The best thing to happen to sports since…
For a team that has been on the fortunate side of some of the most remarkable events in baseball history — the miracle of 1969, making a World Series with 82 wins in 1973, the whole Buckner thing in ’86 — Mets fans are an incredibly neurotic bunch. Maybe it’s the whole Woody Allen New York thing. Or maybe it’s the whole every Mets season not mentioned in the previous sentence thing. Either way, it doesn’t take much to make these people panic.
So when the Mets rolled into Washington on Labor Day with their division lead cut to 4 games, heinies were furiously tightening in Queens.