Dear Reader,
If you’re reading this the New York Mets have once again blown their chances at a real playoff run and the Padres, those insufferable West Coast Friars, led by Juan Soto and his ilk have then indeed vanquished the Amazins, leaving a dark cloud to linger over Flushing.
Now, I know I shouldn’t care as much as I do. In the end, it’s just baseball, inconsequential compared to the woes facing our current geopolitical climate. But I’m not here to talk about the rationality of baseball fans or the emotional investment we give to grown men tossing a ball. Despite the irrationality of it all, there’s still an all too human lesson to be learned from the Met’s disastrous playoff run.
You see, this year was our year, and despite some hiccups, injuries, and a poor performance against our Division Rivals (the scions of Atlanta whom I refuse to name) we still managed to eke out a 100+ win season and a spot in the postseason. I firmly believed we would go all the way to the World Series, at their best the Mets can beat any team, and baseball and everything about this team and this season felt like we were headed for something special.
But of course, in true Mets’ fashion, we ended the season in heartbreak. Now the Mets are no strangers to terrible baseball but this one hurt, precisely because we were so close yet so far. To see our hopes squared in a Wild Card series we should’ve one only added to the pain of the loss.
It’s as the wisdom writer writes, “hope deferred makes the heart sick.”
We all know that feeling, that moment when our dreams collapse beneath us, and our plans fall apart. It’s more common than we let on. Even a brief change in our schedule is enough to deflate us and leave us feeling empty, a stark reminder that we are not in control. It’s in these moments that our hope hangs by a thread and we start to wonder, how we will endure now that all our plans have gone up in flames.
Well, if being a Mets fan has taught me anything, it’s that in those moments “ya gotta believe.”
“Ya gotta believe” is a phrase coined by NY Mets pitch Tug McGraw. It has become the team’s unofficial slogan, in moments when the franchise is at its worst and the out team looks like a tee-ball team, fans rally around the hope that one-day things will get better. Now, this phrase isn’t a form of blind optimism. Optimism looks past our problems, it cannot deal with reality, because at its core optimism assumes that things will get better. But that isn’t always the case. Belief however is a call to look through our problems and envision the possible hope that lies on the other side.
It’s what the Biblical writers referred to as apokalypsis or revelation, a way of looking at history, seeing its problems, and acknowledging that history itself is headed toward some greater hope. In the book of Revelation, St. John invites his readers to see through the lens of history toward their coming redemption. He doesn’t ignore the violence they suffer or the chaos enveloping their world, instead, he reframes how they should understand their trouble—their pain was a precursor to glory.
And so though we might suffer for a little while, true hope knows how to see through our suffering to the glory beyond it, to that great day where all is renewed. In the words of the great Cornell West:
“Hope is not a mood; it’s a virtue.” We have a right to be in as dark a mood as we want, because things are indeed bleak. But hope is a virtue — which is to say, it’s an excellence that we aspire to. No matter how dark your mood is, you still have a responsibility to aspire to the virtuous. Hope is the refusal to succumb to despair and nihilism.”
#LETSGOMETS
-Ryan