That sound you hear is untold millions of mild-mannered citizens rushing into proverbial phone booths (good luck finding a phone booth) and emerging cloaked in their true identities as…
METS FANS!
Slower than the 7 local…
More gullible than a herd of puppies…
Able to to be sated by the coming of Opening Day…
Yes, we’re putting on our blue capes and our orange tights and we’re ready to take flight into another baseball season, even if the last one flew into us, even if the prognostications for this one have us barely getting off the ground, even if P.A. announcer Alex Anthony will be calling out, prior to 1:10 this afternoon, “On Cora! On Jacobs! On Matthews, Junior!”
So what if Omar Claus left holes in our stockings? So what if under the tree, instead of a new starting pitcher, we got the same old lumps of coal capable of producing scarily smoking ERAs? And so what if only half of our 0-0 record looks convincing right now?
Look at the bright side. Look at Santana Claus (and hope he can still shoulder the load). Watch him throw to the wise elf Barajas and try to hope Josh Johnson won’t be the Grinch who steals Opening Day. There are countervailing forces at work, according to ESPN’s Mark Simon [1]: the Mets are generally merry when the season starts (31-9 since 1970; 17-2 the last 19 times the true Opener came to Queens), but Johnson has a tendency to ruin everything every time he gets in our way (7-0 vs. the Mets). The clash of titanic trends will yield a result that is, as of this morning, unknowable. The fun part — before it happens, anyway — getting to know it.
Something’s gotta give, and it will be us, the people who have been sagging and dragging for months on end. We’re out of our phone booths now and we are METS FANS! once again. We are putting 2009 behind us at least until the first Met falls down. We are filing away the non-trades and non-signings of the Hot Stove League. We now know that both the Ides of March as well as the aights of March (as in “aight, intrasquad workout highlights are on!”) are immaterial. It’s April 5, Opening Day, and Opening Day is a both a continuation of only that which is is good and a break from all that was bad. It’s all good for now. It’s all merry for now. It’s all happy for now.
Happy New Year, METS FANS! It’s good to be up and soaring with you once again.