As I’ve already written, it’s been a rough winter for Mets fans. We don’t need to go through it all. No really, we don’t. But it’s okay to be happy about opening day/night. Really, it is. I promise.
Why? Because baseball just a damn sport. I love it and I’ve loved since I was a kid and in all likelihood I will continue to love it up until and including my grave, but seriously. Let’s keep things in perspective. If the Mets won eight World Series in a row, that wouldn’t appreciably change your life in any way. It would be pretty awesome, but let’s be honest: You wouldn’t have done anything. There is nothing more sickening than a fan who tries to lord a championship over another fan by crowing about what we did. No, they rose to the pinnacle of their profession. You sat on your ass and inhaled nachos while watching it on TV.
So as the 2011 Mets season embarks on its epic journey, I would suggest all of you take the advice given by Mr. Bill Murray in this clip from Meatballs. Repeat it to yourself in times of stress. It will help. Honestly, it will. Because in the final analysis. it just doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER.
I haven’t been as pessimistic about how the Mets will do this year as some other people. Take, for example, everybody. Sports Illustrated has them slated for a last place finish, and they’re far from the only ones. If you follow any of the team’s beat writers on Twitter, you’ve been treated to an unrelenting barrage of negativity over the winter. Last night, Stephen Colbert opened his show with “Today is baseball’s opening day. Better luck next year, Mets!” And Chris Rock just went on Letterman to, in part, commiserate about the sorry state of the Mets: “My team is broke!”
Understandable, to an extent, but still grinding. It’s gotten to the point where thinking the Mets shouldn’t just give up right now is almost a revolutionary act of courage.
Now, I have no delusions that they’re primed for a World Series run this season. I like to keep my optimism on the sunny side of sanity. But the way people talk, you’d think they were headed for a dismal 100-loss season, and that simply is not the case. At bare minimum,the Mets will be infinitely more entertaining than the ugly, boring teams of 2009/2010. Because when it comes right down to it, a sports team’s job is not to win on your behalf, to be a proxy for success in your own life. The job of a team is to entertain you, and I think the Mets can achieve that modest goal this year.
More importantly, I believe the Mets put themselves on a good track for the future (all of the Bernie Madoff nonsense notwithstanding; we’re not even gonna go there). The new front office led by Sandy Alderson recognized 2011 for the rebuilding year it is and didn’t mortgage the future for 2 or 3 extra wins, preferring instead to build long term. They made some low risk/high reward pickups like Chris Young and Chris Capuano, and added some depth for a fraction of the money Omar Minaya would have handed out. As The New York Timespointed out earlier this week, they addressed most of their holes for the paltry sum of around $10 million. Last year, $6 million of the Mets’ money went to Jeff Francoeur and Alex Cora, which is about $5,999,999.98 too much.
In short, I felt like the team was in capable hands again. They even made a few strides toward increasing fan friendliness by offering smaller ticket plans and instituting a kids’ section at CitiField, where youngsters could sit for $10 and even get a visit from Mr. Met. That is exactly the kind of thing a team in the Mets’ position should do: make the stadium-going experience more affordable and build up fan equity while the team rebuilds.
But the Mets being the Mets, they had to find some way to screw up the un-screw-up-able. The kids’ section was originally called Mr. Mets’ Landing. Now they have a sponsor. Wanna know who?
Yes, the section is now sponsored by BJ’s Wholesalers, the poor man’s Sam’s Club. I guess it fits in with the level of sponsors at CitiField right now, what with Arpielle Equipment and cash-for-gold scams, and I think there’s even an Agway in centerfield. But my objection is not so much the business as the name.
Did anyone in the Mets’ PR/Sales/Promotions/Whatever Department think for a moment about the wisdom of naming any part of their stadium after a place called BJ’s? Were they just so overjoyed at having any sponsor they didn’t look at the contract? Nobody stopped for the half second it would have taken to realize the double entendre implications? Nobody? In the front office of one of the richest teams in baseball, not one person?
If you think this won’t go unnoticed by every hack comedian or sportswriter (usually the same thing) who wants another excuse to dump on the team, you’re living in a dream world.
Here’s the thing: When you’re in as bad PR shape as they Mets are, you have to try extra harder. Stuff like this is the opposite of trying harder. It’s not trying at all. It’s saying to the world, We absolutely could not give less of a shit about what we look like. And not in Let Your Freak Flag Fly way, but in a Wearing Sweatpants to Go to the Bank way.
I doubt Sandy Alderson and his Nerd Herd have anything to do with this end of the Mets’ business. But maybe they can prevail on ownership to bring some people on board who have the slightest clue of what they’re doing. Because when it comes to PR, the Mets are even worse off than they are on the field.
On the way to school this morning, The Baby and I had a conversation about fandom, prompted by absolutely nothing she or I had said up to that point. She has been talking about baseball a lot lately, for some reason. I may have mentioned that the season was starting soon, and so she’s been asking me often exactly when it will begin. When I say “Next Friday,” she’ll let out an anguished groan, because any length of time longer than a minute is an eternity to a little kid. She also thinks, because I told her I write about the Mets, that I’m a “baseball recorder”.
So we’re walking to school. I believe the last thing I said was something along the lines of, “Ooh, look at that squirrel up on that telephone wire.” Then, this:
BABY: Do you like the Mets?
ME: Yes, I do.
BABY: Do you like the ‘Ankees?
I paused here for a while, wondering how to respond. Do I say something stupid and hateful? Or do I try to keep as much positivity in our shared lives for as long as I can? I opt for the latter.
ME: I like the Mets better. They’re my favorite team.
THE BABY: I don’t like the ‘Ankees.
I am genuinely perplexed, because honestly, I don’t think I’ve said one word about the Yankees in front of her–good, bad, or indifferent–her entire life. Her only interaction with That Team, as far as I know, has been driving past the stadium on our way upstate. I have not tried in any way to transfer any of my animus on to her. I have to assume this is a product of school. *shakes fist*
ME: Why don’t you like the Yankees?
THE BABY: They smell! They smell like ‘Ankee shirts!
At this point, I have to fight every impulse in my body to laugh. Because as much as I might say I “hate,” the Yankees, I really don’t. For one thing, I know too many Yankee fans who aren’t dicks to wish them too much ill. There’s really no one currently on the team who even bugs me–no, not even Jeter. There’s just a certain kind of Yankee fan who drives me nuts. And let’s be honest: there are douchebags a’plenty in every fanbase. If the Mets had the run of success that the Yankees have had in the last 15 years, they’d attract the same terrible types the Yankees do now, people who want to bask in reflected glory and are not fans of baseball or even sports, only winning.
More importantly, I don’t want to be one of those dads who creates a Hate Clone in his own twisted image to hurl tiny epithets at the object of his scorn. That’s even worse than trying to push kids into a sport or to skip grades, because at least a kid can gain something from those endeavors. But using your child as a vessel for all your hates and fears, that’s just monstrous. I’ve seen kids like these at stadiums, dressed head to toe in team gear, yelling horrible things they couldn’t possibly understand, like Children of the Damned in Zubaz.
If I encouraged this kind of thinking, I feared her growing up to make her own version of Buffalo ’66. Or even worse, becoming a version of one of those mutants from Filip Bondy’s Bleacher Creature columns in the Daily News of yore. I had to read tons of that column when researching my recaps of the 2000 season, and it dented my soul. The kind of hate that came out of these people’s mouths toward Mets fans was at thermonuclear, Alabama 1963 levels.
I did not want my daughter to grow up to be such a person. Sports should inspire love, not hate. So, I took the high road.
ME: That’s not nice. The Yankees don’t smell. Different people like different things. Some people like the Yankees, some people like the Mets. Some people don’t like baseball at all.
THE BABY: [with a resigned sigh] Yeah, I guess so.
And we walked on to school. I felt good for following the better angels of my nature, and I thought of the lyrics of one of my dad’s favorite parodic songs, Tom Lehrer’s “National Brotherhood Week”: Step up and shake the hand / Of someone you can’t stand / You can tolerate them if you try…
