Every Night

Every day it's the same.

I bury my head in work and then 6:00 p.m. comes and the butterflies set in, and they flutter around until 7:10 comes and I know the Mets are on again.

Most days I'm not home until 8:30 or 9:00, so the first few innings pass with the game recording on DVR, and every night the same set of fears set in.

For that last hour I'm at work while the game is young and I'm avoiding it, it's the fear that that box will pop up in the right hand corner of my screen with an e-mail from a distraught fan on my Mets list serve bemoaning the latest woeful turn for Team Tightrope (god knows something good never prompts an e-mail, no one would risk being the jackass who jinxed it).

For the 20 minutes from the office to Brooklyn (what!) it's the fear that I didn't record the game. Or that I recorded it but kept the television on 726, so that when I get home and first turn on the television to hit play on the game, I'll sneak a peak at the current score and have all the drama spoiled for me.

And then we're on and the Mets are playing the ball and it's the fear that the pitcher will let up a first inning run and we'll have to fight from behind all night. And then we've got a lead and it's the fear that the bullpen will blow it. And then we've got runners on 2nd and 3rd with no one out and it's the fear that we won't score any runs.

And then it's the fear that for all the Mets can do the calendar marches day by day to September 28, the final day of the season.

And that brings us to tonight, and a 7-6 win. And a dead heat in the wild card with 3 to play, and 1 game back of the Phillies with 3 to play. And the same fears will be there this last weekend, but lurking in the background this final weekend of the regular season is a new one, the worst of all. The fear that come Monday, this could all be over.

* * * * *

For all the talk about a collapse, after tonight's gutsy, rain-soaked victory you can say this about the 2008 Mets. Win, lose, or draw, through 159 games, they haven't gone down without a fight.

They've looked lost on more than a few occassions. They've looked punchless at times on offense and helpless at others in the bullpen.

But as the Hound is fond of saying, this is a team that somehow manages to absorb a "Worst. Loss. Ever." every other week and come out again the next day and somehow show enough mettle to stay in the thick off things.

And as much as each bullpen blowup weighs on us or each wasted opportunity frustrates us, we as fans should appreciate that.

* * * * *

This weekend will be about rain and baseball, hopefully more of the latter than the former.

In my living room hutch sits a bottle of Pol Roger champagne, bought the morning of September 30, 2007.

We woke that day with hopes of a division title, and finished it stunned by the completion of our collapse.

I vowed then that I would keep that bottle of champagne and drink it only the day the Mets won the NL East, whenever that day should come.

Who knows if that will come to pass this weekend, but I've decided this much: if at any point this weekend we're tied for the division lead, the bottle of champagne will go to my refrigerator in the hope that Sunday I'll have reason to drink it down.

No matter what, this team has given you everything you could ask for as a baseball fan. Drama day in and day out, every night promising elation, and every night teetering on the brink of devastation.

It's been a hell of a run, as wild a season as I can ever recall. More than anything, I just want it to keep going.

- A.F.O.M.G.