Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it
Then I look at the Mets and go, nah
If I may quote Benjamin Franklin, in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except the Mets being an absolute trainwreck, just a straight up goddamn catastrophe, a leper colony in Flushing, New York, the physical embodiment of the concept of failure, the inhabitants of their very own Bizarro World, a wildly incompetent real estate business that accidentally fell into running a baseball team.
If you think that’s a bit harsh, hey man, don’t blame me. I didn’t invent bifocals.
No one wants to run the Mets. Theo Epstein doesn’t. Billy Beane doesn’t. Neither do Giants GM Scott Harris or Brewers GM Matt Arnold, Blue Jays CEO Mark Shapiro or Dodgers Assistant GM Brandon Gomes. Apparently a different Dodgers assistant GM, Josh Byrnes, is interested, and Brian Sabean (we all know Brian Sabean!) is interested, but can’t get an interview because Mets owner Steve Cohen wants a young analytics-minded guy in charge, instead of Mr. Three Championships.
In theory, this should be an attractive job. In theory, baseball executives should be lining up to be the Savior Of New York, to run a team in a huge market that is willing to spend lots of money. When you put it like that, ignoring literally everything about the New York Mets, this is a dream job. Then, when you stop ignoring literally everything about the New York Mets, like how they employ Sandy Aldersom's son in an important job and the new guy in charge would have to deal with him there instead of making his own hire, you start to see why Cohen is opening up the binder labeled “Plan R.”
Because the Mets are a mess. They are always, perpetually a mess, and shall still be one in a few billion years, after the Sun expands to the extent that it swallows the Earth. They’re the franchise where Wilmer Flores learned he was traded while still playing a game, allowed him to stay in, crying on the field because he was leaving the only team he’d ever known, only to have the deal fall apart because of a medical problem with Carlos Gomez.
And then they went to the World Series that year! They fucked up the Flores non-trade, then rallied and put it all behind them, then lost the World Series on some dumb bullshit because Matt Harvey stayed in the game too long and the first baseman made a bad throw home that, if it had been a good throw home, would have meant the Mets won the game.
Also, Matt Harvey’s incredibly promising career then fell apart because of injury and subsequent mismanagement of said injury by the New York Mets.
There's just nothing more Mets than screwing something up, then recovering just well enough to make people think they’re not a bunch of wildly incompetent buffoons, then at the last possible second they quadruple down on the wildly incompetent buffoonery. You know, to really make it hurt for Mets fans.
The Mets will never be New York’s baseball team because they can’t stop being the Mets long enough to do it. They’ll be embraced by some people, of course: the ones who see themselves as overlooked or underdogs, the ones who rebel against the Yankees for being too popular, the ones who think they can defy the laws of gods and men in willing the Mets to be anything other than a joke.
That certainly goes for the team off the field, where new GM Jared Porter got fired in January after a month on the job for sending 60 unsolicited text messages, including dick pics, to a female reporter. Their acting GM, Zack Scott, was placed on administrative leave after being arrested for driving while intoxicated after leaving a fundraiser at Steve Cohen’s house. These are the people who should have been running the team, which already had been unable to hire a President of Baseball Operations last offseason, but thought that things would definitely pick up after the 2021 regular season!
Like Nietzsche said, if the Mets didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent them.
On the field, well, let’s put it like this. On June 26, the Mets had a 5.5 game lead in the NL East. That’s June 26 of this year, 2021, in case you were wondering. On July 31, they had a 5 game lead. Then they lost 7 of their next 8, fell to 2 games back, swept the Nationals to pull into a tie with the Braves, and promptly lost 11 out of their next 13 games, all against the Dodgers and Giants, to fall into complete irrelevance.
July 31: 5 game lead
August 26: 6.5 games back
Their season fell apart in a month, which led several Mets to start booing the fans who had been booing them, and that was never that weird. Like, sure, it was unusual and you wouldn’t want anyone to do it, but to an extent it also made sense. Sure, Javy Baez is going to boo Mets fans. That might as well happen. Why not?
The Mets are a force of nature, except that force is just a buffalo farting. We know it today. Don Draper knew it more than 50 years ago:
The Mets are incredible. The Mets are horrible. You can’t look away, but you certainly shouldn’t look directly at them.
I also don’t want the job, by the way.