Mets Mark Worst Fall in History

The Mets' disintegration over the past two weeks, already generally and rightly acclaimed the single worst late season collapse in the long history of baseball, met a wretched and deserving end in the first inning yesterday when Tom Glavine, one of the great control artists of all time, hit the opposing pitcher with the bases loaded to make the score 5–0. This shameful and degrading spectacle, the lowest moment in the team's 45-year history, came just minutes after Glavine, who holds the record for postseason innings, threw a ball into left field, essentially turning a double into a three-run home run.

Rightly or not, this game will define Glavine's five-year tenure with the Mets. The collapse more generally will be manager Willie Randolph's legacy. This is the second time in three years he's presided over a late-season catastrophe — in 2005 the Mets were 1.5 games out of a playoff spot on August 26 and then lost 16 of 20 against weak competition — and his reasonableness no longer seems a virtue. Every day, his reticence seems a bit more like the silence of someone who's figured out the best way to keep people from realizing he doesn't quite know what he's doing.

This disaster changes the Mets' basic identity. Before yesterday the story of the Mets, from 1962 to now, wasn't about how good they were, but about the way they played, and how they were always worth believing in because they played tough, ruthless baseball, win or lose. When they were great, they won the greatest victories; when they were just good, they lost admirably, and sometimes even won.

The 2007 Mets should have joined this line of classic teams. They had brilliance and willpower, even as they lost everything. David Wright hit .397 as the team imploded over the last 17 games. Moises Alou and Carlos Beltran, neither of whom had a thing to prove, proved themselves again, playing in pain. The most important game of John Maine's career was his greatest, one of the greatest Shea Stadium has ever seen. And Pedro Martinez, impossibly, pitched like he was 30 again for six games, less than a year removed from surgery that could have ended his career.

None of this really matters, though, and little of it will be remembered. The Mets were viciously jeered off the field yesterday, and deserved it. The people have been served a thoroughgoing travesty, and no one can blame them for not liking it.

A team has never before squandered a lead like the Mets enjoyed; but neither has any Mets team with anything like this talent ever just died. I'm not sure which will prove to be more consequential. The mathematical fact that the odds against this collapse were 1-in-500 is astonishing, but it's so abstract a figure that it tends to exculpate the guilty. ("499 times out of 500, Willie Randolph gets his men to the playoffs!") For a team, or some large important part of it, to visibly lose their will to win right there on the field is something else, that isn't easily forgiven.

Bitter losses like this are corrosive. You can trace a great deal of the traditional zealotry and vileness of (some) Philadelphia and Boston fans to the legendary collapses of 1964 and 1978. When a team plays so badly, gives away so many chances, and so repeatedly refuses to learn from its mistakes that it actually loses the trust of the fans, it finds that trust a very difficult thing to get back. Who trusts a team that gives away the season 10 minutes into its last game? Who invests their faith in a team that's lost out to Class AAA-quality players two of the past three years? Who would say that Willie Randolph's Mets are truly in the line of Gil Hodges's teams, or Davey Johnson's, or Bobby Valentine's?

This breach of confidence between the fans and the team will be all the worse because there is no hated rival, no one else to blame. Who can say a bad word against the Phillies? They're the exact team Mets fans wish their team were: brash loudmouths who came from behind, beat 500-to-1 odds, and laughed in their critics' faces.

Jimmy Rollins hit six home runs and drove in 15 against the Mets this year after saying right out loud that his team was better. Yesterday, he killed the last shred of hope that the season might come down to a one-game playoff when he hit a bases-clearing triple to put his team up 5–1 and become the fourth player to hit 20 home runs, doubles, and triples while stealing 20 bases in a season. Weeks away from turning 45, Phillies pitcher Jamie Moyer, the off-brand Tom Glavine, did what the Mets' Hall of Famer couldn't do and set down a young lineup with nothing but guile. Rollins would have made a pretty good teammate for Keith Hernandez; does anyone think that of Jose Reyes today?

With their talent and resources, the Mets should be building their dynasty right now, not suffering through having branded themselves as one of the more notorious failures in sports history. What they'll need to do to regain what they've lost is clear; whether they'll do it, less so.

The Mets need to review every decision they made this season, and honestly judge who was right and who was wrong. If there are people in the organization whose views didn't win out at the time and look prophetic in hindsight, and people who were consistently wrong, each needs to be justly rewarded. The team also needs to be wary of internal warfare. In the wake of full-scale disasters, political rivalries harden. One way they traditionally develop in baseball involves front office control over the coaching staff. Something like a purge of Randolph loyalists could precede a descent into outright dysfunction.

More important, Omar Minaya and the Wilpons will need to listen to the fans, as resigned, numb, violently angry, bitterly joyful, and despondent as they are and will be. To start, they should be the ones to decide Randolph's fate, by which I don't mean that the man should be held hostage to talk-radio shouters but just that if there is a broad, sustained rejection of Randolph's tactics and leadership by the fans, it may not be a good idea for the man to stay on. A manager who has lost his team is a problem; a manager who's lost the fans by directing historical, shirt-shredding calamity can be a worse one. (See Gene Mauch, Philadelphia, 1965–1968, or Don Zimmer, Boston, 1979–1980.)

The fans ought to decide something else, as well, which is what kind of future this team has. The Mets' most important players are still very young, and this team still has the chance to build a true dynasty. Whether doing so is worth doing if it means a year of retrenchment with an eye toward the opening of Citi Field is a question that ought not be left entirely to self-interested parties within the Mets organization. Losing can do awful things to baseball fans. Being trusted can do as much good.

tmarchman@nysun.com