Because I knew that if they backed into the title through the poor play of another team, the fate that befell the Phillies would have befallen the Mets. "Prolonging the agony" was the phrase I used several weeks ago. In my opinion, no team should be in post season play because they owe a debt of gratitude to another team, which is what would have happened to the Mets if they'd backed into the NL East courtesy of the Phillies dropping games they should have won.
And while Phillies fans around the internet snarked the Mets for their impressive meltdown, no one seemed to be too concerned for the fact that the Phillies had no business going to the post season because their presence there was due to the Mets pissing away a 7 game lead. The Phillies wound up doing exactly what I *didn't* want the Mets to do. They didn't win the division title; the Mets lost the division title, and that's a very different thing.
Now Phillies fans may have felt some degree of entitlement as the Phillies played monumentally adequate ball in the home stretch...as opposed to the Mets who played monumentally inadequate ball. Without that combination of events, the Phillies finish second. But the Mets gave them the division lead in a box that was gift-wrapped by the bullpen that would come into inflammatory situations and pour on gasoline, and finished with a nice bow on top by an offense that just couldn't get enough of stranding runners in scoring position. All that was proven during the final weeks was that there was no lead the Mets couldn't blow, be it a five run lead or a seven game lead.
How does that entitle Phillies fans to strut? Beats me.
Anyway, the fate that I foresaw happening to the Mets for not truly earning their post season berth was shifted over to the Phillies for not truly earning theirs. I hope the Phils fans enjoyed their whole three extra games of losing baseball. Better you than us.
Wait'll next year.
PAD
Posted by Peter David at October 7, 2007 11:28 AM | TrackBack | Other blogs commentingPhillies still had to win games to win the division. Period. Nothing can take that away from them, no matter what occurred in the post season. Phillies won it, Mets lost it. Ditto for the Cubs over the Brewers.
Both the Phillies and Cubs have and had something that both the Mets and Brewers wanted: a division championship and a chance to win it all. They may have both blew it, but at least both had a chance neither the Mets nor Brewers had.
While the post season didn't go as planned for both the Phllies and Cubs, they were at least there to try. And nothing you can say will ever change that, no matter how much you enjoy trying to turn the dagger into the hearts of the fans of the team you dislike. Your team blew its chance, my team (in this case, the Cubs) didn't.
Jealousy is such an ugly thing.....
Talking to my friends, I predicted the Phillies would be 3 and out...just because of their woeful pitching staff. Choke or no choke, the Mets, player for player had a better team than the Phillies, and would have made for a much better representative of the NL east. I at least would like to think the Mets would have had a fire lit under their butts just from making the playoffs, and their natural talent would have taken over for them; and thus they would have put up a better fight than the Phillies.
Speaking from an objective standpoint, as I AM a Yankees fan, but I am not a Mets hater. (as long as the Mets aren't playing the Yanks, that is) :)
"Jealousy is such an ugly thing....."
Blindness to a team's shortcomings is uglier. All I did was hold your team to the same standards I held my own. Back on the 27th, even when the Mets still had a chance, I stated right here on this board that I hoped they didn't get in; that the Phillies wouldn't be so incompetent as to hand them back the lead that the Mets had provided them. From what I was seeing, I didn't want them anywhere near the playoffs.
I'm sorry if you find that comparison upsetting, but the facts remain: It took a historic meltdown for the Phillies to get in. Nothing short of that would have gotten the Phillies into the post season. And since I very much suspected that any team dependent on another's incompetence to reach post season would probably get wiped away, frankly, I'd rather it be the Phillies than us. Which it was.
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"And nothing you can say will ever change that, no matter how much you enjoy trying to turn the dagger into the hearts of the fans of the team you dislike."
Oh, and for what it's worth: You're wrong. I really don't give a crap about the Phillies. There are teams I like, teams I dislike, and the vast majority of them, I'm indifferent to. The Phillis are among the latter. Even when I was living in Philadelphia, I didn't care about them.
"They may have both blew (sic) it, but at least both had a chance neither the Mets nor Brewers had."
You're kind of missing the point. I believed the Mets had NO chance. I said so back on the 27th. To that end, I believed Philadelphia had no chance either. You can try and attribute whatever negative emotions to me you want, but none of them hold up when I went on record back on the 27th that I didn't want the Mets in post season play. I felt they weren't good enough...just as I knew the Phillies wouldn't be good enough. And I was right.
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If the Mets had swept their final series of the season instead of winning just one of three, they would have won the division by one game and Philadelphia, San Diego, and Colorado would have been in a three way tie for the wild card. The tiebreaker scenarios could have gone a couple different ways, but Philly still could've gotten in without NY's collapse. (Whether they would have or not, considering they would've had just one shot at Colorado instead of a "We'll get them tomorrow" mindset to fall back on... no comment.)
And I wouldn't go around snarking Mets fans for the meltdowns because A) it's childish, B) it's immature, and C) anyone who does something that dumb deserves whatever they get when the tables turn, as they did on Philadelphia against Colorado. Thoroughly embarrassing performance, that.
"The tiebreaker scenarios could have gone a couple different ways, but Philly still could've gotten in without NY's collapse. (Whether they would have or not, considering they would've had just one shot at Colorado instead of a "We'll get them tomorrow" mindset to fall back on... no comment.)"
No, because without New York's collapse, Philly wouldn't have won three straight to kick off the 17 game slide. The Mets was a team in such a downward spiral, that they then went on to get beaten by bottom feeders like the Nationals, or the under-500 Cardinals. Meanwhile what mighty foes did the Phillies go up against? Ah...well, that would be the Nationals and the Cardinals.
I think saying that the Mets lost the title more than the Phillies won it remains a clinically accurate assessment.
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Thinking as a expatriate-Philadelphian and not so much a baseball fan, the emotions emanating from Philadelphia come in large part from 2 things:
* We're the proud owners of the '64 Phillies.
* We got to be the ones who beat out the team that the media took joy in comparing to the '64 Phillies.
The fact that the Phillies won it -- regardless of the quality of their opposition -- is the city's victory. It's not so much how hard the Mets were trying to give it away. It's that the Phillies were in the position to win the division, and did what they had to do to stay in that position.
And as it came down to the end and finally when they did win, they gave the city something in professional sports to be excited about again in the town of wondering whether McNabb will survive the next Eagles game, the disastrous 40th anniversary Flyers season last year, and what are the Sixers doing anyway?
I must return now to bleeding Flyers orange, which can be its own kind of masochism.
"The fact that the Phillies won it -- regardless of the quality of their opposition -- is the city's victory."
Except if the situation were reversed, I would have taken no pride in such a "victory," and would have dreaded the inevitable debacle of the post season. And, obviously, rightly so.
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I think it's simply enough to say that after being eliminated entirely on the last (or next to last?) day of the season two years running, your perspective on "victory" will differ from the average Phillies fan. :)
"I think it's simply enough to say that after being eliminated entirely on the last (or next to last?) day of the season two years running, your perspective on "victory" will differ from the average Phillies fan."
I suppose it comes from the perspective of believing a victory is earned whether it really is or not, just because one is so desperate to feel good about themselves, without thought to what's going to happen next. Ah well.
PAD
PAD, I think you're both being too hard on the Mets AND not giving the Phillies enough credit.
The Mets had an historic collapse, but it was almost entirely due to the collapse of the pitching staff. If you look at their October games, they were still cranking out a respectable number of runs (3rd in the NL), but their pitching was just awful (14th). Then again, their rotation was of the high-risk-high-reward variety, and sometimes such staffs kick ass, and other times they completely implode.
The Phillies, on the other hand, went on a remarkable run. They finished the season 13-4, 17-8, or 24-13 depending on how you slice it. Those are excellent results even accounting for the substandard opposition. (It's also impressive that they managed to overcome the sheer idiocy of moving Brett Myers to the bullpen. Stupidest managerial decision in baseball in 2007, hands down.)
I think it's fair to say that the Mets lost the division AND the Phillies won it. It's even more accurate to say that the Mets' pitching happened to implode just as the Phillies' pitching came together, and against the teams those two faced in September, the disparity in pitching was going to make the difference.
All of the NL contenders seemed deeply flawed this year, especially compared to Boston and Cleveland over in the AL.
Anyway, the outcome of the playoffs in baseball tends to be only slightly more predictable than completely random, so certainly there was no reason to see the Phillies' fate against the Rockies as "inevitable".
I’m a really big baseball fan and an enormous Mets fan but...
I can’t really take much delight in the Phillies loss. I would have to agree with the assessment that the Phils didn’t win the division so much as the Mets lost it.
Even so, I have to give credit to the Phillies for hanging in their and playing as tough as they did over the last month of the season. Regardless of who they played down the stretch, they won their games and that‘s something the Mets didn’t do.
I have to give the Yankees credit too this season because back in June no one would’ve picked them to nail the wild card and they had to play tough to do it.
All the stuff at the end of the season with the crowing about the division - that I just didn’t really understand. Especially when Phillie fans were talking about having 1964 held over their heads, until they bought it up, I hadn’t ever given it any thought.
Yeah, I would’ve liked to see the Mets get in but, I still like the fact that the Rockies and the Indians both might wind up winning it all (it’s really too bad about the Cubs because they are long overdue).
One of the things I’ve been liking over the last bunch of years has been that the teams ultimately winning the World Series are never the ones that have been picked at the beginning of the season - it’s what makes the game so interesting for me.
Ol' Petey, my boy, I LOVE THIS! You can talk about how you knew this, you predicted that. On the 27th this or that happened...as Artie Lange would say...WAAAAAAAH!!! The season is 162 games. Not 140, not 154, NOT 161 but 162! The Phillies WON ONE MORE GAME THAN THE METS! Get used to it. Get over it. The Phillies happened to win more in September, overcoming The Dark Side, earning themselves the divisional title. To review: At the end of the season when it was all on the line, the Phillies (for the most part) went UUUUUPPPP (YAY!) and the Mets went crashing DOOOWWNNNN (snicker, snicker)...and on the way down, we heard plenty of the following sounds from this tired, old team: (GAK-CHOKE-BARF-CHOKE-URCH-CHOKE & CHOKE AGAIN). And the tears from the fans! Oh, the humanity!! So you're Karnak (sp.?). BIG DEAL! Your self-justification makes it sweeter. So, to close and most importantly...the 2007 Philadelphia Phillies are MY National League Eastern Division Champions. N' better still, they're also YOUR 2007 National League Eastern Division Champions, too.
Oh, Peter.
I generally respect you very much as a true fan of baseball, but here, you're acting with the same sense of entitlement as would a Yankees (or, in the last few years, Red Sox) fan.
I agree with Michael Rawdon above; it was attributable to BOTH teams. Bear in mind that a COUPLE of times, even before the collapse, the Phils came within striking distance of the Mets, even after starting with a 1-6 then a 4-11 record. And that even before the collapse, the Phils beat the Mets pretty handily down the stretch.
Look: The Phillies had just five and a half pitchers worth a damn this year (I say "and a half" because Flash Gordon was either very good or very bad. I might give another half for Lohse, though.) You had Hamels, the Marty Bystrom-like phenomenon that was Kyle Kendrick, and the ageless Jamie Moyer. In the bullpen, you had Myers, and you had ... well, Romero. Even in THIS good part of the motley pitching crew, we had to suffer through long injuries to Gordon and Myers (and the less said about Garcia and Lieber, the better.
Look, part deux: The Phillies were the best team, offensively, in the National League. And this even despite their two sluggers starting the season off horrendously: Howard slumped in a big way, then to add insult to injury, was injured for a stretch--and still clawed his way back to respectability. Burrell, he of the albatross contract, was hitting WELL below the Mendoza line until he had his second-half surge. Utley was pretty much the consensus MVP before losing an entire MONTH to injury (damn you, Lannan!).
And this when the team was no slouch DEfensively, to boot. (Oh, "boot" ... as in Burrell, the one exception, booting balls ...) Rowand, Rollins, Utley, the outfield assist machine that is Victorino (hey, look; more injuries!) ... all excellent in the field. And Howard, as shown by his play during the otherwise-depressing NLDS, is fielding far better than any could conceivably expect of the average slugging first baseman.
It all comes down to the fact that there's a guy whose position is scored as "1" on the scorecard, and that "1" singular sensation better be able to do his job. And, well, Philly had a job shortage this year.
But that in no way takes away from the achievement of the team in triumphing (at least in the regular season) over that adversity, nor does the fact that the team ahead of them in the standings had a bad stretch at the worst possible time.
Oh; one thing about that collapse. You may note that it all began on Sept. 14th ... which began a sweep of the Mets ... by the Phillies.
So please; lament your team's problematic lapse as much as you like. But kindly don't minimize the efforts of other teams in doing so.
That is a behavior better suited to your counterparts up there in the Bronx.
(and hey! Make Harlan happy and tell him you're now pulling for his Indians!)
"So please; lament your team's problematic lapse as much as you like. But kindly don't minimize the efforts of other teams in doing so.
That is a behavior better suited to your counterparts up there in the Bronx."
It's not a matter of minimizing the efforts of other teams. It's a matter of stating simple truths, none of which have really been addressed because, well...they're simple truths: I wouldn't have wanted the Mets to owe a championship to the crappy play of another team because they would likely then be swept right out of the playoffs. The Phillies owed their championship to the crappy play of the Mets, not to mention a schedule that placed the Phils against an assortment of bottom feeders and below-500 teams. And the got swept out of the playoffs the first time they ran into a team that didn't fit that category.
Phillies fans are obviously so desperate to get into playoffs that they'll justify the "achievement" any way they can. They'll downplay the Mets collapse (while simultaneously snarking it, go figure) while crowing about the Phil's wins against second and third rate teams. And they got swept away, just as I knew the Mets would had the Mets wound up undeservedly in the playoffs. I don't quite understand how I can put out there that I don't believe the Mets deserve to be in the playoffs and be tagged with having a sense of "entitlement." Well...no. I've been saying, repeatedly, that the Mets didn't deserve to be in the playoffs, and I'm glad they didn't luck into it, because if they had they'd likely have been blown out.
Just as the Phils were. So, y'know, do the math.
Just that simple.
PAD
"The Phillies owed their championship to the crappy play of the Mets, not to mention a schedule that placed the Phils against an assortment of bottom feeders and below-500 teams."
Both teams have nearly identical schedules. In September, the only differences, were that the Phils had 4 games against Colorado and the Mets played 3 against Cincy and 1 against Houston. The Phils went 17 and 11, and the Mets went 12 and 16.
I'd venture to say that Colorado was not the bottom feeder that Cincy and Houston are.
I do believe that it was more a collapse of the Mets than a monumental run by the Phils, but it was more than "monumentally adequate", as put it.
The Phils ran into a very hot Rockies team, and could not perform offensively the way they had all year. It in no way takes away my enjoyment of being at the last regular season game when the Mets blew it.
"It in no way takes away my enjoyment of being at the last regular season game when the Mets blew it."
And I hope you enjoyed your three losing games of postseason play, three games that I barely bothered to watch since I knew how they'd come out. The fact is, when I watched them play the Mets, even when they won, I saw games given away by Mets ineptitude rather than won by Phil's quality. There was nothing there on the part of the Phils, with the exception of Jimmy Rollins, that I found remotely impressive. And my lack of being impressed by them was supported by the results of post season play.
PAD
Peter, I fear your grapes grow sourer. Just my opinion.
Rather than devolve into a "discussion" more suited to the 700 level at the Vet or the Upper Reserved seats at Shea, I think we can both agree that we are unhappy with the endings of our respective teams' seasons, and that we are looking forward to better denouements next year.
(By the way--there IS one thing I want to know: Do you, as a Mets and baseball fan, despise Chipper Jones as well?)
It’s kind of funny PAD - here you come out with a self-deprecating statement about how the play of your team has sickened you over the last month of the season and it still isn’t enough for some people.
Look, I’ve been to the Vet, Three Rivers stadium, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, the Kingdome, County Stadium, old Comisky Park, Ewing S. Kaufmann stadium, Camden Yards, Oakland Alameda Coliseum, Candlestick Park, Dodger Stadium, Jack Murphy Stadium, the Big A in Anaheim, Olympic Stadium, Busch Stadium, Shea Stadium and Yankee Stadium.
If you’re a true baseball fan you can appreciate good play regardless of the team you root for. The Phillies had a good season but, like the Mets last year (one out away from the World Series) CLOSE doesn’t cut it. The old line about horseshoes and hand grenades applies here.
The only thing I really don’t like about baseball at times are the idiots who live such empty lives that their team winning seems to be an excuse to act out and lord over the rest of the world as if they actually were on the field playing the game.
I enjoyed this season and I can’t say what happened to the Mets over the last few weeks was much of a surprise – certainly not so much where I am mortally wounded by it. That being said, is there really that much for Phillies’ fans to gloat about?
Do you guys really feel Jimmy Rollins was right when he said: "I think we are the team to beat in the NL East — finally," shortstop Jimmy Rollins said Tuesday. "But, that's only on paper."
The team to beat came down to the last game of the season hoping the other team lost? C’mon!
As for ‘Larry’ I despise him because he has spoiled so many games for Mets fans but, there’s no denying his ability as a ballplayer!
"Peter, I fear your grapes grow sourer. Just my opinion."
And I fear for your reading comprehension, Alex.
Let me illustrate a post that would legitimately have been sour grapes:
"
The Mets totally got screwed out of the championship, and the Phillies suck."
I've said nothing remotely like that. And frankly, I'm lumping this odd blind spot that some fans seem to have to parse what I'm saying right there with the knee-jerk conservatives who claim that I never have anything bad to say about the Democrats.
While people are tossing around words like "entitlement," "sour grapes," "jealousy," et al, the fact remains the same: If not for the Mets craptacular play in the last 17 games, the Phillies would never have won the championship. They did exactly what I didn't want the Mets to do and hit the exact same fate that I predicted the Mets would encounter had they managed to limp into post season. So Phillies fans are strutting over a victory that is covered with NY phlegm from the Mets coughing it up to them, and their reward was three fast losses in post season. I just think it's sad that Phillies fans take pride in that, because if the situation were reversed, I sure wouldn't be.
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When your team has spent a FRELLING CENTURY out of the World Series--not "winning", I said "in"--THEN you can complain!
-- Ken from Chicago
P.S. "Next millenium."--realistic Chicago Cub fan.
Sorry, but when you say, "They didn't win the division title; the Mets lost the division title, and that's a very different thing," that comes across as sour grapes.
The Phillies still had to win the games in order to win the division. Period. Mets didn't win theirs. Phillies won 7 of their last 10. All the Mets had to do was win 6 in their last 10 to win it, they lost 6 instead.
One last thing: You're wrong when you say the following: "Anyway, the fate that I foresaw happening to the Mets for not truly earning their post season berth was shifted over to the Phillies for not truly earning theirs." Not about what you foresaw, but the fact that the Phillies didn't earn it. They did. They played the games, they won the games. No one gave them the division on a silver platter, nor did they back in.
You say it's not "sour grapes"? I say it is. And your own words prove it.
That's a curious attitude you have, not wanting your team to back into the playoffs, but I confess it's one I shared until last year. Last year my Cardinals backed into the Central Division crown and the playoffs and everyone, including me, though they'd get run in three games once the playoffs start.
But they didn't. They won it all. So just remember, anything can happen once you get in the playoffs. The key is getting in.
Oh, and the '85 Mets still suck.
I don't remember who it was who said it, but I've always thought there was some truth to the statement that ninety percent of games aren't won, they're lost--one team makes a mistake and the other takes advantage and wins the game. I have to say, though, that I believe you're taking that sentiment too far.
As bad as one team may finish up, there has to be another to take advantage or else it doesn't matter. To see evidence of that, we don't have to look any further than last season, when the Cardinals had a seven game lead with eleven to play and managed to turn that into a half game lead with three to play. Houston put on a great run that fell just a little bit short, and St. Louis, with 83 wins, went on to win the World Series. Their finish in 2006 was as bad as the Mets in 2007, but another team wasn't quite able to take advantage of it. Does that mean that Cardinals didn't truly earn their postseason berth, that their fans shouldn't look with pride on their World Series victory because "they didn't earn it"? Is the season worthless because another team COULD have overtaken them during their slump, even if they failed to do so?
No collapse is really a collapse unless someone takes advantage of it, and a team that can take advantage deserves credit. Otherwise, we have to say that the Red Sox didn't rally back to beat the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS; in fact, the Yankees simply fell apart and handed it over on a silver platter. No kudos to the Red Sox, just blame for the Yankees. We can say that the Mets didn't win the World Series in 1986, the Red Sox lost it. We can say that Houston didn't win the Wild Card in 2005, the Phillies threw it away by blowing two games to the Astros in two days, then losing the race by one. We can say that Joe Carter didn't beat the Phillies in 1993, the Phillies beat themselves.
At some point, there has to be acknowledgment that the team that emerged victorious in the end deserves some credit for being in position to do so, even if it required taking advantage of the other team's failures. If you honestly believe that the Phillies NL East title this year is totally and fully the responsibility of the Mets, then I have to ask... At what point to you stop blaming the team that lost and start giving some credit to the team that won?
"If you honestly believe that the Phillies NL East title this year is totally and fully the responsibility of the Mets,"
I never said that. I said the Phillies owed their championship TO the Mets. That it was a combination of the Mets' monumentally inadequate play versus the Phillies monumentally adequate play; without the former, the latter would have meant nothing.
"then I have to ask... At what point to (sic) you stop blaming the team that lost and start giving some credit to the team that won?"
I give them credit for taking advantage of a historic collapse by winning games against subpar teams. And as they did, I knew that because they were only monumentally adequate, they'd be swept out of the playoffs. Which they were. Had they turned in a strong post season performance, that would have reoriented my opinion. Had they blown away their opponents, even made it to the World Series, I would've thought, "Hunh, okay...maybe they really DID deserve to be there." But they didn't, thus supporting my initial assessment.
My simple adherence to facts, I think, really rises above any of the endless negative attitudes being attributed to me.
PAD
It's also true that the Phillies ran into one of the hottest teams in MLB when they drew the Colorado Rockies in the first round. As I watched the one-game playoff between the Rockies and Padres, I said to my wife that the rest of the league had to be rooting for the Padres, because no one wanted to play the Rockies.
Meanwhile, the baseball pundits happily picked the Cubs to walk over the Diamondbacks. I was amazed by this, because when you speak of monumental adequacy, the 2007 Cubs were the first team that leaped to mind. They just aren't very good.
Of course, neither was the NL Central the last two years. And -- much to my amazement -- the 2006 Cards managed to parlay their limp to the finish line into a World Series ring. In their case, it was partly getting healthy, partly getting lucky, and partly getting the right man (Wainwright) to close the game in the absence of Isringhausen.
The 2004 Cards were a superior team in every way save one -- they got run over by the Red Sox freight train in the series. Once the Cards lost the first game, they were really done. You could see it.
And the 1964 Cards -- the first baseball team that I saw play -- took advantage of the big Phillie collapse and beat the favored Yankees.
Some times you win. Some times you lose. Some times you're rained out. (A lot of the 2006 NLCS, thinking about it. :) )
If you want to pick on a team for winning and not deserving it, you might consider the 2003 and 2007 Cubs. (And I say this as someone who roots for the Cubs when they aren't playing the Cards.) Neither team was really talented enough to win, but they did anyway. And the 2003 win messed up the development of the club for several years as it resulted in a "win now" mentality. The 2007 win is likely to do the same thing.
The only good news is that Piniella, unlike Baker, is actually willing to play his team's kids. So there might be some hope...
Forgive me for saying so, but "I wouldn't have wanted that division championship anyway" seems pretty much the definition of sour grapes.
"Forgive me for saying so, but "I wouldn't have wanted that division championship anyway" seems pretty much the definition of sour grapes."
I'll forgive you for saying it right after you acknowledge that that's not remotely reflective of my postings on the subject. An apology wouldn't hurt, either.
The "sour grapes" model only works when it's made after the fact as a sort of sop to one's hurt pride. In fact, that's the way you presented it just now, in order to make the accusation work. Except...that's not what happened. When the Mets still had the opportunity to win, I was ALREADY saying that I hoped they did not do so. And I gave a very good reason for it: That I believed they'd just get their asses kicked in the post season, and I didn't want to see that happen. And the Phillies got it the way that I didn't want the Mets to get it and hey, guess what? The Phillies got their asses kicked in the post season.
It's just kind of amazing to me that people will attribute all manner of negative motivations to me , twisting what I said and when I said it in order to accommodate the smears. In the meantime, my reasoning was sound and the outcome exactly as I feared...except, since it was the Phils who got swept away instead of the Mets, it doesn't bother me.
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I don't agree that the sour grapes model only works in retrospect. I think it works perfectly fine as a two step process, first with a warning that the grapes will be sour, and then when the grapes turn out to be sour, with an "I told you so." I don't think that's bending the story until it's unrecognizable, but you're right that your postings don't correspond exactly with what Aesop described.
So I apologize.
>>When the Mets still had the opportunity to win, I was ALREADY saying that I hoped they did not do so. And I gave a very good reason for it: That I believed they'd just get their asses kicked in the post season, and I didn't want to see that happen. And the Phillies got it the way that I didn't want the Mets to get it and hey, guess what? The Phillies got their asses kicked in the post season.>>When the Mets still had the opportunity to win, I was ALREADY saying that I hoped they did not do so. And I gave a very good reason for it: That I believed they'd just get their asses kicked in the post season, and I didn't want to see that happen. And the Phillies got it the way that I didn't want the Mets to get it and hey, guess what? The Phillies got their asses kicked in the post season.>>When the Mets still had the opportunity to win, I was ALREADY saying that I hoped they did not do so. And I gave a very good reason for it: That I believed they'd just get their asses kicked in the post season, and I didn't want to see that happen. And the Phillies got it the way that I didn't want the Mets to get it and hey, guess what? The Phillies got their asses kicked in the post season.>>When the Mets still had the opportunity to win, I was ALREADY saying that I hoped they did not do so. And I gave a very good reason for it: That I believed they'd just get their asses kicked in the post season, and I didn't want to see that happen. And the Phillies got it the way that I didn't want the Mets to get it and hey, guess what? The Phillies got their asses kicked in the post season.
Focusing on the first half of your paragraph...sounds like a loser's mentality to me...why be a fan in the first place?
"Focusing on the first half of your paragraph...sounds like a loser's mentality to me...why be a fan in the first place?"
I don't think there's anything wrong with a fan not wanting to see his team further humiliated, although we can now add "loser's mentality" to the plethora of insults heaped upon me when all I did was express a thoroughly realistic assessment of the situation...an assessment which subsequent events bore out. I didn't want to see the Mets get into post season despite in spite of themselves because I figured a team that does so is extremely likely to be swept. The Phils did. They were swept. That should be QED to just about anyone who isn't out to try and find new ways to smear me.
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I just got back from seeing the Angels get swept. I'm not necessarily an Angels fan, but we got free tickets . . . what can you do . . . I noticed how insulting fans for both teams were to the other fans. And over what? A game that means nothing? Why does sports create such a forum where people are comfortable being so bawdy with one another over something that is supposed to be a "past-time"? I'd love to see 45,000+ people gathered together to cheer/boo over something really important like the Iraq War, health care or whether Thor should be deported because he's an illegal immigrant.
"I'd love to see 45,000+ people gathered together to cheer/boo over something really important like the Iraq War, health care or whether Thor should be deported because he's an illegal immigrant."
I certainly think there have been demonstrations that pulled in crowds of that magnitude.
As for Thor, since he's a God, I'd think the doctrine of separation of church and state would mean they'd have to keep hands off.
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"As for Thor, since he's a God, I'd think the doctrine of separation of church and state would mean they'd have to keep hands off."
Or perhaps diplomatic immunity, since he's the representative of Asgard? Well, not so much anymore, since Asgard is just a part of the American farmland at the moment.