2015 was never supposed to be "the year".
I keep telling myself this, almost 9 days after I sat at my dining room table, listening to Howie Rose and Josh Lewin one last time this baseball season. It was nearly a month longer than I had ever expected to be listening to them when I started back in April. The 2015 World Series on WOR, brought to you by AutoZone, words that almost didn't seem real even as they were speaking them.
Even if the Mets had won, I think I still would have been a little sad - I did not want the 2015 season to be over. Sure, it would have been better if we had finished as World Series champions, but I didn't want it to be over. I'm still sad about it today, on November 9th.
2015 was never supposed to be "the year".
I don't know why or how I willed myself to believe that this could be the year. I buried myself for several days in Greg Prince's book, Faith and Fear in Flushing and I thought well, why not us? I was excited about 2015. I was excited because I figured we would at least be respectable, especially with the second wild card. These are the types of things you think of as a Mets fan. Expectations get tempered and when those expectations are exceeded, well, it makes it that much sweeter.
2015 was never supposed to be "the year".
Until we won 11 straight games.
Until we had a really formidable starting rotation.
Until Jeurys Familia became the closer we desperately needed.
Until the Mets nearly dropped below .500 at the end of July, when the Padres handed us two awful losses, the Mets picked up my spirit animal Juan Uribe (and Kelly Johnson), Wilmer Flores was traded, and then cried, and then wasn't traded, and the next day the Mets blew a 7 run lead, traded for Yoenis Cespedes, and then Flores hit a walk off HR to bring the Nats NL East lead down to 2 games with a chance to tie, if the Mets could sweep.
Until that "if" happened.
Until turnabout was fair play when the Mets came back from a 7 run deficit of their own to beat the Nationals and basically make the statement that the NL East was our division to lose, no matter what scruffy Jason Werth had to say.
Until we won the NL East in September.
Until we beat Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke and kept the Doyers in LA.
Until we beat, and not just beat, but owned the Cubs who had a 7-0 regular season record against us. That was an interesting week for our family, considering my husband and first born child outnumbered me on that front as Cubs fans.
There were so many more great moments this year. There would be way too many just to list here.
2015 was never supposed to be "the year".
I listened to or watched every one of these moments. There were a few others I missed here and there, because, life, but for the most part, I invested myself in the 2015 Mets more than I had in a long time.
I guess you could call 2015 a mixed portfolio.
I've been a Mets fan for a very long time. I've seen amazing moments. I've felt some killer heartbreak.
Kenny Rogers walks in a run.
The Yankees win a third straight title at our expense. I remember crying after game 4 because I knew it was basically over. I was 16 and I was crying over a baseball game. There's no crying in baseball, or so they say. But there is crying in life, and sometimes you are just so passionate about things that the line between the two is blurry and everything kind of mixes together. I have no shame in that. 2000 was the first time I had seen a game at Shea. It was a crazy year. I think I was probably crying for more than just the baseball.
2006. In some ways, that was almost harder to swallow than what happened 9 days ago.
2007. Never again will I make any predictions at anyone's wedding reception that is baseball related. Nor will I ever say a darn thing until that E# is ZERO.
So here I am now on November 9th, with an unrealized dream once again. That said, there were many, many great returns on my fan investment after years of a "bear market" so to speak. But the market pretty much came crashing down after the Mets collapsed and the wheels came completely off the cart in game 5 against the Royals. And to give them credit, they took full advantage of every single opportunity we gave them (because there were plenty of times we served them up some opportunities on a platter - but good teams take advantage and that's what KC did).
Every huge Mets moment in my life has intersected with something that is as big if not bigger. 1999 and 2000 coincided with a move across the country. We got engaged in 2006 in the middle of the NLCS. This year, my mom was in the hospital with some pretty serious heart and lung issues and to be honest, it was touch and go. I was really scared. I just wanted my mom to be okay, baseball be damned.
Every baseball season begins with an unrealized dream, for everyone. No one knows what is going to transpire either in baseball or everyday life.
When the Mets got to the World Series in 2015, I knew that no matter the outcome, the end of the season would bring some sadness. For the first time, possibly in my life, I just didn't want the baseball season to end.
All the ups and downs and twists and turns that 2015 gave us is what made this season great. All the warts and flaws our guys had, and the fact that they overcame that to go about as far as they could possibly go, is what made us love this team.
And it just won't be the same next year.
Every year our eighth graders recite "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost as part of the curriculum. It's amazing to me how poetry and life and baseball can be so intertwined. The great Walt Whitman once said, "Baseball is our game, the American game...it will repair these losses and be a blessing to us".
On the day of game 5, November 1, I took the first born to the park. She walked beneath a huge, beautiful gingko tree adorned in golden leaves. I knew that soon, it would just be dull and barren, as all trees are in the winter.
It reminded me of the poem our eighth graders recite each year.
It reminded me that all good things must come to an end.
It reminded me that life continues on in its own winding, crazy path.
Nature's first green is gold,
The hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
The Mets gave me possibly the best "hour" of baseball I've had - maybe ever - in 2015. That is one reason this season is just so hard to give up. For me, it was truly gold.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Nothing gold can stay - but luckily for us, it does return every year in the spring. And maybe, just maybe, next year is the year I've been waiting three decades for. But for now, we wait out the dreary winter until pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training. And for now, I'll look forward to that day in February when baseball wakes from its long winter's nap and brings us the joy, and pain, and turmoil it always does.
