Closing the Book on 15 Years of Futility

So yesterday was a good day, which was a damn good thing because the day before yesterday, Sunday, was just about as bad as they come. I was still in a serious, serious rut because I’d lost 170 bucks the night before playing in a poker game with Sippy Momo and some friends of his. It wasn’t just the amount of money I lost. It was the speed. I hemorrhaged cash. It was ugly.

So I guess you could say our story actually began Saturday night when I showed up for a friendly poker game

Hey, guys… Oh, nice to meet you, too… Wow, nice place…

only to find myself nearly two c-notes in the hole

Come again! Your money’s always good here!

in the space of maybe an hour and a half. SALT.

So, yeah, Saturday was bad, but I didn’t officially bottom out until around 8 p.m. Sunday night after Jay Feely missed those three would-be game-winning field goals.

Now look, Sippy Momo probably doesn’t want me admitting this, but the truth is that I’ve never been a big football fan. For a long time it was baseball or bust for me. This is less true today than it once was. I’ve started coming around on football this season, watching every Giants game and following the G-Men in the papers to a pretty respectable extent.

But I’m not going to pretend that the Giants can crush me the way the Mets can, not yet anyway. If in any way I needed to be reminded of that, Sunday’s horrible loss to the Seahawks provided a reminder.

Watching Feely self-destruct and Jeremy Shockey – he who had been dancing and celebrating moments before in anticipation of the Giants pulling off the biggest win of their season – and the rest of the Giants going from 60 to 0 almost as fast as I lost money in that poker game, the only thing I could think about were the following four names:

John Franco. Armando Benitez. Braden Looper. Billy Wagner.

As Jay Feely walked dejectedly off the field those three times, and as the Giants collectively walked, head down, off the field and into the clubhouse after the Seattle kicker did his job and gave the Seahawks a 24-21 win, a memory was conjured up almost instantly. More like several memories. Yes, I know that trudge. I’ve seen it one too many times.

It’s the same trudge we saw out of Armando Benitez all those years. The same one we saw out of Braden Looper so often in 2005.

Like on Opening Day when Looper wasted Pedro’s gem and sent the Mets careening to an 0-5 start.

Or when he gave up the game-winning hit to Jason Giambi that kept the Mets from wrapping up their first sweep over the Bombers at Yankee Stadium on June 26.

Or if you missed those, there was Looper on Sept. 7 against the Atlanta Braves blowing the save in a big spot not once, but twice!

In the run up to the 2005 season, I remember some columnist making the point that nothing’s worse for team morale than suffering a truly crushing defeat in a game that seems to be wrapped up. There’s nothing novel about that observation, but it couldn’t be more true.

Mets fans have grown way too accustomed to losing games in such fashion. I can say without hesitation that the Mets have never had a closer in whom I had complete confidence in all my years as a Mets fan (at least those that I can remember, the years dating back to around 1990). That’s 15 years, folks, that’s a long goddamn time. And it’s sure as hell been a lotta goddamn losses.

Now I’m not sure necessarily that what separated the Mets from the NL pennant in 1999 was Armando Benitez, even if he blew the save in Game 6 in Atlanta. And I’m not sure that we’d have won the World Series in 2000 if he’d shut the Yankees down in Game 1. Take back the grand slam by Brian Jordan in Atlanta off Johnny Franco and do the Mets make the playoffs in 2001? Who can say?

Nothing’s certain in any of those cases except the most obvious thing of all: if the Mets had won those games, any or each of them, everything that followed would have been different. Given that each of those seasons ended in disappointment, that's a start at least.

This past year, Looper blew 8 saves for the Mets. That’s eight times that he entered the game with a lead and he didn’t seal the deal. Did the Mets lose all those games? I can’t say for certain. Looking at Looper’s 4-7 record and remembering what I can from the season that was, it’s safe to say he was responsible for the Mets taking several L’s along the way, and it's certain that he was responsible for some of the most devastating ones.

For his part, Billy Wagner blew 3 saves in 2005. He’s blown a grand total of 18 in the years between 2001 and 2005, or slightly more than 3 per season. Correct the Mets’ record for Looper vs. Wagner, and the Mets instantly go from an 83-win team to an 88-win team, from 4 games over .500 to 14 games over.

That may not sound like the difference between night and day, but remember that that’s what Wagner alone should do. That quick calculus doesn’t even take Carlos Delgado into account, nor does it account for what losing Delgado means to the Marlins, or what losing Wagner means to the Phillies.

It also doesn’t account for the impact a combustible closer has on a team’s (and its fanbase’s) collective psyche. The truth is, for a long time there the Mets never had a guy who you could make an objective argument for and say he was the guy you wanted up there in the big spot.

Sure, Sippy Momo used to place the blame for each Franco/Benitez/Looper meltdown on the original Momo (who on more than one occasion bore more than a passing resemblance to the prematurely-celebrating Jeremy Shockey, if Sip is to be believed), but the fact was that none of those guys were that good.

I don’t think people would argue with me on that one regarding Looper or Franco. Some people would argue Benitez. Fair enough. He was pretty automatic in midsummer games against those pesky Cincinnati Reds or those dastardly San Diego Padres, no argument there. But the guy’s track record in big game situations speaks for itself. When you develop that kind of resume, there comes a point when you forfeit all claim to being a money closer. End of story.

But Wagner’s a cut above any of those guys. He’s a different kind of closer. He’s the kind who enters the game and throws the ball 100 mph and, in the words of Roger Dorn, can "strike this motherfucker out". He’s an intimidator. He enters the game, the other team does not expect to win. They can’t help but think that the game is over.

Now raise your hand if you think the opposing team ever thought that when Looper entered the game? Or if the Braves or Yankees ever felt that way about Benitez? Or if opposing teams saw the image of Franco trotting in to “Johnny Be Good” and immedi… you know what, don’t even get me started on Franco.

The Mets made a necessary move yesterday. Some people aren’t going to like the length of the deal, but shoring up Billy Wagner addresses the team’s most glaring weakness by adding one of the league’s special talents. Wagner is in the same class as Eric Gagne and John Smoltz – guys who have proven to be automatic. All of which is to say, Omar's $43 million gamble isn't quite as bad as the $170 one I made Saturday night.

Is Wagner in the same class as Mariano Rivera? Hopefully we’ll have an answer come next October. Until then, his signing makes October baseball a much more plausible scenario for the Mets, and it should mean that that familiar trudge, the one all Mets fans know so well and that Giants fans saw out of Jay Feely three times on Sunday, will someday be replaced with the more pristine memory of triumphant applause, congratulatory handshakes, celebratory high-fives, and champagne showers.

The rut is passed,

A.F.O.M.G.