the mets are history’s bitch.

yes, this REALLY happened.

*******

there is a line in one of my favorite movies – things to do in denver when you’re dead – that actually explains what life has been like as a mets fan watching the division championship slip through the team’s fingers. it involves being murdered by way of a “buckwheats” hit. i’ll let the quote speak for itself.

“Buckwheats is a whole other animal. A guy orders a buckwheats hit, it just doesn’t mean take the guy out, it means take the guy out in the most painful way possible. It means the vic should suffer. Typical buckwheat hit is to shoot a guy up the ass. Yeah, uh, ba-bing. A slug up the ass, you don’t die so much as contort for a good 15 minutes… then you die. I imagine it’s like crappin’ white-hot razor blades.”

–jack warden, things to do in denver when you’re dead

so there it is.
watching the mets lose this lead has been akin to being shot up the ass with a bullet, and then slowly and excruciatingly leaking essential body fluids until death finally (and mercifully) chokes the light from your eyes. if i had a choice between watching this season again or listening to fingernails dragging across a chalkboard at high volume in my headphones for 4 months? i pick the chalkboard… easily.

the mets were perched in first place since may. they had a seven game lead as late as september 12th… and it was gone in two weeks. the collapse of the mets was so bad, it is actually going down in the history books. yokels in flyover states across america will be clucking their tongues and shaking their heads with disbelief. hack sports journalists will be using it as a reference point for futility for years to come: “hey, the blah-blah’s just lost three in a row – look out, they’re gonna pull a METS!”

womp womp.

so thank you willie randolph. thanks, tom glavine. special thanks to you, mr. billy wagner. good job limping through the stretch run, ny mets line-up (i’m looking at you, beltran and delgado). you’ve rewarded your fans by turning their devotion into a punchline. mr. minaya – i don’t care how you fix it, just fix it. i think i speak for all mets fans when i say we’re tired of being embarrassed. why not – for once – put together a team that doesn’t make us wish we were yankee fans every october?

wishing we were yankee fans. christ, its come to that.

UPDATE:

as mentioned on ESPN’s show Pardon The Interruption, here is a link to the email the ny mets sent to their fans as an apology.

no, it doesn’t make me feel better.