Schadenfreude Week, Day Seven! Because, let's face it, schadenfreude is all we have left.

 "I just want you to hurt like I do

Honest I do

Honest I do

Honest I do..."

—Randy Newman

Pretty much everything that went wrong this year for the New York Mets…is everything that has gone wrong before. Again and again.

Look at all the proven stars who came to Queens—and disappointed or underperformed. All the Jim Fregosis and the George Fosters, the Jeromy Burnitzes and Mo Vaughns and Roberto Alomars, the Bobby Bonillas and Vince Colemans and Bret Saberhagens.  

All the promising young players who were traded away and achieved stardom elsewhere, the Amos Otises and Nolan Ryans and Jeff Kents and Daniel Murphys.  The young guys who never did quite achieve lift-off, the Steve Hendersons and Lee Mazillis and Jay Paytons and Michael Confortos and Travis d’Arnauds and John Mains.

The tragic demises—and revivals elsewhere—of Dwight Gooden and Daryl Strawberry.

The Mets are known for their pitching, for all the strong young arms who are going to turn the team around. But how often do they bloom or die—or die first? Or bloom elsewhere?

Remember “Generation K” (Jason Isringhausen, Bill Pulsipher, and Paul Wilson)?  How about “The Fab Five” (Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Matt Harvey, Noah Syndergaard, Zach Wheeler, Steve Matz)? 

Even the great young 1980s starters, Doc and Ron Darling and “El Sid” Fernandez and David Cone, were gone so soon. Jerry Koosman and Nolan Ryan won 20 games outside of New York, and Tom Seaver pitched a no-hitter…with Cincinnati.

Sixty-five seasons in, the New York Mets are the one and only major-league baseball team that has lasted over five years in NYC and failed to produce a winning record. The figures don't lie:

New York Yankees:  10,963-8,283   .570

New York Giants:        5,959-4798    .554

Brooklyn Dodgers:     5624-5,280   .516 

New York Mets:           4,972-5,312   .483

How to account for this? I think, gentlemen, that we are looking at a curse.

Sure, there has been much ballyhoo about supposed curses in baseball before. But I think that we can safely dismiss them as hooey—hooey, I tells ya!

The Curse of the Bambino up in Boston? Try the curse of never wanting to acquire many Black or Hispanic players.

The curse of that billygoat in Chicago? Please. Since when are goats allowed in the ballpark, even in Chicago? Besides, the Cubbies had already failed to win it all for 37 years and dropped five straight World Series before that alleged goat voodoo.

(If anything, it should've been the Curse of Fred Merkle, but don't get me started!)

I digress.

If there IS a Mets curse—and I say there is, dammit!—what should we call it?

The Curse of Robert Moses, the guy who did so much damage to the city (as well as some good, debate amongst yourselves), and who desperately wanted the UN out in Flushing Meadows, not a ballpark?

But it was Moses who put the park out there in the first place—which was one of his better ideas. Why would he curse his own creation?

The Curse of William Shea, the guy who managed to create the Mets in the first place, and whose park they deep-sixed? 

But Shea was, by all accounts, an incredible mensch, who would do things like see to it that whole troops of kids got to go to the ballpark every summer...along with enough spending money to buy hot dogs and popcorn and soda.

When he had an extended hospital stay, and his room was filled with flowers from friends, he saw to it that flowers were sent anonymously to everybody else on the wing, too.

(Read my forthcoming book!!)

Ahem. Sorry about that advertisement for myself. 

But the fact remains, why would such a terrific person—one who was often amused that nobody knew who he was—want to curse the team he struggled so to bring into being? Or anybody?

No, that leaves only one possible name for the curse:

The Curse of Fishhooks McCarthy.

That is, John A. "Fishhooks" McCarthy, the Tammany sachem who would infamously go to mass every morning and pray, "O, Lord, give us health and strength. We'll steal the rest."

It was Fishhooks who created the great "Valley of Ashes" portrayed so ominously by Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby; Fishhooks who made the gigantic ash dump that underlies everything out by where the Metsies play. 

Okay, sure, so maybe you don't like the idea of a moral universe in which a conniving, thieving, colorful machine boss can cast curses from the hereafter?  Fussy, fussy, fussy.  We need a curse name for the Metsies, and we need it now!

Speaking of black magic, I'm sure all of my schadenfreude will redound against us. Hence my closing image of the regular season, courtesy of our own, Above Average. Yes, soon they will be sweeping up our little heads.

Knicks in Five!