Mike's Mets - Put It in the Rearview

 By Mike Steffanos December 21, 2020 

Today's post was originally going to be about something else — reactions to Tim Britton's long profile of Steve Cohen in The Athletic. Then I got some bad personal news that made me put that half-written post on the back burner, at least for today. We'll probably get back to that one tomorrow. For today, I was informed that I am officially unemployed again with a whole hour's notice. It seems a somehow fitting end to a year that featured a badly mishandled pandemic, a long multi-month layoff in the spring, an excruciating disk injury that took four long months to resolve, a weirdly truncated 60-game baseball season, and some serious medical concerns for Lisa. And those are only the lowlights of this stinking year.

As much as I want to feel sorry for myself, I didn't even have the worst year of people that I know. 2020 was very much an equal opportunity disaster for so many of us. I try not to swear on this blog, but I hope you'll indulge me if I choose to shout out just once, F*CK 2020! I will never be less sorry to see the end of a year of my lifetime.

My purpose in writing this isn't to get anyone to feel sorry for me. We all get some crap tossed at us in life, and it's up to all of us to figure out how to get past it rather than sit around and wallow in it. And, hey, I was wondering where I was going to find the time to write — shouldn't be a problem now. I'll miss the routine of working (as well as the paycheck), even though the job was neither especially challenging or financially rewarding. But it is what it is.

I'm grateful in times like these to have an outlet for two things that I care passionately about, baseball and writing, and to have this space as an outlet for both. When I was a lot younger, I used to have very little sense of humor about my Mets fandom. Thank God that changed, I'm not sure how I would have survived these last two decades of Wilpon madness without the ability to laugh at myself a little. I love caring about baseball and, specifically, the Mets so much. I know it's kind of illogical to spend so much time thinking about something that means a lot less than the truly important things: family, friends, each other — but that's the beauty of it to me, and why it provides such a welcome diversion to all of the crap.

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