I went to the Mets’ home opener last Friday and had a good time. Sure, it was drizzling and the temperature hovered around 40 and the Mets played pretty uninspiring baseball. But it was baseball after all, and following a deathless winter that still refuses to unleash its icy grip on New York, being at a baseball game–even in near-Arctic climes–warmed me in a small way.
Not everyone agreed. When the Nationals expanded their lead to four runs late in the game, many spectators left. On a such a day, completely understandable. Those who headed for warmer spots didn’t bug me. The ones who stuck around did.
I’ve always thought of people who show up and stay for days like this are The Die Hards, the ones who will stick with their team through thick and thin. And that is true, to an extent. But in this case, the people who stuck around seemed to do so for the express purpose of voicing their discontent. And not in a Peter Finch “I’m mad as hell” way. More like someone ahead of you on line at the post office, who feels compelled to sigh loudly and mutter “unbelievable!”, just so everyone else queuing up knows how annoyed he is. The air was thick with a positively DMV-esque atmosphere.
We spent the last inning at field level, watching the action from behind the best seats in the house. Even for a crummy game on a crummy day, being that close to Actual Baseball Playing by Actual Major Leaguers is pretty great. On TV, every pitch looks hittable and every hit routine, but in close proximity, you realize that you are really witnessing the best of the best. Even the worst person on any roster is better than 99.99 percent of the population at what he does. It’s awesome to contemplate.
Unless you were the gentleman standing just behind me. Because with each pitch, he let out an anguished mantra: SAME OLD, SAME OLD! The message was obviously meant to be,”The Mets suck again, don’t they?” This is seven games into the season, mind you. But just in case you were unsure about how much he believed this, he repeated it literally with every pitch, as if it were a phrase he himself popularized. Larry The Cable Guy does not say Git ‘er done! with as much gusto as this man invested into SAME OLD, SAME OLD!