Matthew Callan
The First Fall
In their last two home games of the year, the Mets faced the Montréal Expos, who gave their hosts fits all season. The Expos would lose 95 games in 1998, yet would win eight of 12 games against the Mets, and none were more damaging than this last pair. Though Met starter Armando Reynoso had won of seven of his previous eight decisions, on the evening of September 22 he was perturbed by unseasonably cool temperatures that “seemed to signal the onset of autumn,” in the ominous words of the Daily News. He allowed a lead to evaporate and the bullpen that relieved him permitted inherited runners to score, the fatal margin in a 5-3 loss. The next night, the Mets’ bats fell silent against rookie pitcher Carl Pavano, who compounded the damage by hitting an RBI double. Met batters failed to capitalize on several chances to claw their way back into the game and went on to lose, 3-0.
To finish out the year, the Mets traveled to Atlanta to play three games against the Braves. There was no rivalry between the two teams just yet, unless a fly can be said to have a rivalry with a bug zapper. While Atlanta rattled off one division title after another throughout the 1990s, New York obliged by offering no threat to their dominance whatsoever. When the Mets arrived at Turner Field on September 25, the Braves had already won 103 games and long since clinched the National League East. The visiting team had everything to play for, while the home nine had no concerns other than getting their house in order for the upcoming playoffs.
Unfortunately, the Braves were the ones who played like a team on a mission. In game one, the Mets loaded the bases twice against freshman starter Bruce Chen but could only score two runs for their trouble. When Atlanta turned to its bullpen, the visitors found themselves stymied by another rookie, Odalis Pérez, and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, 43-year-old Dennis “El Presidente” Martínez, ace of the 1980s Expos enjoying his last hurrah. Trailing by two runs with two outs in the top of the eighth inning, the Mets put the tying runs on base and had an excellent chance to do some damage, with their biggest bats due up. Bobby Valentine sent in September call-up Jay Payton as a pinch runner, hoping the speedy young outfielder could score from first on an extra-base hit and knot the score. The move backfired when John Olerud hit a two-out single, inspiring Payton to take third on the hit, challenging the powerful arm of center fielder Andruw Jones. It was an unwise challenge, to put it mildly. The rookie was gunned down by a good five feet, killing the rally. Payton had committed two cardinal baseball sins: making the last out of the inning at third, and doing so while Mike Piazza stood on deck.
The Mets made some more noise in the ninth but were turned aside by another rookie, hard-throwing lefty John Rocker. The end result was a 6-5 heartbreaker. The decision went to Dennis Martínez, the last victory of his major league career. The Mets would come no closer to winning for the rest of the season.
In game two, New York was shut out and limited to three hits by one of the Braves’ trio of aces, Tom Glavine, with assistance from another motley crew of relief pitchers both young and old. Al Leiter held off the Braves for five innings but faltered in the sixth, ceding three runs, which on this day was more than enough to ensure defeat. The loss put the Mets one game of the wild card lead behind both the Chicago Cubs and the surging San Francisco Giants.
Valentine wanted to send Hideo Nomo to the hill for the last game of the year. Nomo came to the Mets as a midseason acquisition from the Dodgers and owned a lifetime ERA of 2.13 against Atlanta, but this was not the same Nomo of a few short seasons ago. Batters had caught up to Nomo’s tricks, and he had not pitched well since his trade to New York. Nomo begged off the assignment as a matter of pride, insisting other pitchers deserved the chance more than he. Valentine had little choice but to go with Armando Reynoso, who was shelled for five runs before getting yanked in the second inning. Reynoso’s early exit forced Nomo into the game anyway for his first ever relief appearance, and he proceeded to throw four shutout innings. Too little, too late. The Mets lost, 7-2. Atlanta manager Bobby Cox compared beating Valentine to defeating Casey Stengel and John McGraw. As was often the case when words of praise were expressed by Valentine’s opponents, the intended tone of Cox’s words—sarcastic or sincere—was unclear. Valentine chose to take it as a compliment.
To pour extra salt on the Mets’ wounds, both Chicago and San Francisco were trailing in their respective games as the team boarded a plane back to New York. “They’re both going to lose, aren’t they?” Steve Phillips sighed to reporters before he left Turner Field. By the time his plane landed, they had. The Cubs and Giants finished in a tie for the wild card, necessitating a one-game playoff. If the Mets had won a single game of the five they dropped to close out the season, they would have found themselves part of an unprecedented three-way tie. If they’d won two games, the Mets would have captured the wild card outright. Instead, they won a premature trip to the golf course. When they returned to the Shea clubhouse to clean out their lockers, they found a pile of fan-made t-shirts with the hopeful legend 1998 WILD CARD NEW YORK METS printed in orange and blue.
No Met could explain it. “I guess we just ran out of gas,” said Lenny Harris, the Mets’ go-to pinch hitter. “And there were no gas stations open. They all closed down as soon as we got to Atlanta.” Outfielder Brian McRae had a more rational, if depressing, theory. “To win as many close games as we won meant we were close to losing them, too,” he opined. “We finished right where we should have finished. Because when you play 162 games, you don’t fool anyone.”
The entire organization took the loss hard, but no one took it harder than Bobby Valentine. Normally impossible to shut up, the manager was at a loss for words. “I don’t know what happened,” Valentine told reporters after the Mets’ last defeat. “If I knew, I would have done something about it. That’s my frustration about it. Everything I tried didn’t work.”
“There should have been something. There should have been something,” Valentine repeated, more to himself than anyone else.
Valentine had never been to the playoffs in his entire baseball life. Not as a player, coach, or manager. Not in the majors or minors. Not in America or Japan. This was the closest he’d ever come to the finish line, only to trip and fall flat on his face. The flameout validated the worst of what his detractors thought of him. He’d topped out at second place in Texas. He finished second in Japan. Now, Mr. Baseball was second best again. Notice a pattern?, critics asked. A better manager would have been able to motivate his team to win one lousy game, wouldn’t he? Now, two of the players who brought him so close to the postseason—Al Leiter and Mike Piazza—were set to become free agents. If the Mets couldn’t re-sign both players, or even one of them, there was no reason to think that Valentine would get another shot at the playoffs in 1999.
If Steve Phillips felt the same devastation, he did a better job of hiding it. “My hopes were grander than just getting to the playoffs,” he admitted after the Mets’ final, brutal game of 1998. “But I’m also excited about putting a team together for 1999. And that’s what’s getting me through today.”
Steve Phillips was never a man for the long view. As he set about the business of assembling the next iteration of the Mets, it is unlikely he gave much thought to one minute beyond 1999. His intent notwithstanding, Phillips would soon pull together one of the most memorable and beloved teams in franchise history.