Oh My God -- the roller-coaster of emotions, the mental, physical, psychic and spiritual ups and downs of being a sports fan. (Fellow Mets' fans, you know exactly what I mean!)
As a life-long Mets' fan, I understand the hopes, the joys, the anguish, and the disappointments of loving a team that will more often break your heart than make it into the post-season. (As I've said to console fellow Mets' fans many a season, if all we cared about was winning then we'd be Yankees' fans.)
Last night was the last home game of the Mets' 2024 season and I watched it on ESPN along with millions of other people -- both Mets' fans and normal folk alike. I had attended the prior day's game at Citi Field as part of the sellout crowd. They were in the midst of a four-game series against the division-leading and decades-long rivals, the Philadelphia Phillies. I don't hate the Phillies; after all, they're not the Mets' ultimate nemesis and archfiend Atlanta Braves! (Plus my one-time favorite Met, the late Tug McGraw, was traded to the Phillies way back when I was a young lass. My heart was broken for a time, yes, but eventually I got used to seeing him wearing red instead of the familiar blue and orange, so I have a soft spot for the Phils, just like I do for the Cleveland Indians -- I mean Guardians -- because my relatives in Ohio love them so much.)
Back in May, a month when our record was nine and nineteen, few Mets' fans would have dreamed we'd now be among the three wild-card leaders, with a good chance of making it to the first round of the playoffs. (If the season ended today, we'd be tied with the Diamondbacks for the last wild-card spot, and two games ahead of the displaced Braves.) The Mets even have a theoretical chance of overtaking the Phillies for the division title. The Phils have clinched a playoff spot, though because the Mets beat them last night, they haven't clinched the division just yet. (Thank the baseball gods that the boys from Philadelphia didn't get to celebrate that milestone at the last home game of the regular season on our turf!) I have no doubt the Phillies will clinch the NL East title -- their magic number is one -- and they deserve it since they really are a great team.
Attending the next-to-last home game of the season on Saturday at Citi Field was AMAZING! The Phillies took an early lead but the Mets came back in the bottom of the second inning to tie and go ahead by a run. The Phils re-tied it in the fifth, and it stayed that way until the Mets scored three times in the bottom of the seventh. Even that comfortable lead was cut by a run when the Phils scored in the top of the eighth. But Edgar Diaz held them at bay, and with the Mets matching that run in the bottom of the inning, we finished with a six to three victory, and Edgar got a well-deserved save. (Did you hear those trumpets playing, Mets' fans?)
Buckle your seat belts, Mets' fans, because we have a crucial three-game series against the Braves starting on Tuesday, and then we end the season in Milwaukee with three against Brewers, who have already clinched the Central Division title. So six more games -- six more chances for the Mets to either cement a play-off spot, or break their fans' hearts.
But I won't be here to watch ANY OF THAT. Tomorrow, just as the Braves are taking the field in Atlanta against our boys, I'll be getting on a plane for my ten hour flight to Turkey! (Unless, of course, my flight gets delayed and I'm stuck at JFK for a few hours or more. If that happens, I'm sure every bar and restaurant at the airport will have the game on TV -- we're in QUEENS, for goodness' sakes.) I don't return home until the middle of October, at which point the League Championship Series will just be getting underway -- I can only pray that the Mets will still be in it then!
I arrive in Istanbul at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning (3 a.m. New York time), so once I get to my hotel and take my phone off "airplane mode" I can check the box score from Tuesday's opener against the Braves. Then I will be sightseeing and focusing on the beautiful country I am visiting for the next two and a half weeks, and not thinking about baseball at all (yeah, right...). The chances of finding a TV in Turkey with Mets' games are infinitesimally small. There's an outside chance that when the first round of MLB playoffs begins on October 1, they will be shown on some TV in some bar, somewhere in a large Turkish city. I will be in Kusadasi on the turquoise coast of the Aegean that day, hopefully not thinking about baseball.
