‘Wait ‘til next year’

To paraphrase Yogi Berra, it got late early at Shea Stadium this year.
The Mets, a.k.a. the Cardiac Kids, a.k.a. the Amazin’s, failed to live up to their team mythology and dropped a comfortable September lead, to finish in second place behind the Philadelphia Phillies.
Until the very last, Mets fans were convinced that somehow, their guys would get the wheels back on the wagon and make it to the playoffs. After all, everybody knows that “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”
As the faithful streamed into Shea Stadium on a brilliant Sunday, September 30, one could hear the mantra repeated. “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” Met fans seem to feel they own the phrase.
In a way they do, because it was first uttered by (of course) Berra - as manager of none other than the New York Mets. The year was 1973, and the Mets were in last place in the National League Eastern Division, nine games behind the Chicago Cubs.
They were still in last place on August 30 that year, one game behind … the Philadelphia Phillies. They went on to win 21 of the last 29 games, and went to the World Series.
Few in the stands for this year’s final game were old enough to remember that the Mets lost the 1973 series in seven games to the Oakland A’s, or the many years when the closest thing to a Mets powerhouse was the Con Edison plant in Astoria.
The crowd that day was hopeful, dominated as it was by fresh-faced children unaware that their Mets were also famous for making bad-baseball history.
Their hopes were dashed as the Mets melted down in a fashion rarely seen since their first manager, the immortal Casey Stengel observed, “They have to learn to stay out of the triple-play.”
The details of the game are of little import; the Florida Marlins scored seven runs in the first inning and the Mets could only manage one, despite several opportunities.
What is important is that the Met fans who sat in stunned silence through the entire, final collapse, have earned their place alongside the “old-timers” who remember when the Mets were usually eliminated by September 1.
They can spend the winter intoning the mantra that warmed blue-hat Met fans for most of their team’s existence, when they were skippered by the other laureate of baseball, Casey Stengel: “Wait ‘til next year.”