What Could Have Been: The Mets' Bleak Future Was Sealed When 2006 Ended

(Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

The stadium was rumbling as if an earthquake had struck from underneath it.  The fans were screaming as if their lives depended on it.  It was October 19^th, 2006, Game 7 between the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Mets.  The winner here would face the Detroit Tigers in the World Series.

Jose Valentin stood at third base, staring at the small diamond-shaped plate that sat 90 feet away.  Of course, his run meant nothing.  He glanced over to where Endy Chavez was faking down the line at second base.  If he scored, then they were alive and well.  Someone coughed.  It was Paul Lo Duca at first base, the run that mattered the most.

Carlos Beltran took a deep breath.  The count was 0-2, but his history against Cardinals pitching assured everyone, including the 50,000+ men, women, and children sitting around where he stood, that the game was surely not over yet.  It couldn’t be.

Adam Wainwright stared down the ‘gauntlet’ at Yadier Molina, who had just crushed a go-ahead homerun a half-inning previously.  This was it.  All or nothing.  He held the small, 9-inch ball in his hands, twirling it nervously.  Looking for the signs, he understood.  Curveball, outside and at the knees.  Good enough for him.

Wainwright stood up and lifted his leg.  The ball was flying out of his hands at slow motion.  At the plate, Beltran clutched his baseball bat as the ball came rocketing towards home.  It was a curveball…

The Shea Stadium faithful leaped up into the air as the bat connected with the baseball, sending it sailing into the air.  The jubilant voice of Gary Cohen could be heard across the country.  It was going… going…

GONE!  A walk-off grand slam!  The Mets win!  The Mets win!

The party lasted all into the night as the team prepared for the World Series. The grounds crew at Shea Stadium spent weeks cleaning up the champagne that was spilled that nght.

They had skated by a pesky Cardinals team, but now had the face the juggernaut Tigers.  But they had something the Tigers didn’t have: the confidence of a lifetime.

That proved to be all that they needed, as the Mets went on to sweep the Tigers in four games with their newfound confidence.  The Tigers had won their pennant much easier and much faster than Mets had.  Naturally, the Tigers were a tad sluggish in the World Series… and the Mets crushed them.

The Mets came out the following year with a fire in their eyes, going 36-13 in the first two months.  They kept us this streak going like a championship team should, knowing that they had one once that therefore, since they had the exact same team the next year, they could win easily.

With the confidence they had procured, and they went to win 110 games in 2007, the largest amount in team history.

However, a surprising Colorado Rockies team that had won 13 of their last 14 powered into the playoffs with even more confidence, and proved too much for the Mets, whose starting rotation had been, until this point, fairly decent, and the Mets lost in the Division Series in five games, unfortunately.

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