A Big Win

Fairly or unfairly, the vultures are always circling this Mets team.

There's a lot of people who think their success is a fluke, that their pitching isn't this good and their hitters are too inconsistent. They see a Mets team that lives and dies with its streaks, a team that wins in bunches then coughs the gains back up with a sustained rough patch.

Even after a 7-2 road trip, the emphasis in the media wasn't on the 7, it was squarely on the 2. On some level it was fair; the losses came in their final two games, and of course they came against the Yankees, against whom everything is magnified.

But on the sports talk shows yesterday and in the papers the past two days, the talk wasn't just about their latest setback, the question was whether the Mets had peaked. They were 11 games over .500 entering play on Saturday -- would they ever reach such lofty heights again this season? Surely they would get a healthy dose of reality with two strong AL Central teams coming to town.

One game does not a successful home stand make, but with all of that as prologue, the 14-6 dismantling of the Tigers at a rain-soaked Citi Field came at a pivotal moment in the Mets' season.

The losses against the Yankees were disappointing, particularly with Mike Pelfrey and Johan Santana (both of whom have looked decidedly mortal lately) on the mound for the defeats. But in what has become a hallmark of this team, the Mets didn't succumb to the negativity swirling all around them.

The media and the fans have been poisoned by the past few seasons of disappointment. Many in both camps have a default expectation of failure.

I confess I've had that feeling myself. Coming into the year, certainly, I expected little from this team (my exact expectation was a ,500 season). I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point they made a believer out of me.

I still have my moments of doubt; that's what three years of disappointment will do to you. The part of me that used to expect failure would have expected the Mets to come out flat last night, but the part of me that believes in them again thought they'd come out and send a message to the remaining doubters.

In the end, belief carried the day. The Mets didn't allow a 2-game skid turn into a longer losing streak; they didn't let the media run with all the negative story lines. Instead they gave everyone a decisive victory to talk about.

It was a big win.

Let's get another one like it tonight.

- A.F.O.M.G.