PHILADELPHIA, PA – Being a Mets fan has been tough these past few years. We have seen both the Phillies and Yankees win world championships while we have floundered. We’ve heard it from our two closest and biggest rivals for far too long now. Well this past week might have signaled the beginning of the end of our misery at the hands of tormentors because those fans have new targets: the Yanks and Phils themselves. This past week the specter of another Phillies-Yankees World Series was laid to rest magnificently with both clubs losing at home in the final game of their best of five playoff series. Let’s look at how the media and the fans have responded to these defeats:
Yesterday’s Philadelphia Daily News headline declared this past weekend simply as the “Worst. Weekend. Ever.” Philly fans are downright ruthless. When they are winning, they are insufferable to be around. When they lose, they call for heads to roll faster than you can say Marie Antoinette. Every Phillies fan was convinced that the addition of Cliff Lee to their pitching staff meant their team would cruise through the NL playoffs into the World Series. Fortunately for the rest of the league, the Philly bats went colder than Ted Williams’ corpse. In a brutal blow to the already shaky fan-base, first baseman Ryan Howard finished off another pathetic post-season by blowing out his Achilles tendon while making the final out of the series. He barely made it out of the batters box before his legs gave out. My question is: Was it his 300 lb frame or the weight of his $125-million contract extension which caused him to crumple to the ground in agony like one of Michael Vick’s canines?
Speaking of the surname Howard, Saturday’s New York Post delivered a headline “The Three Stooges” with Alex Rodriguez as Moe, Mark Teixeira as Larry and Nick Swisher as Curly. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk. Yankee fans want blood and these three are pretty good targets. A-Rod was an easy out all post-season and Tex and Swish have a combined .165 average over 55 playoff games as Yankees. Maybe they should stop poking each other in the eyes before their at bats. What makes matters worse (or in my case much much better) is that Teixeira and Rodriguez are in the middle of contracts that total nearly half a billion dollars and run through 2017. Pretty soon Yankee fans are going to want Maddoff trustee Irving Picard to go after these guys for running a Ponzi scheme on them.
More likely than not, the Yankees and Phillies will be right back in the post-season next year with the Mets on the outside looking in once again. But maybe, just maybe, this is the beginning of the end of our great national pastime nightmare. Not only did the Yanks and Phils lay an egg but the Red Sox and Braves had epic collapses of their own.
Don’t forget that Jose Reyes became the first Met to ever win a batting title. In reality this has been the best September-October to be a Mets fan in a long time. Things certainly are looking up.
Stay tuned tomorrow for Angry Ward, who is also a little less angry after the previous week’s baseball results.
