On Tuesday morning, pulling up my email in an idle moment at work, I noted that Mets postseason tickets were on sale — and then I deleted the email that had told me that and went back to work. It wasn’t until an hour or so later that what I’d done — or rather, what I hadn’t done — registered.
Wait a minute. Am I so mad at my baseball team for how they got into the playoffs that I’m … not interested in going to a playoff game? What, exactly, am I proving and to whom?
Emily was a voice of wise counsel. So was the co-worker I half-hoped would tell me that playoff tickets were frivolous. A few minutes later, I’d spent a ridiculous amount of money for nine tickets on three dates. Screw it, I figured. If the Mets are going to stomp on my heart, they may as well also kick the shit out of my bank account. But even then, I felt ambivalent, even uneasy — like the guy at the poker table who’s trying to figure out who the sucker is.
What’s happened since Friday night has been a journey — a journey that continued Tuesday afternoon and evening, as the Mets swept a doubleheader from the Nats and watched their division hopes fade to black when the Braves edged the Marlins to clinch the NL East.
And yet, somehow, it’s a journey that’s brought me back where I’d hoped I’d wind up while fearing I might not.
I’ve forgiven the Mets — or maybe that hasn’t quite happened yet but I’ve at least accepted what didn’t come to pass. The important part is my baseball team is hosting wild-card baseball on Friday, and I’m in.
It helped that my baseball team played the kind of games we’d come to appreciate and then (perhaps unwisely) to expect. The Mets beat the Nats in Game 1 [1] behind sharp defense, capable relief and some impressive hitting from Brandon Nimmo [2] and Jeff McNeil [3], then obliterated them in Game 2 [4], kick-starting the bottom of the first with back-to-back-to-back homers and hanging seven runs on poor Paolo Espino [5] in a third of inning.
It helped that Francisco Alvarez [6], alternately luckless and jittery in his trial-by-fire debut against Atlanta, found his footing and then some, blasting a mammoth home run in his first Citi Field AB and following that with a rifle-shot double. It’s not exactly a long-shot wager to say those will be the first of many, with Alvarez perhaps becoming a force as early as this weekend.
It helped watching McNeil slash balls all over Citi Field and out of it too, taking the lead on Freddie Freeman [7] in the NL batting race. McNeil has been a joy to watch all season, erasing his lackluster, uncertain 2021 with a campaign that’s married offensive mayhem with much improved defense. A fun game on our couch this year has been “Why Is McNeil/Scherzer Enraged This Time?” — those two are each other’s bookends, playing baseball like twin kettles boiling over, and it’s alternately hilarious and a little scary to watch.
It helped knowing the Mets had reached 100 wins, which might not have been quite enough this year but was a level they’d only reached in three other seasons. Two of those ended with World Series titles and the third expired in dismay and disarray, but that’s baseball.
All of that helped, and when Kenley Jansen [8] coaxed a flyout from Miami’s Jordan Groshans [9], I did an emotional inventory and found I was … well, one might even say disappointed but no longer devastated. Yes, perhaps you remember those words in another context. That’s my point — baseball would be the death of us all if we weren’t able to turn the page, to put some healthy distance between past unhappinesses and present possibilities. No dedicated baseball fan ever forgets — there are failings and fizzles that play on repeat up there on the ceiling when we’re fuming sleepless at 4 a.m. — but in remembering, you have to make room for the idea that something good might happen one day.
Maybe even one day very soon.
Plenty of Mets seasons have ended with a little ember we’ve had to convince ourselves is a spark that will grow into a bonfire — think what we would have done with two Game 161 hits from a Francisco Alvarez in 1993 or 2004 or some other dismal campaign that we weren’t actually sad to see breathe its last. But this isn’t one of those seasons, however much it may have felt that way this weekend and during our rainy sulking Monday. Someone I know from Twitter asked how a 100-win season could feel so depressing. This was my response: Wipe the slate clean. Win the next four series — even by just a game each — and they’re all immortal.
That would have been courageous but empty talk this weekend or Monday or even between games Tuesday. But by the end of the night I believed it.
I have a ticket for Wednesday’s game. I’d decided before the Braves series — thanks in large part to some wise words from my blog partner — that I wasn’t a jinx and could safely attend. But today and even tonight, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. After all, the game was likely to be meaningless — not to mention cold and dreary. And, well, there was the fact that I was still pissed off.
But somehow that meaninglessness became a selling point once second place was official. Wednesday’s game will be the only stress-free one played in October. It will be a chance — weather permitting, of course — to look around the park and cheer on McNeil’s batting-champ chase and compare notes about roster construction and play amateur scout and fret and kvetch and maybe even dream a little. How could I miss that?
Friday will be different. The slate will be clean — erased of accomplishments and shortcomings alike. And I’ll be all in, both eager and anxious to see what’s written. You should be too.