For those of us who are life-long Mets fans it has been painful to see them self-destruct in September. However the eternal optimist in me is not yet thinking of next season. Instead I am already enjoying the thought of a calm month of October not spent staying up late in London hunched over my SlingBox player stressed to the max.
The baseball season is so long that I now realize I have allowed modern management practice to supplant my earlier and simpler love for the game. I follow the Mets on an "exceptions basis" as I would any large project. I pay a lot of attention at the beginning and end of the project monitor several metrics like won-loss record and number of games lead in between and only really pay attention when these stats show that some pre-set threshold has been breached. As with any good project I also do the occasional "deep dive" by either attending a mid-season game or reading a commentator’s analysis.
For the 2007 Season it is clear that the project has died – I think I will just go back to enjoying the game next year.
Tom: I’ve been a Mets fan my entire life… in fact I am sorry to say that my Dad took me to a Mets game at the Polo Grounds before the moved to Flushing Meadows. I think they were only at the Polo Grounds one year at most two until Flushing Meadows was finished. I was 12 or 13 years old at the time. I used to follow every detail in the same way teenage boys did quoting statistics about all the players. I remember Casey Stengel Cleon Jones Marvelous Marv and my all-time favorite Met Bud Harrelson as if it was yesterday… I too was a shortstop in little league and like my boyhood idol I couldn’t hit that well but could field like a demon… The thing about living overseas particularly in Thailand is I rarely get to see the games as I’ve yet to get a slingbox. One of the things on my Christmas list. But it is interesting in that I tend to keep track of the Mets in the same way you describe… I was incredibly disappointed that they did not make the playoffs this year… so perhaps I too will simply go back to enjoying the game… although I still have the desire to come to NY to see the Mets in person in a World Series… hope that happens before I retire!