Reese Kaplan -- It's Always Darkest Before the Dawn, Folks

Well, there’s normal negativity and then there’s throw in the towel negativity.  Do a little reading about the current state of affairs for the New York Mets and you will see that the scales most definitely tip towards the hurling of a large piece of fluffy cotton cloth. 

Wins and losses are obviously very important but there’s no guarantee for either side.  Remember back in 1969 the Mets made their improbable run from perennial losers for the rest of the decade into a World Series against the Baltimore Orioles.  They had Tom Seaver on the mound and all was right with the world — until it wasn’t.  Facing a lineup that contained folks like Frank Robinson, Boog Powell, Brooks Robinson, future Mets manager Davey Johnson and others, the Orioles made the seemingly invincible Seaver look merely mortal.  

After giving up a first inning home run to Don Buford he gave up three more runs in the 4th inning to provide the Orioles with a 4-0 lead.  The Mets managed to gain one run back in the 7th on a sacrifice fly y light hitting Al Weiss, but Mike Cuellar was too much to handle and pitched his team to a complete game 4-1 victory. 

Now at that time I was a kid having just turned 9 years old the previous month and while I was not yet capable of differentiating between optimism and pessimism, I did feel like the happy ride to October had come to a crashing halt.  If the Orioles could hit against our best pitcher and we couldn’t do the same against theirs, well, maybe the Mets simply were not as good as I’d come to believe. 

Of course, as history shows, after that stunning Game One loss in which the Mets appeared ill equipped to take on the big boys from Baltimore, the Mets went on to deliver a four game winning streak to deliver the World Series Championship to the boys from Flushing.  Somehow they were able to shake off what had happened and regrouped to play the formula of winning baseball that brought them to the national stage.

Do you want more inspiration?  Think about Terry Francona, then skipper of the Boston Red Sox back in 2004 faced a seemingly insurmountable mountain.  In the American League Championship Series the Red Sox lost the first three games to the Yankees and faced a quick exit from their October dream.  

Somehow Francona was able to motivate his troops to win the next game...and the next...and the next...and then to take Game 7 for the first in baseball history come-from-behind to win a series 4-3 after having been down 0-3.  For good measure the Red Sox continued in undefeated fashion to take the World Series from Tony La Russa’s Cardinals in four straight.

While no one is suggesting that Carlos Mendoza has the same magic formula in his back pocket, history has indeed shown that when it appears to be pretty grim good things can still happen.