Ahh, 1969.
I was a mere, bespectacled teenager when the Mets' Cinderella team won the World Series in 1969. How incredibly elating that was! (I had more power than Bud Harrelson, just to let you know, but who didn't? I digress.)
Little did I (or any of us sufferers) know then that the Mets would win just one more series (in 1986) over the next 51 seasons.
That one was a nail biter, but so utterly joyous when we won. Won for the second time. 1969 and 1986 - two miracle years won in very different manners, with the 1986 team clearly expected to be the best team in baseball. Cherished memories.
Over those 51 years since 1969, 7 MLB teams have not won a single world series. In order to be repeat winners, you need perennial losers. So, let me say to them right here, THANK YOU.
Of the teams that have won world series over the past 51 years, 9 of them won just once, leaving the sheer joy of the other 42 world series wins over that span to just 13 teams.
Seven of those teams have won 3 or more times - they have, in total, won 27 of those 51 world series, include the following:
YANKEES - 7
OAKLAND - 4
BOSTON - 4
GIANTS - 3
DODGERS - 3
ST LOUIS - 3
CINCINNATI - 3
Why were the Mets only a winner once after 1969? Well, the narrow losses in 1973, 1988, and 2015 were clearly factors.
But of the above teams, only 4 (Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, and Giants) have been frequent recent winners, and only the first 3 teams seem willing and able to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to be year-in, year-out STRONG AND COMPELLING CONTENDERs for the crown. And, despite Atlanta only winning 1 crown in that span, I would add them in there, too, as they have been in the playoffs so many times over the past 30 years. It just hasn't gone their way.
The Mets need to join the post-1969 Multi-World Series Club over their next 10-20 years. The only way to get there is to do what the Yankees, Dodgers, and Red Sox do - fight tooth-and-nail to do everything possible, and shrewdly spend like drunken sailors, to win a world series each season.
Given the multi-round playoffs of today's game, vs, the single round playoffs that garnered the Yankees so many titles in the 1950s, it is impossible to expect to win a World Series Crown every year.
But, like the Yankees, this Mets team, starting in 2021, needs to build a superior team with the goal of doing exactly that.
Which obviously was not the Wilpons' goal, which instead seemed to be "meaningful September baseball". Too many times, of course, we ended up with meaningless September baseball.
Heck, as we fanatics know, this team has only MADE the playoffs 7 times in the past 51 years, an incredibly unacceptable rate. 87% of the seasons without playoffs! Egads!
It is time, right now, to PERMANENTLY raise the team's sights and non-negotiable goals to WINNING A WORLD SERIES EACH YEAR, NO MATTER WHAT THE OTHER 29 TEAMS TRY TO DO TO PREVENT IT.
Nothing else will suffice. Nothing.
We've waited, and starved, for too long.
We Mets fans want to have a team that is the envy of the entire baseball world again.
If you build it, we will come!
Steve Cohen, please establish a:
METS RENAISSANCE IN QUEENS
First he needs to build a business plan. That involved hiring front office people. Thus far he's failed miserably at doing so.
ReplyDeleteHopefully, deep pocket acquisitions near term will allow the Mets to temporarily override an incomplete front office.
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