The ‘Luis Castillo Game’ turns 11
Trigger warning for all my Mets fans
I woke up this morning in a good mood. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and I managed to get my lazy behind out the door for a morning run (no big deal). I had just four hours of work standing between me and another quarantined weekend. Then, as I am likely to do from time to time, I opened up Twitter.
What did I immediately see on my feed, shared by a Mets fan no less (come on, Tim)?
I won’t even watch the clip. Can’t do it.
Today is the 11th anniversary of the Luis Castillo game. If you simply say that to any Mets fan of a certain age, they’ll know exactly what you’re talking about. Even more, they’ll probably be able to tell you exactly where they were when it happened. I know where I was: at home, hanging with a few friends. We were watching what was a great, back-and-forth game between cross-town rivals.
Before I continue, let’s add some context to the game and to the Mets’ trajectory overall at this point. It’s June 2009, and the Mets are coming off just about as devastating a three-year run as a team can experience. Between the NLCS loss in 2006 and the — gulp — back to back meltdowns in 2007 and 2008, it was, unsurprisingly, tough to be a Mets fan. The team had squandered what could’ve been a historic time for the franchise, and was now facing a potential downswing.
Being a 17 year-old in 2009, I grew up with the Yankees teams of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s dominating baseball. I was stuck listening to all my friends who are Yankees fans make fun of me for rooting for a team I picked because my dad was a fan. This, of course, built up in me a nice, healthy hatred for the team from the Bronx.
Take that hatred and apply it to every single series the Mets and Yankees would play during my teenage years. If nothing else during a number of lost seasons, I wanted the Mets to beat the Yankees. I knew it’d get under the skin of my friends that the lowly Mets managed to take two out of three from the mighty Yankees, and, being a Mets fan, I’d take what happiness I could get.
Back to the game. With two outs in the bottom of the 9th inning and Mets closer Francisco Rodriguez set to give the Mets the victory, it happened. K-Rod (Rodriguez) got Alex Rodriguez to pop up to shallow right field, which meant the Mets would seal the victory against the Yankees, and I would receive a night’s worth of happiness.
But, in the words of Lee Corso, “not so fast, my friend.”
Castillo dropped it. He dropped a pop fly in shallow right field that allowed two runners to score and the Yankees to win the game, 9–8 on a walk-off pop-up. It is the quintessential Mets moment of my childhood. In a classic Mets way, they managed to not only snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, they did it in excruciating fashion.
I sat there, stunned at how something like this could possibly happen to the Mets and — as an extension — me. It was the cherry on top of a garbage two-plus years. It was, and still is, so Mets. And, it couldn’t have happened against a worse team. It’s one thing to have that happen against a divisional rival because at the time, I wasn’t encountering Philly, Atlanta or Washington fans. It’s an entirely separate thing when it happens against the Yankees.
In some sort of sick, poetic way, it had to be against the Evil Empire, the team from the Bronx. To this day, I don’t believe I’ve ever re-watched this game or this drop since the night it happened. And I have no intention of ever doing so.
Wonder how Luis Castillo’s doing nowadays.
