🥳 Happy New Year!
Thank you for making this newsletter a small part of your baseball routine, whether you read it each morning with your cup of coffee, or skim through it every once in a while.
Without you, there would be no Mets Fix.
What makes Mets Fix special to me are the moments we share together: moments of joy, which we were blessed with so many times this past season, or those inevitable moments of disappointment; each morning, I know a friendly reader awaits.
I can’t wait for the story to continue in 2025. Thanks for your continued support!
In honor of the holiday, I thought it would be fun to share some of the top newsletters from 2024.
💌 After Pete’s home run
Pete Alonso was lost, you could see it in his face, the deep breaths, the I-want-this-so-badly-but-I-can’t-make-it-happen look. It felt like Joe Biden was still running for re-election the last time Alonso had an extra base hit. He had tripped over his own bat grounding into a double play. He was swinging at ridiculous pitches. His last play of the season and possibly as a Met at first base was trending towards being a dropped pop up.
Surely, when he stepped to the plate with two deep breaths and a last chance at redemption, the most likely outcome was for him to make one, if not both, of the final outs by striking out or grounding into a double play.
The baseball screenwriters had already written an improbable story on this night. In a tie game, in the seventh inning, in only the fourth winner-take-all game out of 131 to remain scoreless that long, the Brewers struck lightning twice, the first a pinch-hit home run by a .199 hitter, the second an almost identical blast by a player who had hit two home runs in 524 plate appearances this year.
That was going to lead SportsCenter. That was what the newspaper articles and blogs and social media posts would be talking about. That, and the failure of Pete Alonso.
And then the Polar Bear reminded us why this game of baseball is so different from life in that it can make fairy tales come true.
💌 After beating the Phillies in the NLDS
It turns out all of the losses and doubts mattered, whether from seasons before or this one.
The losing Wilpon years. The false promise of 2022. The underwhelming offseason. The minor-league deal for a middle infielder who had fallen out of the majors. The gambles on reclamation-projects. The 0-5 start. The questions about Lindor, Nimmo and Alonso.
Without those challenges, without those doubts, Mets fans wouldn’t have the feeling they experienced last night and that they carry with them to this newsletter, whether you are reading on the train to work, in a dorm before class, or the throne of your house.
Because no matter how many zeroes pad their payroll, the Mets aren’t the Yankees, or the Dodgers.
They are the lovable Mets, a franchise that tries to punch up and often falls down, one that every so often, with the passing of a black cat or the emergence of a purple dino-looking mascot, does something magical, unthinkable.
💌 After losing to the Dodgers
All dreams end.
But what are dreams? The dictionary tells us they are a series of thoughts, images, or emotions that occur during sleep.
For Mets fans, they are the thoughts, images and emotions they have felt over the past four months and three weeks.
From 0-5 to O-M-G, Gary Cohen’s words are more perfect than mine.
In fact, it’s hard to come up with the right words this morning.
It’s like waking up from a dream, forgetting what it was about, your mind only willing to remember that you left something great, something magical, something too good to be part of this regular world.
Because as much as this playoff run was about trying to win a World Series, it was about something more than that, something outside of what you see when you turn on the light and greet the day with a peek at the news on your phone.
It was about people, and a community built around a baseball team. It was about that baseball team proving to us that a ridiculous idea, one almost too embarrassing to admit is desirable, still matters.
That is, we can still believe in the impossible.
💌 After signing Juan Soto
Juan Soto, the Ted Williams of our generation, is a New York Met.
Do we really have to say anything else?
I remember where I was when I learned Mike Piazza had been traded to the Mets. I was in middle school, playing Wiffle Ball with my two best friends — we would mimic different batting stances before taking wild swings to knock the ball into the upper deck, as we called the top of my friend’s roof.
It almost sounds made up, thinking back to that moment, when baseball seemed to rule every waking second of my life. A time when Super Nintendo and cable TV was the great threat to our childhood instead of social media and smartphones.
I remember thinking how special it would be to finally have a Met who was one of the players featured in MLB marketing ads, the ones that reached beyond the local telecasts, as if my own baseball relevance would somehow expand through the Mets’ relevance, knowing some other starry-eyed kid in St. Louis would suddenly be jealous of my team, and that somehow meant something to me.
It’s hard not to think back to that feeling, because it is close to the emotions I have right now.
And isn’t that why we remain loyal to this ridiculous idea of baseball fandom after all of these years? Despite the money, luxury-tax payrolls, or real-world responsibilities that try to pull us away from the game and try to cloud that idyllic picture of America’s pasttime, if you squint enough, if you keep your focus on what matters, sometimes you are rewarded with a feeling like this, like you are young again.
Juan Soto is a New York Met. He becomes the biggest superstar to join the franchise since The Franchise, himself, was traded away.
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Thank you JB. Love Mets Fix and its community. Happy New Year to all.
Thanks, J. B. for giving us the 1st Mets Fix of 2025 and for reminding us of all that was the 2024 season! Here's wishing you and all of Mets Fix a great 2025! #LGM!