Dying with the 2024 Mets

For some people, it’s hard to talk about death. My opinion is that deep down, very few of us are afraid of death. Rather it’s the slow, painful process that sometimes accompanies death that is the truly scary part. It’s the old joke – When I die, I want to die in my sleep, peacefully, like my grandpa. And not screaming in terror like the other three people in the car.

The 2024 Mets remind me a little of death. That seems a touch harsh but hear me out. Most of us did not have high expectations for this year’s team. The club this year being mediocre seemed inevitable, you know, like death. We were hoping for a fun ride, with maybe a breakout performance or two, but just didn’t want it to be painful at the end.

So, what happens? We get the breakout performance from Mark Vientos. And we get an MVP-type season from Francisco Lindor. And just enough from the others on the team to give us hope that death won’t occur as soon as we expected. Unfortunately, that was just a preview for … pain.

The Mets are playing two teams they are trailing in the Wild Card chase and have lost two games they should have won because their $100 million closer gave up game-losing gopher balls in both of them. The Mets are 3-3 in these matchups but should be 5-1. How different our perspective would be right now without those two painful losses.

Before the start of the season, my opinion was that this was an 80-82-win team. They’re likely to finish a couple of games better than that. And that should be good news, a comforting thing in the overall scheme of things. But the way they’ve lost these last two games, along with how they lost series to bad teams like the A’s and Angels here in the second half, is the opposite of comforting.

It’s a blown opportunity, like not buying Apple stock when it was $0.04 cents in 1982 or even $0.20 cents in 2003.

But this is what happens when you invest so much in a sports team, especially if you’re loyal and don’t flip from team to team chasing the next super squad. But for most of us, “You can’t walk away from the price you pay.”