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Professional athletes sometimes have lingering memories of a particularly difficult moment in their careers.

For New York Mets first baseman Lucas Duda, his appears to be the ill-fated throw he made to the plate in Game 5 of the World Series.

The throw eluded catcher Travis d'Arnaud, allowed Eric Hosmer to score the tying run in the ninth inning and, effectively, cost the Mets any hopes of a World Series comeback as the Kansas City Royals won later in the night to seal the deal.

At the Mets' spring training facility on Thursday, Mets beat writer Marc Carig of Newsday asked Duda about the throw -- and it's something he thought about a lot:

In hindsight, while Duda might think a good throw home would have nabbed Hosmer, it's hard to say whether that would have been the case.

That "what if?" mentality, of course, is one of the central aspects of the game of baseball. The Royals dealt with it after coming up agonizingly short in Game 7 of the 2014 World Series and made amends by winning it all a year later.

Can the Mets do that in 2016? Time will tell.