Mike Celizic

The Mets faithful stood at the end with cameras in hand, making sure they captured the historic moment when their hopes were crushed in Shea Stadium for the final time.

It was beyond painful, like scrubbing down a bad case of shingles with a wire brush, dosing the sores with gasoline and setting them on fire. Only worse.

For those of you at home keeping score, that’s two straight years now that the Mets have polished off a September collapse by losing a game they had to win on the season’s final day. In their defense, they at least had an excuse this year: their closer, Billy Wagner, missed the last month of the season and nobody in the bullpen was capable of stepping up.

But a collapse is a collapse, and when you think back on all the leads the Mets blew, all the games they lost late, it’s beyond belief. They have one of the most expensive payrolls in the game, and they lost Sunday to the Marlins, and in the playoff race to the Brewers, teams with lower payrolls. At the end of the day — or the season — nobody wants to know about the adversity you faced. Every team has injuries; every team has bad breaks. They want to know if you won or lost.

And the Mets lost again. At least this time, nobody could blame Willie Randolph. The manager who presided over last year’s collapse was fired this year to make way for Jerry Manuel, who took the team into first place only to watch the Mets do that voodoo that they do so well.

There are only two places to lay the blame for this one: the bullpen that couldn’t get the job done when Billy Wagner went down for the season, and Omar Minaya, the general manager who first thought that Wagner could be relied on and then didn’t have anyone who could back him up.

Wagner is old, prone to wear down late in the season and also adept at melting down in the biggest games of the year. Minaya knew all that, but figured correctly that Wagner saves a lot of regular-season games. What Minaya didn’t figure is that he needed someone behind Wagner, someone who actually could close a game for the Mets.

So I’m blaming Omar for this debacle. Wagner’s injury was predictable. Minaya should have had a Plan B, but didn’t. And the Mets paid for it.

Two swings of the bat off two relievers — Scott Schoeneweis and Luis Ayala — finished the Mets on Sunday. The score was tied 2-2 when Schoeneweis pitched to Wes Helms, who knocked the ball out of the park. Enter Ayala to pitch to Dan Uggla, who hit another one out. The Mets had more at-bats, but the game was over.

Now it was up to Milwaukee, which needed to beat the Cubs to grab the NL wild card and the final playoff slot. Trailing by a score of 1-0, the Brewers tied it at 1-1, then took a two-run lead within 10 minutes of the Mets falling behind to Florida.

Video   Mets season ends early again Sept. 29: Reyes, Wright, Beltran and Delgado talk about another heartbreaking September collapse NBC Sports

That’s when the fans got out their cameras to record the last bit of Shea Stadium ignominy for posterity. New York actually got the tying run to the plate in the ninth, but Ryan Church ended it with a fly ball almost to the warning track in center.

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