Baseballs Bad Idea: The New York Mets
When an idea becomes outdated and then distructive.
Post Comment|0 Liked It
I was never a Met fan but at the same time not a Met hater. For the sake of disclosure I’m a Yankee fan. Being a Yankee fan means, for me at least, that I don’t dislike any team in particular. I could harbor animus toward the Red Sox and for a while I did but when looking at the ledger for both teams I figured what’s the use. The Yankees are winners and prove it with eighty years or so by beating the likes of the Red Sox. Boston to me is just another Detroit or Cleveland.
Back to the Mets. I want to declare that the Mets should go out of existence. Why? Because no one should be asked to believe in magic. If you don’t follow the Mets this is what I mean. The charm about the Mets from its expansion days was that they were underdogs and just awful and so when they caught fire and improbably won the 1969 World Series they became the “Amazing” Mets and the darlings of baseball. Today they still have the nickname “Amazins”. Though they’ve been in existence for over 40 years they can’t escape being characterized with words like “miracle” or “magic” or the phrase “you gotta believe” when they win. Don’t fans see that these characterizations are efficacious? If a fan has to be asked to have faith or when they win it’s considered a miracle, doesn’t that say the team is a perennial loser deviating from a norm? Add to this their new stadium Citi-Field is named after Citibank an institution of colossal failure.
Worse then this is what the Mets represent. It’s appalling that the Met colors of blue and orange are meant to pay homage to the long gone New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers. The Mets are identified by what they aren’t, they’re the not-Dodgers the not-Giants, a cheap facsimile of clubs that skipped town. To perpetuate this Citi-field is intentionally made to look like Dodgers Ebbetts Field complete with a statue of Jackie Robinson.
What I propose is not a wholesale elimination of a team but the idea of the Mets. The club should change their name and colors. New York should finally come to terms with their past and stop being vicarious fans of teams that are no longer there through the Mets. Also a new name will shed the losing appendages that Amazin and magic implies. Ditch the “Mets”.
