Great Moments in Mets Sadness: Carlos Beltran’s bat slumped on his shoulder, his knees made of pink slime; Doc Gooden lost in a crack house while his teammates celebrated a World Series in the streets; Luis Castillo’s too-early pop-up squeeze; Bobby Valentine’s Groucho Marx routine; "A really good kid. A very good player. Not a superstar."; Dykstra-for-Samuel; twin collapses in ’07 and ’08; the Madoff follies; Kazmir-for-Zambrano; "The Walk-off"; Vince Coleman’s firecrackers; Mike Scioscia’s heroics; Oliver Perez’s left arm.

It goes on.

The Mets — and their convulsive, overreacting, gallows-humorless fan base — thrive in a culture of ignominy. It’s bad, or it’s going to get bad. Despite two World Series wins and a surprising long-term profitability in the Land of Yankee, the Mets will always be baseball’s drunk uncle, prone to moroseness and pratfalls around the coffee table. Even in victory, there’s weakness. The 1969 Mets were the product of a “miracle.” The baseball-dominating, 108-win 1986 squad has been branded by Buckner Ball historicity and disappointment in the non-dynastic years that followed. The saddest of these sad stats: Across a 50-year pitching-rich existence, the absence of a no-hitter. That’s over now. Eight thousand and nineteen games later, it’s over. Johan Santana did it.