That nervous feeling is back
Long road back to playoffs finally over. Enjoy!
For Mets fans who have waited nine long years, the start of the postseason brings the usual feeling of excitement, but also the nerves that accompany the fun.
LOS ANGELES — How long has it been since the dawning of a baseball morning brought what Friday morning will bring you — the nerves, the anticipation, the heart working double time as you slog through an endless workday, and through dinner, and maybe through a few pregame beverages …
How long has it been since just thinking about that day’s game will make you both giddy and nauseous? The Mets did you a favor, after all, stripping much of September of its mystery.
Even if you allowed the paranoia of mid-September to affect you, the Mets never let the Nationals sneak closer than six games away. By the time they take the field at Dodger Stadium on Friday night, it will be 13 days since they last played a game that truly, honestly mattered. It’s been a nice break for you, whose spirit rises and falls for this baseball team, for your heart, for your stomach, for your nerves. Break’s over. “Its time,” Terry Collins said. It’s time: for him, for his base- ball team, which looked awfully loose in the L.A. sunshine Thursday. And for you, who probably haven’t felt the way you feel right now since Labor Day week, since those three games with the Nationals, since you punched the air right along with David Wright and thrilled to Yoenis Cespedes’ daily heroics and pointed to the sky alongside Jeurys Familia all three days.
You were spared a month’s worth of those games because the Mets took care of their business and because the Nats never bothered to take care of theirs. The Mets were spared having to run through the tape, and maybe that cost them home field in this NL Division Series with the Dodgers, but the trade-off — an extra road game in exchange for palpitations — is one they’ll make every time. As will you. And now return the butterflies, and the anticipation, all the way to 9:45 at night. The Mets? Don’t worry about the Mets. They’re ready. They’re prepared. For many, getting this far is a culmina- tion, the realization of dreams that go back as far as their memory allows.
Travis d’Arnaud grew up 25 miles from Dodger Stadium, in Lakewood, which means that when his parents would take him and his brother, Chase, to Dodgers games it could take anywhere from half an hour to half a day, depending on traffic. Often he would stare wideeyed as his favorite player, Mike Piazza, took aim at the famous zig-zag pavilions in left- and rightcenter fields; now, he plays Piazza’s old position on the Mets.
“Crazy, right?” d’Arnaud said, laughing. “I walk in here, I still feel like I’m supposed to be in the rightfield pavilion munching on Dodger Dogs. Now, I get to play my first playoff baseball game here.” Think he’s ready for this? “Only my whole life,” he said, laughing.
Don’t worry about the captain, David Wright, or the slugger, Cespedes, or the Game 1 starter, Jacob deGrom. Don’t worry about Curtis Granderson, in the playoffs with a third different team, who said, “Look, we were confident when we were in second place, we felt like we belonged with the Nationals even when nobody else did. So we certainly believe we belong now.”
Don’t worry about the manager. Collins has spent 44 years chasing his dreams, and he knows how lucky he is to have finally found this team, at this hour of his career, at age 66. Thirteen days ago, in Cincinnati, drenched in champagne, Collins had said: “It’s all worth it now,” and he spent the last two weeks alternating between gratitude and grumpiness, so eager was he to light this candle.
Riding shotgun with Collins is always one of the unique experiences of being a Mets fan in this time, and he has been on a Vegaslevel roll of late.
“I’m ready,” he said. “We’re all ready.”
You’re ready, of course. You’ve waited two weeks for this, but really you’ve waited nine years for this, for a team like this, for an October like this, for an opportunity like this. Maybe you’ll need to mainline caffeine to be game-ready for these late starts. Maybe you’ll need some Maalox to quell what will be jangling inside of you, because nothing tears a fan up quite like postseason baseball does.
Break’s over. The fun starts Friday night, late, and Clayton Kershaw will be there to greet you, looking like the meanest bouncer you’ve ever run into on the other side of a velvet rope. Won’t be easy. Good. A wise man once said you do certain things “not because they are easy but because they are hard.”
JFK was talking about going to the moon. Once this series starts, you’ll be ready to be launched over it. Enjoy the ride.