We’ve had some tough times us Mets fans. The road to 2015 has been fraught with heartache. We tell ourselves we’re used to it, we can handle it, but it hasn’t been easy. We take solace in whatever consolation may come our way.
We’ve been more or less able to plan October events without compunction … no excuses for missing your cousin Marlena’s wedding to weird-eyebrow Sal from Bayonne. We haven’t had to worry about keeping track of the standings either, which always seem to look the same unless you turn them upside down. We’ve been able to derive a certain artistic license born from despair — a sad combination of anxiety and dread — we are the Edvard Munch of baseball fans.
Other fans could never understand that feeling where the prospect of being eaten alive by angry bears is preferable to another late-inning melt-down. We all know that 7th inning urge to smear yourself with hamburger and run out into the woods.
I remember a Happy Days episode where the Fonz was trying to show Richie how to pick up girls and he explained that some girls go for the dark sullen look, standing sadly in a corner slowly punching a pinball machine … Mets fans have that look down pat. I’ve derived a hefty portion of inspiration in my own right from all the misery … a self-indulgent malaise animated in many maudlin media. I have a tree stump out back that I hack away at when I’m feeling exasperated … it has begun to resemble a cross between Mr. Met and Oogie Boogie. My sumi-e ink drawings take on a ghastly appearance during losing streaks … I’ve even managed to channel an unhealthy dose of existential angst into my snide posts about our glorious manager, our vaunted bullpen, and our “powerhouse” offense … It’s been a good run from a creative standpoint.
Now Matt Harvey comes sauntering over the prairie like Shane offering to help me remove my stump, and suddenly my cynical jokes seem to miss their mark. When I comment on how Terry Collins’ hamster wheel has come off its hinges again it just doesn’t have the same bite. This is wonderful news of course. I’d gladly give up my miserable craft for a few wins. No one cares about sumi anyway … my bamboo brush keeps losing its horsehairs. Maybe I’ll spend my sumi-brush money on a knock-off deGrom jersey from Korea (no one would know!). Yes, self-deprecation isn’t the cakewalk it used to be … even my Mets cap has somehow been finding it’s way to the top of my head without recompense.
I was talking baseball with a couple of Twins fans the other day who were going on about Ervin Santana and I mentioned how the Mets also lost Jennry Mejia to this same stanozolol (is it stanozolol or stanozo-lol? Because if it’s stanozo-lol I DON’T GET IT!). By the way it seems oddly disquieting that Edvard (of Edvard Munch from earlier) and Ervin (of Ervin Santana) both have “v’s” in their first names where you’d normally expect a “w” … I know, mind blowing. Anyway, when I mentioned how losing Mejia was also “a real bummer” they looked at me and said “yeah but the Mets have the depth to weather it and still be competitive but for the Twins it changes everything.” I was surprised … I was half expecting some variation of “yeah but the Mets suck anyway,” but NO! Apparently this may no longer be true. I was flabbergasted, I realized I had no idea how to behave in a world where the Mets did not suck … I had to pinch myself.
The interesting thing about all this is how the positive synergy may actually be having an impact on the team. I am of course talking about that elusive 10th player, the fans.
NY Mets fans are a strange animal. They are like a beast that is let loose into the wild every 20 or 30 years, and when they are released they go totally freaking berserk like some sort of wolf-hybrid bereft of natural enemies in Yellowstone … throwing beer at poor unsuspecting Grady Sizemore. What would possess an otherwise normal person to do that (besides beer of course)? I’ll tell you what … years and years of frustration. It’s like these people who try to tame tigers and lions and the creatures are all friendly and cuddly until of course the day of the mauling … You can’t domesticate a frustrated Mets fan who is finally experiencing winning no matter how many times you try to disorient them by moving the fences or with ill-advised Yankee-esque roll calls (whose brilliant idea was that “BTW”?).
The positive side of this is that all of a sudden the opposition is looking over their shoulders a little more, just like in 1969 and in 1986. Like the fans are going to start parachuting in or something. You can almost see the opposition wondering if those flimsy blue barriers can really keep the fans from rushing onto the field should something particularly unpalatable occur … I swear the Phillies had this “maybe we should just let them win” look on their faces on opening day, which is as it should be — this is New York for crying out loud.
Sandy Alderson and the Mets’ triumvirate of triangulation have been conducting all manner of statistical marauding trying to figure out why recent Mets incarnations have done so poorly at home … I can tell you why as easily as I might flick a sabermetric booger at the guy in the Marlins jersey standing in front of me at the supermarket check-out counter. Besides the lack of contact hitters in a very big pitcher’s park, it’s because for the last 6 seasons our tenth player has been on strike.
Yes my Mets peeps … it is an excellent thing. Not only are there signs that the team may actually be able to compete, there are palpable indicators that our 10th player (who unlike other more docile 10th players around the league is a particularly ferocious species) may be back from the grave. Now you do need a certain amount of wins to re-animate a corpse such as it is — wins are like lightning bolts for this Fan-kenstein’s monster — returning to munch on the erstwhile smug and confident brains of our opposition. Interestingly enough it appears the Mets have responded with some spunk of their own, plunking batters, getting in people’s faces, getting bench warnings … which of course only riles up the maniacal faithful even more. But the wins have to keep coming. Losses are like Darryl Dixon crossbow arrows to the brain of this snarling ghoul.
Still, I will apologize in advance if my jokes don’t quite have the same zing they used to, art suffers when misery wanes as they say … a small price to pay for a winning season.
