Enjoy the Ride, Mets Fans

There is a cliché that says, “Life is about the journey, not the destination.”  I cannot stand most clichés, but I happen to like this one.  In fact, this cliché is especially true in sports.  If you ask a fan of a championship team to state his/her favorite part of winning the championship, chances are the fan will talk about the thrilling wins and anticipation of big games along the way.  Of course, we fans love championship celebrations, trophy presentations, ticker-tape parades, and drunken Brett Hull

victory speeches; but the journeys to these exhilarating moments contain many other exhilarating moments in their own rights.


That premise brings me to discussion of this year’s New York Mets.  After falling to 11 games under .500 following a loss in Miami (first game after the All-Star Break), the team has gone on a 19-5 run.  The Mets now find themselves 3 games over .500, a half-game out of a Wild-Card spot, and 8.5 games out of first place in the National League East.  That said, what does this all mean, Basil?  

The optimist in me says that the Mets can keep playing well for the rest of the season (albeit not at a near-.800 winning-percentage pace like the team has shown over the past 24 games) because the team has fixed its fatal flaw, the bullpen, from the first half of the year.  Even if the pen does not dominate like it generally has over this 24-game stretch, it is difficult to imagine the pen being as legendarily putrid as it was in May and June.  Additionally, the optimist in me sees a team that can expect dominant pitching starts every night, now that Marcus Stroman is in the fold.  Lastly the optimist in me loves the emerging young core of position players in Jeff McNeil, Pete Alonso, Michael Conforto, Amed Rosario, and J.D. Davis and knows that this group will give the Mets a legitimate chance to win every game the rest of the way.

I like to think there is no pessimism in me, so let us instead say that the realist in me has doubts about the rest of the Mets’ season.  The realist in me worries that the Mets’ 19-5 run is more a product of the Mets facing the subpar Marlins, Pirates, White Sox, and Padres over the bulk of that stretch.  The realist in me worries that the relievers outside of Seth Lugo and Justin Wilson will be hit hard as the Mets embark upon a stretch of 11 series in which 10 are against above-.500 teams.  Lastly, the realist in me worries that having too many games with 6/7/8 hitters of some permutation of Tomas Nido, Angel Echevarria, Luis Guillorme, Juan Lagares, Todd Frazier, and/or Aaron Altherr will be the undoing of this team.  (It is a shame that Robinson Cano succumbed to injury as his bat was finally starting to heat up.)  

Thus, who is correct?  The optimist in me or the realist in me?  The truth is that, right now it does not matter.  To return to the cliché at the top, sports is all about enjoying the ride.  I have loved these past four weeks of Mets baseball as the team has played like the best team in baseball.  Whether this Mets season keeps going strong or not, I will always look fondly upon this stretch of baseball for however long it lasts.  


Thinking back, my four favorite seasons as a Mets fan were 1999, 2000, 2006, and 2015.  When I think of 1999, I think of the team’s countless dramatic wins as the Mets progressed to and through a Game-162  win to force a one-game Wild Card tiebreaker and ultimately lost in a 6-game NLCS to the Braves.  That team also beat the D-Backs in an exciting NLDS that featured game-winning 9^th-inning homers from Edgardo Alfonzo and Todd Pratt. 

With 2000, I think of the Mets’ thrilling run to their first World Series of my fandom, as the Mets dispatched of the Giants in an exciting 4-game NLDS and easily beat the Cardinals in a 5-game NLCS.  In 2006, I experienced the Mets’ first divisional crown of my fandom, and the team also tied with the Yankees for the best record in the league.  It was a wonderful six months, and I thoroughly enjoyed the team’s NLDS sweep over the Dodgers and everything in the NLCS through the Endy Chavez catch in Game 7.  Lastly, with 2015, I experienced the most enjoyable Mets season of the Citi Field era, as the Yoenis Cespedes arrival sparked an incredible 6-week stretch in August and September that gave the Mets the NL-East crown.  Then, it was a delight to watch the Mets’ four dominant starting pitchers (deGrom, Syndergaard, Matz, and Matt Harvey) lead the Mets past the Dodgers in a tight 5-game NLDS and the Cubs in a complete 4-game thrashing in the NLCS.  

Writing that previous paragraph made me extremely happy.  That said, I should acknowledge that those seasons also presented the most upsetting moments I have experienced as a Mets fan.  Kenny Rogers walking Andruw Jones, Jose Vizcaino’s and Luis Sojo’s game-winning hits, Yadier Molina’s game-winning homerun, and Eric Hosmer’s mad dash for home plate were all brutal moments.  However, when I think of those seasons, I think first of the long, glorious roads that led to those brutal moments. 

I think of sitting in Shea Stadium for Melvin Mora’s game-winning run in Game 162, Robin Ventura’s grand single, Mike Piazza’s homer in the 10-run inning, Bobby Jones’s 1-hit shutout, and Endy Chavez’s catch.  As for Citi Field, I think first of being there for Daniel Murphy’s homerun in Game 1 against the Cubs….and I also reminisce about being present for the “Wilmer Flores crying” game. 

As we move further into the future, the joy of the happy moments greatly overtakes the pain of the depressing endings.  I would much rather have the chance for a negative ending than have a season like 2017 or 2018 in which the Mets were out of contention by the end of May.  As Rick DiPietro often mentions, the “currency of hope” is a valuable commodity, and I am happy to possess it whenever I can, such as during the current Mets’ run.

Meanwhile, if you are not like me but are instead a Mets fan who thinks of 1999 as a disappointment because of Kenny Rogers and 2015 as a disappointment because the team lost the World Series, then I do not know why you are a fan.  Unless you root for a team who has won a whole bunch of World Series in recent years (not the Mets’ case, obviously), you should enjoy whatever rides your team gives you.  Maybe this season will not take the Mets to the NLCS or beyond, as happened in previous seasons.  Maybe this season will be more like 1997, 1998, 2001, or 2016; when the Mets provided exciting runs but fell short of reaching the NLDS.  (Note: even the optimist in me cannot put a silver lining on a 7-game collapse, or even a 3.5-game mini-collapse, with 17 games left in the season.  Sorry, 2007 and 2008.)  Perhaps this season will actually be more like that of the 2010-11 Devils, who went on a 23-3-2 from January through March to turn a 27-point playoff deficit to a 6-point deficit. 

While that team ran out of steam in mid-March and missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs, I nevertheless look back upon that run as one of my favorite times as a Devils fan…and I have experienced much more success as a Devils fan than as a Mets fan.

That Devils run gave me hope for a miraculous championship that never materialized.  Similarly, this Mets run is giving me hope for a near-miraculous championship.  Will this dream come to fruition?  Only time will tell, but I am happy to have the currency of hope.  I did not have that currency at this time last year, at this time in 2017, nor in June and early July of this season. Thus, the moral of the story is this: we have no idea how this Mets season is going to finish, but we now know that, after most of us had buried the team for dead, the team now has a legitimate chance to do something special.  Let us enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts.