My Team is Good, and I'm Not Entirely Happy About It

It’s June 30. My team is in the playoff hunt. I have mixed feelings about that.

I should be happy. A month ago, the Mets were the laughingstock of baseball. They had lost a bunch of games in a row due to shoddy defense, lackluster hitting, and an imploding bullpen. One of their relievers had just gotten ejected from a game, tossed his glove into the stands, and told reporters that he was “the worst teammate in the fucking MLB.” [When asked to clarify if Lopez, for whom English is not his first language, said he was “the worst teammate” or “on the worst team,” he replied, “Both, probably.”] It was starting to feel like another lost season.

Then something changed. Some are crediting Grimace, the purple McDonald’s mascot who threw out a first pitch two weeks ago at Citi Field. The team has gone 13-3 since. Others are calling them the “Gay Mets,” since the winning streak has largely coincided with Pride Month. Less superstitious folks cite the closed-door team meeting that was held the night of the pitcher’s ejection. Others will note the chemistry-altering call-up from the minors of Jose Iglesias, who is also a pop singer and whose song “OMG” has become a rallying point for the team. Just watch these happy fools dancing around the field to the song after a win the other night.

Then there are others who will simply say, “That’s baseball,” and point out that this team was never as bad as it seemed during its awful May, and they’re probably not as good as they look right now.

That’s my favorite thing about fandom. There are many ways to do it, and your choices reveal who you are. Maybe you’re superstitious. Maybe you believe the simplest explanation is often the correct one. Maybe you admit there are things in this world that cannot be explained, and you just try to enjoy the ride. I mostly fall into the latter category, although I do get a little tickled thinking about the moniker “Gay Mets,” especially since this team, like all baseball teams, is likely full of homophobes.

But I’m not sure we have a name for what exactly I am: a person who is delighted the Mets are playing good baseball for the first time this season, while being a little disappointed they’re in the playoff hunt. To understand this, let’s step into the wayback machine. There was a time not that long ago when you only got into the playoffs if you won your division. There were no “Wild Card” spots. In many cases, this meant the playoff races were decided early. For example, the Mets are 12.5 games behind the first place Philadelphia Phillies right now. It’s not an insurmountable lead, but it’s close. In the old days, the playoffs would be pretty much off the table. 

What would a fan do in this situation? It’s hard to even remember. But I’m pretty sure we still watched the games. We still flipped on the TV every night at 7. We still showed up to the ballpark every now and then to enjoy this game of baseball and cheer on our team. We watched our favorite players rack up statistics and celebrated their individual achievements. And in the back of our minds, we harbored a hope that this could be one of those miracle seasons, when a team scraped and clawed their way back into a division race and played important games in September. Like the Mets did in 1969. And 1973.

But that’s the thing: We had to create our own meaning out of the season. We had to find our own hope. Or we had to accept that our team wasn’t going to make the playoffs and find some other reason to watch. And that creation of meaning invested us in the season much more than a mere playoff spot ever could. It created a more wholesome connection to the game. We chose hope, rather having it foisted upon us. Foisted hope isn’t hope at all. It’s just marketing. 

After all, that was the point of adding all these playoff slots. MLB wanted to get more teams in the postseason and, perhaps more importantly, simply have more teams in the mix for playoff spot at the end of the year. To make more money. So far, it has worked. As of now, there are only two teams in the National League that aren’t still in it: the Miami Marlins and Colorado Rockies. The other 14 teams are at least within four games of a playoff spot. Inevitably, that number will dwindle. It’s likely that by September, something like five or six teams will be fighting for three wild card spots.

Maybe that's fine, and maybe I’m just turning into an old man who yells at the kids to get off his lawn. But I do miss the days when a team could have a “good” season even without sniffing the playoffs, when we could enjoy a baseball game not because it could lead to more exciting games in October, but instead simply because baseball is enjoyable. The responsibility now falls to us, the fans, to block out the noise, the marketing, the gambling ads, and the manufactured excitement to locate the pure beauty of the game itself. I wish they didn’t make it so hard.