The Mets' place in history has been vastly overstated
Would the TV, radio, Internet and print people who keep calling the Mets' collapse the worst in baseball history PLEASE stop?
It was the worst collapse in baseball history for a team with a seven-game lead and 17 to play.
There are many other comparable collapses that just happened to involve different combinations of games back and games remaining.
As a writer, I understand the desire for dramatic declarations such as "worst collapse in baseball history.'' But it's not.
Now that that's clear . . . enjoy Game 2, Yankees fans. I'll write a review of TBS's coverage in Sunday's newspaper column.
I'm done for today.
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Comments (6)
Neil,
Please can you give us one thing here...I mean the Mets can't even have the biggest collapse? I am sorry but losing a 7 game lead with 2 and a half weeks left in the season seems pretty big to me. I mean the Red Sox blew a 14.5 game lead in '78. It started at the end of July so in about 9 weeks they lost 14.5 games averaging 1.6 games lost a week. The Met lost 7 in 2.5 weeks thats 2.8 games a week. More than one full game a week than the Sox.
I mean I wouldn't make it monumental (who wants a monument to this?) but it was still really big. The Biggest ever.
It was certainly big, but it wasn't the biggest ever. The '64 Phillies lost a 6 1/2 game lead in 12 games - that seems almost impossible.
Regardless, this wasn't even the biggest collapse in NY in the last three years. Losing a playoff series to your biggest rival while up 3-0, leading Game 4 in the 9th inning w/ the best closer in playoff history on the mound, AND with Games 6 and 7 at home is simply a bigger collapse than what the Mets pulled off.
However, as a Mets fan, I'm very proud of their ability to emulate the greatest collapses in baseball history - they've done us all very proud.
Excruciating as the Mets' collapse was, it wasn't as bad as that of the '64 Phillies: 6 1/2 lead with 12 games to go.
Yes, the Mets had that extra 1/2 game lead, but also an extra five games to kill (which killed them).
Actually, Neil, your own paper earlier this week had a story saying the Mets collapse was the third-worst in regular season history and worse (statistically speaking) than the Yankees' collapse in the 2004 ALCS. Maybe you could add a link to it in the bottom of this item?
Not as bad as '64 Phils. Sorry.
I remember thinking with 7 up and 17 to go, the Mets would have to lay down and die, while the Phillies would need to get real hot. Since both events had already happened during the season, it wasn't out of the question.
It's a drag, but I wasn't shocked. The Mets showed an ability to get real cold. Any team thats playing well can beat them. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I didn't see them winning a world championship any way. Only if they got real hot for three weeks. Watching this entire season, I didn't see that as very likely.