Reese Kaplan -- After 38 Years the Crosstown World Series Happened

After the monster offensive and defensive output of the 1999 team failing to progress to the World Series, the fans were ready for more.  How much more they expected and wanted could not be measured as the season would result in a World Series folks had been hoping to see since the Mets broke into the National League in 1962.  This World Series would pit the New York Mets against the perennially contending New York Yankees, winner take all.

Darryl Hamilton CF

Robin Ventura 3B

Mike Piazza C

Todd Zeile 1B

Rey Ordonez SS

Edgardo Alfonzo 2B

Derek Bell RF

Rickey Henderson LF

Mike Hampton SP

Leading up to the postseason was a lineup that included many carryovers from 1999 but a few significant new faces as well:

While this assortment was not quite up to the greatest infield ever metric, they were still a solid ballclub and the team moved to improve the starting pitching which had been seriously lacking in 1999.  

In addition to Mike Hampton coming to the Mets, they still had Al Leiter and Rick Reed who were joined by Glendon Rusch and Bobby Jones.  It was still not the staff that inspired fear in opposing hitters, but Hampton finished the year going 15-10 with a very nice 3.14 ERA.  Al Leiter improved to a team leading 16-8 with a 3.20 ERA as well.  The others, well, they kept the Mets within range of winning games. 

As the season drew to a close the Mets were in second place a game behind the Braves which was good enough for the wildcard berth into the postseason.  

The Mets made it a bit of a wild ride, losing the first game in the best of five series against the San Francisco Giants.  They then got the comeback game at what is now called Oracle Park.  They headed to New York to square off and the Mets captured the two games there for a three game comeback sweep of the Giants.

After the Cardinals did away with the Atlanta Braves, the Mets were set to face them for the National League Championship series to see who would move on to play in the World Series.  This time the Mets started off quite a bit better, winning the first two games against the Cardinals on their home turf of Shea Stadium.  Although the Cardinals took the third game in Queens, the Mets finished it up with two straight over the Redbirds at Busch Memorial Stadium.  

All of the regular season and playoff baseball was, however, chump change as the World Series berth meant a chance for the first time ever to play the legendary New York Yankees in the time of year when they were kings.  The Mets started off with the Series opening at Yankee Stadium where the Bronx Bombers ran off two straight victories.

Perhaps most memorable during these games was the infamous Roger Clemens bat throwing incident when he retried a broken bat fragment from a swing taken by Mike Piazza and hurled it at the man running down the line to first base.  A comment taken from the video said that even as a Yankee fan he had to admit Mike Piazza had more class in his little toenail than Roger Clemens had in his whole body.

The Mets did manage to eke out a victory by the score of 4-2 in front of their hometown fans at Shea.  Unfortunately that was the sole highlight for the club as the Yankees finished off the World Series with two more victories, sealing their third straight World Series Championship and 26th overall while Mets fans slunk out of Shea with bitter disappointment.