A Distant, Painful Replay

By Mike McGann
Posted Sunday, March 4, 2007

And there it is again, the seventh inning. Tied, 1-1, three innings from a trip to the World Series. The tension at Shea Stadium thick and pressing on you, threatening to drive the air from your lungs in one burst.

And, somehow, despite the details being different, the end result seems to turn out the same. Sometimes, it’s Chad Bradford giving up homers to Pujols and Edmonds in the eighth (what the hell was he doing still in there in the eighth?) and sometimes it’s Paul Lo Duca’s weak liner to shortstop that ends the season (maybe because some lunkhead manager allowed Bradford to hit in the eighth).

You play it over and over again, different details, same result. The Cardinals beat the Mets and go on to the World Series. John Miller and Joe Morgan are effusive in the praise for Oliver Perez and talk about how the Mets’ bats went dead. It just keeps repeating like some kind of twisted, evil version of Groundhog Day.

I’m not sure whether the demo for MLB 2K7, out this week for XBox 360, is therapy or just torture for Mets’ fans. I’m sure there’s a way to win the scenario, a way to cosmically undo that called strike three. Damned, if I’ve found it yet, though. It seems a bit like the demo is predisposed to having the Mets lose — or it’s a mental block on my part. But because of the vastly improved graphics and player modeling, it is eerily like watching the real game — except you’re the one with the bat on the shoulder, seeing that killer Adam Wainwright curveball.

Undoubtedly, Mets fans around the country find themselves trying, on some level, to undo that pitch, replay those innings when the Mets’ bats went dead and find some version of reality where Carlos Beltran rips that curve into the gap.

And those same three innings used for the demo are still hanging over Mets’ fans — whether they’re gamers or not — this spring. For a few weeks last year — even with the pitching injuries — they believed. They saw all the old familiar signs of the Miracle Mets, the bits of pixie dust with this team that can turn us all back into nine-year-olds. And it looked again like they would snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and be Amazin’ once again.

And then Beltran’s knees buckled and it was over. It was like Bambi getting shot at the end of the movie: sudden, jarring, unexpected. Painful.

The whole off-season seemed like a celebration that should have been and wasn’t. The team, after winning 97 games, didn’t make any major moves, just tinkered at the edges, and Mets’ fans had little to feel re-energized about. And now the usual joy, expectation and hope of the spring somehow seems muted.

Mets’ fans are having trouble embracing a team that is probably, again, the best team in the National League. Instead of getting angry when the monkey-brained Steve Phillips picks the Mets third (third? third? When did ESPN start handing out crystal meth to on-air “talent”?) they instead just shake their heads and agree. “We shoulda got more pitching.”

And so Mets’ fans watch, but don’t trust. They care, but don’t dare to hope. Even with the March snows melting around them, they’re transported back to an October night in Flushing and one breaking ball that shattered their dreams.

When one curveball became the stuff of nightmares.