drop by the personal pages for Greg and Jason.

Or follow us on Twitter: Here's Greg, and here's Jason.

A New Standard

I straggled home from Game Four of the World Series Sunday at 2:00 AM EDT, which in the instant it took me to look up at the clock, became Sunday at 1:00 AM EST.

Standard Time had returned and the Mets were still playing baseball. Not very well on the eve of us gaining our wee small hour, but they were alive. The sun hadn’t officially set on their rapidly dimming postseason yet.

“Think about that,” I thought.

So I did. I thought it was remarkable. I thought it must be unprecedented. Not on the life-affirming side of the calendar, mind you — clocks didn’t used to be sprung ahead until late April, a.k.a. well after Opening Day — but here where autumn inevitably gives way to winter and we are dealt a single extra hour of sleep as scant compensation for being involuntarily shoved into month upon month of darkness. The Mets simply aren’t active when we as a nation fall back.

Except for this one instance, I realized. The date was October 27, 1986, one day after America grimly reclockened itself on the final Sunday of the month, as was the law of the land at the time. Their last moment in Daylight Savings involved a ground ball…trickling… It was a fair ball that got by Buckner. You’ve probably heard of it.

The Mets gave themselves an extra dose of daylight by beating the Red Sox in Game Six of that World Series and earned themselves a Game Seven, their only non-spring Standard Time affair ever, also their final home game of that particular year. With great help from a fellow known as Knight (he who rounded third on that trickling ground ball), it worked out pretty well for them. Ray Knight hit a tiebreaking homer in Game Seven and won the MVP award in recognition of his role in bringing the New York Mets the world championship.

Twenty-nine years later, it was still the most recent world championship the Mets could claim and remained the standard against which all subsequent Mets teams would be measured. No wonder, then, when I peered hard into that clock following Game Four, I saw a glimmer of 1986.

I saw the Mets would be playing their final home game of 2015 in Standard Time. And if they were going to have any chance of winning the current World Series and creating a new standard for future Mets teams to measure up to, they were going to have to rely heavily on a fellow known as the Dark Knight.

Which was perfect, considering it couldn’t have been much darker three hours before Game Five’s first pitch and it couldn’t have been much darker in the minutes that followed the final swings of Game Four.

I was at Citi Field when Daniel Murphy made the boot heard round the world. And Yoenis Cespedes was caught off first. And Tyler Clippard kept missing in agonizing fashion. And Jeurys Familia couldn’t quite slam shut the door marked ROYALS, which was built preternaturally ajar. And the Mets who weren’t Michael Conforto didn’t hit worth a damn anyway.

The team effort that undermined a Series-tying victory until it morphed into a brink-of-elimination loss was breathtaking in its scope and ineptitude. The game I watched get away convinced me there was not much point to getting my hopes up for Game Five. There was not much hope to raise. I had basically none. Thus, after the Mets lost Game Four and I made my quick trip to what was referred to in 1776 as the necessary, I did something I’d never done at Citi Field.

I went back to the stands, somewhere in Promenade. The season was about to end and this was my last in-person game. This was Ultimate Closing Day minus one, but the only version I was going to get. I knew I wasn’t coming back for the actual final home game of 2015. I had to have my moment.

I wasn’t the only one. There were probably more people lingering in Promenade long after Citi Field’s most crushing loss than there were for the playing of the dozens and dozens of ordinary defeats that dotted the Augusts and Septembers that directly preceded 2015. I was surprised security wasn’t bum-rushing everybody the hell out, but the staircases were jammed and the field was still buzzing with media and Royals. There was no need to rush.

There was, instead, a funeral. I conducted it privately, in my head. This was the best season we’d ever had here at Citi Field. It was the only good season to date. Even the crushing Game Four loss contained a faint silver lining. Murphy making that error was the first time I ever felt a genuine kick to the baseball gut — one that truly made me go OOF!!! — in that building. You have to have something on the line to ache that badly over a baseball game.

Congratulations ballpark. You graduated to another level. I shall lower my morale to half-staff in your honor.

I looked around a while. I remembered this or that day or night when things went swell or lousy. I eavesdropped on conversations that were either rich in blame or soberly philosophical. If there was a “we’ll get ’em tomorrow” in the crowd’s remainder, I didn’t hear it. I know I didn’t say it.

It took me until “tomorrow,” in the hours after the clock simultaneously struck two and one, to understand there was a tomorrow to these Mets. Game Five still had to be played. It wasn’t a formality. Not when we had a historically favorable time change on our side. Not when he had a Knight going for us.

As Sunday got going in earnest, I forgot I ever officiated at a private memorial for the 2015 Mets. Whatever life they had left in them was not to be taken lightly.

When it is in condition to be driven, I drive a very old car. It makes sense if you know me. I form attachments to objects animate and otherwise and strive to keep them running for as long as possible. For example, I’ve had the same baseball team since I was six, and it hasn’t always worked perfectly. The car — which has generally been far more dependable than the man who drives it and receives clean bills of health far more often — is undergoing a major repair job that is illogical when one takes into account its age and “value”. Before I signed off on it, my mechanic advised me frankly that this was a lot of trouble to go through to stick with a vehicle whose future isn’t exactly unlimited and maybe, despite its admirable decades of durability, it was time for me to let go.

“Look,” I replied after mulling it over. “I know it’s not going to last forever. But…” I trailed off because I had to grope for the words.

“Not like this…y’know?”

He did. And so did I as Sunday morning passed into afternoon. Not like this. Not down three games to one when it takes four to end the World Series.

No funerals. No memorials. No selling a pennant-winner short for scrap. One more game at home equaled one more chance to win. Win Game Five and have a Game Six. Win Game Six…well, play Game Five. Don’t give up on it before it starts.

So off I went, carless, to root my team on. When I left home to catch the first in a series of trains and taxis that would take me to watch Game Five with my dad, it wasn’t yet six o’clock yet it was already dark out. That was the downside of Standard Time. The upside was all that aforementioned juicy championship precedent I dared to see in the changing of the clocks. Frankly, I preferred it to the margins of Games One, Two and Three shadowing 1986’s. That was getting creepy.

I showed up at my father’s place, which will never be mistaken for McFadden’s, and watched Matt Harvey be Matt Harvey as we understood him to be when we first laid eyes on him. It was as if Scott Boras was never invented. The Royals, those masters of making contact, couldn’t touch him. Harvey was heavenly, striking out nine in eight innings and allowing zero runs. Talk about precedent. He was Johan Santana winning on one good knee and absolutely no bullpen from Game 161 in 2008. He was Curt Schilling keeping the Phillies afloat by shutout in World Series Game Five in 1993. He was anyone you wanted him to be.

He was Matt Harvey. That’s all we ever wanted him to be.

Though we also wanted some runs. Two was “some,” I guess, though as the Dark Knight battled on and the night got later, those two the Mets had totaled looked lonelier and lonelier. It wasn’t a lack of confidence in Harvey to think he would require a little extra cushion. It was recognizing how little the Mets had been scoring as a rule and how capable the Royals were of fast-forwarding their offense on demand and that the entire Met bullpen probably hadn’t been overhauled since Saturday night. No pen’s ever been a certainty, but our pen, particularly in a short series, has always been a crapshoot. Think back to the depth and talent and experience the Mets were packing in relief in 1999 and 2000 and 2006.

You can’t think of it, can you? It was there, but at some very critical juncture, it found a way to crack. That’s what pens do…Met pens, in particular.

Getting Harvey every shred of support as was possible would have diminished a fan’s anxieties. But after eight, Harvey led by the same 2-0 he’d been out in front by since the sixth. The Mets hadn’t done enough to yet another KC starter — Edinson Volquez in this case — and were doing nothing against the Royal bullpen.

But “so what?” you wanted to rhetorically ask. Harvey’s so clutch, so dominant. Can’t Harvey just finish off the Royals with a two-run lead?

Does anybody finish off anybody anymore? Johnny Cueto gave his reliefmates the night off in Game Two, but he was ahead by six and the Mets were, let’s face it, the Mets, at least the Mets of Game Two. The Royals, as much as the “relentless” theme was pounded to dust, truly never relented. Even in the one game they lost in the Series, they were relentless complainers regarding Noah Syndergaard pitching Alcides Escobar up and in.

All of which brought us to the highest drama of Game Five, the emergency board meeting among Harvey, Dan Warthen and Terry Collins aimed at deciding whether Harvey would pitch the ninth. This conversation simply didn’t happen in Jerry Koosman’s day, but baseball has changed forever. No starter throwing impenetrable four-hit ball across eight innings is automatically allowed to attempt to fully craft his masterpiece. Predictably, Warthen was ready to pull Harvey in favor of Familia. Just as predictably, Harvey resisted the pull.

Collins, whose call it was, went with his starter. It was the understandable call. When Harvey walked leadoff batter Lorenzo Cain, it might have been just as understandable if Collins went with his original plan and replaced his ace starter with his ace closer. But he didn’t. He gave Harvey one more batter and, as seems to have been the case through the regular season and postseason, it was one opposing batter too many for one Met pitcher too spent. Eric Hosmer lashed a double to left and Cain — who had Crunchwrapped the Royals’ 648th stolen base of the World Series — raced merrily home from second to halve the Mets’ lead.

It didn’t all have to go to hell from there. It would be disingenuous to insist I knew it would. I’d come a long way from de facto surrender almost 24 hours before and refused to intuitively sense that the Mets were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. How confident was I in the Mets’ ability to win this game that had been moving so swiftly and going so swimmingly? Confident enough in the bottom of the eighth to start checking LIRR timetable apps and gauge if maybe the Sunday night schedule was going to be kind enough to ping me from the North Shore to Jamaica to the South Shore in timely enough fashion to save me a pricey cab ride home.

I’ll take the blame for such an uncharacteristically cocksure gesture (and wound up with another hefty fare in practically the middle of the night). Everything else that went wrong for the Mets can be attributed to the figures on the hospice room television. That would include the Royals, who it must be stressed were the protagonists in this World Series in every way but parochial. We focus on the Mets because we’re Mets fans. The Royals, though, made things happen. They produced. They executed. The Mets, with a few notable exceptions, were mostly reacting to the Royals’ actions. Met defense in particular seemed to be played in the slowest of motion.

Despite now owning the dubious record for most saves blown in a single World Series (3), Familia shouldn’t be inordinately blamed for what was about to transpire. He threw a good pitch that retired Mike Moustakas for the ninth inning’s first out, yet moved Hosmer along to third. And Jeurys really can’t be blamed for Salvador Perez’s neither-fish-nor-fowl grounder to not quite short and not quite third. David Wright opted to field it before it could get to Wilmer Flores (aggressive is good, usually) while Hosmer danced further and further from third.

Wright threw to first. Had to, didn’t he? Had to get an out. Hosmer wasn’t that close to home when David made his peg. Then again, he was getting a little far from third.

Duda makes the putout.

Hosmer breaks for the plate.

Duda turns and fires.

Hosmer’s gonna be out based on geometry. The inning’s gonna be over. The Mets are gonna win, 2-1.

Hosmer’s gonna be safe based on everything you feel in your Mets fan bones. The game is gonna be tied at two.

Hosmer was safe. Duda flung the ball past Travis d’Arnaud and through the window of the Lemon Ice King of Corona. The game was indeed knotted.

The fifth game of the 2015 World Series was over in the twelfth if you’re a stickler for technicalities, but it was basically over when some combination of Familia, Wright, Flores, Duda and d’Arnaud failed to prevent that second Royal run. I told myself otherwise in the moment. In the moment — after I briefly roused my dozing father and half of his sleeping neighbors with the detonation of a phalanx of f-bombs — I rooted mightily for the Mets to walk it off in the bottom of the ninth. I did the same in the bottoms of the tenth and the eleventh. All it would have taken was one incredibly well struck fly ball or a reasonably sturdy chain of Met-friendly events.

But they weren’t coming and I wasn’t surprised, just as it was no shock when the final crack of the year showed in the top of the twelfth and everybody but Buddy Biancalana drove in a Royal run to break the tie and make the score 7-2. The bottom of the twelfth thus ballooned into the most inconsequential final home half-inning in Met postseason history among those that marked closure for a campaign. It wasn’t Mike Piazza taking Mariano Rivera deep to center but not deep enough as the potential tying run. It wasn’t Carlos Beltran taking strike three from Adam Wainwright as the potential winning run. It was Wilmer Flores, folk hero of July, frozen by Wade Davis. If only Flores had swung, it…

It wouldn’t have mattered. The Mets were down by five. Believe, Believe, Believe, yes, of course, always. But when You Gotta Accept, accept that baseball has its new world champion and it’s not the Mets.

The Kansas City Royals are to be congratulated. If you run into one, feel free to congratulate him.

The New York Mets? Our New York Mets? What do we do with them in the hours after they kept us up late for the last time in 2015?

My instinct is to go the route I distinctly recall carving out fifteen years ago under similar difficult circumstances. The 2000 World Series was also a five-game loss. When it ended undesirably, I remember writing and circulating an e-mail of the “buck up” nature. I was so proud of how hard those Mets fought to get as far as they did, never being out of any of their games against the hated crosstown rivals, making us Believe deep into October (albeit before the clocks needed changing). I bought that line a decade-and-a-half ago and I stand by it today.

The 2000 pennant has not aged well in the public Mets fan consciousness, which is a shame. I think one element that is forgotten is 2000 was the culmination of a four-year climb onto baseball’s ultimate stage. We got surprisingly close to the Wild Card in 1997, one game away from it in 1998, two games from the World Series in 1999 and, finally, three games from a world title in 2000. There was a 673-game buildup to Piazza flying out to end Game Five then. It was an exhausting, exhilarating rise, Timo or not.

This run was different. Many of these Mets bubbled under the Hot 100, so to speak, in the years prior to 2015, but the team we’d been making our cause in October didn’t exactly exist until the turn of August. There were great achievements from April to July, yet it’s almost as if they came from another season altogether.

As for how proud these Mets made me during this World Series…I wanna go there, I really do, but the video actualities are just too harsh. Balls thrown away. Balls kicked around. Batters who were rarely hitters. A bullpen that was Russian roulette at its riskiest. This was a thrilling Series only if you were a Royals fan, and that’s not an assessment based on who won. The 2000 World Series was a thrilling World Series, five games notwithstanding. The 1973 World Series was fascinating theater. We lost those, but I knew we competed to the bitter end of both. In 2015, the competition overwhelmed us when it counted most.

I also don’t know if there’s a “the future’s so bright” card to play here. The pitching is fantastic and that’s a spectacular platform on which to build. The everyday lineup…who knows? We didn’t have even a hint of what this one was until the season was about two-thirds over. I’m not up for a full dissection right now, but we know it’s unlikely Cespedes and Murphy are back (and we’re probably unsure how badly we’d want them to stay). We’re enamored of Conforto and feel generally sanguine about d’Arnaud despite his inability to throw anybody out. Everything else is more than a little underknown, whether it’s who’s gonna play where or what they’re capable of giving us in 2016. And that’s fine to a certain extent. Offseasons exist to reshape rosters and we have undeniably entered the offseason.

Honestly, I’m not “worried” about next year right now, but in the realm of trying to figure out if we can take solace in coming close this year as prelude to that which is bigger and better — as Royals fans must have or at least (in hindsight) should have when they lost Game Seven in 2014 — I just don’t know. I remember good, solid clubs and wonderfully appealing stories like the ’93 Phillies and ’07 Rockies warming their Octobers as much as they could and then essentially disappearing from contention after losing the World Series. Same for the 2000 Mets, come to think of it. Because of Harvey, Syndergaard and Jacob deGrom, that’s probably not us. But ya never know.

OK, so the World Series wasn’t a festival of Metropolitan excellence and the crystal ball clouds up if you fog your breath all over it. We led in all five Fall Classic games yet prevailed in just one of them. Our parade is taking an unexpected detour through Western Missouri. What is there to feel good about as Standard Time tightens its grip on our psyches and the sun goes down for good on the 2015 baseball season?

Are you kidding? What isn’t there to feel good about?

It’s November 2. We just finished playing.

We are the champions of the oldest professional baseball league in existence.

We posted our first winning record in seven years, secured our first division title in nine years and, as the t-shirts declare, earned the right to raise our first pennant in fifteen years.

We didn’t passively watch the Giants or Cardinals or whoever represent the senior circuit out there these last five games. That was us, not them, not the Nationals or Dodgers or Cubs. We beat all those clubs.

We outlasted everybody’s expectations, ours included.

We attracted everybody’s attention for the best reasons possible.

We hosted a bandwagon, for goodness sake. Some griped about frontrunners. I welcomed their presence, no matter how ephemeral. This is the idea of winning. You win and you excite the populace. It’s always going to mean more to the diehards. That’s why we’re so named. We take the death of a dream hard, but we are ready to report for duty again and again. This time the dream lived 176 games.

And it wasn’t a dream. It really happened.

We really did win eleven in a row in April.

We really did get Harvey back.

We really did see deGrom blossom.

We really did make room for Syndergaard and Steven Matz.

We really did find a closer, no matter what kind of luck eventually found him, in Familia.

We really did ride Yoenis Cespedes for six stunning weeks.

We really did witness David Wright defeat stenosis, or at least keep it at bay for the two months his entire career had been leading up to.

We really did witness a Murph miracle do in the Dodgers and club the Cubs.

We really did get to cheer countless times and open champagne bottles three times and buy commemorative apparel marking our accomplishments by association and luxuriate in a large lead in our division and withstand a scoring drought in June and persevere to beat St. Louis in eighteen innings and jump up and down when Juan Uribe delivered in late July and how about that kick save and a beauty between Murphy and Carlos Torres and don’t forget the night Bartolo flipped a no-look pass to first and need I remind you we hit eight homers in one night at Philly and we won consecutive 14-9 decisions in Denver and broke a seven-game losing streak in Milwaukee on the strength of deGrom’s pitching and hitting and hair and we applauded loudest when everybody everywhere saw just what a star Jacob really is when he struck out the side in the All-Star Game and we didn’t let that horrible loss to the Padres stop us and we didn’t trade Wilmer Flores and Flores couldn’t have paid us back any better and fuck Chase Utley because we love the stuffing out of Ruben Tejada and though neither of them was on the postseason roster don’t forget that Sunday when Darrell Ceciliani and Dilson Herrera homered in that enormous comeback over the Braves the day after we blew one and there was even a hit or two from John Mayberry at some point and a save from Buddy Carlyle on Opening Day and Alex Torres wore that weird cap and Logan Verrett kept coming through when asked and Kirk Nieuwenheis went deep three times at home after coming back from the Angels and we were no-hit twice and it didn’t matter a whit and Johnny Monell and Eric Campbell and Bobby Parnell a little and Jenrry Mejia for a minute and Duda with the enormous homers in two clinchers and Cespedes with the sleeve and the throw to nail Sean Rodriguez and Murphy stealing that uncovered base and David with the epic fist pump and fuck Scott Boras while we’re at it and two pitchers homered and Ruben hit one inside the park and he will play and hit again but he’ll never do anything better than come out with that cane and Matz’s grandpa cheered nearly as well as East Setauket Steve hit and pitched and…

Ohmigod, what a season and what a postseason and what an experience to be a part of it as a fan and a blogger. What a year to have it confirmed that you don’t give up on the baseball team you form an attachment to when you’re six, no matter how inanimate they can appear for years on end. Not that you were going to give up. It’s just nice when they give you a season full of all this. It’s confirmation that you’re not crazy to be crazy about the Mets. You’re crazy if you’re not crazy about the 2015 Mets.

If this is how it feels after losing the World Series, I can’t wait to see what winning one will mean.

If it means as much to you as co-authoring the most heartfelt Mets blog you’ll ever read means to me, then I will be incredibly happy for you.

Every season since 2005 has played out in these pages, this season a little more so. To every one of you who makes Faith and Fear a regular stop on your trip around the bases; to every one of you who takes the time to burnish what we write with what you write; to every one of you who seeks one or both of us out to extend your thoughts on baseball/life; and to every one of you with whom I’ve been honored to share a championship journey…I’d be at a loss for words to tell you what you mean to me if not for a phrase I’ve found to come in extraordinarily handy over the past month in particular.

Let’s Go Mets.

And thank you.

109 comments to A New Standard

  • Inside Pitcher

    Thank YOU Greg, and also Jason – you always find a way to find words to describe what we’re feeling.

    Let’s Go Mets!

  • Dave R.

    Nicely said.

    I’m done with rehashing what could have been. That was a wonderful season, right up there with ’69 and ’86.

    If someone had said to me on July 30, “Here’s the deal. You’re going to have an August, September and October of great wins, but then you’re going to lose three heartbreakers in the World Series,” I would’ve said, “Sign me up.”

    So thanks for a memorable run.

  • MetFanMac

    “Later, in his quiet office, Earl Weaver was asked by a reporter if he hadn’t thought that the Orioles would hold on to their late lead in the last game and thus bring the Series back to Baltimore and maybe win it there. Weaver took a sip of beer and smiled and said, ‘No, that’s what you can never do in baseball. You can’t sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You’ve got to throw the ball over the goddam plate and give the other man his chance. That’s why baseball is the greatest game of them all.'”

  • Camberwell Met

    Thank you Greg and Jason, from a British fan who jumped on the bandwagon in 2006 and has clung on since, sustained in no small part by your fantastic writing and ability to capture so exquisitely not only what happens in the games, but what it feels like to be a fan watching it happen. This year has been incredible, and thanks for reminding us of that so that when the punch to the gut of the last couple of games subsides, all those amazin’ memories can float to the surface.

    “You’re crazy if you’re not crazy about the 2015 Mets.” – I’d like that on a t-shirt, please.

  • argman

    Thanks Greg for another great post. This was a truly enjoyable season and although it didn’t end the way we all wanted it to, it ended better than any other in at least 15 years. Thanks to you and Jason for your great writing. And best wishes for your Dad.

  • sturock

    And thank you, Greg! What a season to be a Met fan, in some ways maybe the best ever, certainly the best since 1969 in terms of reality shattering all expectations.

    Now it’s on to the offseason with all the tweaks and nips and tucks that will– I hope– help get us back there next year.

    Yes, the Mets lost the World Series, but I do believe that the days of what-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong are eclipsed for the time being by the days when we can say we have a good team that has the chance to get even better.

    A new Mets standard, indeed.

  • LarryDC

    Wow. Epic. I may need to read it again later. Hope it was a special few hours for you and your dad.

    I’m going to grimace when the 2016 previews come out and everybody picks the Mets to win the East, if not the NL, if not the WS, because of course that’s what everybody does. And then, like the Nationals before us, we enter a season of sky-high expectations and championship-or-bust, which is so much less pleasurable than finding lightning in a bottle and being the Surprising Postseason Upstarts.

    Thirteen years between 1973 and 1986. Fourteen years between 1986 and 2000. Fifteen years between 2000 and 2015. Lord, if it takes 16 years to make the World Series again, I’ll be … friggin’ old.

    Our starting pitchers are incredible. I may need to own all their jerseys. As to who will be producing runs for us next year, that’s more troubling. How many games can we win 1-0?

    Grateful for this amazing run, for Noah Syndergaard’s high fastball, for a chance to bring my son to his first postseason game at Citi Field instead of Nats Park. Otherwise, really worried. See? I’m a Mets fan.

    • Dave R.

      LarryDC: I was thinking the same thing. In ’86, I was just 26. Now I’m 55. And let’s face it: in a 15-team league, you’re only supposed to make the WS once every 15 years.

      • DCLarry

        Gotta gotta gotta win when you get there. Now that I live in DC I had a front-row seat to the Nationals deciding to shut down Strasburg, with columnists and fans and talk radio saying that it still left enough to win “this year” and meant Strasburg would be ready for future championships.

        There are no future championships, I knew. There’s this year and only this year, and if you lose this year, you might end up waiting 108 years.

        • Dave R.

          That’s painfully true, Larry, but when you think about it, nobody roots for the Mets because they win. I root for them because, growing up on Long Island, it was them or the Yankees, and in my family, rooting for the Yankees was not an option. Imagine if the Mets had shut down Harvey; we wouldn’t have had the first eight innings of last night, which was pretty special.

  • 9th string catcher

    like a great 8th inning bridge relief pitcher, you and Jason have helped bridge the misery of the last 8 years to a team you could absolutely root for and believe in. Bravo to you guys and this heroic blog, bringing the psychology, philosophy, determination, euphoria, ups, downs, sideways, faith and fear of all our favorite team. Thank you from your nutty posters!

    I believe the future is bright. Great starting pitching, a little cap room, a real closet and a couple of bats makes a good core. I personally would dump Murphy and cespedes (unless his post season suddenly makes him more reasonably priced) trade Duda for a high contact bat, and sign Chris Davis.

  • Charles Reiss

    And thank you for adding scoope and thought to the entire season. For making reading your comments the real emd to each and every game. You gave it all color and meaning.

  • Ken K. in NJ

    Thanks, we needed that. And I’m saving it in my “Best Of” folder.

    And thanks guys for a great season.

    Oh, and goodbye Yoenis. It was a fun 2 months. Too bad you were here for 3 months. Now go kick those balls across some other team’s outfield. “I’m a Center Fielder”. Right.

    Trickling…….best Bob Murphy use of a word ever.

  • cleon jones

    What a ride!!!! Lets go Mets!!! Pitchers and catchers Feb. 15͵2016.

  • Dennis

    Great post and a huge thank you to you and Jason for this blog. A disappointing end when you contemplate the “what ifs”, but ultimately a successful one considering what expectations I was hoping for this season (an over.500 record and competing for the wild card). I’m already excited about the prospects for 2016 with our manager,Conforto and the maturation of the young pitchers. A shout out as well to posters like Rob E, Matt, Lenny65 (among others) whose positive and rational analysis kept the faith all season long. LGM!

  • open the gates

    Thank you Greg. Let’s just say, I REALLY needed to read this today. Thank you. Let’s Go Mets. And let’s get ’em next year.

  • S

    As always – a wonderful recap, Greg. I went to sleep last night so angry…because you just never know when you’ll be back to this point again. You remember how much it takes to get there.

    I needed to read your thoughts to put things in perspective and close the book on 2015. There will be many moments during this cold winter where I’ll be reminded of the horror show of last night’s 9th inning and Saturday’s 8th.

    But this was a wonderful season – one that I did not see coming at all. Heck, I didn’t have a sniff of it in July! What a fun ride. What a reminder of what it’s like to see the New York Mets be the cool kids in town. It’s really something special. All the amazin’ moments you wrote about, that’s what I’ll remember.

    Thanks for all you do. LGM.

  • Dave

    Everything you said is true Greg. Just need some time.

    But what I don’t need some time for is to praise FAFIF and what it means within the realm of Mets fandom. Greg and Jason are not only gifted writers, they understand everything about Mets fandom…yes, remembering the Steve Henderson walk-off and what was the most important 112th game of the season the Mets ever played and how many games they’ve been involved in with a final score of 14-9, but more importantly the passion and the humor. I was a Mets fan for a long time before there was an internet and blogs and social media and the ability to follow a game on a little computer we still call phones and whatever else, but at this point, I’m not sure what being a Mets fan means without being able to read this blog. And even as I’m half-comatose after arriving back home in Central Jersey from Citi two nights in a row at a time I would normally be halfway through a night’s sleep, even as the sting hasn’t even started to subside except for the numbness, I thank you both and everyone else who keeps this conversation and sharing lively and informed and passionate.

    Can’t wait to see what the 2016 Mets are going to look like. But we have all winter to talk about that, don’t we?

    • Eric

      I’m a fan of this blog not for the Mets trivia but for the ability to capture and articulate the moment and its context for and as Mets fans.

  • Art

    Thank you once again Greg. Surprisingly, I am in a good mood this morning. Already looking forward to next year.
    The whiteboard in my office already says:
    Opening Day is April 4, 2016
    154 days

  • Marc R

    Thank you both.

    What a wonderful season. Some teams’ fans root for championships, not their teams. Don’t get me wrong, I very desperately want the Mets to win it all. Very desperately. But it would truly be a miserable existence if I couldn’t enjoy myself after a season like this one.

    Some of my favorite years, most of them of course, were non-championship seasons. 1985, 1999, 2006, and now 2015.

    Part of what made this season so wonderful was that, even though it didn’t quite come out of nowhere, it was still more than a bit of a surprise. Kind of as if we had won the pennant in 1984. But it’s also not a last gasp. More like a child’s first steps.

    Greg and Jason, thanks for embodying everything that is great about Mets fans: passion, pathos, literacy, and good humor.

  • Great post. For those of us on this side of the pond, the days have been long, as our Mets delivered, time after time, in the wee small hours. It has been a fabulous year of baseball – for all the reasons you have written, Greg, and for the green shoots of our recovery from the last eight years turning into a full blown riot of orange and blue bushes. Harvey, deGrom, Thor (whose pitching in Game Three will stay with me forever), Matz (he’d played how many games before pitching like that in a World Series?!), Captain America (who I think is in considerable pain when he plays – the body shape and adjustments he is making just seem to shout out that he’s hurting), Conforto, Familia, Wilmer, The Dude (when he’s hot!) – we have a really solid core, that’s getting bigger all the time. We are the champions of the National League, and it’s not that hard to see why. The foundations look solid this time – our time is coming (?). I have to put the question mark, because, hey, we’re the Mets! We’re Amazin’ – and it’s nice to be reminded of that from time to time by the quality of this blog, and passion of its writers. Let’s Go Mets.

    • Eric

      The no-longer-young stud starters and closer make for a solid core.

      The position players, though? Questions.

      Granderson is the 2015 team MVP, but he’s a year older in his mid-30s.

      Conforto is promising, but his latter drop-off showed the book is now out on him. I expect him to do well, but let’s see how he makes his sophomore-season adjustment.

      Set aside his bat. Of greater concern, what happened to Lagares’s gold glove?

      Can Duda be better than scorching hot for a few 1-2 week stretches but then ice cold for months at a time?

      What are Tejada and Flores?

      Is Herrera ready to take over at 2B?

      d’Arnaud looked gassed with his bat and throwing diminished in the post-season. He has yet to play a full season at baseball’s most draining, bruising position. Will he stay on the field? And if he does, can he play at a high level?

      Wright is diminished at the plate, on the bases, and in the field. Hosmer described his WS game 5 game-tying run as “shuffling” into a running start from 3B following along with Wright’s “shuffling” throw to Duda. For the 2015 post-season run, Wright had to be featured, but the play-offs showed Wright is a reduced player. What can spinal-stenosis Wright give the team over a full season grind? What can he produce in the play-offs should the Mets make it back to the post-season?

      Will Murphy accept the QO?

      Is Cuddyer shot?

      Will the Mets sign a free agent, say Upton, to replace Cespedes or promote from within, say Nimmo?

    • Eric

      Bring back Uribe and Johnson? If not, how to replace them on the bench?

      I oppose trading any of the Mets stud starters to beef up the line-up. I want to see history made by the potential for the greatest 1-4, maybe even 1-5 rotation of all time coming to fruition.

  • Gene F.

    Yes. My Citi Field postseason record is 4-3, as it is for many of us, and it was great seeing the ballpark full and rocking.

    Thanks for putting it all into words, good days and bad.

  • Eric

    I look forward to your book on this special Mets season, Greg. The beat writers will be scrambling to capitalize. But its story needs to be told right and you’re the right man to tell it.

    One of the most important life lessons we learn as young men is regret hurts worse than defeat. You give your best in a competition but lose, the defeat still stings and you bear the consequences, but no regrets. In an honest defeat, you glean the lessons from the experience and move on.

    But when you don’t give your best in a competition and thereby lose, that hurt is much worse than an honest defeat. That’s regret. Regret soaks in and burns, maybe for the rest of your life. Time doesn’t heal that festering wound. Regret must be exorcised. You can only hope for an opportunity for redemption then seize it when it comes.

    This 90-win division winning, DS winning, LCS winning 2015 Mets season was the redemption for the 2007 collapse, the 2008 echo-collapse, and their LOLMets progeny.

    To earn one’s freedom from festering regret is no light thing.

    2015 was a magical rollercoaster of a season. The 2015 Mets grappled with LOLMets, fell down, bounced back, then took off.

    Unfortunately, the Mets lost the 2015 World Series defeat in a regretful way. Mets destiny was stronger than Cubs destiny, but Royals destiny was strongest of all. The team we just watched lose to the Royals was not the indomitable force that improbably swept the Nationals in August and September to seize the division.

    Nonetheless, this was a special season to be a proud fan of the team as they paid off the compounding debt from 2007.

    The next step is to pay off the fresh regret incurred from the 2015 World Series. There’s only one way to do that and the Royals showed the Mets how.

    The Mets did not give it their best in the 2015 World Series. Losing to the Royals in the painfully regretful way they lost it can motivate this team to get back and win it in a manner that wouldn’t be there had the Mets won the 2015 World Series.

  • Matt Bogen

    I’ve been rooting for the Mets since 1981, and this is my favorite season ever. 1986 was amazing, but given the steamroll in the regular season, it felt like destiny to win the Series. The 2015 Mets had to work HARD for every win and every champagne bottle. This one was really satisfying to root for.

    I don’t think of this as almost-’86. I think of this as ’84-plus. The future – full of deGrom+Harvey+Thor+Matz+Niese/Wheeler wheeling in rotation from April to September-at-least – is as bright as it’s ever been. Nothing is certain, except death, taxes, and Opening Day. I’m still going to enjoy this, even with the what-ifs.

    Thank you, Greg, and Jason for a great year and great companionship. It’s a lot closer to Spring Training than it’s been in long time.

  • zvi

    i wanted to thank you for your heartfelt words.

  • Steve2916

    Greg,

    Thank you for your usual wonderful post.

    Getting to the game: WHY take out Neise after he pitched the 11th so well? He can give them LENGTH, and he had Monday to rest if the series went to Game Six. Am I missing something? As I recall, the above was a first guess, not a second guess.

    As to Harvey, I love how he demanded the ball for the ninth. His mindset should put to rest any thoughts about his not caring, etc.

    Looking forward to reading your offseason posts.

    But, perhaps, most importantly, how great that you could share the Mets last game of 2015 with your Dad.

    #LGM

    • Eric

      You’re confusing the TJ-recovery innings limit situation. That’s a different consideration. Under normal circumstances, Harvey usually wants to stay in a game when he’s pitching okay.

      The problem with Harvey has been that in games where he’s been otherwise strong, like last night, he’s often become unsprung quickly after passing 100 pitches.

      Harvey started the 9th inning at 102 pitches.

      Given the adrenalin of the situation, the strength of his game through 8 innings, and the slim margin for error afforded by the 2-run lead, it was understandable for Collins to give Harvey allowance for 1 runner. But given Harvey’s history of becoming unsprung quickly after 100 pitches, he should have only been allowed 1 runner.

      Yet Collins gave Harvey another batter after the Cain walk, which was a clear and known sign Harvey had lost his command, which we’ve seen happen to Harvey before after 100 pitches, and Hosmer roped a double.

  • Gil

    DVR is set for the grapefruit league. Hotstove reports on deck. Pitchers and catchers in the hole.

  • Eric

    The 2015 season won’t happen next season. It can’t. This season was the magical climb. Every step up was a fresh thrill that broke new ground while healing festering wounds.

    Next season and thereafter will still be Mets baseball, but fandom will be about getting back to the World Series.

  • Lenny65

    A tremendous and quite unexpected run that will never be forgotten. However, it’s also the “end of innocence”, if you will, as next season nothing less than a WS will suffice. No more “being happy to be there”, it’s boom or bust from here on out. I’m not ready for deep analysis or assigning blame yet, although it was pretty obvious what happened…they couldn’t hit a lick when it mattered most. You could see the bats cooling down as the regular season wound down, Murphy’s heroics kind of masked the snowballing slump there for a while but fact is that no one else stepped up and started raking with any regularity. You have the bases loaded with no one out, you gotta do better than a measly sac fly there. Story of the series.

    • Eric

      The Mets starting pitchers who bested Kershaw and Greinke and put the Cubs young dynamic sluggers to sleep arrived in the 2015 post-season.

      As a unit, deGrom, Harvey, and Syndergaard (plus Matz and Wheeler) now set the bar in the National League.

      The Mets won the NL East outright with a solid 90 wins. They swept the Cubs to win the NL pennant. There’s no rationale for the Mets being a chaser in 2016. Whatever questions the Mets have about their line-up, defense, and bullpen, they’re the target for the NL East and the league.

      • Lenny65

        Yes, agreed, there was nothing “fluke-ish” or “lucky” about it, the Mets vaunted “future” is now. They were a few timely hits away from winning it all and now nothing less will suffice. Our starting staff is as good as anyone’s, a few tweaks and adjustments and they’ll have as good a shot as anyone to make it back and avenge this loss. As bummed as I feel today, I have to admit I never thought we’d get so far so fast, as I’ve said before it was one of if not the most remarkable run I’ve ever seen out of them, it couldn’t possibly have been more fun (until the WS that is). I miss them already.

        • Eric

          Yep. I haven’t let go of the 2015 season yet. Thinking about the lost opportunities in the WS, I’m upset I’m not anticipating game 6 in KC right now. It’s going to take a few days to let go.

          • Lenny65

            I’ve seen a lot of breathless articles trying to over-analyze and assess blame to this one or that one but it truly was a team loss, they just didn’t hit enough when it mattered most. You can have the greatest pitching staff, gloves and manager in the world and it’d make no difference if no one’s hitting. Just from a totally unscientific fan perspective, it was almost like the NLCS came too easy for us, no one got the chance to really get rolling and that long break didn’t seem to help much either.

            IMO 2000 was much, much worse. Not only did we lose but it was to them and if you live in the area it was inescapable. “At least a NY team won!”…blah, I’d rather lose to KC over NY a hundred out of a hundred times.

  • Matt in Richmond

    Add me to the impressive and diverse list of dedicated Mets fans who want to thank you Greg and Jason. FAFIF has become my first and most important destination on the web after every game. It gives me a sense of Mets community that I otherwise wouldn’t have down here in the (sort of) south. Next year can’t get here soon enough, but what great memories I will have forever of 2015. Thanks again, to you, to the Mets, and to the other readers of FAFIF.

  • Adam

    “What a year to have it confirmed that you don’t give up on the baseball team you form an attachment to when you’re six, no matter how inanimate they can appear for years on end. Not that you were going to give up.”

    1000 times this!!

    I was 5 in 1984 when I really discovered baseball, and those magical years of the 80s are etched in my consciousness and define me as a baseball fan.

    My older daughter turned 5 before the season started, and this is the first year she’s truly taken an interest in baseball. It started with joining me on the couch before her bed time for a few innings.. It built further with her first “real” game this summer- the 12-3 home victory over the Rockies where Thor went 7 and we hit three huge home rums. It climaxed in Game 4 against the Cubs as she went crazy on Duda’s monster home run in the first. She watched very little of the series, she could barely stay up much past first pitch, but every night as I put her to bed she and her little sister would jump and chant “Let’s Go Mets” before climbing into bed. I hope the joy stays with her. And I look forward to many more days with her at Citi Field.

    Thank you and Jason for this blog. Spring training will be here sooner than we know it!

  • mikeL

    thanks greg yet another great reflection on the day in the mets universe.
    as hearbreaking a loss we all suffered last night, i’m done (for now at-least) mulling over the what-ifs.
    bottom line – the mets fought (mostly) valiantly against a far stronger team. those of the mets who are around next year got to witness first-hand how it can

    brutal ending aside, i still feel like this was

  • Steve2916

    Speaking of the Mets spirit in the city…

    Yesterday, I finished the NYC Marathon, my first Marathon. I wore my Mets cap, and I heard countless voices calling out “Go, Mets!” In the evening, I was at a bar with my running team and there was a very nice Mets vibe.

    Today, I’ll be wearing both my Marathon medal and Mets cap with pride.

  • Usha

    Thanks Jason and Greg! So glad I discovered your blog this year. During the really dark moments during this series (esp while SNY-deprived), this was the only update I could bear to read, while the NYT yammered on with irrelevant baseball copy and Fox was even more hideous. It was an amazing year, and a comfort during a dark summer of personal loss. Thank you, guys!

  • mikeL

    ooop!

    …can be done. the royals were exciting in all the ways the mets were for a few weeks in august, but in october ouf guys were overmatched. yes unable to string hits, to capitalize on opportunity.

    brutal ending aside this was a season for the ages. maybe the best of the bunch if only for the way an aggravating team morphed into world beaters almost instantaneously…and yes, the mets played 176 games and to nov1!

    the question of signing murph and cespedes seems to have worked itself out with dull thuds…i’d have preferred ticker tape and dealing with those questions later, but there’s something to be said for clarity.

    it seems clear the mets will need steady hitters with steady gloves. the team rose largely on the fortunes of streaky hitters…and those same hitters’ gloves were the team’s undoing.
    how different would this series been had ces **caught** that first pitch off escobar’s bat (ok, there’s the what-if i’d been avoiding)?

    anyway plenty if time to take this all in an look to 2016.

    mostly just a BIG THANK YOU to greg and jason the community of fans you nurture here through your wonderful
    writing and powers of observation.

    wishing all the best for your dad greg…and wishing everyone here a quick processing of this mets defeat and a looking forward to a productive off-season and an even more productive 2016.

    LGM!

  • Z

    One of the anticipated joys of seeing your team play in the World Series is that now the whole baseball world will see what it is that’s been so exciting for you and fellow fans over the preceding half year.

    We didn’t really get much of that experience this week, which I think is what makes the Mets’ WS performance so disappointing for us diehards.

    Still there’s nothing to do now, but move on and hope against hope that the Mets get a chance to erase any lingering bitterness from this November in a revenge matchup next fall.

    In the meantime thanks to the team for a great run up until last Tuesday and to the FAFIF bloggers and commenters for a consistent perspective that is always erudite as well as impassioned.

  • Kevin From Flushing

    Thank you both, so much, for making an awesome year even better.

    No shame in losing to the Royals. Sure, we could stolen that Series with one or two more timely hits and one or two less errors, but the best team won. These were not the 2006 Cardinals or 2000 Yankees or 1988 Dodgers. The 2015 Royals were as-advertised and fully legit. It’s still a huge bummer, but the Royals deserved this far more than we did.

    Special thanks to Howie, Josh, the MLB At Bat App, and the inventor of DVR for allowing me the ability to sync up the 2015 World Series video with the WOR broadcast. I’m proud and extremely grateful to have not heard a single Joe Buck call this series.

    But the biggest thanks to the Mets. In May, the Mets would be down by 2 runs in the first inning and I’d say, “well, this game’s over.” In September we were down by 6 to the Nationals and I wasn’t even close to giving up. I didn’t think I was capable of such faith anymore. It felt so good to re-discover it and be rewarded for it.

    I greatly look forward to reminiscing on this club in the future.

  • I had two thoughts in the aftermath of Alfonso Marquez ending the 2015 Mets season on a called strike three: one, oh there’s that awful feeling again… and two, wait, you mean there won’t be any more Mets baseball in 2015?

    It was a trainwreck of a World Series and won’t be remembered fondly, but this season wound up being so much more damned fun than any of us had any right to expect.

    At season’s end, I simply wanted a few more minutes with this Mets team. (A Team! An actual team! Not a hodgepodge of faded Major League players chasing one last milestone or career minor leaguers who hope they stick around long enough to qualifying for a Major League pension.) I found myself seeking a few more innings of this specific season rather than fatalistically needing to tear the roster apart and pray replacement parts can be purchased with whatever change can be culled from the Caesar Club seat cushions. Though the end was anti-climactic, the journey with this team… man, I’d travel that road again in a heartbeat.

    Thanks beaucoup, Greg and Jason, for continuing to capture it for us Metsopotamians. Let’s do it again next year, hopefully when we’ll experience nothing but the happiest of recaps.

  • Thank you for another great year and another great end of season post. You hit the right chords at the end of the 2006 season (the year I started reading this blog) and you did it again with this post.

    I was raised a Giants fan, and have referred to the Mets as my ‘other’ team since 1984. Not my second team. So these past few years have been good for me as a baseball fan, and I was hoping to add a ‘fourth’ championship by my baseball teams, over 6 years.

    Here’s to 2016; even numbered year for the Giants, but things do look promising for the Mets, too.

    LGM!

  • Eric B.

    Great season…and 3 out of five of these games were close nail biters in which we had the lead in the late innings. Admittedly, shitty infield defense and shoddy relief pitching will be what sticks with us, but we had the Royals on the ropes in most of these games…and we beat everybody else in sight. Shout out to Greg and Jason and Wilmer, and Yoenis, and Murph, and Harvey, and DeGrom, and Thor, and Wright, and Duda, and esp. to Grandy, who was the most consistent player all year, and in the postseason.

  • Dave

    The similarities to 2000 game 5 are interesting. A starter left in too long. Two runs given up in the ninth. A team not wearing Orange and Blue celebrating a title in Queens. I was thinking about 2000 when Harvey came back out last night and I wasn’t liking it one bit.

    http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN200010260.shtml

  • wooferson

    No joy in Mudville, but plenty of gratitude here for an amazin’ ride. Thank you Jason and Greg for your literacy, context and unwavering allegiance to all things Blue & 0range. I love NY when it’s a National League town. Reading and talking baseball on Nov 2 is true gravy.

  • Mike from Atlanta

    Greg and Jason,

    The Mets might be up and down over the years but you guys are perennial World Champs. Your blog is the first thing I read after the games and when Mets news unfolds. It also helps keep the fire stoked in the winter, triggering memories of Mets players from yesterday and helping me get ready for the spring to come. Most appreciated is the way you keep things in perspective and in context while always staying true to the die hard Met fans you are. This post is a great example of that (i.e. FU*K Chase Utley and FU*K Scott Boras). Big thanks for all you do!

  • As our long seasons journey into November came to an end last nite, It was wonderful how brilliant the sun came up this morning! Shining precious light on the season that was, as you so refresh our meomories in the above narrative!
    The best 5 game World Series, I’ve seen and I have seen them all since 1966.

  • dykstraw

    thanks for this and for all you guys write.

    i hope you and your dad will be watching the next mets world series in more comfortable environs.

  • Seth Wittner

    Thanks, Greg and Jason. You make many good points. Like you, I’ll dwell on the great things that happened this year. We did get Harvey back and all we want is for him to be himself. Maybe if the big “controversy” over his innings limit had never happened he wouldn’t have felt called upon to prove his courage and team spirit by insisting on going back out there in Game 5. Thanks for nothing, Scott Boras. Listening to Babe Murphy talk to the media about how he’s loved being part of the Mets, it sounds like he has his eye on parts unknown. Too bad, he was our most consistent hitter.

    Let’s all bear in mind that we made it to the World Series and that was kind of miraculous in its own way. Maybe we can make some great trades during the winter.

  • Bob

    Met fan from Polo Grounds –1963–
    Great that Greg spent this time with his father!
    Thanks to Greg & Jason for making a great Met season even better!
    Leave it to our beloved Mets to cap off a great regular season & then beat the Dodgers & Cubs–only to poop all over themselves in The World Series.
    All credit to Royals and their NL-style playing.
    But our Mets GAVE this Series away–errors–no hitting at key times…Familia doing Benitez in game # 1…
    Was at Game #3 of 2000 Series–so I recall what a Met World Series is like–I got tickets for $60@ back then…
    All good things…….
    2015 was a big step forward for Mets and if they can build around young pitchers (I think this staff was like 1968)the future is bright.
    Let’s Go Mets–for ever & ever!

  • Gio

    I knew I would cry if they won – the way I broke down sobbing when Johan completed his no-hitter, inexplicably, unexpectedly, with joy – but I didn’t imagine I’d cry if they lost. And I didn’t. Somber, defeated, disappointed, but not in tears.

    But reading this really choked me up, and I can’t quite see through the tears right now. It truly has been a helluva season. And you guys (Greg and Jason, and all the rest of you!) are superb writers and dedicated fans and earn every bit of praise you get. This was an absolutely unforgettable season. Time will heal the bitterness from these past few losses, and then we’ll have Wilmer’s tears/heroics and Yo’s insane run and David’s feel-good story about getting back on the field and getting all the way to the World Series, surpassing what he might have thought had been the apex of his career achievements in 2006.

    Next year will be fun. Right now, I feel like I need a break. A few months should be just fine. But once Spring Training gets here, I’m going to be so ready. I love this franchise. Let’s Go Mets.

    • Eric

      Interesting that you brought up the Santana no-hitter. It offers a precedent of sorts for Collins’s decision to keep in Harvey last night.

      The Santana no-hitter also involved a controversial Collins decision against his better judgement to keep in an eager starter at the end of his outing with history in the balance.

      • Lenny65

        Howie mentioned that last night as well, Collins would have been crucified if he yanked Santana just like he would have been crucified if he lifted Harvey last night. No-win situation for him. Obviously it’s hindsight and as a fan I truly wanted to see Matt close it out last night but TC’s instincts were right on last night, he probably should have pulled him and gone with Familia there.

        I’ve never really been a huge TC fan or anything and he left me puzzled a few times but he’s catching a lot of flak today and IMO it’s sort of unfair. It wasn’t his fault that the guys who got them there all stopped hitting at the same time, no manager can overcome that. Sure, he could have shuffled the lineup but honestly, would it have mattered?

  • TJ

    Thank you, as always, for sharing this with us.

    I want to get to that place, the one where it’s all open road, high ceilings, and visions of next year. I want to be there so badly. But I’m not there yet. The wounds are still too fresh, my tear ducts are still on a hair trigger, and the gas tank that holds my faith is still depleted from emptying the tank in those final innings last night. I know I’ll get there, and by April I’ll be dreaming of another pennant again. But right now, I’m still struggling to get through a story like yours without the tears.

    All of that said, I’m glad I chose this to be the first thing I read about last night and this season. I’m glad that another fan had the same perspective I’m still wrestling with, and ended it smiling. Gives me that first bit of hope, and if there’s any lesson to be learned from this season, it’s that it all starts with a little bit.

    I’m gonna go wipe the tears from my eyes (and reconsider the multitude of hateful messages I drafted to the Phillies fans screaming LOLMets on my Facebook feed) and start rebuilding my faith. See you all next season (and sooner, I’m sure).

    Thanks again (and thanks for permitting me this space to ramble and process).

    Go Mets.

  • And thank you Greg and Jason for all your hard work and insight this season.

  • Scott M.

    Greg,

    Great post as always but you really stepped it up when all us FAFIF readers needed some straight talk about the crashing ending last night but in the context of a really fun & reinvigorating season overall. Best to your Dad.

    Jason,

    Last night’s ending felt a little like the end of Empire – just the middle part of a larger story. Any thoughts on a possible Met/Star Wars parallel?

    Thanks again for another great season guys.

  • Left Coast Jerry

    Greg and Jason,
    Thank you for guiding us through the season with entertaining and intelligent posts throughout the year.

    2015 was a magic season. Nobody expected the Mets to win the division. For me, the highlights included going to a game with you, Greg, at Citi Field in April, and meeting Black Country Met at Petco Park. I was also at the game described above in Milwaukee when deGrom broke the 7-game losing streak.

    I’m looking forward to Greg informing us when the equinox between the last pitch of 2015 and the first pitch of 2016 will occur. Obviously, it will be later than past years, and that’s a good thing.

    Give the Royals credit. They play the game the way it’s supposed to be played. Put the ball in play, and something good might happen. They did that time and again. Salvador Perez was named the Series MVP, but they could have given it to all 8 position players plus Wade Davis, Edinson Volquez, and Johnny Cueto. Let’s just say that I was impressed.

    Here’s looking forward to a productive off-season, and reading FAFIF to learn about all the nuances of potential free agents or trades.

    Again, thanks, Greg and Jason, for all you’ve done. And thanks to all the commenters, as well. You won’t find a more intelligent group of baseball fans anywhere.