Mets Fans to Spend Fall Driving Knish's Truck

Mikey McD, Mets Fans Know the Feeling

Kevin Gregg collected the rake. Once Carlos Beltran's meek infield pop up landed in Dan Uggla's glove I was one of the 50,000 or so at Shea sitting in my seat. Speechless. Mouth agape. Emotionally and, by extension, physically paralyzed. I'd attented about 20 games over the course of the season as a partial season ticket holder. Watched a frighteningly high percentage of the other 140 or so. Spent countless hours, energy and breath on the New York Mets. And, here, sitting in the Loge section at Shea, our hopes had vanished.

Like Mikey McDermott, we'd gone bust, and it was like getting hit by a freight train even though the warning signs had been there for miles. The expression on Mikey McD's face after getting cleaned out by Teddy KGB in Rounders is the only adequate analogy I've been able to come up with in the past twelve or so hours since leaving Flushing.

Like other Mets fans around the world, I'd been watching the events of the last month, but almost in a semi-detached manner. As if this was all an out-of-body experience that really wasn't happening. Hell, our playoff tickets arrived in the mail yesterday. In retrospect, it was very similar to that "zone" you find yourself in Vegas or at the poker table. That things-may-be-going-badly-but-I've-still-got-chips-on-the-table mentality. Until they're not...

Only a few weeks ago, Mets fans had been dreaming about our own World Series. With Pedro coming back, Delgado on the mend, Wright heating up, the cards seemed to be falling in our favor. Then "it" started happening. The collapse has been so well-documented that embedding a bunch of links here now is utterly superfluous.

Thinking back it almost would have been fitting if the Braves had been the ones drilling us down the stretch. If our KGB-like arch nemesis had given us a final "if we're going down, you're going down with us" push under the waves, it might have seemed like some sort of sick poetic justic. But it wasn't Teddy KGB inflicting our pain. It was a bunch of freakin' tourists and, I guess appropriately, fish.

So, as I sit here today I'm stilling trying to come to grips with it all. Like any self-respecting Mets fan, I'd be lying if I said I thought this team was taking us to the f&*!ing Mirage. But you never know what can happen once you get a seat at the table. Instead, we'll be driving Knish's truck...and wondering how we came up short.