Mets’ midseason turnaround has few parallels in New York sports history

As I’ve watched the Mets this season, I’ve kept trying to think of another example of a team that made such a remarkable in-season turnaround. 

In 1969, the Mets had a poor April, and they were 18-23 as late as May 27 … but there was zero expectation around the Mets of that era. The ceiling was absurdly modest for a franchise that had never won more than 73 games. And as remarkable as the Mets’ late-season surge was in 1973, they still won just 82 games. That story was told as much by other teams’ ineptitudes as the Mets’ successes. 

The Yankees had a couple of seasons of recent vintage that began miserably. In 2005 they started 11-19 and in 2007 it was 21-29. But those teams were the opposite of the ’69 Mets: They were veteran teams used to success. When they turned things around, it was simply the law of averages coming into play. And even the great comeback teams of our town — the ’51 Giants and the ’78 Yankees — were having solid seasons when they fell so far in arrears, victimized only by the hit starts of the Dodgers and Red Sox. 

To me there are four seasons that resemble this, one baseball and three football. 

The ’99 Mets were a hot mess at 27-28, so much so that Steve Phillips purged Bobby Valentine’s coaching staff during a Subway Series at Yankee Stadium with the promise Valentine was next on the chopping block. The Mets proceeded to win 40 of their next 55 games, which not only turned the season around but solidified the manager’s status. That stretch came quite out of nowhere, and though the season ended in heartache, the fact the Mets got to the NLCS at all was remarkable given where they’d been in June. 

But the three that really stick in my mind are all football seasons. 

The first is the ’81 Jets, who were coming off a 4-12 season the year before and started the new year at 0-3 and 1-3-1 before winning nine of their last 11 games to break a 12-year playoff drought. Walt Michaels was a dead coach walking after four games, and Richard Todd was booed unmercifully because he wasn’t Matt Robinson, who’d become a folk hero as his backup. By the end of the season (ending in a heart-wrenching playoff loss to the Bills) fans were toasting Michaels and carrying “TODD IS GOD” banners to Shea Stadium. 

The second is another Jets team, the 2002 edition, which started the season 1-4 and 2-5, and were as dull and lifeless a team as you could imagine before Herman Edwards replaced Vinny Testaverde with Chad Pennington. The Jets won seven of their final nine games, made the playoffs on the last day of the season then thumped Peyton Manning and the Colts, 41-0, in the most recent home playoff game the Jets have played in. 

The last one is the good standard one: the 2007 Giants. Coming off an 8-8 season in which Tom Coughlin had barely managed to keep his job, the Giants where whupped by the Cowboys in Week 1 and whipped by the Packers in Week 2. They trailed Washington 14-0 at the half of Week 3. Coughlin was on the hottest hot seat possible. So was Eli Manning. But they rallied in Washington, roared to 10 victories in their next 12 games and lived, as we know, happily ever after. 

Vac’s Whacks

If you’re lucky in this crazy tapestry of life, you’ll meet a few people so kind and selfless that by their spirit alone they require you to aspire to the same. Father Dan Riley was such a man to generations of St. Bonaventure students. We lost him and his king-sized laugh this week, his enormous heart stilled at 81. Godspeed, old friend. 

There may not have been five players ever born who would’ve reached that place in center field at Fenway Park that Aaron Judge reached in the seventh inning Friday night. 

How respected was the late Mets photographer Marc Levine in baseball circles? Well, this week the Yankees joined the Pirates and Marlins in honoring him in pregame ceremonies. Marc, who was with the Mets for 35 years, died July 4. 

Carlos Mendoza should be the leader in the clubhouse for the National League Manager if the Year — as much for how he worked when the Mets were scuffling as what he’s done as they’ve soared. 

Whack Back at Vac

Ron Cole: Imagine placing Cashman & Co. in charge of the second-place Yankees of 1970. Hitting cleanup before Bobby Murcer: Curt Belfary/Stick Michael/Jerry Kenney or Ron Woods. Sounds like the hitters that are following Judge right now. 

Vac: Tell me you’re a legit longtime Yankees fan without telling me you’re a legit all-time Yankees fan. 

Chris Salogub: I am no “if George was alive” guy as a Yankees fan, but if George was alive to see Mets jerseys being sold at the Stadium, you would have copy for WEEKS as he went scorched earth on his employees. 

Vac: I saw those and I thought it was a gag concessions stand. It was not. 

@DanDePetris: Sometimes I think folks forget that under George’s watch, the Yankees missed the postseason for 14 straight seasons. We tend to remember the good times and are all too happy to forget the bad. 

@MikeVacc: As Casey Stengel would say, “You can look it up.” 

Daniel Polner: When was the last year the Knicks, Rangers, Mets and Jets all made the playoffs? 

Vac: It’s a good one. I’ll let you ponder and answer it next week in Vac’s Whacks.