Loving the Mets used to be an act of futility.
Futility like dating in the 1980s when there were only big answering machines but no cell phones and no voice mail and so you had to literally by the phone for that guy you had the perfect date with to call you...
(omg it was so great he kissed me good night and said "I'll call you" and then no call and you wonder if you were crazy because you could have sworn he liked you...)
Yep. That's what it was like being a Mets fan.
Watching a World Series game against the Yankees in 2000 was like watching a million dollar Ming Dynasty vase fall in slow motion with no hope of leaping across 20 feet to catch it.
And that was nothing compared to the decades of no rhyme or reason...
(the last game right before the 1994 strike everyone left Shea Stadium in the 8th inning because it was 1-0 Phillies and who the hell wanted to get stuck in traffic and we all sat there shaking our heads like you don't know what's going to happen and in the 15th inning the Mets lost 2-1)
Call it building a team by Moneyball theories, or figuring out a way to survive Bernie Maddoff so the Mets could stay in New York, or a good general manager, or bringing up talented kids from minor league…
Or maybe all of the above…those long-ago days have recently been replaced by steady, slow, almost consistent games. It's fun to watch them win. Or at least lose less.
But, that feeling of never knowing what's coming out of left field (literally or metaphorically) is familiar and when it's not there, you feel a little wobbly.
At the new predictable, steady, consistent Citi-Field, lots of loyal fans of their beloved team paid good money to pour their love into chiseled stone - tons of messages in stone tiles outside the stadium in the plaza all with Let's Go Mets! and We Love You!and YOU GOTTA BELIEVE!
But the Nicolau Family reminds us left field is always there... waiting....
"Why?" indeed. Now that's a cry of love.
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