The first time was 1998. The Mets had turned a feeble team into a formidable one by trading for Mike Piazza in May and were sitting on 88 wins when they arrived in Atlanta for the final three games of the season.
They’d just been swept two games at home (tell me if this sounds familiar) by the last-place Expos. Still, the Mets were tied with the Cubs for the wild card, a game ahead of the Giants. And the Braves were 15 games up in the East, nothing to play for.
The Braves swept the Mets, the last two by a total of nine runs. As it turned out, all the Mets needed to do was win one of the three to earn a wild-card tie. They went 0-for-3.
“If you can’t win one game when you absolutely need to,” a morose Bobby Valentine said after the last pounding was over, “maybe that tells you something.”
It all started there, 24 years ago. Until then the Mets and Braves had mostly existed in different orbits, occupying different divisions. In 1969 they’d met in the NLCS and the Mets crushed the Braves on their way into legend, but the Braves were barely a second, third or fourth thought to most Mets fans.
Then came ’98. Then have come the 24 seasons since. And the Braves’ mastery of the Mets — especially at an old house of horrors named Turner Field, and their current suburban palace, Truist Park — has become an element of virtually every Mets season. The Braves have won 17 NL East titles since realignment landed them there in 1993 and will be vying for No. 18 when they welcome the Mets to Truist for three games beginning Friday.
The Mets enter a game up, and they lead the season series 9-7. They have so far proven themselves immune to the Braves’ traditionally mystic sway over them, and if they can win two out of three they will leave town on the doorstep of their seventh NL East pennant (though only the third since the Braves joined them there 29 years ago).
“We know how good they are and we have got an opportunity just like they do,” Mets manager Buck Showalter said Wednesday night, in the cheerful afterglow of the Mets’ 5-4 comeback victory over the Marlins, which allowed them to sneak ahead of the Braves in advance of the series.
“It’s great for baseball, it’s good for our sport that we all love and it’s an honor to be a part of. But we’re going to get an opportunity in October to play in the playoffs. We’ll see when.”
Said Drew Smith, who earned the win Wednesday by working a spotless 10th: “It’s going to be huge, honestly. It’s pretty much deciding the division. I’m sure it’s going to be as close to a playoff atmosphere as you can get without actually being there.”
Both teams are already in the playoffs, and both teams know their consolation prize will be two (and as many as three) extra home postseason games if they find themselves in the best-of-three wild card. But both teams will happily sacrifice those home gates for four extra days off to get their pitching right and their bodies healthy.
And there is the matter of statements to be made.
The Mets have insisted across the season’s first 156 games that they are not beholden to the past, particularly the franchise’s past September follies. The imperial Braves assume first place in the East is their birthright. And they especially believe they know how to flummox the Mets when it is absolutely necessary, that the players may change but a franchise’s DNA does not.
So they can point to ’98. They can point to 1999, when the Mets were within a game of them in late September and then lost five out of six to them. And then, in the NLCS, after the Mets had wiped out a 5-0 lead against John Smoltz in Game 6, the Braves won anyway after both John Franco and Armando Benitez blew save chances, and Andruw Jones clinched things with a bases-loaded walk against Kenny Rogers.
There was 2001, when the Braves broke the Mets’ spirit two days after Mike Piazza’s home run for the ages by coming back against Benitez, and even 2008, when the Braves were a lousy 90-loss team yet still beat the Mets four out of six in September, denying the Mets a postseason bid.
Chipper Jones has feasted on the Mets. So has Freddie Freeman. Now it is Austin Riley who has become the assassin of choice with an “A” on his hat. So many dark memories, so many difficult hours. One good weekend in Atlanta won’t change any of that.
But the Mets will sign up for that good weekend anyway, see what happens from there.