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When I think of a bad game experience, these are the factors that spring to mind:
--Arriving late to seats that weren't as good as I thought they'd be to discover the Mets have fallen way behind early.
--Empty stadium in lousy weather in a lousy season watching lousy baseball unfold.
--Being with somebody who'd clearly rather be somewhere else.
--A sizable plurality not rooting for the Mets, if not necessarily rooting against the Mets.
--A blown lead when there's something to play for.
On a macro scale, it's hard to beat September 30, 2007, the day Tom Glavine was certified T#m Gl@v!ne, but even then, even with the 7-0 hole and the fucking Marlins being fucking assholes and the Phillies winning on the scoreboard and the collapse of collapses going final...well, it was fucking awful, but I still remember a certain doomed camaraderie leavening the fucking awfulness a little where I was in the Upper Deck. Several days before, I watched the Mets give up a large lead to the fucking Nationals when they totally sucked and fall out of first place and you knew the slide was irreversible and everything was wrong, yet that was my first game with Dana Brand and though we cursed it for as long as knew each other, it was a fun night to a point.
This one, though...
http://ultimatemets.com/gamedetail.php?gameno=5826
This one can totally go fuck itself.
It had the Mets in the Wild Card race but endlessly tripping over every opportunity to move up (the weekend before was when Angel Hernandez and Turner Field both became Angel Hernandez and Turner Field; the weekend before that was the first Subway Series at Shea, featuring the Mel Rojas-Paul O'Neill debacle). The night before, right after the All-Star Break, the Mets lost 9-8 in eleven. So you're already on edge about every game being the difference between making the playoffs for the first time in ten years and not making the playoffs.
It had me there with a certain buddy of mine who, for his many wonderful qualities as a person and as a Mets fan, can zone out to utter obliviousness and leave me feeling utterly alone when he's sitting right next to me.
It had fucking Merengue Night, which on July 10, 1998, meant hordes of people coming out of nowhere in the late innings (because the Mets would sell tickets that way), climbing over us in Loge to lower themselves down in to Field Level. While the game was in progress. While the Mets clung to a precarious 6-5 lead in the ninth.
While John Fucking Franco loaded the bases and Shane Andrews tripled to unload them and the Mets fell behind 8-6 and were quelled in the bottom of the ninth. Just loads of Merengue fans either not paying attention as they helped themselves to seat upgrades or some actively rooting for the Expos because of Felipe Alou and Vladimir Guerrero (and always a sprinkling of MFY dicks from every culture), and my pal being pissed off but being pissed off differently, which somehow annoyed me as much, and Jesus did we just lose another one of these goddamn things?
Out in the concourse as we made our getaway before the Merengue beat could captivate us, I found an open, mostly fully 20-ounce bottle of Pepsi and smashed it against the nearest wall. Cola exploded in all directions. That got my friend's attention. To this day, he asks me if I need to throw a bottle of soda when Met things go wrong.
The Mets, you might recall, missed a shot at a Wild Card play-in by one game in 1998. Might've been that game that did them in. Might've been any number of them. I'm gonna say it was that one.
I'm not sure this was the worst of the worst, but damn, it sucked.
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