What I Saw on the Last Day of the Mets' Season
Today, twelve major league baseball teams entered the postseason hunt for the World Series. The New York Mets are not one of those teams. On Sunday, I went to the last game of their disappointing season, a long sad 162-game coda to their sudden postseason collapse last October after notching 100 wins.
I have never been to an opening day, but I have been to multiple last games. I enjoy their elegiac mood, the same way that most people prefer to watch sunsets instead of sunrises. My last last game came in 2016, when the Mets had secured a wild card spot. The whole stadium had a happy buzz that day; the gorgeous fall early fall weather a kind of benediction. (Of course, the Mets went on to blow the wild card game that year, but we still had hope on that day.)
The weather was equally golden on Sunday, a perfect day for a baseball game. I sat there in the stands, drinking it all in, yet consumed with the melancholy that it would be months before I would be able to come back to Valhalla. For me and a lot of other fans, baseball is my daily friend for half the year, a trifling diversion to distract me from the run of the mill crap life throws my way just as regularly as I read the box scores. Getting to the ballpark is a highlight of these months, a break from the iron rules of time that govern my daily life. I will be watching the playoffs, but without my team, it’s not the same.
I went to the game with a Phillies fan friend who got to have all of the hopeful feelings I’d had seven years ago on the last day of the season that I have not gotten to feel since. Instead, I experienced a seemingly unending train of downers. Before the game they announced that Tim Wakefield, one of the last knuckleballers and not an old man, had died. Right after the scoreboard revealed it was also Mets manager Buck Showalter’s last game with the team. His players came out of the dugout to applaud him as he handed the ump the lineup card, and the fans stood up to join in. I realized it might be the last game this venerable manager would helm in the majors for any team. Death and forced retirement are not exactly the happiest ways to open a baseball game.
The feelings of dread and loss never seemed to go away. During the game I went with my daughter to get some merch and take advantage of the end of season sales. I noticed a huge selection of Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer bobbleheads for 30% off, a reminder of the high hopes that had preceded the season. The big money moves that Mets fans had been craving for years blew up in our faces. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.
After we got back to our seats the Mets’ pitching imploded, turning a 1-1 nailbiter into a 9-1 blowout. The first two Mets batters in the ninth went down with barely a fight. With two out, the mighty Pete Alonso strode to the plate, bringing the biggest cheers of the game. Rumors swirl that he won’t be with the team next year despite being a fan favorite. We all stood and chanted his name like little kids clapping for Tinkerbell at a theater performance of Peter Pan. He popped out.
And thus ended the Mets’ 2023 season, not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Despite all the sad moments of that game, while I walked out of CitiField through the stately Jackie Robinson Rotunda, I suddenly felt buffeted by the soft October breeze and baseball’s eternal appeal for me. It’s amazing that baseball players make it through 162 games every year, twice as many games as their counterparts in basketball and hockey and ten times as many as football players. The sheer number of games creates a kind of mental balance. The Mets were bad this year, but they still won 74 games, giving me 74 individual moments of joy. Not much else in my life outside my family has that kind of track record. On the flip side, when the Mets won 100 games last year, they still lost over 60 times. Like life itself, baseball forces you to take the good with the bad. There’s always next year.