I am done being at peace with the Mets

August baseball and the fullness of where you found yourself to be

By Addy Baird

I started the 2024 season with a resolution: I was going to make peace with the New York Mets, and when they opened the year 0-5, I was sure I had done it.

It’s a strangely easy thing to love a bad baseball team. To have no expectations is to have nothing to lose and no way to be hurt. It is easy to be at peace when every game is meaningless. I was ready to enjoy a summer of watching SNY and hearing Gary, Keith and Ron fill the time with stories and snark. I was completely, totally okay with it. I even wrote in this newsletter, at that time, that if the Mets exceeded my expectations and managed to get my hopes up, only to crush them, I’d be fine with it. I’d know I’d gotten more than I had bargained for and I would simply be grateful. The Buddha taught that desire is the source of suffering, and I was done suffering.

Since starting 0-5, the Mets have ridden a rollercoaster. They went on an early season run to get up to .500. They hovered there, they cratered, then they climbed back up again. They produced a pop star. They overtook Atlanta in the standings and then slipped back down, and the whole time I tried to stay equanimous. It was fun when it was fun, it was shitty when it was shitty, and I was fine with it — or tried to be.

On Monday night, with one out in the ninth inning of a tie game with the Orioles, Francisco Alvarez was at the plate, the count 3-0. I thought to myself, “He’s about to get a meatball,” while in the booth Gary asked Keith and Ron if they’d let him swing. Both of them agreed, absolutely not. But he did indeed get a meatball, and he swung. I’m home visiting my family right now and I was watching in the kitchen while my dad watched in his bedroom, and we both started yelling at the same moment. The second bat touched ball, we all knew. Alvarez didn’t even flip the bat; he just dropped it. He started to walk up towards first, pointing at the ground with both hands. His lips are easy to read: “This is my fucking shit.” That’s right, baby. This is your fucking shit.

The next night, the Mets fucked it up (derogatory). The Orioles tweeted a clip from the top of the ninth and captioned it “New York Mess.” I couldn’t even be offended. It was. I feigned peace. You can’t win ‘em all, I told myself. There are 162 games in a season. Dozens of them are simply made to be lost.

And then Wednesday afternoon’s game started with 5.2 perfect innings from Sean Manaea, and I couldn’t even perform peace. I wanted it so badly. I was having delusions of grandeur and glory, and then it was gone. A hit batsman, a home run. Tie game. Desire is indeed the source of suffering. I never should’ve wanted. 

The game was still going, in the top of the ninth, when it was time for me to go to therapy. I turned it off, I fired up Zoom. When it happened, I didn’t know, but while I was in therapy, I started thinking about a lecture from one of my favorite spiritual teachers, the great Ram Dass, where he talks about the value of embracing our humanity.

“[W]hen I get — like I’m supposed to be, I’m Ram Dass and I’ve worked on myself, and I’m supposed to be equanimous, loving, present, clear, compassionate, accepting — often times I get tired, I’m angry, I’m petulant, I’m closed down,” he says. “Now for a long time I’d get into those states and I would feel really embarrassed because that isn’t who Ram Dass is supposed to be. So I would appear like I was warm, charming, equanimous, compassionate and there was deviousness and deception involved. And then I realized that that is – that’s bad business because that cuts us off from each other. And I had to risk my truth. I had to risk being human with other people. … I had to allow myself to be a human being.”

He goes on to talk about a conversation he had with a spiritual entity he calls Emmanuel: “I said to him, ‘Emmanuel, what am I doing on Earth?’ He said, ‘You’re on Earth, why don’t you try taking the curriculum? Why don’t you try being human?’ I had always assumed the way to God was to deny your humanity and embrace your divinity. And then I realized that the way to truth might be through acknowledging the fullness of where I found myself to be, which was my humanity and my divinity. And not wallow in it but acknowledge it and allow it. Not reverence it or judge it, just appreciate it, allow it. Allow my humanity.”

I didn’t know it at the time, but back at Citi Field, the game was tied with no outs in the bottom of the ninth and Jesse Winker was at the plate. In the booth, when it happens, Keith points. Ron stands. Gary throws his hands up in the air and gives the classic Gary call: “It’s outta here!” Winker stops halfway up the first base line and rips off his helmet, throws it on the ground. The Mets did it again. Put it in the books.

When I finished therapy and checked the score and saw the video, I sobbed. It became suddenly, undeniably clear: I am not at peace with the New York Mets, and I don’t want to be. I’m here on Earth, and I might as well take the curriculum — might as well embrace the full spectrum of being human via the ridiculous vessel that is Mets baseball.

“Most of the time, this game brings you to your knees,” Ron said after the walk off. “Occasionally, it brings you to your feet.” To be playing meaningful games in August is no small thing. It is a gift I didn’t think we’d get this year, and I am absolutely brimming with desire. It’s so exciting and so intense and so fucking fun, and I want playoff baseball at Citi Field more than I can even put into words. I want a miracle run. I want a World Series. I want magic, and we’ve gotten it, and now I want more. I am willing to get my heart broken in service of hope, because anything less seems like a sad, boring, small way to live. Let’s fucking go Mets.