WASHINGTON — Here’s a fun fact:
Forty-six years ago Wednesday — April 8, 1969 — the Mets hosted the Montreal Expos for their first-ever regular-season game. This was an exciting time for the Mets: no longer the most recent expansion patsy, the advent of the Expos — now known as the Washington Nationals — was supposed to signal an automatic certainty that things were looking up in Flushing.
Final score: Expos 11, Mets 10.
It was the eighth time in eight tries the Mets had lost on Opening Day. Tom Seaver got cuffed around for five innings, it was a gray, dreary day, and it may well have been the first time — though not the last — the Mets officially exasperated fans who had been extremely patient through seven awful years and 737 losses: boos rained down from the crowd of 44,541.
“One of these days,” said Eddie Kranepool, who had seen more Mets Opening Days to that point than anybody, “we’ll figure a way to start a season 1-0.”
You know why that became a fun fact, of course. The Mets won 107 of their next 169 games. They won the N.L. East, won the NLCS, won the World Series. And you can bet, with absolute certainty, when the confetti fell on the Canyon of Heroes six months later, Expos 11, Mets 10 had long been forgotten. By everyone.
Here’s a not-so-fun fact:
Twenty-four years later — April 5, 1993 — the Mets were again selected to play host to a National League expansion franchise. This time, it was the Colorado Rockies, and this time there were 53,127 people in the house, and this time instead of a diminished Tom Seaver the people saw a resplendent Dwight Gooden: nine innings, four hits. The 2-0 win made the Mets 21 for their last 24 Opening Days. The faithful were ecstatic.
“That sounded the way it sounded in the good days,” Gooden said later. “That sounded the way it used to sound in 1985 and 1986. A good sound.”
You know why that became a not-so-fun fact, of course. The Mets won the next day, too, to reach 2-0. They then lost 103 of their next 154 games, and by the time the Mets went on a six-game winning streak to close out the season, the two-game streak that started it was forgotten. By everyone.
So look: if there is one operation that understands the folly in putting too much stock in Opening Day, it is the Mets, who despite that 0-for-8 start to Opening Days now sit at 35-19 (.648) after Monday’s 3-1 win over the Nats. It’s Every Other Day that has always been the hard part for the Mets, who are 4,004-4,389 (.477) from Games 2-162.
Look: sometimes, the first day really can be a harbinger of the days to follow: those first seven years, 1962-68, it was no surprise the Mets lost because the Mets ALWAYS lost, to everyone, any city, day or night, nine innings or 25. Bad teams looking bad from the jump. And also: in four of the other six seasons after 1969 in which the Mets made the postseason — 1973, ’86, ’88, ’99, ’00, ’06 — they started 1-0. Good teams looking good from the gate.
Of course, during the gloomiest era in team history, 1977-83, seven straight years finishing either last or next-to-last in the N.L. East, the team going a relentlessly abysmal 434-641 … the Mets went 7-0 on Opening Day — and really it was 8-0 since they won Opening Day II after the ’81 strike finished up in August.
What does any of this mean?
Well, what do all of the Kennedy-Lincoln coincidences mean, other than a way to show off at cocktail parties and win beers off your skeptical friends in bars when they insist there’s no way Lincoln’s secretary could have been named Kennedy, and Kennedy’s secretary Lincoln.
But as an old Mets boss named Casey Stengel (0-4 on Opening Days) would say: You could look it up. And what you find when you look up the Mets and Opening Day is a lot of early speed through the years, a lot of early hope, and a winning percentage not unlike the ’88 Mets. And a lot uncertainty afterward, with a winning percentage not unlike the 2011 Mets.
As Sgt. Phil Esterhaus might say: Be careful out there.