Y2K6: Looking Back on a Year of Mets Baseball

(Note: A quickie by Sip follows this one from A.F.O.M.G.)

It's been a hell of a year here at Y2K. We passed the one-year mark, launched version 2.0, followed a winner, cried with a loser, and experienced everything in between.

We follow baseball here, and that's what baseball consists of. The highs are high, the lows are low, and the rollercoaster of it all is something we love, even if there have been more valleys than peaks over the years.

What I wanted to do today was take a look back at the year that's past. One of the nice things about running a site like this that updates every day is that it allows you to look back at your past and conjure up very specific moments, and the feelings associated with them as well.

So what I've done is I've gone through the archives month-by-month and selected the 12 articles that capture where I was in each of those months. To my fellow bloggers, please understand that the posts below are mostly by me for no other reason than that, naturally, the ones I wrote more firmly entrench me in specific moments.

Please note that you can access the original articles by clicking the blue headers.

January 11, 2006: Dudes Who Love the Man Upstairs

OK, most of these are going to be by me, but not this one. This was a classic Sip post. Completely out of left field, nothing had really spurred this post, it was just the result of an observation we've all seen in sports.

There's not much doing in the world of baseball in January. By January 2006, the Mets had made all their principal offseason transactions, so Sip and I (though mostly Sip at that point) were left to fish for content.

I can't speak for Sip, but I panic sometimes when I realize I have to write for a certain day and there's nothing going on. It's days like that that posts like this are born. Give it a read if you're a late-adopter on Y2K -- and check out the Shawn Green reference!

February 24, 2006: Selling Out and Coming Clean, or, Corporate Suites: Sweet or Salt?

This is one of my favorite early posts. At the time I hadn't been to a Knicks game in years, and I'd never sat in a corporate box at any sporting event.

That all changed when a client of my company's hooked my group up with tickets to their private box at Madison Square Garden.

Simply put, it was awesome. The food was amazing. Earlier in the day, Isiah Thomas had traded for Stevie Franchise, and I had the pleasure of talking shit about the trade with a vendor at the arena. John Starks was there.

If you've never had the opportunity to sit in a corporate suite, definitely give it a try some time, provided you have the means. I have no idea how much it would cost (again, we got comped), but between the food, the booze and the view, it's really a fine experience. Especially when you don't really care about the action on the court.

March 31, 2006: The Sounds of Summer

Three days to Opening Day and we were all getting cabin fever. That last week before the season starts you just get so desperate for baseball to be back, particularly when you couldn't care less about March Madness.

Looking back on it, this post was better conceptually than it was in execution. I really like the idea: it was a list of 10 songs that instantly remind me of the Mets for one reason or another.

So I had the idea for a post but didn't really have the time to fully develop it; hence, filler songs like "We Will Rock You" by Queen. I mean, I do actually think of the '86 Mets tape whenever I hear that one, but it shouldn't have made the list instead of a song like the Bruce Lee theme music that Kaz came out to, or that ridiculously bombastic song Carlos Beltran comes out to.

Oh well, maybe I'll do another list like it some time. One way or another, I can't re-read it without feeling the twinge of excitement that exists in late March, when you've come so far, and those last few days until baseball finally, mercifully begins feel like months.

April 14, 2006: Not Winning, Dominating

This was the first in a type of post that would become familiar as the season wore on. I'm too young to remember 1986 or 1988, so I'd never seen a Mets team dominate the way this one did in 2006.

This post was written after the Mets had started the season 7-1. We were atop the NL East, and already you were getting the feeling that we wouldn't relinquish our grip. You could see how talented the team was, you were seeing how good they could be. And for a fan my age, it was all pretty remarkable.

May 6, 2006: Great Moments in Broadcasting, Greater Moments in Baseball

I'll never forget this night. The Mets were playing the Braves at Shea on a Saturday night in early May, back when a Mets-Braves game was still a big deal.

I caught the beginning of the game but then went out for dinner with some friends, so I had to depend on Sip for text message score updates throughout the night. I transcribed the text messages from that night in the post, and I still love reading them.

In any event, the Mets fell behind 6-2, but in typical 2006 fashion, they stormed back to even the score in the bottom of the 7th. Here's how Sip relayed it to me:

9:31 p.m.: 2-6 bot 7, mets suck when i give u scores

9:47 p.m.: 6-6 top8, new mets!

By this point I was stuffing my face at a nice Italian eatery in Alphabet City, right on the same block where my sister used to live. The weather was nice and I was sitting outside with Killer Cam, Shabasito, Steve, and the rest of the regulars when I realized I had to get out of there to watch the game.

You can read the way it unfolded in the original article, but to summarize, I sprinted desperately around the LES trying to find the game, found a sweet dive, spoke to an awesome dude named Ken who longed to bag a white chick, the Mets won on a double by David Wright.

It was good to be alive. The memory just brings such a huge smile to my face.

June 7, 2006: Moon Men Walking

This is a strange post to look back on, but I really look back on it fondly. The Mets were in firm control of the NL East when I wrote this piece, but they had developed an inability to get more than 12 games over .500. It seemed like for weeks they were perpetually between 9 and 12 games over .500. They were doing the moonwalk, as Willie Randolph had called their up and down swings of a year earlier.

I wrote that piece some time in the afternoon. That evening, two things happened that I can't forget. The first is the Mets won the game and didn't lose again for another 9 days. A dominant west coast swing concluded with a 3-game sweep of the Phillies in Philadelphia. The road trip basically cemented our position as the best team in the NL East, if not the entire senior circuit.

So I remember that. More personally though, I remember listening to this game in my car as I drove up to this corporate conference we had.

The conference was in Long Island somewhere so I got to watch the end of the game, but something about the making the drive out to this unknown part of Long Island on my own just felt perfect. I was in the car with the windows down and the Mets on the radio.

I can't really explain it but it was one of those moments where everything just comes together.

July 11, 2006: That Time, It Counted

I wrote this piece the night that Trevor Hoffman failed to close out the American League in the All-Star Game.

What I love about this piece is how intensely I believed, how certain I was that the outcome of the All-Star Game would have some bearing on the Mets. That was OUR home field advantage Hoffman had just pissed away, it just didn't seem fair.

August 9, 2006: The Monster Is Out of the Cage, and Back Where He Belongs

Who can forget the night Mike Piazza returned to Shea? Not me and B.O.A.F.O.M.G, that's for sure. We were there to stand and applaud as the Monster returned to Shea Stadium. It was a very special moment. I'd never seen an ovation like that for a former Met, but it was perfect.

The fans stood and cheered like they always did when the announcer called out "Now batting, the catcher, No. 31, Mike Piazza" and "Voodoo Child" blared through the sound system. 10 out of 10 on the goosebump scale.

And then the Mets won the ballgame, 3-2, in what I found to be perfectly fitting fashion. On the night when our former franchise cornerstone returned, two of our current cornerstones sent the fans home happy:

"Piazza heard his cheers and everyone in the stadium got goosebumps. Wright went 3-for-4 and drove home the winning run. Beltran went 3-for-4 and scored the winning run. The Mets won the ballgame. One era has ended and another has begun."

September 18, 2006: The Team. The Time. The Celebration.

The single most minimalist post in Y2K history (at least as far as I can remember), I think this post is perfect. Words weren't necessary the night the Mets clinched their first NL East title in 18 years, or not many were necessary anyway. All that you needed was that picture. I don't think I'll ever forget it.

October 19/20, 2006: Win Tonight/At The End of the Night, We'd All Seen Better Days

I've gotta break with the one post theme here for October. These two posts capture everything that's perfect about sports. They capture the drama, they capture the rush of victory, the agony and ecstasy of anticipation, and yes, the devastation of defeat.

I can't forget the way my heart raced all day on October 19, the day of Game 7. I can't forget the way I couldn't possibly get anything done at work, how I had butterflies in my stomach all day long. And I can't forget the subway ride out there, and the sound of the crowd, and the amazing catch by Endy, and the way everyone was ready for a miracle, how in every mind's eye Cliff Floyd was trotting around the bases.

And I can't forget the deflated silence after strike 3 was called. And we can't escape that that's how our season ended.

There's always next year.

November 3, 2006: A Million Little Moments

There's always next year, yes, but in the weeks after the season ended, the fact of baseball being out of my life really took a toll on me.

This post was actually like a less protracted version of the one you're reading now. "That's the thing about basball," I wrote at the time. "Somewhere in the midst of those 162 games are a million little moments that just make every part of your day-to-day life better. And when it's over it's really shitty."

When you follow the team as closely as anyone who's reading this web site does, it gets in your blood. It becomes such a part of your routine that when the season's over, you'd almost say that it's like a death in the family, if only saying so weren't so overly dramatic.

What I mean is, it's a part of your life that you deal with every day until one day, just like that, it's gone. My mother can't understand how I could feel that strongly about it, my girlfriend can't either, but I'll bet some of you can. And it all just sucks.

December 12, 2006: Best Wishes From...

I thought this piece was hilarious, nice job Cheddar. This was the first day of our move to yankees2000.com, and I remember how excited I was to see the finished product. It was a big moment in the history of Y2K, and I thought this piece brought it all home.

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And there you have it. A year in the life, a year of Mets baseball. Happy memories and the painful ones too, I'm glad I've got them all captured here, and I'm glad I had the chance to share them with our audience.

Y2K6. It was a hell of a year.

- A.F.O.M.G.

(Images appear courtesy of catholic.net, newyorkrangers.com, mlb.com, and static.flickr.com)