Mets escaping Braves doubleheader in playoffs ought to ease followers anticipating worst

Earlier than we get to the recollections that will probably be foremost on the thoughts of Mets followers via the 18-inning torture chamber that awaits them Monday afternoon in Atlanta, let’s begin with a happier one. Let’s return to 1973, which was the one different time that dangerous climate pressured the Mets to play a doubleheader on the day after the common season was supposed to finish.

Let’s return to Oct. 1, 1973. A number of days of Forrest Gump rain — you already know: “little bitty stingin’ rain … and large ol’ fats rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And typically rain even appeared to return straight up from beneath — had washed out two days of video games in Chicago. They must play doubleheaders Sunday and Monday.

And when Monday got here, they wanted to win one out of two at Wrigley Discipline to clinch the NL East. They gained the primary, in additional rain, and the umps mercifully referred to as the second with nothing left to play for.

“We’d have waited ’til Thanksgiving if we needed to,” Tug McGraw stated afterward, “and if that’s the case we might’ve gained the sport then, too.”

They have been a brash and assured bunch, these Mets, and so have been their followers. This was throughout a stretch of their historical past when Mets followers really anticipated good issues to occur to them. There was the miracle of ’69. There was the mini-miracle of ’73. Later there could be a lot luck and so many most well-liked bounces in October of 1986 it was laborious to maintain observe of all of them.

The Mets misplaced lots, positive, at the start after which in between, however it’s laborious to establish one recreation they misplaced earlier than Sept. 11, 1987, that may be referred to as genuinely gut-wrenching, as in the-baseball-gods-hate-us gut-wrenching.

Then Terry Pendleton hit a ninth-inning residence run off Roger McDowell at previous Shea Stadium, that means the Mets weren’t going to go the Cardinals and defend their championship. A yr and a month later, additionally at Shea, Mike Scioscia took Doc Gooden deep in one other calamitous ninth inning and so it will be the Dodgers, and never the Mets, who could be going to the 1988 World Sequence.

And after that …

Effectively, we gained’t even get into what occurred in 2007 and ’08, as a result of should you’re studying this you definitely know what occurred in 2007 and ’08. We’ll use the next names, and assume you already know the context all too effectively: Yadier Molina, Alex Gordon, Conor Gillaspie — a troubling troika that darkened the clouds so many Mets followers endlessly see loitering.

However no crew has added to the index of indigence extra the Atlanta Braves. There was 1998, once they swept the Mets three video games, when one Met win would’ve certified them for a play-in with the Cubs and Giants. There was 1999, when a late-season sweep eased the Braves previous the Mets and into first place and them near the brink, after which a couple of weeks later when each Armando Benitez and John Franco blew saves, and Kenny Rogers couldn’t throw a strike when he desperately wanted to.

There was Sept. 23, 2001, two nights after Mike Piazza’s endlessly residence run, when Benitez gave up a three-run ninth inning lead, the Mets’ surge towards a miracle playoff push stalled, and boos returned to New York Metropolis for the primary time since 9/11. Six days later, Brian Jordan hit a walk-off grand slam off Franco to cap a seven-run ninth.

There have been too many Chipper Jones moments to rely. Too many Greg Maddux gems. Too many Freddie Freeman bases-clearing gappers. And for the cherry, there have been the three video games on the finish of the 2022 season during which the Braves sped previous the Mets to the NL East.

Now, the Mets must win one recreation in Atlanta on Monday. A cut up will get them an 89th win on the season and a seat on the desk within the NL playoffs.

And that is why I began with that Monday doubleheader, in the future shy of 51 years in the past. I want one factor for Mets followers: one victory Monday. Possibly that’s what it would take to permit them to consider that dumb luck impacts virtually each crew, that there are not any jinxes, hexes, poxes or curses on their path.

I hope they’ll channel J.D. Martinez, who in Sunday’s 5-0 win in Milwaukee ended an 0-for-36 skid with a few hits. He exhorted his teammates — whom he may see have been urgent because of an ill-timed three-game dropping streak — to let all of it go.

“If you happen to lose, you lose,” he stated. “There’s no level in stressing about it. Exit and luxuriate in your self. That’s when this crew is at it’s greatest, after we’re having a superb time.”

None of that can put followers who’ve seen an excessive amount of relaxed till the Mets report one twenty seventh out Monday. As soon as upon a time, Mets followers won’t even have bothered to look at: they knew great things was going to occur. Now they won’t have the ability to maintain down breakfast. Possibly one win Monday afternoon gained’t change that endlessly.

However it will be a rattling good begin.