“The moon belongs to everyone,” a wise man once informed a hallucinating man [1], though the subject could have been the playoffs, and that would have been wise, too. They’re here for all of us every October that isn’t October 1994, even if the best things in life include the Mets playing in them, and that’s not going on this October.
Rare treats being what they are, the Mets’ playoff involvement doesn’t go on most Octobers, so a Mets fan oughta be practiced at this type of adjustment. A Mets fan watches two non-Mets teams and picks a side, sometimes consciously, sometimes just pulled in one direction or another by the moment. You didn’t have to be a Mets fan to enjoy the National League Division Series elimination of the Braves [2]. That belonged to everyone. For anyone reflexively pointing out that at least the Braves made the playoffs, nah. It’s too late for those who advocate on behalf of an ousted playoff team to take out their frustrations on the snickering peanut gallery far removed from the action. You’re on the big stage, you stumbled, we get to guffaw. The best things in life are free.
Enjoying Atlanta’s exit from the postseason necessarily meant being in favor of Philadelphia’s advancement therein, which is akin to a person beset by nut allergies digging into a tin marked Planters. Except it’s October, and we can be inoculated against the usual impact of our chronic allergens if we wish. We just have to forget how much we can’t stand one half of a postseason series’s participants, either because we are smitten by a fleeting storyline or we really can’t stand the other half of that postseason series’s participants. For Phillies-Braves, we had a practice round. We had Phillies-Marlins. The Phillies — who we can’t stand for getting in our face — eliminated the Marlins — who we can’t stand more for getting under our skin — in less time than it took for the Marlins to have been declared losers of a suspended game [3] at Citi Field the week before. That’ll buy a hated foe a cup of goodwill that comes with free refills.
Once we got to the Phillies and Braves, neither were the Mets’ hated foes. They were each other’s problems, and we were so there for it. When Philly pulled out in front, I know I was there for it. The Braves lost only 58 times in the regular season. It wasn’t enough. Them losing in ratcheted-up circumstances felt too good to not want to see more. Ahead in the series and with universally acclaimed ace Zack Wheeler on the mound (Zack Wheeler…where have I heard that name before?), I was frothing for the Phillies putting their foot on the neck of the Braves. The Phillies? Really? Honestly, they had me at “…foot on the neck of the Braves”. I wasn’t going to ask too many questions regarding the color scheme of the pants leg above the foot.
Then Travis d’Arnaud hit a home run (Travis d’Arnaud…where have I heard that name before?) and the Braves eventually pulled ahead in the second game, sealing it when Bryce Harper, who has been known to use the postseason to remind everybody of his all-timer status, got caught off first base in a somewhat understandable fashion, as an 8-5-3 double play had never before been turned in a postseason [4], let alone to end a postseason game.
Then the Phillies clobbered the Braves in Game Three, as Bryce Harper returned to using the postseason to remind everybody of his all-timer status, though by that measure, every Phillie was an all-timer, as they were all clobbering the Braves. The chef’s kiss aspect, of course, was Harper’s pair of glares at the Braves’ shortstop, Orlando Arcia, who thought it was a hoot that Harper had been caught off first base to end Game Two and let it be known volubly and de facto publicly [5], then acted all hurt about his precise sentiments getting out. Atta boy, indeed.
By Game Four, as the TBS cameras made me wish I had the maroon and powder blue concession at Citizens Bank Park, I’d forgotten that I normally hate the Phillies; forgotten that they’d employed Chase Utley longer than and before the Dodgers ever did; forgotten that I can’t look at Citizens Bank Park in sunshine and not see Brett Myers striking out Wily Mo Peña to end the 2007 regular season, which clinched eternal darkness in my soul where the 2007 Mets were concerned; forgotten that I chronically cackled harder than Orlando Arcia ever did at whatever missteps or misstatements [6] Bryce Harper made in a Washington Nationals uniform in 2015. Gotta say, in the nighttime moment, I was all in on the Phillies.
Because I was all in on the Braves being all out. How could I not be? They’re just so…Braves. Or they were, as they are no longer involved in the present tense of the postseason, having lost their NLDS in four games, or one more that it took for the similarly successful regular-season Los Angeles Dodgers to take their leave. I don’t see the Dodgers enough in the regular season to embellish my ongoing animus in their direction beyond what still exists for Chase Utley’s assault on Ruben Tejada, but the playoffs belong to everyone. Everyone can enjoy the Dodgers being bounced in October.
After two years of giving baseball’s best regular-season teams time to freshen up before re-entering the fray while their statistical lessers stay engaged by playing games that count, questions have arisen if this is the best way to conduct a postseason. Whither the 104-win Braves? The 100-win Dodgers? The 101-win Orioles, for that matter? They all withered, whisked aside by teams that won 90 games, 84 wins and 90 wins, respectively. How do we deal with this unintended disparity?
We deal with it. Or those teams can deal with it. My team won 75 games. This isn’t my problem. My team won 101 games last year and couldn’t take two out of three in their mandatory first-round series. So much for staying engaged and playing games that count. Maybe something is wrong with a setup that doesn’t more easily enable the teams with the best records over 162 games to carve a path to the World Series. Or maybe something is wrong with each of those teams on an individual basis in a given week. Or maybe a team that can be very good for a few days, like the Diamondbacks, isn’t tangibly lesser when compared to a very good team not playing its best, like the Dodgers.
Enjoy those 162-game seasons if you were blessed with a golden one. It’s six months of unrelenting ecstasy that needn’t be permanently tarnished because a few days in October didn’t go according to plan. That’s just my off-the-cuff advice to those who are now ensconced in the peanut gallery with the rest of us. What do I know? My team won 75 games.
My team for the rest of the way is…I dunno. The Phillies are still the Phillies. They managed to find the bandwidth to express their thoughts about the Mets [7] during their clubhouse celebration that was ostensibly dedicated to defeating the Braves, so I see no point in getting even temporarily attached to them (though it was nice to be remembered, I guess). The Diamondbacks are plucky and admirable — and my gratitude for the 2001 World Series is forever — but for all the desert pastels they’ve donned, to me they’re beige. In the other league, the Rangers and Astros are loaded with ex-Met pitchers, active and otherwise, who’ve won Cy Youngs. Some years that’s a feature. This year it’s a bug, as in it bugs me.
But whatever. A little more high-stakes baseball for the peanut gallery to take in prior to the staring out the window and waiting for spring commences in earnest. The playoffs belong to everybody, us included.
National League Town watched the playoffs, too. Hear all about it. [8]