The Dog Days Are Over
It's still August, but for the Mets and their fans, it's more like springtime, and the dawn of a new era frees everyone's mind for a... totally stressful September and October
By Tim Ryder
Do me a favor. Take a step back from the rollercoaster of 162 for a second. Now take a deep breath. Feel that? Yeah. Things are going A-OK for these New York Mets, all things considered.
Sure, the Atlantas are hot on their heels, the offense has fallen into an (extremely natural) little funk, the starting rotation is being patchworked a bit, and the bullpen isn’t as impermeable as the front office anticipated. What, us worry?
Here, let me give you a clearer picture of my perspective. We’ve been enveloped in this fandom for years. Some for a half-century-plus, some for a few decades, some just beginning their journey. The kicker is that every one of us has seen the bedrock of this wide-ranging spectrum, firsthand.
Barring a few instances, you don’t know truly hard times as a baseball fan unless you’ve got orange and blue blood pumping through your veins. High expectations are routinely dashed. Eternal hope sprung in April, squashed by the end of May. Can’t forget respective dashes of late-season collapses and postseason misery. A perpetual string of simply crushing twists of fate. Hey, we signed up for this.
But these days, things just feel different. Those all-too-familiar feelings of waiting for the other shoe to drop are still there, but they’re strangely not as gripping. See? We’re healing.
Whether or not 2022 ends in champagne baths is inconsequential. Times, are a-changing. This is the maiden voyage of the SS Steve Cohen. This franchise’s renewed commitment to winning has barely revealed itself yet. The framework is in place. A portion of the material has been delivered. But there’s still an entire process to play out before anyone can look at the finished product and smile proudly.
What we’ve seen on the field and off this season is encouraging. Mostly. And we saw it again on Thursday night, with Jacob deGrom being Jacob deGrom and Pete Alonso destroying a baseball to quickly rebound from getting swept by the Yankees, instead of the Mets not hitting for their ace and immediately wondering if the end is nigh. What’s to follow over the next couple of months is endlessly intriguing, but what’s down the turnpike over the next decade or two is what’s really got my stomach acting like a million Home Run Apples are rising.
If this is just the start—100-win pace, top-five offense, and rotation, effectively keeping the defending World Series champions at bay—my heart is absolutely a flutter imagining how this epic wraps up. LFGM, pals.
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