Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job.
—Epistle of St. James
IF he lived today, Job would undoubtedly be a fan of the New York Mets. So would Sir Francis Bacon ("Adversity is not without comforts and hopes"). So is anyone with the slightest sympathy for the underdog, the smallest shred of a sense of futility, the least understanding of how it feels to lose, and lose, and lose.
From the first, it was clear that the true Met fan had to be a man of almost mystical forbearance, untrammeled optimism and infinite compassion for the inept. Born in 1962, when the National League expanded to ten clubs, the Mets promptly lost their first nine games. They finally won one on their tenth try, but defeat was more their style. Baseball, according to a hoary cliche, is a game of inches. The Mets lost by feet, even yards, and they did so with agonizing regularity. In their first seven seasons they threw away the awesome total of 737 games while winning only 394 (see chart, page 51). Only the staunchest of supporters could have sat in the stands through those long afternoons and borne the relentless booting of ground balls, the repeated mistakes on the base paths, the dreary succession of batsmen looking at called third strikes.
To most New Yorkers, the very thought of a Met victory was an alien concept. "In those days," recalls Leftfielder Cleon Jones, "people never even asked if we had won. Most of the time it would have been a silly question." But the fans went on cheering, ever hopeful that some day heroics would replace horselaughs.
That day has come. The Mets started this season in typical fashion. They lost their first game—as they have lost every opening-day game they have ever played—to the league's new expansion team, the Montreal Expos, by the exasperating score of 11-10. By late May, they had lost five more games than they had won. Then, suddenly, they caught fire. They won eleven in a row, the longest winning streak in their history. They slumped briefly in midsummer, but they have since rallied to win twelve of 13 games. As the season turns the Labor Day corner and heads into the stretch, the Mets are serious contenders for the National League pennant. Last week they were only 2½ games behind the faltering Chicago Cubs, the leaders of the league's Eastern Division.* Like the fabled little engine that could, they are pulling mightily, and they really believe they can make it. Whether they do or not, the very possibility that they might makes the Mets the biggest surprise of the baseball year.