Amazin' revival to first

Imagine you're a successful and charming person. You're the life of every party. Your grade point average is the highest in your class, semester after semester. Entering the bar one night, everyone glares with high regard, not disdain. You get to the bartender, order rounds of drinks for everyone, and girls throw their inhibitions out the window. \nAfter a long night of drinking and partying, you head back to your apartment, where you find your roommate watching soft-core porn on HBO, eating spaghetti and drinking 7 UP. You ask your roommate how his night was. But guessing from the sauce stains on his shirt and the rise he gets out of the cheesy plot lines on the aforementioned movie, his night was probably dull.\nI'm not talking about my life (because it's certainly not that interesting or that boring), nor am I ripping any of my roommates, as much as I would love to divulge all their dirty secrets to the Hoosier populous. I'm drawing comparisons.\nYou were the New York Yankees -- the toast of major league baseball, spending at will and garnering respect from every baseball team, executive and hometown fanatic. Your roommate would be none other than the New York Mets. The ugly duckling. The bastard child. The loser roommate.\nIt took 18 years for the ugly step-sister to earn the National League East title, but it was worth the wait. It was a difficult journey out from the Bronx shadow and a longer one out of the NL East basement.\nNew York City is traditionally a National League town. Mets fans will agree with me. Yankee fans won't. But it always has been that way. In the 1964 season, the Mets finished last in the NL, losing 109 games in their first season at Shea Stadium. The Yankees won the AL pennant but were outdrawn in attendance by a dismal Mets franchise by more than 400,000. And the Mets again outdrew the Yanks in 1965 through 1968 -- all losing seasons for the Mets.\nThe Mets are beloved in New York on account of their predecessors. The Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants were the darlings of the city before their moves. The Yankees -- in all their glory and mystique -- will always be second fiddle to a successful New York Mets club because New York City bleeds Dodger Blue and Giant Orange in the form of the Amazin' Mets.\nThe climb to a division crown has been a different road, though. The last time the Mets won the NL East was in 1988, at which time the Atlanta Braves were in the NL West. The team then flirted with mediocrity and embarrassment for nine years until it reached the playoffs as a wild card. These teams were horrendous. It was like watching your son dress up like Boy George and perform "Karma Chameleon" at a school recital. It was that embarrassing.\nMeanwhile, the Braves were the prototypical consistent franchise. They won a record 14 division titles in a row. Neither the Mets, Phillies, Marlins nor Expos (and recently the Nationals) could derail the Braves. No matter how much the Mets spent (and they did), no matter how many homegrown talents fizzled (on drugs) and no matter how many steroids Bobby Bonilla took, the Mets were always behind the Braves. That's what makes this division win so sweet.\nThis year's playoffs will have plenty of firsts. It will be the first time the Detroit Tigers and Yankees are in the playoffs at the same time (Detroit was in the AL East before 1994). The Mets might share October with the Padres or Phillies for the first time ever. The Mets also share single-digit postseason appearances with the Phillies and Padres, whose first playoffs were in 1984, when they lost, coincidently, to the Tigers in the World Series. It will be the first time Carlos Delgado enters the postseason after an active majors-record 1,703 games without a sniff.\nFor this Mets fan, it will be the first time since 1988 the Mets enter October division champions. But maybe more importantly, it will be the first time since the release of "Hoosiers" that the Mets are the toast of the major league baseball.