The recap: Part 2.

The second part of the weekend recap was, of course, how my beloved Mets blew the World Series with a sudden lack of clutch hitting, foolish errors, and poor management, and basically turned back into the June version of the team that was flirting with a .500 season. Great time to run out of gas, boys.

As a friend of mine asks, is it better to have never followed a team, given that only one gets the championship each year---and that for the rest, as Vin Scully said, losing feels worse than winning feels good?

Can't say. Too much pain. Philosophy is never negated but may be paused when pain is acute.

I congratulate the Royals, who came back for another shot after losing the Series last year. Congratulations! Now, go tear some tendons or something.

The problem that many of my friends don't acknowledge is that, when you're the Mets, you don't put together a powerhouse team and stay in contention for seven or eight years. When you're the Mets, you get one shot every ten years, if that. If you don't win it all, your stars flee or develop injuries, your phenoms crap out as soon as they arrive,  your ownership runs into money crises (even linked to major criminals), you pick up sluggers for big money who turn into stooges overnight, and the guys you have to cut go across town to the Yankees and become world-beaters. The Mets are the small-market team in a big market. All the media hellfire, none of the rewards.

I guess people who say "Wait till next year!" are thinking of those great followups to the World Series-losing 1973 and 2000 seasons, right? Finished in fifth place in 1974; 1974-1985 showed eight losing seasons in 11 years. They finished third in 2001, and 2001-2014 saw nine losing seasons in 14 years (and two of the winning seasons, 2007 and 2008, each featured end-of-year slumps of epic proportions that left them out of the playoffs). There is no next year for the New York Mets.

And down we go!

I heard a woman call in to a radio show on Friday morning, who had just won tickets to Game Five. She mentioned how in 2000 her then-young son told her, after the Mets lost the Series to the Yankees, "I don't want to be a Mets fan anymore. It's too painful." She told him that she was sorry, but he had no choice.

I hope she enjoyed her tickets to the game Sunday night, but I doubt it. I wonder if she's wondering if there really is no choice.

One more crappy recap tomorrow.