Everything about the Mets is special, nothing about the Mets is special
Being a Mets fan during a charmed season like this is a tightrope walk. Your right brain wants to give yourself over to the present and embrace the lore. Your left brain knows there’s no such thing as a Team of Destiny and it could all come to a screeching halt in 3 days.
The Mets face the Braves this week and can clinch a playoff berth with a series win in Atlanta, and I’ve spied a lot of Mets fans on social media observing that this season feels different. And it absolutely does. Even compared to a year like 2022 when the Mets won 101 games and skated to the postseason — if not a division title — there’s something in the water this year.
Of course there’s Grimace, the folk hero’s folk hero. There’s Jose Iglesias, the aging infielder picked up off the scrap heap who immediately became one of the team’s most productive hitters and — oh yeah — moonlights as a chart-topping Latin music artist whose earworm OMG has become an anthem for players and fans alike. Especially when you consider where the Mets were spiritually at their low-water mark, with Jorge Lopez launching his glove in the air in frustration and calling the Mets the worst team in baseball, the whiplash is jarring.
It’s been particularly weird, because as Mets fans we’re programmed to always expect the other shoe to drop, for the honeymoon to always end and Murphy’s Law to govern our chaotic marriage to this team. But what if the shoe dropped in reverse? What if everything that preceded Francisco Lindor moving to the leadoff spot and Grimace throwing out the first pitch were the baseball fates getting the mythology right, but out of order?
Remember the Grimace Shake Challenge, where TikTokers would drink a Grimace Shake and eerie, paranormal and disturbing things would start happening? What if the Grimace first pitch was a sort of hex-breaker? A Grimace…Unshake Challenge? (These are real sincere thoughts I have. They’re pointless.)
Since then, most everything that could go right has. But with six games left, everything could still go horribly wrong and I’m trying to hold both of those thoughts in my head at once. I have loved watching Mets baseball this year and it would feel almost cosmically unfair for a team with these vibes to not at least have a shot at the World Series. But that happens in baseball. It happens all the time. Everything about the Mets is special, but nothing about the Mets is special. They simply have to keep playing baseball better than the team they’re facing on any given day. If they don’t, they will meet an ignominious end and thousands of fans will be devastated.
I suppose this is just being a sports fan. You make the time and emotional investment, and for all but one team everybody goes home hurt. But you don’t do it for the dividends. You do it for the roller coaster. Even if it isn’t up to code and there are screws and bolts loose that could send the car careening off a loop at 70 miles per hour, you get on anyway.
I’m not ready to fly off, but I’ve accepted it as a risk you have to assume by strapping in at all. So let’s ride.
