CAN'T WIN 'EM ALL by Tom Brennan

CAN'T WIN 'EM ALL by Tom Brennan

I guess 162-0 was not meant to be.  Oh, man, come on, I thought "this season, for sure."   So did Charlie Brown.

But how often has winning the season's first game portended a season of Mets’ success?  Hmm....lemme think...

After the Mets lost their first 8 season openers, they'd gone 35-11 in the next 46 openers through 2015.  Truly remarkable.  Winning 76% of those openers led to…let’s see…four world series appearances since 1970.  That's 8.7%.  Not a lot of correlation there.

And sure, going back to spring training, they've lost 15 of 16.  But 15 of those were spring training practice games and Pappy always told me, “Son, spring games don’t count.” 

Aside from the Cespedes gaffe (after which I  swore I heard Britney Spears say, "Whoops, he did it again"), they didn't look so bad on Sunday against a highly successful and talented KC squad.  So I'm not sweating that loss one bit. I won't allow myself to sweat this.

The Mets have won 100 regular season games just twice in over 50 years. In 1986, a year they won an amazing 108, they started out the season going 2-3...then ripped off, as I recall, 18 of the next 19. And still lost 1/3 of the season's contests.   They lost 62 games in the legendary 1969 season, too. 

Nope, losing one game does not a season make, nor dictate what that season will become. I haven't given up hopes of 100 wins this year because of 1 opening day loss.  Anyway, including the games we'll win in the playoffs, winning 100 will be cake this year.

To be honest, I am by nature a "sky is falling" type.  The Dow drops 50 points and I have to talk myself off the ledge.  Not really, but things going bad can catch my attention with intensity, whereas something going equally as good or better does not.  

So, losing the first game, I can get like "wow, is Rod Serling going to show up and we'll go 0-162? Queue up the Twilight Zone theme music."  Nope, not this time, fellas and ladies. No ledge, no Twilight Zone music.  Lots of wins coming our way instead.

This team has splendid, superbly talented starters, a solid pen and a competent offensive squad.  We can't win them all...but we'll sure win a lot of them. Rod Serling is long gone, as for the most part are twilight double headers, and we will show him how it is done in Metsville.

YEAH…CAN'T WIN EM ALL. THE TEAM WILL MAKE MISTAKES.  ALL TEAMS DO.  BUT IT WILL BE EXCITING. AND I STILL THINK THEY'LL BE BACK IN THE SERIES.  ONE GAME DOES NOT CHANGE THAT.  COUNT ME IN FOR MEANINGFUL OCTOBER (AND NOVEMBER) BASEBALL.