Profound Heartache

This is a picture of me when I was just 4 or 5 years old, back when Joe Torre used to manage the orange and blue. That would be 1976 or so. Boy, how I loved going to the games back then and yell Joe Torre’s name, “Hey…Joe Toyeee” My family used to tease me because I couldn’t pronounce it properly. I was just a simple, innocent little Mets fan at that time, didn’t care about wins and losses, I just loved the game. I look at that picture now and think; how happy I look, if I only knew the agony that lay ahead.

Nearly 30 years later, I have never felt as bad as I do right now as a Mets fan. Sure I’ve experienced heartbreak many times before; I was at Game 7 last year; and Game 4 of the ’88 NLCS. Those stung real bad. That’s just part of being a baseball fan; you go in to this thing knowing you’re going to be crushed at some point or another. Even Yankees fans have felt heartache. As a Mets fan, heartbreak is an inherent extension of our being. It’s just there.

But this time, this heartache is different; it’s a profound kind of pain that I cannot comprehend nor do I know quite how to handle. I can sit here and tell all of you young Mets fans out there that bitter losses only make you a better fan, they harden you and you learn to live and die with your team. It makes you love them that much more when they win. But this kind of monumental collapse, this humiliation, is something that I’m just not sure how to react to. It rips me to the core.

Back in June, when Dave and I started this blog, it was simply an outlet for us to vent about our favorite team. The Mets were reeling then, and our email exchanges that were fueled by frustration evolved in to a tiny little web site dedicated to all of you Mets Lifers out there. I love this team and I will never, ever stop rooting for them. ‘Til next year, I leave you with my first ever post (with new addition) on MetsLifer.com.

Thank you for reading…