Remember my cutout from that 2020 season? He’s still hanging around. Don’t really know what to do with him, but he’s relevant to this post.

(Sunday Paper, Year VII, Issue 32)

I don’t often stop to think about the lack of winning baseball I’ve seen from my favorite team over the years.

Every so often, though, they put together a season like this one and it makes me reflect.

The Mets won the World Series in 1986.

Since then, they’ve had playoff appearances in 1988, 1999, 2000, 2006, 2015, and 2016.

If you’re not a huge baseball fan, let me give you context: that’s not a lot.

Especially when you compare it to some other teams that have featured prominently in my life the past twenty or so years.

All of those years ended in disappointing fashion (even more disappointing than all the years in between because of how close they came to glory), and some of them were frustrating even when the team was doing well.

(And that doesn’t even count the ultra-frustrating 2007 and 2008 years when they were good for much of the season and fell apart at the end.)

So in a season like this one, I try to appreciate what I don’t often get to experience.

The Mets are in first place.

They started the season off strong, and instead of fading (which my daughters frequently point out happens more often than not), they’ve gotten better and better.

This weekend they had a huge series with Atlanta, a team which has often broken the hearts of Mets fans, and the Mets gave Atlanta back a little of their own medicine. Atlanta won’t gain on the Mets this weekend, thanks in part to a doubleheader sweep yesterday.

I’m hesitant to even write about it, because last year I got all excited about watching a lot of games and wrote from the start of the season about a season that turned out to be nothing.

This year I’ve been able to watch just as much…and it’s been much better.

And the fact that I’ve been watching so much is a big deal - because the last time the Mets were this good I wasn’t watching a whole bunch.

Back in 2015 the Mets made an exciting run to the World Series, and I followed a lot of that from my phone in the back of bars and clubs.

The summer and fall of 2015 were very exciting in my comedy life - I had a lot of shows and that was the priority at the time - which conflicted with watching baseball.

These days, I’m just not interested in getting out to perform a lot. There are a bunch of reasons for that that maybe I’ll get into at some point, but the upshot of that is being able to watch a lot of great baseball.

This is a fun team to watch, and they’re very good

It’s easy to think it’s the beginning of a stretch of dominance where it will be like that every year.

And while I hope that’s the case, I’ve seen enough seasons like this to know that’s no guarantee.

So I’ll be watching and enjoying the Mets for the next couple of months.

And I won’t tell you about it all the time.

But hopefully I’ll be writing about how much I’ve enjoyed this Mets season one more time.

Maybe in late October.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

“The Velvet Underground & Nico” - The Velvet Underground
“Loaded” - The Velvet Undergound
“Full Moon Fever” - Tom Petty
“Pure Heroine” - Lorde
The Dirty Dozen
Thunderball
Luck

Not a lot of movie watching this week. I fear I won’t have as much time to do so as the work piles up. We’ll see. The whole point of this exercise is trying to find the time.

Notes

*I can’t believe we’re already sitting here a week into August. Not that I’m wishing summer away, but I always get a little excited about the onset of fall. I do enjoy autumn.

*This year I have a fun little idea for the fall months that I’m eager to put into practice….and of course I’ll tell you about it in the coming weeks.

*The other thing notable about August is that August 1st was the day I marked to settle into a more disciplined work routine. Work’s been good - there’s a lot of it, which is always a great thing for the freelancer…but I was a little scattershot over the summer. I took a little time to get myself organized the last couple of weeks of July and set up a new routine for August. So far, so good.

*The social media links to Like/Follow are below. Thanks for checking them out!