I have not always been disgruntled. There was a time when the Mets were awful, and I didn’t care. I was happy cheering for a team with an old Eddie Murray at first base. I used to get excited when Todd Hundley’s performance enhanced at bats led to long home runs. I was genuinely heart broken when the Mets replaced Lenny Dykstra with Daryl Boston. I even played third base in little league to be like Howard Johnson. I have not always been disgruntled…I would say it all started in 1999. I was a freshman in college. Life was very different than it had been in High School. I was living on my own, away from home. I was experiencing things I had never experienced before. I was becoming a lot more cynical than I had ever been in my childhood. The Mets had overachieved that season, beating the Diamondbacks in the Division series and moving on to the Braves in the NLCS. As any Mets fan knows, the Braves were the franchise’s mortal enemy in the 90s.
Fast forward to the deciding Game 6 of this series. The Mets are fighting to stay alive in this game, scoring four runs in the 7th to tie it, and 1 run in the 8th to take the lead, only for John Franco to give up the lead in the bottom half of the inning. Scoreless 9th inning sends us into extras and my stress level through the roof. I am not a loud, obnoxious screamer when watching these baseball games, but I do get very stressed out internally, and I was feeling it big time.
The 10th inning of this game was one of the more exciting innings of baseball I can remember. Benny Agbayani, one of my favorite players of all time, leads off the inning with a walk against one of the most hated pitchers Mets fans have ever known, John Rocker. Rey Ordonez pops up his bunt attempt to record the first out. Agbayani gets picked off but reaches 2nd safely on an E3. He’s moved to third on a Melvin Mora single, and then finally scores on a Todd Pratt sacrifice fly.
The bottom of the 10th does not go well as Armando Benitez, one of the many beleaguered closers the Mets have had (See Turk Wendell), gave the lead back on an Ozzie Guillen single scoring Andruw Jones.
The Mets 3-4-5 hitters go down 1-2-3 in the top of the 11th, and My Man Kenny Rogers gives up a double, a sacrifice bunt, 2 intentional walks, and one very un-intentional walk to end the game and the season for the Mets.
This is when I became disgruntled.
