Sports

Remembering July 30: The Mets’ absolute rock bottom

It’s hard to fully appreciate a summit without enduring the sinkhole that precedes it. Hard to admire a zenith without a nadir.

On Sept. 29, 1968, the Jets were 19 ½-point favorites at Buffalo, but Joe Namath threw five interceptions, three of them were returned for touchdowns, the Bills stunned the Jets 37-35, and Namath’s performance nearly caused a mutiny. Nearly. Because exactly 106 days later, Namath enjoyed his finest hour in Miami, leading the Jets to a 16-7 win in Super Bowl III.

On Nov. 25, 2007, the Giants got slammed at home, 41-17, by a clearly mediocre Vikings team, mostly because Eli Manning had the worst game of his life — four interceptions, three of them pick-sixes — and there was never less confidence for Eli than that precise moment. And exactly 70 days later, Giants 17, Patriots 14 happened.





So it is good that Mets fans remember the afternoon of July 30, 2015, as they savor the last few days before they play in the World Series against the Royals, because that was the bottom, absolute rock bottom. The Wilmer Cries game of the night before gets more attention because crying in baseball is irresistible.

But that wasn’t bottom.

This was bottom:

The Mets had a 7-1 lead against San Diego. In itself, that was unremarkable but it still was going to be a good day for the Mets. They had just started a two-month run in which they played 90 percent of their games against losing teams like the Padres. It would have been a series win. Jon Niese, who had struggled, was going to get a win.





In the seventh, Derek Norris hit a grand slam off Hansel Robles. It was 7-5. Tighter, but not terribly nervous. Two innings later, Jeurys Familia — scuffling a bit since the All-Star Game — had two outs, nobody on, and was up in the count 0-and-1 against Norris, who already had four hits and was bidding for the first five-hit game of his career. But before Familia could throw another pitch, it started to rain, then teem, then pour, then come down in a blinding rage. Umpires almost never call for the tarp at that point of the game. These umps did.

The delay lasted 44 minutes. When play resumed, Familia got a second strike on Norris. It is not crazy to say any other Padre simply would have wanted to get done with the at-bat, get dressed, get dry, get on a plane. But Norris was hitting .227. This was a chance for a fifth hit. And he got that fifth hit, a bloop dunked into right.





Then Matt Kemp found a hole on the left side. The rain resumed. Came down harder. And harder. And …

… and then Justin Upton — at the time, the subject of trade rumors as the trade deadline beckoned, an obvious choice for the hitting-starved Mets — crushed a Familia meatball through the rain, way over the right-center-field fence. It was 8-7. The rain came down even harder. The tarp came back on. This time, the delay lasted 2 hours and 52 minutes. The rain stopped. The Mets hit in the bottom of the ninth. They went 1-2-3. The game, start to finish, took 6 hours and 12 minutes.

“Any time you lose a tough game this time of year, they’re hard to take,” manager Terry Collins said, calmly, though his eyes were red with frustration. “You’re fighting hard, have a big lead and to see it dwindle as fast as it did, these are tough ones.”





And Mets fans everywhere understood: That was that. You don’t recover from that one. You don’t take a knee punch to the gut like that and find your legs again.

Except the Mets did. From that moment to a last-week slump, the Mets went 37-17. Now, it’s the kind of game that’s almost fun to look back on. Hindsight allows that. In the moment, though, it was something else entirely.

Whack Back at Vac

Timothy Foster: Here’s hoping Terry Collins wins NL Manager of the Year. But also here’s a vote for Joe Maddon as the Classiest Manager of the Year, for his kind and sportsmanlike remarks about the Mets team and Terry Collins.

Vac: Collins and Maddon are so refreshing you really do wish in a copycat sport more managers would choose to cop the way they conduct themselves.

Gabriel Pompe: According to Einstein’s Theory of Recurring Ineptitude, Mets 4 + Cubs 0 = 108 and counting.

Vac: I’ll give Cubs fans this: There was a minimum of woe-is-me as they walked out of Wrigley on Wednesday. No curses here. They were just beaten soundly.

@sabr: Yes, it’s true. First all-expansion World Series will be in 2015, 54 years after AL added two franchises in 1961.

@MikeVacc: Which seems impossible, until you start doing the research. Truly an amazing factoid, that this is the first Series ever without an Original 16 team.

Tony Perry: I was the leadoff hitter on two or three Little League and Legion teams when I lived in Ebbets Field back in the day. I knew then, as I know now, that when the shift is on and you have the whole left side of the field open you bunt to get on base. Why are all the pro’s avoiding the obvious?

Vac: I wish I knew, Tony. I wish I knew.

Vac’s whacks

Ned Yost will be managing in a second straight World Series. No punchline necessary.

As fun as this baseball season was, both sides of the Triborough, you get the sense we could be in for something similar if the Giants and Jets could somehow both turn today into a red-letter football day.

I’m not sure even a Papal intervention could help us get a remotely interesting pro basketball season, however.

For what it’s worth, I really liked “Rock the Kasbah.”





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