Mike's Mets - Tuning Out the Noise

 

By Mike Steffanos

Don't listen when someone tries to sell you the "everything short of a championship is a failure" philosophy. It sucks the fun out of being a fan.

In May, back before the New York Mets' season turned to fecal material, I started writing a piece that ended up sitting on a back burner for most of the season. I always knew that I would get back to it. I just didn't think the entirety of spring and summer would pass before I did. I never conceived of the year going quite this badly for the Metropolitans, even as I began to suspect quite early on that this team wouldn't live up to all of the preseason hype. Even that didn't prepare me for the reality of a sub-.500 team, so clearly playing out the string as we head into the final week of this disastrous campaign. But, in a way, this reality check of a season reinforced the truth I hoped to convey when I began this piece.

The inspiration for this post came at the end of April while reading an item by Joel Sherman in the New York Post. He was reacting to a comment by the Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo. The Bucks had just been ousted by the Miami Heat in the playoffs. Antetokounmpo's offense, in Sherman's eyes, was to claim, "There's no failure in sports." Joel assured all of us that there is, indeed, failure in sports and broadened the point out to include the Mets and Padres, two MLB clubs who famously spent big money this past offseason:

...what the Mets and Padres have done — hyperinflating their star power and payroll the past two years — has changed the context for them. They have entered a territory annually reserved for the Yankees and Dodgers. Essentially, championship or bust. Or, at minimum, play for the championship or bust. Getting ousted early in the playoffs or — imagine — somehow not even making a larger-than-ever postseason field would mark a season as a failure. Think about the reaction if, for example, the Mets didn't even make a six-team NL playoff group.

Yeah, just imagine that reaction. Oh wait, I don't have to. 

A little background here. If you are a New York sports fan, you're unlikely to escape the mentality among those who cover the sport and many who follow it that any season that doesn't end with a parade down the canyon of heroes is an abject failure. Most of the New York sports media accepts and amplifies this thinking. And because so many in the press espouse the view, many local fans buy into it, too.

The recent roots of this belief derive from the run of success that the New York Yankees enjoyed from 1996-2000, winning four titles in five years. Even the current Yankees are victims of that success. Although they've been in the playoffs almost every year since then, they've won one solitary title during those years. None at all since 2009. This, of course, is completely unacceptable.

There isn't anything new about this thinking. As a Mets fan, I first encountered it in the 1980s. After the marvelous  "Ya Gotta Believe" season of 1973, the Mets franchise had essentially collapsed as the heirs of original owner Joan Payson struggled to keep the lights on at Shea Stadium. In truth, the Mets clubs from 1977-1983 would have been better served playing in darkness. Only the sheer awfulness of the 1980 and 1981 Cubs kept the Mets from finishing in last place for all 7 seasons. The only year in this stretch where the Mets didn't lose over 90 games was 1981, when a strike limited their season to 105 games. This era nourished a broad pessimistic streak in me that can still dominate my attitude toward the Mets if I allow it.

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