NEW YORK — Here are some words from Opening Day in 2014, when the Mets lost in 10 innings to the Nationals.
“Opening Day is the idea that anything can happen, but the universe of anythings is heavily populated by rollercoasters that take the Mets on a loop-de-loop, only to have the safety harnesses fail at the apex and dump everyone into a splattered pile of mangled body parts, and then when a survivor crawls out, he gets flattened by the runaway rollercoaster cars.”
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The reason to repeat these words is that nothing ever seems to change for the Mets, except that maybe instead of the rollercoaster dumping all its passengers, it explodes in a giant fireball for no particular reason. Or maybe it gets struck by lightning.
The Mets were able to avoid having that fate literally befall them on Thursday afternoon, but not by much.
“With all the things that have happened, with the injuries, and a number of other things, we’ve had a lot of tough losses,” manager Terry Collins said after New York’s 8-7 loss to the Padres on Thursday afternoon. “We have to be resilient. Tomorrow, they’ve got to come back. We came out today, and up until the seventh inning, played great – swung bats, got big hits, hit the ball out of the ballpark, all the things you like to see.”
For two hours, everything looked great for the Mets. Even having seen a six-run lead trimmed to two on a Derek Norris grand slam in the seventh inning, the Mets were one out away from victory when the skies opened up and a violent thunderstorm delayed the game for 44 minutes.
When the game resumed, closer Jeurys Familia, who had thrown four pitches before the delay, gave up a bloop single to Norris and a grounder with eyes to Matt Kemp for another single. It started raining again, and then Familia gave up a three-run homer to Justin Upton to give San Diego the lead.
“That’s the game,” Familia said. “We’re going to have bad times and good times. The only thing we can do is try to keep going and win some games.”
Familia got the final out, but the rain kept coming, so there was another delay, this time for 2 hours, 52 minutes so that the masochists who decided to stay could watch videos of the 1986 and 1969 Mets, and generally think dark thoughts about the present day.
They could think back to one night before, when the Mets reportedly had a trade for Carlos Gomez wrapped up, but left Wilmer Flores – who was going to be part of the deal – in the game, and saw their 23-year-old shortstop break down in tears on the field.
They could think back to two days before, when setup man Jenrry Mejia, freshly returned from an 80-game suspension for performance-enhancing drugs, was hit with a 162-game ban for a second positive test.
They could think back to almost any time since Carlos Beltran struck out looking against Adam Wainwright to end the 2006 NLCS back at Shea Stadium.
It seemed, for a time, like the horror show might be coming to an end. The Mets made trades in the past week for Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe to bolster their lineup, then Tyler Clippard to help the bullpen. Then it looked like they had Gomez coming as the final piece of the puzzle, right up until they didn’t, and wound up with a pair of emotionally-draining losses in less than 24 hours.
“We’re all humans out here,” said left-hander Jon Niese, who left after six innings looking destined to earn the win. “We’re not tigers in a circus, jumping through rings of fire, and then get put in our cages afterwards. We have lives outside of baseball. We have feelings. And we make mistakes. That being said, I know we come out here and work hard every day, and do our best to win.”
The Mets still have until 4 p.m. Friday to find another bat on the trade market. The failure of the Gomez trade, though, with the Brewers center fielder and agent Scott Boras insisting that his health is not an issue, raised fresh questions about the Mets’ financial ability to put together a real contender. The Nationals, who lead the Mets by only three games in the National League East, arrive on Friday for a three-game series that could define this New York season every bit as much as the final hours before the trade deadline.
There’s always the possibility that the Mets will get their big bat and sweep the Nationals. If that happens, maybe it will finally be the sign that good times are back for the Mets. Or it’s just the beginning of another slow climb up that rollercoaster loop-de-loop.