Los Mets

(This was originally published on October 29, 2024, for Ida Post)

This past year, I lost a good friend and one of the most talented, fun and warm humans and writers I will ever meet (and importantly — one of the most natural editors — his generosity of spirit and true love for the talents and personalities of his friends and writers helped us cultivate our entire selves — I’m not exaggerating and he requires superlatives to capture what he was and for many of us continues to be). I feel his loss everywhere and all the time — both because he found the fun and the joy and the poignant in the everyday — that kind of wholesome subversion that so very few actually embody and generate. His Supernova wife and effervescent golden son who shoots hoops and breaks the moves with the most angelic sweet disposition (my best Mr. Beast interlocutor, if I must have one) are more than a testament to him, they are a family of such full graceful force and fun. And now Tuna too — that dog is SO of his household.

Both Michael and I adored baseball, especially the oftenhapless Mets. Michael was an Expos fan and there was no way the Blue Jays, his adopted city’s team (he was from Ottawa), were going to fill that void – Toronto is shorthand for a lot that isn’t great — forget the average Canadian’s opinion, they all hate Ontario for reasons of the center of power and/or anglophone culture vs. the rest, ask the average Torontonian. I can’t believe Michael is not here with us to experience this team — I long for what I imagined he’d be writing and saying — perhaps a letter from Grimace to Jose Iglesias, or to all of us. Or just to Bryce Harper. And Jesse Winker, goodness. I’d love to read a letter from Michael as Winker – or Starling Marte with his long long answers that I am determined to believe are meant to annoy his lovely interpreter and contain a lot more that isn’t being translated. OMG. I want to see Michael’s son dance to it — I use to have a lot of requests of Michael, he was too funny not to at least ask for these commissions. But my all time favorite, of course, was his letter of romantic intent on my behalf to Ike Davis (his idea, not mine, but Jesus lord, f’n hilarious and thank god he did it, one of my favorite things in my life). I treasure that more than even my law school diploma and believe it has just as much shape my life. Anyway, I know he’d have asked me to write about this team and this insane and miraculous and charming post-season. Here it is.

In his classic, ought to be regularly revisited, Men at Work, George Will writes about the civic virtues of baseball: 

There also is a civic interest served by having the population at large leavened by millions of fans. They are spectators of a game that rewards, and then elicits, a remarkable level of intelligence from those who compete. To be an intelligent fan is to participate in something. It is an activity, a form of appreciating that is good for the individual’s soul, and hence for society.

Perhaps. But it also provides a beautiful reprieve. This year, I have held on to this Mets miracle like a lifeline as never before, mostly leaving my peripheral vision for the possible horrors that await us on November 5, and the actual horrors in Gaza (there are so many other horrors, but those feel most personally urgent to me). I have watched the video of Grimace, getting on the 7 to already bouncing Mets fans, at last 50 – 100 times; the Pete Alonso homer in the 9th inning, Mets down 2-1, on the bring of elimination and his possible final at bat as a Met — about 1000; and Lindor’s Grand Slam against the Phillies and the OMG Citi Field performance on a constant loop – these and the daily Adams’ next man down news bulletins feel like an actual, non-metaphorical addiction – these dopamine hits are entering my eyes and ears so regularly I very definitely expect them to continue as a permanent part of life. Though it’s also possible that because I’m so acutely attuned to what is happening that I seek some joy to offset it (a privilege I am aware of and grateful for), one that is as pure and unexpected as this postseason (alongside seeing the dominos of the dumb and corrupt fall with the slightest whisps of federal jurisdictional winds – the two complement one another wonderfully, naturally). And baseball nerds are the true nerds of the world of sports – a fandom one cannot feign without being unmasked quickly, one that means it and really can’t help itself – a sense of purpose that feels so purifying it intoxicates. 

And the sport provides a mix of history and place, and individual narrative arcs, that few if any other sports can. As the Mets play the Dodgers, the former having sprung from the latter – a New York story that includes Robert Moses himself – I get to reflect about not only city and team history but my own. I moved the US – to Queens specifically – in August of 1986, when I was 8. I remember little else from those first months here except immediately watching the Mets as they reigned supreme and then won it all. I absolutely became fluent in baseball before the English language. My father is American and grew up a Giants fan and then relented and adopted the Mets. We’ve been attached to them ever since, both a perfect initiation with the ‘86 team, and then requisite years of fairly shameful baseball that seems to have defined the Mets fan experience. And why this year stands apart – neither dominant nor hapless – this squad of fairly wholesome dudes playing hard and loving each other and their fans ( with Jesse Winker as the wonderful exception that proves the rule — long-haired, tatted up, bombastic and the only Met who would not be out of place on the ‘86 team– I take some pride in looking at him an immediately guessing that the man must be from the state of Florida; we get one slightly trashy bad boy). The first game against the Dodgers was a rout, painful to watch, and we’ve become so spoiled as to expect the miraculous in every game, some magic wand waved with late inning home runs. I’m not ready for this season to be over, as soon as it is, November 5th is here, and the realities of everything outside SNY recaps and my Mets Twitter Timeline return, the dream turning to postseason dust.