Perhaps you’ve heard that the Mets are once again doing what they do best: losing. Not just losing, but doing it with such flair and creativity that, for a long-suffering fan like me, it almost feels like a strange kind of gift. Despite entering the season with some flashy free agent additions, the league’s second-most-expensive roster (behind only the L.A. Dodgers, who’ve won the last two championships) and legitimate playoff expectations, the 2026 Mets, as we approach Memorial Day and roughly the one-third mark of the season, have still lost more games than they’ve won and have been one of the worst teams in baseball.
I’m not sure if this counts as a silver lining, exactly, but one consequence of the Mets’ hapless start has been the outpouring of, let’s call it, outreach I’ve received from various people in my life. These are people who know I am a Mets fan, some of whom I haven’t heard from in years.
This outreach has arrived in a multitude of forms: consoling texts, forwarded memes, playful teasing, less-playful teasing that feels more like thinly veiled scorn and teasing that feels more like pity and outright mockery (that’s mostly coming from Yankees fans). There have also been a lot of questions about my mental health and the efficacy of my coping mechanisms.
To all those people: Thanks for asking! And, by the way, I’m OK! Being a lifelong Mets fan, I am sort of used to this situation.
Given the dire state of the team, though, it occurs to me that lots of people out there may have Mets fans in their lives who they’re worried about. Seeing as this will most likely be yet another long, rough summer in Queens, I thought I’d offer some advice about how to care for us, reach out to us, talk to us and help us get through this situation.
Let’s start with the obvious: If you’re a Yankees fan, I don’t want to hear from you. Not at all. Not a word, not a whisper. In fact, I never liked you.
As for everyone else: The most important thing to know about Mets fans is that because we have a reputation for our self-aware sense of humor, we’re also forced to listen to the same jokes over and over again. So before you forward that story from the bar mitzvah about a dad apologizing to his son for making him a Mets fan, or that correction in The Times about how “even the Mets cannot lose on an off day,” ask yourself: “Will I be the 12th person to send him this already?” Because the answer is yes. And if you realize that and send it anyway, you’re either a bad person or you are possibly my wife.
Please don’t misunderstand me. The Mets may be a delicate subject, but they’re definitely not off limits. For fans of this team, there’s even a certain comfort that comes from watching, for example, excellent starting pitching get wasted yet again by an anemic offense and a wobbly closer. It almost feels like … home.
I’ll turn 50 during the back end of this baseball season, and I’m starting to realize that, as with so many previous seasons, the games around my birthday might end up being meaningless. But that’s fine! I’ve gotten used to shifting into a mode where I find small pleasures in a lost cause.
There are even slivers of optimism if you know where, and how, to look. So go ahead and ask me about Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor, our pair of recent M.V.P. vote-getters, and how they’re still very much in their prime. Or do get me started on our three electric rookies — Nolan McLean, a pitcher who bends the ball like no one I’ve ever seen, and the speedy outfielders Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing — or ask me why I’m apparently the only Mets fan left who thinks Carlos Mendoza is a really good manager (I do!).
Now here comes the tricky part: Being a Mets fan isn’t just about enduring losses that unfold in spectacularly creative ways — such as, just recently, allowing the rare inside-the-park grand slam. It’s also, very occasionally, once in a very long while, about watching the team succeed in spectacularly creative ways, too.
Look at the 1969 Miracle Mets. Or the 1973 last-to-first Mets. Or the 1986 Buckner ground ball Mets. Or the 2024 Mets — just two years ago! — whose season was essentially over on June 1, before the team suddenly transformed into baseball’s best squad, made the playoffs and had a postseason run for the ages.
I know it looks bad for the Mets right now, but even as I write this, we’re only a (sizable) handful of games out of a playoff spot — and it’s still just Memorial Day weekend! In fact, I’m pretty sure we’re going to make the playoffs and, after that, who knows? Yes, the Dodgers look tough, but I’ve seen the Mets pull off crazier upsets — and, if you’re as old as me, so have you.
What if this turns into another one of those miracle seasons when the left-for-dead Mets make a spirited and delirious late-season charge? Maybe, just maybe, the terrible start to this year is simply the perfect opening chapter to yet another improbable Mets triumph, one that will end with our first World Series title since 1986. Mets fans don’t need your sympathy! We’re always just a few days, a few games, a few lucky bounces away from turning this whole season around.
So in the coming weeks, if the Mets fan in your life remains irrationally optimistic, please just smile and nod and let us have this moment. Save your pity, your memes and your concern for our sanity, and just leave us be.
And if you simply can’t resist, get your jokes in now. Because when it actually happens — when the Mets stop losing, make the playoffs, then win the World Series and shock the world — you know I’m never going to shut up about it.
Devin Gordon is the author of “So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazin’ True Story of the New York Mets — the Best Worst Team in Sports.”
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