The Win Now Mindset

It's a fun time of year, this. One of my favorite activities every February is surfing the internet for the first pictures of the Mets at training camp. Baseball is never fully back until Opening Day, but seeing those first few pictures makes you realize how close you are to having the Mets back in your life. After a long offseason, it's all I ask for.

As a blogger, it's almost like the Mets never left. That's not to say that I'm more of a fan than Coop, Lister or anyone else who reads this site -- I'm fairly certain Lister, for one, knows more about the team than I do -- but I can honestly tell you that blogging about a team changes your relationship with it.

It's different from the journalist's dilemma. When you cover a team for a publication you just root for the best story; drama makes for compelling copy after all.

As a blogger it's a little bit different. You still root for the best story, but you always hope that that story ends the same way: with your team winning. That's the same with every fan.

Where it differs, I think, is in the aftermath when your team doesn't win. I feel like I was left holding the bag in a somewhat different way.

The season stopped but the subject matter didn't. Sure I had the Giants and the Knicks and there are other interests to fill my time, but nevertheless there I was with the Mets, focusing on them, agonizing over their defeat last year and revisiting it, in some form or another, twice a week for the past several months.

I find now that I expect a resolution. I expect the story lines that have played out over the past two seasons to resolve themselves. And the only possible resolution is a title.

I've never been one of those New York fans that needs to win every year. Hell, as far as I'm concerned one of the beautiful parts about being a Mets fan is knowing what it is to suffer.

To my mind, 2006 would have never been as sweet without 2002, 2003 and 2004 coming before it. God knows I don't long for a return to those lost seasons, but I can appreciate that they give me perspective.

But I'm not like that anymore. I feel like I need a championship out of this team. Is it because of the agony of blogging or is it just because I'm a Mets fan?

Any Mets fan would have seen what I saw the past two years. The rebirth of the "Next Year Is Now" season in 2005; the euphoria of 2006 that came crashing down with an improbable Game 7 loss (improbable because it came courtesy of a Yadier Molina home run), that looked like the staging ground for a Met miracle (1st and 2nd nobody out, Cliff Floyd at the plate... then Jose Reyes... then Lo Duca... then, well, you know).

It was the miracle that never came. The anticipation of it has lasted an entire offseason for me, and as we sit on the verge of next year, I find that I'm still expecting the big payoff.

I may not feel the same way later in the season. But let's face it, we lost to a clearly inferior team last October, and then a few days later, that clearly inferior team made the AL opposition look like a JV team. I realize that's not what anyone expected, and that if the Mets had been there instead everything would have been different, but that's the way it went and it's been eating at me for some time now.

Do you guys feel the same way? Do you feel like the powers that be owe you something? I never felt that I was owed anything after the Kenny Rogers bases loaded walk in 1999 or the loss to the Yankees in 2000. But I feel like the agony of that hanging breaking ball to Yadier Molina demands redemption.

Is it blogging that's made me feel this way or is that just the way that all Mets fans feel? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.

- A.F.O.M.G.