Look, I get so many of these things wrong, I like to relish and cherish the things I get right. My predictions and my prescience has been questioned and ridiculed for years, and legitimately. I once predicted a Rich Kotite Jets team would win 10 games (missed by seven). I once called for Tom Coughlin to get fired (it wasn’t exactly a lonely chorus, but we all sort of got that one wrong).
I could go on. I won’t go on.
But I will cheerily retweet myself here, something I scratched out as I watched the skies open up in Queens the other night:
@MikeVacc: I haven’t seen it rain with this kind of ferocity at Citi Field since July 30, 2015, a fairly significant line of demarcation for that year’s #Metsteam.
It didn’t take long for serious Metsologists to remember the moment: a 7-1 Mets lead over the Padres that became a tooth-puller of an 8-7 loss thanks to a bunch of bullpen blowups sprinkled with a couple of Biblical and highly comedic rainstorms. That was the night after Wilmer Flores’ tears. It was a surreal blur that immediately preceded the Yoenis Cespedes trade, a sweep of the Nationals, and the greatest 2 ½ months Mets fans have enjoyed in years.
Tuesday, when I typed that, the Mets were about to get double-blanked in a doubleheader for the first time in 45 years, which was the day before Yogi Berra was fired. They were two days away from the Thursday night follies at Citi Field in which a serious, poignant moment was obscured by the GM chatting in front of a live mic, throwing the commissioner of baseball under a bus, throwing one of his owners under a train, then being himself thrown under a Sherman tank by those owners (both of whom misspelled his name even as they spat it out).
It was damn near Shakespearean.
And the next day — I mean, the very next day — entering into exclusive negotiations to buy the Mets.
And that was damn near Utopian.
Mets fans know to keep their touchdown dances to themselves until Cohen signs, Glengarry-style, “on the line which is dotted.” They have been to this dance before. But it is also OK for them to dream a little bit. For one thing, Cohen has been more than a clear-cut favorite among Mets fans to win this bidding with his deep pockets and deeper affinity for the team. He was Secretariat times a thousand in those hearts and minds.
Yes, there are reasonable-thinking (and still passionate) fans who worry about his past SEC issues, who are wary of the man upon whom Axe on “Billions” was based, who worry the Wilpons are just playing another game of “Psyche!” with them, who fret that baseball’s owners might treat him unkindly upon seeking approval. All fair questions.
But most of those fans, if we are speaking honestly, didn’t want any part of Alex Rodriguez and all of the baggage and all of the drama and all of the diva-ness he would’ve brought to the table. And it was hard to even keep a Mets fan awake if you talked about Josh Harris and David Blitzer.