Let's Go Mets! (But in What Direction?)

By Fred Bruning

May 25, 2025

What to make of the Mets?

Though faltering occasionally, they claim one of the best records in baseball and compete daily for the divisional lead.

The small team flag I post outside our front door following each victory flew so many days in a row at one point that I joked to a neighbor it might be stuck there for the season.

“Could be the year,” he said.

“All the way,” I agreed, no doubt with a thumbs up.

And still – still – I am uneasy, oddly uncomfortable, adrift.

All the way?

These are not the words of a Mets fan.

Rather, it is the familiar and cocksure calculation of the Yankee faithful who from the earliest days of spring training anticipate “October baseball” – that is, the team’s inevitable appearance in the playoffs and, if God remains hard at work, the World Series.

Simply a matter of the scriptures being fulfilled, you understand, for an oft-blessed franchise and its fortunate fan base disproportionate of Wall Street traders, entertainment industry tycoons, malpractice attorneys, import-export entrepreneurs, media notables and showcase personalities like Rudy Giuliani before America’s mayor self-deported to Palm Beach.

On the other hand, Mets fans expect nothing – nothing at all beyond a 162-game schedule that can bring joy or despair, with despair always the better bet.

Or that’s the way it was from the team’s birth in 1962 to 2020 when stock market whiz Steve Cohen bought the team and began spending as befits a hedge fund billionaire. Up went expectations and skyward again this year with the signing of superstar outfielder Juan Soto to a 15-year, $765 million contract with a $75 million welcome-aboard bonus as sweetener.

Now hope ripples through the stands like banners flapping atop Citi Field. Now an imperial sense of entitlement worthy of the Yankees is palpable. You can hear it in the robust cheers of the big crowds that show up even on rainy nights and the outsized celebrations on the electronic scoreboard, biggest in baseball, thanks, once more, to Cohen – good, old Uncle Steve.

So what’s wrong?

No need to bore to tears those with little interest in baseball nor mention again my Brooklyn beginnings, my abiding love for the borough’s erstwhile team, my recollections of Jackie Robinson and Gil Hodges and all the beloved Boys of Summer, my despair at the team’s 1957 skedaddle to Los Angeles, no less, and then, redemption, five years later, when the Mets began their noble and nutty history with such endearing ineptitude that the manager cried out, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

No need to get into any of that. All been said before.

There are bigger issues at hand.

Identity, for one, self-worth, overall mental health.

The dilemma faced by fans of the modern Mets is captured in a long New Yorker magazine piece with the (web-version) headline, “If the Mets Are No Longer the Underdog, Are They Still the Mets?”

Deep into her piece, writer Louisa Thomas summons an essential truth about the Queens franchise: “The Mets have always been vaguely embarrassing; it’s part of their charm.”

Oh, but exactly.

I do not think I am alone when admitting that over the years a kind of perverse instinct takes hold that finds even the most ardent fan rooting for the team, well, to lose – yes, there, I said it – because for a zany organization like this one, losing is its very heart and soul. We love them most when they strike out in the ninth, bases loaded. Again.

Does the hope-they-flop impulse betray something worse – a glum and jaundiced assessment of all who succeed? A dour look at humanity and its various strivings? (Thinking Elon Musk, here.) A strain of defeatism that taints every aspect of life?

Or – or – on the bright side, does Mets Disaster Syndrome mean simply that the afflicted is drawn to the down and out, the little guy, the schmuck, the screw-up, the un-Yankee? That with setback comes the possibility of thrilling, against-the-odds recovery and unlikely triumph?

During a recent stretch, the Mets – and their $765 million right fielder – lost five of 10 games. They made ghastly errors and failed to score. Pitching slumped. Then it took them nearly six hours (rain delay, included) to suffer defeat against the aforementioned L.A. Impostors.

In other words, they appeared exquisitely, adorably themselves. As demanded by outcome, my little front door flag went often to storage.

Do I want these big-budget Mets to play like they’ll be around for October baseball?

Sure, just not in May.

Previous Invisible Ink posts at: https://fredbruning.substack.com/archive