October 2022 was going to be one for the ages in New York City. It was all set up. The Mets had won 101 regular-season games and tied for first in the NL East (though, by virtue of a lost tiebreaker with the Braves, they were officially a wild-card). The Yankees won 99, and, though there were some anxious moments in September, they won the AL East outright and comfortably, by seven full games over the Blue Jays.
It was as fine a baseball summer as we’d ever seen around here, up there with 1985 (when the Mets won 98 and the Yankees 97, though in those days before the wild card, neither made the playoffs) and up there with 2000, when we enjoyed our only Subway Series World Series since 1956.
It should’ve been a time of sheer and unmitigated delight.
It wasn’t.
The Mets’ postseason lasted three days, enough time for the Padres to walk into Citi Field and take two out of three, beating up both Max Scherzer and Chris Bassitt along the way, with the final image Buck Showalter asking for San Diego pitcher Joe Musgrove to be all but strip-searched because of a fishy spin rate.
Mets fans went into instant mourning, and for many of them it was difficult to remember any of the 101 wins (plus the Game 2 victory against the Padres) that had come before.
The Yankees survived a legit scare from the Guardians in their first playoff series, winning the final two games, filled by the absurdity of Cleveland’s Josh Naylor’s rock-the-baby nonsense after he hit a Game 4 homer off Gerrit Cole.
But then the Yankees fell under the steamroller of their arch-nemeses, the Astros. Not only did Houston beat them in the postseason for the fourth time in eight years, but the Yankees didn’t even take a game off the hated once and future champions. Yankees fans went into an instant series of rage alternated with sadness. And it was difficulty to remember any of the 102 victories that had come before.
It was awful, on both sides of the baseball divide. All of the things baseball brings out in us when things go wrong for our team — depression, fury, jealousy (of the teams still playing and the fans still rooting), bitterness, the whole basket — was Out There. Mets fans and Yankees fans, normally unified by so little, unified in that.
It was just awful.
And here’s a question:
Whether you are a Mets fan or a Yankees fan, as much as living through that dyspeptic October night have been, is there any question that you would sign up — would sign up this moment — for the opportunity to feel what you were feeling at the end of last October as opposed to what you are feeling — or, more tellingly, not feeling — at the dawn of this one?
That is one of the odd and inexplicable truths of sports, right? At the end of the day, even the pain, the misery — the agony of defeat, as they used to remind us on Channel 7 week after week back in the day — beats the grisly vacuum of emptiness.
And that’s the prevailing emotion on both ends as this most galling of baseball seasons comes to its merciful conclusion in New York City:
Emptiness in Queens.
Emptiness in The Bronx.
And look, sure, there was plenty of anger on both sides this year: Anger from Mets fans for four solid months of relentless underachievement, which caused even more anger at the trade deadline as the team held a garage sale, rendering the final two months of the season an endless and meaningless mess. And anger from Yankees fans, as they were unable to generate much in the way of offense all year, as they posted an endless string of lineup cards in which six or seven of the starters were hitting .220 or less, as they let two genuine superstars — Cole and Aaron Judge — play virtually by themselves in one plane of excellence while everyone else loved in the murky mess of mediocrity.
For a while it looked like both teams might finish in last place, and though that’s not likely to happen, it’s hardly a consolation prize. The Mets were officially eliminated from playoff contention Friday, and the Yankees are going to follow soon, maybe as early as Sunday. And a year when you’re officially done with a week still to go is nothing other than unmitigated disaster.
Disaster in Queens.
Disaster in The Bronx.
An empty October, all the way around.
Vac’s Whacks
Happy 70th birthday this week to my pal, Joe Benigno. Maybe the Jets can do him a solid and see to it that it’s not filled with agita?
Daniel Murphy, whose quest to return to the big leagues ended a month back, will throw out the first pitch before Mets-Phillies next Friday night. Somehow it has been eight years since Murphy went on one of the great Joe Hardy/Roy Hobbs runs of all time in real life against the Dodgers and Cubs in the 2015 playoffs.
It’s been a while since I hate-watched anything with the fervor that I hate-watch “The Morning Show.”
Andrew Luck showing up after the Giants-49ers game in the civil war army uniform that his old fake Twitter account @CaptAndrewLuck used to feature him in was the funniest thing I’ve see on TV since “30 Rock” went off the air.
Whack Back at Vac
David Bryant: I have a suggestion for the Giants: All they have to do is play the Duluth Eskimos!
Vac: Those treated to my early edition column Friday know the Giants beat the pesky Eskimos the first time they ever played on a Thursday. It drew 5,000 to the Polo Grounds — about the same audience as during the fourth quarter against the 49ers.
John Cobert: James Dolan: “I don’t really like owning teams.” Well, that makes it unanimous!
Vac: Sometimes the lowest-hanging fruit is the sweetest-tasting fruit.
@IcehouseMB: Go New York Novabockers!
@MikeVacc: I like to think of them as Knicksanova, but that works, too.
John Sieg: Wow! HBO, let you and me down! “Winning Time” was a great show. Tremendous performances by Quincy Isaiah as Magic, John C. Reilly as Buss, Solomon Hughes as Kareem, and especially Adrien Brody as Riley. Riveting! Need more!
Vac: Can’t Netflix or Hulu step in and save the day here? Please?
