[Déjà Bru]

I figured you guys would appreciate this guest essay. The title alone should draw you in but if not, I provide the first two paragraphs below.

Who Am I if the Mets Are Good?

The New York Mets managed to put together a perfect season last year, despite failing to win the World Series. This should be impossible — a title seems like a prerequisite for perfection — and for any other franchise, for any other fan base, it would be. But when you root for a team that’s won just two championships in its 63-year history, and none since 1986 — a team famous not just for losing but for losing with cartoonish flair and bottomless invention — you learn to be a little flexible.

For Mets fans, 2024 offered an unfamiliar combination: a feeling of accomplishment unlike anything we’ve experienced in decades (that’s easy — very low bar) and the total absence of accompanying anguish (that’s much, much harder). Yes, the Mets wound up getting brushed aside by the stacked Los Angeles Dodgers on that team’s march toward its own championship, but a crucial part of what made 2024 so magical is what didn’t happen to the Mets along the way. There was no epic collapse or humiliating blunder, no scapegoats, no lingering resentments. The Mets had a crazy run of historic moments that I’ll be rewatching on YouTube for the rest of my life, and then we just got beat by a better team.

But . . .