1/13/12

The Greek Tragedy of the New York Met Fan

In Greek mythology Sisyphus was a king punished by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity. The OBVIOUS question, Was Sisyphus a Met fan?

The various legends of King Sisyphus do bring an eerie remembrance of Bernie Madoff to mind. He tricked his wife into slaying his rival, betrayed a Zeus to improve his portfolio and even tricked Persephone into letting him out of the underworld so he could scold his wife (for obeying his commands).

So because of the SINS of our team's ownership... have the Mets been doomed to watch the team struggle forward and fail for the rest of eternity?

The tragic fate of this Jerk of a King is similar in many ways to my experience as a Met fan. The Mets begin to climb back into relevance with Mike Piazza. They reach the world series (a year late) and fall to the Yankees. Then... that team starts to crumble. Then... they re-build. They bring in Carlos Beltran and Pedro Martinez and Tom Glavine. They promote Jose Reyes and David Wright... The team makes in to the NLCS and would go onto the World Series... but Yadier Molina... Then... the team starts to crumble. They try to cobble things together to keep that boulder from sliding all the way back down... but nothing works.

Here we are. At the bottom of the hill. The boulder that is the New York Mets is heavy, and reaching the top seems impossibly hard. Perhaps this time will be THE time, and we'll finally escape the MLB equivalent of Tartarus. Perhaps we're destined to watch that boulder backslide a few more times.

Time will tell.

3 comments:

Mack Ade said...

King Sisyphus ?

This site is getting too high-brow for me....

David Groveman said...

Truthfully, I found the image online from the NY Magazine archives and thought it was a cool concept.

Joe said...

Great analogy. Loved this article...nice work David Groveman.