I usually leave blind faith in disappointing teams fighting for playoff scraps to those who live in America’s Second City. No doubt you’ve read more than your fair share about the trials and tribulations of being in those shoes. After all, it’s been eight whole years in baseball and 26 years in basketball since either won a World’s Championship.
Well, it’s 38 years for my admitted source of passion and consternation, the New York Mets. It was actually a little easier early on this year when a team coming off a sub-.500 year, trading two oft-injured veteran Cy Young winners by August and then having to settle for a Yankee bench coach as manager and a Brewers wunderkind as GM effectively crapped the bed. As Mets fans, we’ve been conditioned to expect those kind of results.
But then, miracle upon miracles, they somehow turned it around. Amazingly, it all coincided with the call-up of a 35-year old infield replacement who was out of the game for a while and an inexplicable turnaround inspired by a relic from 70s McDonald’s commercials, as FOX SPORTS’ Alex Conrad wrote at the time:
(O)n June 12 — the individual in question’s supposed birthday — the Mets found their spark from the unlikeliest of sources.
Grimace, the 53-year-old purple McDonald’s mascot pear-shaped body, trotted out to the mound with a Mets cap for the ceremonial first pitch at Citi Field.
Donning an oversized baseball glove and with Vito Calise, the Mets’ Head of Podcasts at home plate, Grimace tossed the ball wide of the strike zone.
But it mattered little.
Grimace, with a positive expression permanently etched upon its face, gleefully skipped to home plate to collect the ball and lap up the moment.
Little did we know that that middle infield call-up, one Jose Iglesias, or as the music world knows him, “Candelita”, would become literally the face and voice of the franchise, leading the team for the last two months in OPS and becoming the only major leaguer with a top-rated music video in known history. His OMG has become the soundtrack of a summer where the Mets have one of the top five records in baseball and for a spell had them ahead of arch-rival Atlanta in the battle for the third Wild Card.
And Grimace would somehow evoke memories of another 70s favorite, Tug McGraw, who effected a similar turnaround with his own effusive “YA GOTTA BELIEVE!” which helped a team dead last in their division in late August somehow go on a tear that carried them through to a division title, an upset over heavily favored Cincinnati in the NLCS and within one game of knocking off the defending World Champion Oakland A’s in the World Series (if only they could have convinced Tom Seaver to start Game 6).
But a week ago things started to get dicey. Those same A’s, in the last year of their existence as an Oakland franchise and now among the league doormats, took two of three at the outset of a nine-game homestand. And the equally inept Miami Marlins stole a crucial Sunday game that disrupted any momentum. And then a team certain to make the playoffs and yet another old World Series opponent, the Baltimore Orioles, came to town.
And just when things began to look truly dark, bookending a horrificly played fielding farce on Tuesday night, the Mets stayed competitive enough to win two of the final three of this homestand in equally dramatic walkoff fashion off the same pitcher, a Phillies castoff no yes. On Monday night it was Francisco Alvarez, the struggling catcher. And yesterday afternoon the game-winner came from an even more unlikely source, as SPORTS ILLUSTRATED’s Patrick Andres reported this morning:
When New York Mets pinch-hitter Jesse Winker stepped to the plate in the ninth inning of a 3–3 game Wednesday in Queens, he was a man badly in need of a home run.
Winker had hit well enough (.275) since coming over via trade on July 28, but hadn’t been able to find the modest power stroke he had with the Washington Nationals—for whom he hit 11 home runs in 101 games.
Consider that stroke found. On a 3-2 four-seam fastball from pitcher Seranthony Dominguez, Winker crushed a 417-foot home run to center field that handed the Mets a 4–3 victory over the Baltimore Orioles.
So now the Mets venture West for a truly crucial road trip against the two teams they currently trail in the Wild Card race, the San Diego Padres and the Arizona Diamondbacks. Both teams on respective .700-plus paces in recent weeks while the Mets have yo-yoed back and forth. But thanks to the Braves’ 2021-like rash of injuries, the Mets are are very much within striking distance, a mere 1.5 games back of them and, at least for now, staving off the onslaught of other teams such as the Giants, Cardinals and yes, the Cubs who are clinging to even lesser life.
When you listen to as many effevescent and upbeat podcasts as I do, you’re somehow talked into this being indeed a magical time, and one to be grateful for considering where we were pre-Grimace and Candelita.
But if you’ve had 38 years of more negative results than not, and yes, I’m including the 1988 playoffs and the 2015 World Series, you’re otherwise predisposed to be, at best, dubious.
So yes, I’ll be watching this roadtrip with eager eyes and trepidation, if for no other reason than they’ll be playing in my time zone and I’ll be able to watch them via MLB without a blackout on a real TV.
But my perpetually queasy stomach will be challenged. And, sorry, Grimace, ain’t no way you’re gonna trick me into a Big Mac. But maybe you might just “Tug” on my heartstrings enough to get me to believe.
Courage…