I have been a life long Mets fan. I can still remember pretty vividly when I first became a fan. It was in 1984 and it was Doc Gooden’s rookie season. All I remember is it was electric. There was this buzz all around the baseball world (which for a 6 year old isn’t that big a world). Gooden was doing remarkable things and his potential was virtually unlimited. This craziness added on top of the buzz around Strawberry made the Mets the only place for a kid to be. I was a free-agent as nobody in my family was really an avid fan of any team, so I gravitated to Shea.
The next year was just as crazy with Doc lighting the league on fire and I was hooked. It was just so exciting for a little kid to be on a ride like that. To hitch your heart to a team that had Darryl and Doc, man this is gonna be awesome. Poor kid, what the hell did I know.
The next year was obviously the miracle year of the 1986 Mets. The year Mookie Wilson became my all time favorite Mets player. The year of unadulterated bliss. A year I have longed for ever since. It’s a shame really that such a year was wasted on such a young and naive Mets fan. It would be much better served on this old, pessimistic, gnarled Mets fan. But that’s how these things go isn’t it? They get the hook in you for life and then they beat you over the head with it year after year.
Many of my friends are Yankee’s fans and there are many times I am jealous of them. But I just keep reminding myself that because of all the strife this team has put me to, when they do finally win one, the pure joy and exhilaration I will feel at that accomplishment while exceed that of all their championships combined. They know no better, they feel it’s gods gift, and they have no perspective.
To be a Mets fan is to be intimately in tune with the real world. To be fully conscious of “Murphy’s Law” and to develop a steel will that will drive you on for season after season of new and uncharted adventures. Say what you want about the Mets franchise, but they are anything but boring.
I love my Mets, and I love everyone else who does too, you see we have common suffering that only we can understand. We live and die by what goes on in Flushing, and each time we get knocked down and think it can’t get any worse, by the time April rolls around we are ready to go and cheer on our Amazins.
