Just Keep On Going

Pop quiz: what was the Mets' record in the first 9 games of September 2007?

Was it:

A) 4-5
B) 8-1, or
C) 1-8?

If you said 8-1, you had the correct answer. It was said then that the team was peaking at just the right time, and it sure seemed hard to argue the point.

What we didn't realize then is that the baseball season is a marathon, even at the very end when it looks for all the world like a sprint.

The Mets are playing truly outstanding baseball right now, sprinting out to early leads and stymieing the opposition with suffocating starting pitching. For all the world we've looked like world beaters the past 6 games.

As regular readers are aware, I take the losses pretty hard. Sip has said he doesn't live and die with these games anymore, but I sure do. And right now, life is good. If you're going to beat yourself up over tough losses, you've gotta let yourself enjoy the good times when they come.

That said, remember the 8-1 run at the start of September 2007. Six-game winning streaks are great, and they're even better when your team does it in such dominating fashion.

But six wins isn't enough. A 2-game lead in the division isn't enough. The marathon goes on.

* * * * *

And what a marathon it's been for the Mets. How many times has this team been left for dead? How many times have we, the fans, buried this team? How many times have we told ourselves they were hopeless, that they didn't care enough to succeed?

Hell, that's been the running conversation of the season.

One of my favorite activities is to read random posts from the Y2K archives. It grounds me in particular moments; I remember how I felt at the time, what I was feeling about life or the Mets. It's occurred to me that if the Mets pull this thing off and go on to win the division, what fun it will be to read those mid-May posts when we were all dumping on the team.

I don't think any of us need to feel repentant about that; they looked positively comatose through the first 81 games of the season.

But if there's anything we need to repent, it's that we allowed ourselves to forget that 81 games is a lot, but there's still another 81 games afterward. Talented teams can turn things around and good times can still lay ahead.

So here we are in first place with 124 games in the books. All we need to remember now is that 124 games is a lot, but there's still another 38 left to go.

Six in a row has been great. We need to just keep on going.

- A.F.O.M.G.