NEW YORK _ There's something special when a fan base falls in love with a team and something even more special when it lasts 50 years. That's what was on display at Citi Field on Saturday afternoon when the Mets honored their 1969 World Series championship team.
"The greatest New York sports story ever told!" the great Howie Rose exclaimed, and who could disagree with him?
Then the 2019 Mets took the field. For Mets fans, this group feels like a story they've heard far too many times.
Just when they wanted to believe _ when the Mets came back from a three-run deficit and went ahead on Robinson Cano's RBI single in the sixth _ reality returned in the form of back-to-back homers off Seth Lugo in the eighth.
After Nick Markakis' homer tied it, Austin Riley put the Braves ahead with a monster second-deck shot to left. The Mets went on to lose their seventh straight, 5-4.
There are parts of this Mets team that are beloved _ Pete Alonso, Jeff McNeil and Jacob deGrom spring to mind _ and then there is the rest of the team.
That's where Cano comes in. Cano drew louder boos Saturday than even the Wilpons did when they were mentioned by Ed Kranepool during his entertaining and heartfelt remarks.
The boos directed at Cano were for his uninspired and uninspiring play since he came over in the so-far disastrous trade with Seattle.
Cano was booed when the lineups were introduced, before he grounded a hard single to center in the first, when he struck out looking with the bases loaded to end the second, when he popped to left to strand a runner at third with one out in the fourth, and when he came to bat in the sixth with a man on second in a 3-3 game.
Cano grounded a go-ahead single to center, his fourth hit in the last two days. The crowd of 40,809 erupted in cheers. Cano was double-switched out before the next half-inning. He left on a high note. It was the Mets' last high note of the night.
When news of the Cano/ Edwin Diaz trade first surfaced in the offseason, I thought there was no way the Mets would take on five more years of Cano's contract at age 36 coming off a PED suspension.
I was wrong, and the Mets were wrong for taking on Cano and trading two of their best prospects to get a closer. Saturday's game shows why _ you don't need a supposedly elite closer (which Diaz hasn't been) if you can't get him the ball with a lead in the ninth.
It was Brodie Van Wagenen's first and most important move as general manager. He pushed his best trade chips into the middle of the table when he didn't have to.
Van Wagenen's fancy new analytics experts should have told him a) you could have bought a closer last offseason for mere money on the free-agent market and b) you don't use your top assets to acquire a closer in a trade unless you are a win-now team.
That's the delusion the Mets allowed themselves to start the season with: That they were a win-now team.
"Come get us," Van Wagenen said. But nobody needs to come get a fourth-place club, except maybe the fifth-place club.
The 1968 Mets, a team nobody remembers fondly, were a ninth-place club in the 10-team NL in the last season before divisions. Did then-GM Johnny Murphy call the '69 club the team to beat going into the season? Not likely.
Still, the '69 Mets are proof miracles do happen. Or, as New York City Mayor and presidential candidate Bill de Blasio said at Citi Field on Saturday when giving the players the keys to the city, "Ya Gotta Believe!"
Yes, that was the slogan of the 1973 Mets, not the '69 club, but ... who knows? Maybe we'll all be back in Flushing in 2069 to celebrate this year's squad.
That would be the second greatest New York sports story ever told. But I wouldn't bet on it.
