BIG BLUE’S NY ROLL MODELS
Giants wouldn’t be the first New York team to complete an unforgettable comeback
LOOK, let’s get this out of the way at the top: Unless a number of extraordinary and unforeseeable things happen, the Giants aren’t going to make the playoffs. Just about every viable site that formulates such mathematical probabilities stands in agreement with this, but let’s rely on the smart folks at FiveThirtyEight, which lists Big Blue thusly right now: N.Y. Giants < 1%. As in: less than 1 percent. And it’s fair to wonder: How is it possibly that high?
Still, what’s the point in being a sports fan if you aren’t willing to sign up for impossible dreams? That long-ago song from “Man of La Mancha” wasn’t written with sports teams in mind — the story of Don Quixote was written between 1605 and 1615, meaning he’s even older than Eli Manning — but its timeless anthem perennially applies to the true sporting believer: To dream the impossible dream To fight the unbeatable foe … To try when your arms are too weary To reach the unreachable star … And, look: We’ve seen plenty of impossible dreams around here, and that’s not counting the usual suspects — say, the 1978 Yankees and ’51 baseball Giants, and other fine candidates in the 1958 and ’11 football Giants — who overcame steep odds to play for or win championships; those, after all, were excellent teams who would’ve had good seasons anyway, even if they hadn’t ended in the playoffs.
No, if the 2018 Giants pull off t his crazy trick of theirs, they would join a far more exclusive club of New York teams that were, for the most part, ordinary (to be kind) or pedestrian (to be blunt) yet still managed to foil the Grim Sporting Reaper despite long, unsightly odds. These are the best of the worst of that bunch:
1973 Mets
1 They were 11 ¹/₂ games out of first place as late as Aug. 5, 12 games under .500 as late as Aug. 26 and in last place as late as Aug. 30 … and then finished 24-9 to win an NL East that, quite literally, nobody else seemed to want to win at 82-79. The Mets then went all the way to Game 7 of the World Series before the A’s finally finished them off.
How dead were they? Team chairman Don Grant tried to offer up a comical pregame pep talk during the doggiest of dog days, encouraging the team to keep believing in itself. Tug McGraw, having a dreadful season, had enough and started making fun of Grant right in front of him — “You gotta believe, guys! You gotta believe!” — only, amazingly, the team turned things around immediately, as did McGraw, who became unhittable and beloved and coined the most famous slogan in team history as a bargain.
1995 Yankees
2 An ill-timed eight-game losing streak dropped them to 5 3 -5 8 as l ate as Aug. 26, and it seemed they would force Don Mattingly to end his career without ever playing an inning of October baseball. But they won 25 of their f inal 32 games, capped by a 6-1 win in Toronto on the last day of the season, when Mattingly poignantly pounded the ground with his fist. He then hit .417 in a wonderful swan song during a painful ALDS loss to Seattle.
How dead were they? At 53-58, they were only 5 ¹/₂ games out of the wild card — not an impossible, impassable task — but unbeknownst to them at the time they were actually 13 games behind the team they would ultimately edge out for the playoff berth, the soon-to-swoon Angels, who would go 11-21 the rest of the way.
988 Knicks 1988 Knicks
3 The Knicks had gone 71-175 the prior three years and seemed hell-bent on wasting Patrick Ewing’s basketball youth. Under Rick Pitino they started 0-5 and 4-12 and 14-28 before starting to figure out his 94-foot philosophy, winning 18 straight at the Garden at one point to light the first spark in a renaissance that would last 12 years.
How dead were they? They were still 10th in an 11-team conference as late as March 26 and had a win-and-you’re-in showdown with the Pacers in Indianapolis on the season’s final day — unbeknownst to anyone, the first spark in what would become a wonderful postseason rivalry. Bill Cartwright hit two free throws and the Knicks held the Pacers scoreless the final 2:38 to get it done. Even the ensuing 3-1 loss to the Celtics felt good.
2002 Jets
4 They started the season in remarkable fashion, winning at Buffalo 37-31 when Chad Morton returned two kickoffs for touchdowns, the last to open (and close) overtime. But they lost their next four in a row and, sitting at 2-5 after Week 8, made the white-flag move for a win-now team of benching Vinny Testaverde in favor of Chad Pennington.
How dead were they? They were still dead last in the AFC East on Nov. 4, but found a true (if temporary) savior in Pennington, closing 7-2. But they still needed help from — go figure — the Pats, who were already eliminated yet still managed to help out their hated rivals by rallying from 24-13 down to Miami with under 3 minutes left to win in OT and hand the Jets their second (and most recent) AFC East championship. The Jets beat the Colts 41-0 the next week in the playoffs before losing to Oakland.
1970 Rangers
5 The Broadway Blueshirts had a fairly good season but still needed to go 3-1-1 down the stretch just to tie the defendingchampion Canadiens for the final playoff slot, and Montreal did its part by going 1-3-1 in the same stretch …
How dead were they? Ah, but there was a catch. The Rangers knew they not only had to beat Detroit at the Garden on the season’s last day, and not only had to have the Habs lose to Chicago … but had to outscore Montreal by FIVE GOALS to win the tiebreaker. The Rangers came out firing, took a 9-3 lead and Emile Francis played the game’s last five minutes, way ahead, with an extra skater and no goalie to try to add more goals to no avail. But the Canadiens, also playing most of the third period without a goalie, could manage only two (and allowed three empty-netters) in a 10-2 loss to the Blackhawks. The Rangers eked in, then immediately lost to the soon-to-bechampion Bruins.