Mets escaping Braves doubleheader in playoffs should remind fans of time they didn’t expect worst

Before we get to the memories that will be foremost on the mind of Mets fans through the 18-inning torture chamber that awaits them Monday afternoon in Atlanta, let’s start with a happier one. Let’s go back to 1973, which was the only other time that bad weather forced the Mets to play a doubleheader on the day after the regular season was supposed to end.

Let’s go back to Oct. 1, 1973. Multiple days of Forrest Gump rain — you know: “little bitty stingin’ rain … and big ol’ fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath — had washed out two days of games in Chicago. They would have to play doubleheaders Sunday and Monday.

And when Monday came, they needed to win one out of two at Wrigley Field to clinch the NL East. They won the first, in more rain, and the umps mercifully called the second one with nothing left to play for.

“We’d have waited ’til Thanksgiving if we had to,” Tug McGraw said afterward, “and if so we would’ve won the game then, too.”

They were a brash and confident bunch, those Mets, and so were their fans. This was during a stretch of their history when Mets fans actually expected good things to happen to them. There was the miracle of ’69. There was the mini-miracle of ’73. Later there would be so much good fortune and so many preferred bounces in October of 1986 it was hard to keep track of them all.

The Mets lost plenty, sure, at the beginning and then in between, but it’s hard to identify one game they lost before Sept. 11, 1987, that can be called genuinely gut-wrenching, as in the-baseball-gods-hate-us gut-wrenching.

Then Terry Pendleton hit a ninth-inning home run off Roger McDowell at old Shea Stadium, meaning the Mets were not going to pass the Cardinals and defend their championship. A year and a month later, also at Shea, Mike Scioscia took Doc Gooden deep in another calamitous ninth inning and so it would be the Dodgers, and not the Mets, who would be going to the 1988 World Series.

And after that …

Well, we won’t even get into what happened in 2007 and ’08, because if you’re reading this you certainly know what happened in 2007 and ’08. We’ll use the following names, and assume you know the context all too well: Yadier Molina, Alex Gordon, Conor Gillaspie — a troubling troika that darkened the clouds so many Mets fans forever see loitering.

But no team has added to the index of indigence more the Atlanta Braves. There was 1998, when they swept the Mets three games, when one Met win would’ve qualified them for a play-in with the Cubs and Giants. There was 1999, when a late-season sweep eased the Braves past the Mets and into first place and them close to the brink, and then a few weeks later when both Armando Benitez and John Franco blew saves, and Kenny Rogers couldn’t throw a strike when he desperately needed to.

There was Sept. 23, 2001, two nights after Mike Piazza’s forever home run, when Benitez gave up a three-run ninth inning lead, the Mets’ surge toward a miracle playoff push stalled, and boos returned to New York City for the first time since 9/11. Six days later, Brian Jordan hit a walk-off grand slam off Franco to cap a seven-run ninth.

There were too many Chipper Jones moments to count. Too many Greg Maddux gems. Too many Freddie Freeman bases-clearing gappers. And for the cherry, there were the three games at the end of the 2022 season in which the Braves sped past the Mets to the NL East.

Now, the Mets need to win one game in Atlanta on Monday. A split gets them an 89th win on the season and a seat at the table in the NL playoffs.

And this is why I started with that Monday doubleheader, one day shy of 51 years ago. I wish one thing for Mets fans: one victory Monday. Maybe that is what it will take to allow them to believe that dumb luck affects almost every team, that there are no jinxes, hexes, poxes or curses on their trail.

I hope they can channel J.D. Martinez, who in Sunday’s 5-0 win in Milwaukee ended an 0-for-36 skid with a couple of hits. He exhorted his teammates — whom he could see were pressing thanks to an ill-timed three-game losing streak — to let all of it go.

“If you lose, you lose,” he said. “There’s no point in stressing about it. Go out and enjoy yourself. That’s when this team is at it’s best, when we’re having a good time.”

None of that will put fans who’ve seen too much at ease until the Mets record one 27th out Monday. Once upon a time, Mets fans might not even have bothered to watch: they knew good stuff was going to happen. Now they might not be able to hold down breakfast. Maybe one win Monday afternoon won’t change that forever.

But it would be a damn good start.