The 162-Game Entrée

When last I dwelled on the Brooklyn Nets in this space, I was crushed by their seventh-game playoff loss in overtime to the eventual NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks. Had they beaten the Bucks, they surely (I’m sure) would have beaten the Hawks in the Eastern Conference finals, and then they would have sat four wins from the crown that has eluded them since they played with a red, white and blue ball. Given how close the Nets seemed to come to ultimate glory last spring, this season loomed as prelude to reaching the heretofore unreachable star this spring.

And, for a while, it was. The Big Three even played together two or three times, I think. But de facto MVP Kevin Durant missed a chunk of the schedule with a sprained knee; and Kyrie Irving couldn’t be persuaded a vaccination against COVID-19 was something he should take for his (and the team’s) own Barclays Center good; and James Harden suddenly remembered how much he really wanted to play in Philadelphia; and all kinds of other mishegas that can derail a season that once looked so promising oozed onto the hardwood. At this moment, the Nets — who led their conference for a spell and whose composition implied the 82 games on their 2021-22 agenda constituted a mere formality — are hardly a sure thing for a playoff spot.

I’m not crushed. If anything, I’m invigorated. Not by the results, which have been a letdown, but I’m invigorated that several nights a week I have the Brooklyn Nets playing basketball, with multiple storylines overlapping and an evolving cast of characters introducing and reintroducing itself. I have a team I root for. I haven’t given up on their potentially going far. Given all the mishegas, I don’t really believe they will, but I’ll take what there is to be had from my favorite currently active team.

What I’ve rediscovered in this season of general Nets discontent is I’m content to keep company with them. When they win, I’m happy. When they lose, I’m less so, but it mostly passes. As they drop in the standings…well, stop doing that, Nets. But if you can’t, I’ll try to be understanding. Sometimes I slam the remote into the couch cushions. I’m not that understanding.

I’m processing the Nets this way in the shadow of baseball’s ongoing hiccupping negotiations. Nothing to be content or invigorated about there. Nobody talks for weeks on end, then there’s a flurry of noise, then nothing. Hopes rise modestly only to be dashed instantly. Wrapping my head around individual issues — beyond the overriding reality that the owners locked the players out and would like to squeeze their union tighter and tighter — doesn’t strike me as a productive use of my gray matter. Yet I have managed to absorb the desire by the party doing the locking out to host 14 teams in the MLB postseason; and reports that the party being locked out might agree to bloat the postseason if it wins them a more substantial increase in the CBT, an acronym I’m disappointed I’ve bothered to learn.

Fourteen teams in the postseason, with twelve teams in the postseason as the fallback position. Thirty teams continue to operate, or would if operations were underway as they usually are come March, so it’s not like the addition of postseason teams is commensurate with overall expansion plans. No, rather it’s been determined that the postseason is where the real baseball action is, and the owners (and probably the players, if they can make it work for them) want more action, which is to say more postseason revenue, which is to say stacks of money are blocking the entrance to a ballpark near you.

More playoffs! More money! We’ll let you know when you can pay us for the privilege.

Like you, I love when the Mets make the playoffs. I loved it when they were one of four teams in one of two LCSes, one of eight teams in four LDSes, one of ten teams to qualify for October, even when they were merely one of four teams playing in one of two Wild Card Games with no promise there’d be any Mets games beyond it (there weren’t). Nine times the Mets have gone to the playoffs, and nine times I’ve gone to the moon before the first pitch has been thrown. The stakes are elevated, the excitement is amplified, the thrill is present for however long Metropolitan participation lasts. Mentally, I’m wearing a tux when the Mets are in the playoffs.

Yet while my annual goal as a fan is to experience my team winning a World Series, it’s not why I’m a fan. It would be great. It would be greater than great. Having had the tingle of a last out of a World Series captured by the New York Mets race through me twice, I know how it feels. I’d love to feel it again. I’d love all of us to feel it, especially those among us who weren’t around in 1969 and/or 1986.

But winning it all isn’t what it’s all about. It can’t be. It’s impossible. And it misses the point. The point is the season. The point is the company we keep with the season. The storylines. The cast of characters. The joy that comes from the mundane. The days and nights with the Mets. Pulling for positive outcomes on a pitch-by-pitch, batter-by-batter, game-by-game basis. Finding a way to be certain the next pitch, the next batter, the next game will give us what this one didn’t if it didn’t give us the preferred outcome. Never abandoning ship altogether because, win or lose, a baseball season is tantamount to 162 party cruises. Some tours of the harbor wind up a little more sullen than the others, but they were all worth their salt the second we climbed aboard.

Metaphors are running as wild here as the ’85 Cardinals on artificial turf. The point for which I’m groping is I care deeply about the Mets winning a lot and winning as much as there is to be won. But it’s not all I care about when it comes to the Mets. The regular season is the trophy. That’s the hunk of metal we all yearn to lay our hands on and grip for six months. Should our team be marvelous enough to extend our common commitment into a seventh month, huzzah! If our boys can’t do it, we’ll gather our recriminations and hunker down in hopes of moving up next year. I can deal with angling for a division title or one of two Wild Cards. I don’t need to have extra slots dangled before me as if the only credo a fan adheres to is October or Bust. It’s never October or Bust from the perspective of March.

OK, now and then, it feels like October or Bust, but those are rare and special intervals when you know your team is really, really good. Yet there are still no guarantees. Most seasons, it’s take your journey and earn your tourney, and even if you don’t get the payoff you anticipated, at least you can claim the journey. The Nets work on a different calendar, but they’ve reminded me the journey is the primary reward for a fan and the destination is inevitably up for grabs — and that’s in a league where sixteen teams make the playoffs.

The baseball season is not the appetizer for the postseason. The baseball season is the main course. If you’re good, you get dessert. I can live with that arrangement. I’ve lived with it forever. Baseball has lived with it forever. It’s plenty filling.