RIP The Fun, Sassy, Grimace Mets
The Spreadsheet Mafia‘s move from the boardroom to the diamond has stolen a lot from baseball. The math of the true three outcomes: homer, strike out, and walk reign over a mathematically driven formula that’s stolen from the soul of baseball the way it’s stolen the creative soul of America.
America’s craving for authenticity and camaraderie in a world rapidly driven to isolation, artificial intelligence, and slate-colored company logos is how the richest payroll in the financial engine of America becomes a group of the most lovable underdogs in sports.
The 2024 Mets embraced the art of the gimmick this year. Having had a rally pimp, a veteran literally named Seymour Wiener, Grimace, Hawk Tuah, a gay Mets gimmick, the goddamn Temptations at Game 5 of the National League Championship Series, and a Latin pop star playing second base. All being run by a guy who quite literally settled an insider trading case with the SEC nicknamed Uncle Stevie.
Oh, and that guy you work with who just grabbed his stuff and quit one afternoon after he absolutely couldn’t take it anymore? The Mets had one of those too.
In May, before the power of pop cultural icons inhabited the Mets lifeless husk of a roster, Jorge Lopez walked off the mound, fired his glove over the proactive netting, and told a reporter that he was on the worst team in baseball because who doesn’t love ripping their employer on the way out.
That’s not starch cleaned. That’s real life. In an era where regular people put out statements on holidays and current events the way politicians used to (Like they all actually spend “today and every day thinking about veterans in a country where nearly two dozen vets commit suicide every day).
We’ve taken the human element out of even writing those bullshit thought leadership pieces on LinkedIn and out of dialogue across movies, books, and shows.
Weird stuff happens in baseball because baseball happens every single day. Just like real life. It’s messy. It’s imperfect. It reflects our lives. Major League Baseball is typically played 5 days a week. Some days you win and others you lose. Often it can feel monotonous. Sometimes you can’t believe it’s happening to you. But it’s always there. 7pm. Every night.
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Sure, this Mets team didn’t have a coke problem. But it had personalities. It had drama. It had ways to connect the baseball supporting public to this team.
And Mets fandom played a large part in combatting the cynicism surrounding fun gimmicks online. Baseball in its infancy drummed up support for barnstorming tours through personality and flare, driving fans into packed stadiums. Even Satchel Paige, the greatest pitcher of his era, once pitched while sitting in a rocking chair and being attended to by a nurse.
Now, baseball, more than anywhere else, (and probably why it was the first to be taken over by dorks), loves to button their top button and tell you why a bat flip quite literally gave their grandpappy cancer the first time he saw it when he stopped to see a barnstorming tour in nineteen-ought-seven.
But you can’t out-cynic a fan of a team who quite literally batted out of order like Little Leaguers six years ago.
“Same old Mets,” once a weakness, was now the ability to make “weird” things fun again.
Weird like colorful logos. Weird like writing your own essays and novels. Having your friends over to play video games and listening to records rather than playing in your room, alone, and attached to an internet that is actively rotting the very thing that makes you human.
The Mets became underdogs despite their payroll because they reminded us that baseball isn’t a business comprised of robots and spray graphs. They became fan favorites because they reminded us of what we used to have. Creativity and expression devoid of the relentless pursuit to break everything down to numbers and whether something you enjoy puts you in the red or the black.
Baseball is humanity and letting it be so means more than stolen bases and 300 game winners.
The sterilization of baseball mirrors our own creative culture. And what can be more America’s Game than that?
-Michael Mulraney