Cautious Optimist -- I'm Mad As Hell and I'm Not Going to Take it

 

Indulge me a Cathartic post, please

My great uncle -- not my best uncle, just my great uncle -- was the comedian, Henny Youngman, known best (unfortunately) for his famous one liner, "Take my wife...., please".

He actually had much better material than that, but at least he's remembered for some of his work, even if it is not his best.  I wonder what this iteration of the Mets will be remembered for.

And so I implore you,  "Take my Mets...., please."  

This is not going to be one of my philosophical or analytical or theoretical pieces that bores some of you to death.  This is a stream of semi-consciousness catharsis.  

I need it, and I'm going to indulge myself.  'Do you (dear reader) feel like I do?' (Speaking of which, whatever happened to Peter Frampton's hair?"

It's worse than you think and worse than I had ever imagined

It's really hard to imagine a team more out of favor with its fan base than the Mets.  Even Jets fans are more engaged with their woeful team than are Mets fans.  Somehow the genuinely dysfunctional Jets managed to make two excellent trades at the deadline and had a truly excellent draft this past week.  The typical Jets fan was able to ignore the fact that there is no evidence that their HC can coach at this level and put aside decades of incompetent ownership, and find themselves, if not quite optimistic, at least hopeful.

Hope may spring eternal, but for the average Mets' fan, this Spring has killed all hope. Video may have killed the radio star, but really, who cares? The Mets play has sent me back to therapy, and at these prices, it might be cheaper to pay off an opponent to throw a game every once in a while! 

I think it's fair to say that the Mets fans have lost all faith in the team's prospects, not just for this year, which is bad enough, but going forward.  The extent of the disengagement is both striking and easy to understand. 

What I don't understand is the apparent failure of the organization -- from the owner to the manager -- to grasp its source as well as its significance. 

They are misreading the signals the fans are sending, underestimating, not the extent or quantity of disaffection, but its quality and character.  This is not a fan base responding to a losing streak or to a stretch of disappointing play.  

This is a fan base screaming that there is rot at heart of the team.  Being a fan of the Mets is tantamount these days is like watching a loved one devolve into a depression from which they seem unable to extricate themselves, one that defines them and with which they seem incomprehensibly to have become comfortable with.  

Some might think that watching the Mets is like watching a train wreck, but I demur.  A train wreck, while likely to cause untold personal harm and property damage, is, at the end of the day, a ballistic event.  It doesn't build or boil over, it is above all else, a sudden impact.

What the Mets fan has experienced has been a slow, exhausting, recalcitrant, dissolution.  It is personal and offers no relief or hope of respite, let alone a rebound.

This is like the sucking of all life out of an organism or the death of a long relationship.  At no time does it seem inevitable, but all of the time it seems intractable, incomprehensible. 

Speaking as a fan, I find myself asking questions I never expected I would.  Am I crazy in thinking that the FO and the manager aren't seeing what I am seeing?  Are they delusional in some way.  Is it possible that they just don't care in the way I, and most other Mets fans for life, obviously do. 

Sometimes you have to understand that the fans are invested in ways that may be unhealthy, but which, given how little there is to cheer about or find solace in the circumstances of modern life, may well be all that keeps us going day to day.  Ok, that may be a bit hyperbolic: not all of what keeps us going, but nevertheless essential to one's well-being. 

Sometimes, simple decency requires putting a stop to the pain.  If the FO isn't going to do that, the fans surely will of their own accord.

But most of all, we don't want to hear a manager's post game press conference punctuated by banalities, like, 'we are playing hard, taking good at bats, putting in the work, but obviously what we are doing is not enough'.  Some banalities are informative; some are obvious.  This one clearly is not.

Or my favorite, 'No one is going to feel sorry for us.'  No shite.  The goal is to make them loathe to play against us.  Do I need to hear the POBO say with a straight face that he believes that the manager is doing a good job?  

Really?  The team is listless, frustrated and plays the game without joy or energy.  They make mistakes and commit mental errors befitting little leaguers.  They are making every opponent seem invincible.

Do I really need a POBO, who I largely admire and have a great deal of faith in, looking to sign players off the scrap heap hoping to find a diamond in the rough.   No, no, a thousand times no.

I'll tell you what I need, and I'm betting others need as well 

I need to see the owner, the POBO and the manager responding to this moment appropriately, which for me is captured best by Peter Finch's portrayal of the fictional character, Howard Beale, in the film classic, Network, going to the window, opening it and shouting at the top of his lungs, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.'  

If FO continues to take it, rest assured the Mets fans will not.

There may well be little, if anything, the FO can do now that will turn the team around, but we won't even be able to stop the bleeding if we are unable to see how sick the patient is. 

This is a team that is 57-84 since June 12, 2025.  This isn't a team that has to play better.  After all, it is almost impossible for it to play any worse.

This is not a team that needs a good series or two.  This is a team that every fan can see desperately needs a reboot, a severing of ties with its long slow dissolution.   

This isn't a team that can settle for a reboot.  This is a team that needs a rebirth.  

We are so close to becoming a team that isn't even capable of talking a good game, let alone playing one.  This is the team the fan base sees day in and day out.  

Can it really be possible that the FO office sees something different.

So at the top of my lungs, hear me, 'I'm mad as hell and I am not going to take it' 

Nor am I going to spend the summer in a bad mood.  Until there are bright spots to report on on the major league team, I'm going to devote my time to the only source of hope right now: prospects toiling in the minors and honing their craft.

Because, though prospects rarely pan out as expected, they have not yet shown us their ceilings and thus they free us to dream of better days to come.  

And just to show that I can find humor in even the most horrific events, I will end with a joke that I have rewritten slightly so as not to risk offending anyone.

Comedian to the Audience:  Do you know the difference between a Mets pessimistic fan and a Mets optimistic fan?

Answer:  The pessimistic fan is always reminding you that the pitchers can't pitch, the hitters can't hit, the manager can't manage, and the GM can't make a decent trade or free agent signing.  It's so bad, it's impossible for things to get worse

To which the optimistic Mets fan responds, 'Don't be ridiculous.  Of course they can.'

Until next time.