The Lowest Points of My Sports Fandom

Sports are filled with highs and lows. Boston fans have been lucky to have their lives filled with so many highs. In contrast, my life as a New York sports fan has been not been filled with so many highs. I have had my share of triumph with two Giants Super Bowl wins, but those are the only two championships in my lifetime. Let’s take a trip down memory lane and look at some of the low points of my sports fandom.

Mets Vs. Padres: July 30, 2015

It is hard to choose from the plethora of moments as a Mets fan. However, this one stands out in my mind just like it was yesterday. It was an afternoon game at Citi Field. The Mets had a 7-1 lead going into the top of the seventh inning. Derrick Norris hit a grand slam that brought the score to 7-5. Jeurys Familia managed to get the first two outs in the ninth inning when they got hit with a 44-minute rain delay. Terry Collins inexplicably let Familia try to finish it out after the delay. Derrick Norris singled. Matt Kemp followed that with a base hit of his own. Then Justin Upton managed to knock one over the right centerfield fence for a 3-run home run. The Mets lost this game 8-7.

This game had me in my feels all night.

As the text to my high school buddies says, I sat on my bedroom floor for an hour (at like midnight by the way) just contemplating what it meant to be a Mets fan. This was the day or two after Wilmer Flores cried on the field and the Carlos Gomez trade fell through. I seriously considered giving up on the Mets. They only brought me heartbreak and pain. However, I decided I had spent too much money and too much time invested in this stupid team to give it all up.

Rangers Lose Stanley Cup to Kings

I was born a year and a half after the Rangers won their last Stanley Cup in 1994. I got my first and only experience watching the Rangers play for the cup in 2014. Here is the setting. I am sitting in a friend’s backyard watching game 5 of the finals. It is double overtime and like 1 in the morning because the game was in LA. Alec Martinez bangs a rebound home and the Kings beat the Rangers to win the Stanley Cup. I am not exaggerating when I say every person in that yard (like 8 of us) did not move or say anything for like 45 minutes. The only noises you heard was the occasional sniffle and wipe of a tear off our cheeks. I had never had my team lose in the finals before (with very limited experience). What made it so much harder was the fact that it could have easily been the Rangers lifting the cup. They lost a couple games in overtime. Games in which they had the lead late or hit multiple posts in OT. It was crushing.

Rangers Lose to Lightning in 2015 ECF

The 2015 New York Rangers were so much fun to watch. That year was truly special for me as a sports fan. The Rangers won the President’s Trophy, while the Mets managed to make it to the World Series. However, the Rangers were unable to make it to two consecutive cup finals. They had a historic comeback against the Capitals in the second round after coming back from a 3-1 series deficit. I still have never jumped as high as I did when Derek Stepan put the puck past Holtby in game 7. \

The conference finals were a different story. The Rangers found themselves down 3-2 in the series when Derick Brassard scored a hat trick to propel the Rangers to a dominant game 6 win. Like me, you are probably thinking that there is no way the Rangers go back to the Garden and lose in game 7. However, like me, you would be very wrong. The Rangers got shut out in game 7 on home ice. What made this ending so painful was that I was not hoping the Rangers would win the Stanley Cup. I was expecting them to win the Stanley Cup and anything short of that was a failure.

Final Thoughts

There were certainly some others I could have included on this list. I could have talked about game 7 of the 2006 NLCS when I cried in bed the following morning when I found out the Mets lost. I could have talked about the Mets actually losing the World Series. Just like the 2014 Rangers, the 2015 Mets had so many chances to make that series theirs, but blown saves and a scrappy Royals team prevented that from happening. Sports can bring out the worst in us sometimes. We are emotionally attached to a team and game that simply means so much to us. It may be just a game to a lot of people, but to those of us who care so deeply, it will always be more than just a game.

-Pete Chatterton (@Pchat12)

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