With the irksome proceedings of two sparsely scheduled games in Kansas City out of the way, the Mets returned home, and the fun part of the season began.

I hate to qualify it that way, because really, baseball season is the fun part of baseball season and there’s nothing more to be said.  But no one who attended or watched can deny the magic of the home opener, when, for just a brief moment, the idealized version of baseball is played out on the field, and anything is possible.

Jacob deGrom, who could be anywhere from one to four in our rotation, took the mound, and like we knew he would be, was as good as ever.  Six innings, one run, departure with a tight lat muscle.  In previous years, this would have been cause to panic.  Somehow, this year feels different.

Maybe it was because of what happened on the field.  The Phillies came in, a ragtag band of AAA players who may well lose 100 games this year.  We came in confident, a defending league champion.  We knew we were going to beat the Phillies, and beat them handily.  And then we went out and did exactly that.

How long has it been since we’ve been able to say that?  Since we’ve been able to say, right from the beginning of a season, that we were A) overwhelming favorites to win a game, and B) able to deliver and easily win the game in question?  It’s been a while, let me tell you.  This is what they say good teams do: they win the games they’re supposed to, and give their best effort in everything else.

All of this is not to reduce the action down on the field to a generalization, even if it is a positive one. There was baseball being played, and it wasn’t bad either.  Outside of the first and last hitters, everyone in the lineup had at least one hit.  Neil Walker had two more RBIs.  Michael Conforto had three, and is batting .444.  Lucas Duda has a three game hitting streak.

In short, it’s a classic lineup, following a tried and tested formula: if you’ve got the pitching, all you need is a lineup with no easy outs.  That’s what Sandy has quietly assembled, even as he stockpiled the greatest rotation any of us have ever seen: we’ve got young, homegrown talent behind the plate, at first base, and in left field.  We’ve got not superstars but solid hitters at second and short, a quintessential team player in right, and a slugger, albeit strikeout-prone, in center.

We won’t out-slug the ’27 Yankees, but the ’27 Yankees couldn’t hit much against us either.

After deGrom left with his mysterious tightness, Jim Henderson, the former feel-good project, entered.  It’s been mere days, and yet Henderson looks better than anyone could have realistically imagined.  He set down the side 1-2-3, with two strikeouts thrown in for good measure.  For all the griping about the bridge to Familia, it’s proven, through three games, remarkably solid, and today, because of its firmness, Familia wasn’t even needed, and Antonio Bastardo, another hurler who drew curious stares during Spring Training after rather conspicuously appearing at less than his best, came in instead.

He gave up a single, recorded two strikeouts, and induced Cameron Rupp to ground to Asdrubal Cabrera, and just like that, the Mets’ first home win of the season, and of many more, was in the books.

Beating up on the Phillies.  Ah, how I’d missed it, and now that it’s back and expected, ah how wonderful it is.  And I’ll be in attendance tomorrow night, in what look to be positively arctic temperatures, looking for my own first win of the season.

Good teams beat up on bad teams.  It’s just what they do.  And really good teams play just like we did today, and beat up on the bad teams without a second glance.

I’ll admit it: there was a moment, however brief, when I was sure that game two was a lost cause just as game one had been.

When Michael Conforto slammed a ball at the left field wall and Lorenzo Cain came out of nowhere to make a catch that, on top of all the other luck the Royals have been privy too, seemed downright unfair, I was sure, for a brief moment, that the Royals were simply too much.  They were unbeatable, unassailable, invincible, not even worth taking on.

I couldn’t help think of a Calvin and Hobbes strip, wherein Calvin is kicked off his swing by Moe, the schoolyard bully.  Walking away, Calvin thinks to himself, “Years from now, when I’m successful and happy…and he’s in prison…I hope I’m not too mature to gloat.”

That’s how I felt about the Royals as Lorenzo Cain robbed what would have been our young Conforto’s fifth consecutive time on base to open the season.  I cursed them; I clenched my fists; I wanted to throw something but didn’t have anything replaceable at hand.

And it didn’t help that, through the first three innings, we did a whole lot of nothing against Chris Young, who is plenty infuriating in his own right.

In the midst of a hard-fought contest, the Royals and their interminable luck can conjure memories of schoolyard bullies who don’t realize that sometimes, they’ve got to fail too.

Then came the fourth, and before you could say Daniel Murphy had two hits yesterday, Neil Walker was putting us on the board and moving memories of Murph to the backs of our minds.  It’s been two games, but I’m growing to quite like young Mr. Walker, he of the power from the five spot and the dependability at second base.  He’s just the kind of player all good teams need to play second fiddle to your temperamental superstars and your overpaid veterans: the gritty, dependable, everyday guy who makes the plays you need and gets the hits you want.

But hold on: I’m starting to sound like the ESPN booth droning on about the Royals, America’s team, the scrappy underdogs who were never the most athletic guys out there, but when the going got tough the Royals got going, so they went out there and they worked harder than everybody else, and they trained their bodies, hearts, and minds so that they always knew what to do out there on the field, and as Eric Hosmer was coming home he was using complex physics equations and psychological laws to calculate that Lucas Duda couldn’t possibly throw home on time, because that’s just the kind of guy he is, he’s a true ROYAL—

I’ve had just about enough of the Royals, as you can probably see.  And what’s more, I’d had more than enough of the Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN broadcast crew, which meant the good-humored camaraderie of Gary, Keith, and Ron was all the more welcome, especially as the trio was calling a game that was shaping up very well for us.

While Walker was putting us on the board in his quiet, unassuming way, Thor was doing what he does: namely, pitching so awesomely that all normal baseball logic ceased to apply.  The Royals, who NEVER STRIKE OUT, struck out nine times against Syndergaard, twelve overall.  Runners at third with nobody out didn’t score — a cardinal sin of Baseball on the part of the Royals, but the SNY crew is too good to resort to nonsense like that.  Players who don’t go down easy went down on three pitches.  Pitches that you could’ve sworn were ticketed for up the gap and rolling to the wall were exploding into d’Arnaud’s mitt.

Thor was pitching his game, in short, and if this was indeed his game, and he can keep up anything close to it going forward against the comparatively paltry lineups of most of the National League, we’ve got a helluva year to look forward to.  And I don’t see any reason why not.

Then came the seventh: Thor was out with 92 pitches, and Jim Henderson was in.  Jim Henderson.  Scott Rice.  Greg Burke.  LaTroy Hawkins.  Jose Valverde, Kyle Farnsworth, Jason Isringhausen.  We’ve seen a million of these guys.  But never, as far as I can remember, have we seen such an effective debut by a player largely presumed to be a feel-good project: 1-2-3 inning, two by strikeout, hitting 97 on the gun and topping it off with a dirty slider.  Maybe that bridge to Familia that we’ve all heard is overdue for maintenance is just fine after all.

We hit but didn’t score as the later innings continued.  We got a scoreless eighth from Addison Reed, whose mechanical, repeatable motion filled me with confidence even if his 93 m.p.h. fastball looked like a bowling ball coming to the plate after having watched Thor for six innings, and on came Familia for the ninth.

Yes, Familia blew three saves in the World Series.  One, as far as I can remember, was truly his fault.  When you’re playing the Royals on a hot streak, you give up tying runs on weak infield grounders and mistimed throws: it’s just something you do.  But Thor had disposed of the Royals’ hot streak on Familia’s behalf, and now Jeurys needed only to finish the job.

It was almost eerie, as the ninth began: Mets ahead 2-0, Lorenzo Cain at the plate, the series at stake.  The count went to 3-2.

“Lorenzo Cain, who famously walked on a 3-2 slider against Matt Harvey,” said Gary Cohen.

Well, it’s a new year, the past is done, and apparently, Familia hadn’t gotten the memo.  He threw a sinker.  His most lethal, most unhittable pitch.  It was down, out of the strike zone.  Cain swung anyway.  He had no shot.  The brief parallels with the final game of 2015 disappeared immediately, and d’Arnaud gunned the ball around the infield casually.

That’s when I knew we’d be fine.

We still had two outs to get, but come on.  This was Jeurys Familia, and these were the Royals suddenly bereft of the magic that had propped them up in October.  Familia faced Hosmer.  Hosmer hit an easy grounder to second.  Walker bobbled it.

And again, the Mets drove home the point that they were no longer the sloppy-fielding 2015 runner-ups.  In the time it took Mets fans all over the country to gasp, Walker regrouped and fired to first.  Got him by a stride.  Two down.

Kendrys Morales came up as the Royals’ last hope.  He chopped a swinging bunt in front of home plate.

2015 effectively ended on an errant throw from Duda to d’Arnaud.  The best part of 2016 began with a perfect one right back.

d’Arnaud to Duda.  Routine play.  And thus, the game went to the books.

So that’s it: we’ve taken on the Royals, the perfect team, the team America seems to root for, and split two games with them.  We’ve held them to three earned runs over those two games.  We’ve got pitching, and away from Kansas City and closer to home, we’ve got an offense to go with it as well.  And what’s more, we’re coming home.  Friday, Citi Field, 1:10.  That’s when the magic begins.

And now that we’ve left Kansas City with a win, call me crazy, but the spell seems to be broken, just a little bit.  Maybe we’ll run into the Royals somewhere down the line, and maybe they’ll be a cellar dweller.  I won’t gloat; in fact, I’ll probably root them on.  On any other day, there’s nothing wrong with a genuine group of scrappy, battle-worn underdogs.  Nothing wrong with a real-life America’s Team.

I just happen to prefer the Mets.

Did anyone really expect anything different than this?  What else, if we’re honest, could have happened?

I did expect something different, for one.  I expected the Mets, based on the veritable mountains of luck due to them after that travesty of a World Series, to pull out a win.  But then the Royals propaganda office went to work, brought in what, from the best I could tell, were two dying fire fighters to raise the championship banner, and got their crowd screaming over whatever was happening, which as far as I could tell was mostly a bunch of highlight reels and the like that reinforced the idea that, whatever else, the Royals were pretty damn good.

How could we win after that?

For those of us at home, meanwhile, we were stuck watching the game on ESPN, listening to commentary that consisted mostly of talking about how relentless the Royals were for doing things like hitting ground balls, not to even mention the occasional fly ball.  Everyone knows that this is a load of nonsense; the Royals have been lucky when they put the ball in play, and it’s as simple as that.  That didn’t stop the booth: for every Eric Hosmer grounder through the hole, we were treated to a lengthy explanation of how while Hosmer hadn’t really hit the ball well, he had put the ball in play, and because it had happened to find a hole, he had done so relentlessly and scrappily, with the heart and hustle befitting an underdog.

This is not even to mention the “K-Zone,” which seemed to be the main objective of the entire broadcast.  “We’re going to take a break now and show you some baseball,” I kept expecting to hear, “but after that, we’ll be right back to take another extended look at the K-Zone.”

But there was baseball, between the lengthy treatises on the K-Zone and the tiresome dogma spoutings regarding how the Royals PLAYED THE GAME THE RIGHT WAY, GODDAMMIT, there was a ballgame, and if we’re honest, again, did we really expect it to go any differently?

For the first seven innings, the Mets appeared to have not even a semblance of an offense, which is nothing more or less than a disease that strikes once in a while.  The Mets could put together a lineup to rival the 1927 Yankees: every once in a while, we’d simply know, deep in our hearts, that we had absolutely no chance to score.  When your lineup is not the 1927 Yankees but a mix of inconsistent aging sluggers and left-handedly flailing shortstops, it happens more often.  Not necessarily too often to preclude a winning season, but it happens.

Meanwhile, Edison Volquez, on the mound, was just having one of those games.  Maybe our lineup was just bad; maybe he was just good; it was probably a little of both.  Everything he threw fell just right for him, and on the multiple occasions when the Mets hit balls harder than anything the Royals hit all night, they went directly to fielders.  Pitchers have those days: it’s yet another thing that just happens.

Then the eighth came along, and against a pitcher who by the numbers alone is very ordinary, but because he’s part of the Royals self-proclaimed super-bullpen must be a mound wizard, we finally pulled ourselves together.  We scored three.  We couldn’t score a fourth, because Asdrubal Cabrera came up with two outs, and Asdrubal Cabrera’s swing just doesn’t do things like driving in runs.  We went to the ninth down 4-3.

Mets/Royals.  4-3 going to the ninth.  A hard-throwing reliever on the mound.  Sound familiar?

Well, not for the Mets, it seemed.  A walk, a fielder’s choice, a single, a strikeout, and another strikeout combined for three outs without a run.  With two outs, Michael Conforto was three batters away – three batters too far, as it turned out.  Cespedes gave Wade Davis a bit of a battle before striking out, which frankly is more than he usually does before striking out, but he couldn’t hold off his free-swinging tendencies forever, and he chased a pitch a foot off the plate to end it.

So there we were, same old one-run losers despite two hits from Conforto and an effort from Harvey that wasn’t as bad as his final line would indicate.  And with that, the perfection of Opening Day dissipated, and we were the same old Mets, not enough offense, pitching not quite good enough, just a little too old, not quite good enough.

Or maybe not, because three runs today is three runs more than I thought we’d get over the Royals rumoredly-deadly bullpen, and, dare I say it, three more than we would have scored in 2014, or 2012, or 2010, or a bad year.  This is a good year — even with the disheartening loss, that much still seems evident.  One League Champion had to lose today, and it was us.  But we’ve got Thor on Tuesday, and they’ve got someone, almost by definition, who is nowhere near as good.

No, Opening Day didn’t go the way we wanted.  Yes, there’s a lot we need to improve.  But that’s the point: that’s why it’s Opening Day.  This is not a good game 160.  But for game one of a whole lot, it’s not the worst thing in the world.

We’ll be back Tuesday, ready and rearin’ to go with a long tall Texan on the mound and a fresh fire in our bats.  And now that we’ve got a real team, those obscure terms actually mean something beyond being angry.

They mean the Royals need to watch out for an opponent with something to prove and the means to prove it.  And they mean that we’re going to win on Tuesday, and a whole lot besides.  And disheartening as it seems, one Opening Day loss doesn’t change that one bit.

It’s been cold, dark, and windy.  It’s been bleak and grey.  It’s seemed interminable.  At some points, it’s seemed the norm.

It’s over.  Baseball is back.

Really, that’s all there is to say, because what else matters?  What else need be added to make the simple pronouncement any more spectacular?  Baseball is back, and that’s all.  No qualifiers or confirmations are needed.  The three words are enough.

In a few hours, we’ll be ready for warmups, player introductions, and the national anthem.  Soon after that, it will be Edinson Volquez on the mound, and our guys at bat.  Picking up right where we left off, in more than one sense.

Who knows where we’ll go from here, or how we’ll get there?  That’s the beauty of Opening Day.  The season exists fully in our imaginations, different to each but ending well for all, meandering in its path but arriving at the same happy destination regardless.  We can’t say that after today.  Maybe we win, or maybe we lose, but regardless, we won’t be perfect.  After today there’s minute, obsessive analysis to conduct, lineups to tinker with, fielders to move around.  After today, things, small or large, but things regardless, start to go wrong.

Today our team is perfect, and don’t bother telling us otherwise because you’ve got no leg to stand on.  It’s Opening Day: anything can happen yet, and until either of those changes, our team is whatever we want it to be.  We’re an offensive juggernaut, a swaggering frontrunner, a stingy cheese factory, a heroic underdog.  Whatever notion we hold of our team, based in fact or fantasy, reality or wishes, today it’s absolutely true.  But not for much longer.

It seems only yesterday we were hunkering down for the long wait through Spring Training, telling ourselves while not really believing it that Opening Day would be here before we knew it.  Once again, we thought we were wrong, but we weren’t.  We never think we’ll make it, yet we always do.

Yes, whether you’re talking about Opening Day or the World Series, we never think we’ll make it.  But we always manage to get back there somehow, whether it takes five months or fifteen years.

Scant hours remain, which somehow always seem to drag on endlessly, but regardless, we’ve made it.  Practicalities of 8:30 p.m. starts notwithstanding, we’ve made it back to baseball season.  That’s today’s real magic, even more than the return of baseball itself, although a win wouldn’t hurt.  The two sound the same, but they’re subtly different.

The Mets aren’t playing yet.  They won’t, for some hours.  But there’s a game today.  Whether it’s late or early, that’s what matters.

We’re back, once again, to days that have Mets games attached.

I’m ridiculously happy about that, and ridiculously excited for “gameday” becoming “gametime,” because who isn’t?  We’ve got our best team in a good nine or ten years, and now, we’ve got weather and an opponent to go with that.

I was excited for Opening Day 2015, when we had a glimmer of hope that maybe something would happen.  I was excited for Opening Day 2014, when the Mets, supposedly nearing the end of their rebuild, took the field with a former (and, I suppose, future) star in right field and a short, squat, lovable pitcher in the dugout.  I was excited for Opening Day 2013, with the promise brought by a resurgent David Wright and a fireballing Matt Harvey and the brief craze that was Collin Cowgill.  I was even excited for Opening Day 2012, because no matter how bad it seemed we would be — and this was a team that, beyond anyone’s expectations, severely overperformed in the first half of the season, cresting at 46-39 the game before the all-star break — baseball was back.

But today?  Opening Day 2016?  Defending National League Champions?  This tops them all, and not narrowly.  We’ve got a team for the ages, a team full of youth and character and grizzled veterans and jumpy rookies and every other baseball cliche you can imagine, thrown together through a combination of patient rebuilding and desperate, on-the-fly signings to win a championship or die trying, and give the fans something fun to watch either way.

Everything’s back, after today.  Bartolo’s behind the back flips.  Thor and deGrom and Harvey, all striking out hitters with fastballs that don’t give much of a chance.  Conforto and d’Arnaud hitting line drives all over the field, Grandy getting on base like Ted Williams, Duda slugging balls to God knows where, Matz bringing his grandfather to the edge of his seat, the captain going out and giving us everything he’s got every single day.

Or maybe that’s the optimist in me talking, and the season won’t go nearly so well.  But that’s the point.  It’s Opening Day, and the season is whatever we want it to be.  It’s a romp, a bash, a charge through the shoddily defended N.L. East and right on back to the World Series and through whatever opponent they’re foolish enough to throw at us and on, on, on until there’s a new trophy in Flushing.

We’re headed that way.  We’ve got just the team to do it, and today, they get started.  And hell — even if they don’t, today’s when we know for certain that they will.

Happy Opening Day.  Let’s get out there, and let’s play ball.

(Originally published March 30th, 2014 via Pedro Beato Fan Club)

Tomorrow there’ll be baseball

The teams will take the field

And shouts of good or negative

The tow’ring stands will yield

‘Morrow shall the game be held

At the ground once called Shea

But negatives we will not feel

For there’s a game today

The fans will show up early

On the number seven line

“I see it! There’s the stadium!”

The children will opine

The veterans, the more seasoned

Will overtake the parking lot

Happily preparing

Sausages and burgers hot

Those who cannot be there

The students, the oppressed

Of their wretched situations

Still will make the best

List’ning on their radios

Dawdling in the halls

Eagerly will they follow

Josh and Howie with the call

Meanwhile those attending

Gametime will await

Their six month thirst for baseball

Food and drink just cannot sate

Finally as the time arrives

These fans begin to wake

Then they move more quickly

For they’ve a game to make

The lines of eager attendees

With haste approach the seats

For today’s a day for baseball

And the fans will not be beat

As game time fast approaches

The players are introduced

And still the fans’ excitement

Has yet to be unloosed

But as the fans do take their seats

They are yet called to stand

And sung out with great passion

Will be the song of our land

Finally will the players yield

To whomever will M.C.

Who will introduce the home team

in this baseball game to be

He’ll start out rather simple

He’ll say “And now, here they are,d”

Then the eager fielders

will be quick to heed the call

Then nigh on 40,000 fans

Will shout out loud with joy

Being, for a moment

A young girl or boy

Meanwhile those being kept away

Their radios will wield

Hoping to hear Howie say

“Live from Citi Field”

And as we see them on the field

Our team of these nine men

We’ll finally absorb it –

Baseball’s really here again

The game will soon proceed

Because the season must begin

Steadfastly will the Mets advance

Hoping for a win

To later innings will the game

Rapidly progress

We’ll hear our first Lou Monte

At the 7th inning stretch

When at last the game concludes

Regardless of the score

Back to real life we must go

But we’ll all long for more

And as we leave the building

As we travel to our cars

We won’t think of women

Or of drinking at the bars

Of social state, of government

Of problems, of our pay

We will not fret, complain, or worry

‘Cause tomorrow’s Opening Day

The Mets held an event recently, announcing changes at Citi Field for the 2016 season.  All manner of exciting new innovations was featured: an animated Coke sign, new burgers, and a cornhole game atop the Coke Corner headlined the event.

There was nothing about a new outfielder.  No one said anything about adding bullpen depth.  The issue of injuries didn’t come up even once.

And finally, not a single person complained about it.

Much as I hate to bash my own people, it’s not without reason that some Mets fans – the ones whose voices are heard, at any rate – have a reputation for complaining.  Because we do complain a lot.  About uniforms.  Long lines.  Fashion.  Ice cream.  We nitpick the trifling instances of perceived malfeasance on the part of ownership, forgetting how good we’ve already got it, having a team in New York in a wonderful stadium with players that we’ve all grown to love.

But then Yoenis Cespedes came along, Wilmer cried, Wright brought himself back with thunder, and 2015 happened.  And suddenly, we’re less like angry jewish mothers and more like, you know, baseball fans.  Baseball fans looking forward to a hell of a season.

People complained a year ago, when the Mets announced an expansion of the scoreboard that would cost $8 million.  Completely illogically, of course: the suggestion that the Mets took $8 million from their player budget and moved it to scoreboard costs instead is on par, in terms of absurdity, with Mike Piazza playing first base, or Brad Emaus being our starting second baseman.  It just wasn’t going to happen.

We like to think that we’re cynical, that we expect to fail and will be surprised to succeed.  We’re not fooling ourselves.  Even this week, as Matt Harvey added “Urination, Insufficiently Frequent” to the Mets lexicon of outright absurd injuries, we continued believing.  We told ourselves we didn’t, but let’s be honest: we do.

We believe in this team.  We believe in the coaching staff.  We believe in everyone minus the Wilpons, from Sandy down through to the head groundskeeper with the possible exception of Ray Ramirez.  We’ve seen what they can do, and soon, we’ll see it again.  There’s no need to convince ourselves otherwise, and, likewise, there’s no need to feign offense over a harmless, or, indeed, positively beneficial video highlighting improvements to our ball club’s home.

I drove by Citi Field the other night, returning from Kennedy Airport on the way back from a Florida trip that, regrettably, didn’t include a trip to Spring Training, because my family doesn’t understand the urgency of driving three hours to watch minor leaguers play a game that doesn’t count.  The road goes close by the stadium, almost contiguous with the parking lot.  I looked out the window of the cab and thought about how close we were to the season.

We’re getting up on Opening Day, and had I not included a picture of Citi Field in its sun-resplendant glory, I wouldn’t have been doing my duty as a beyond-ecstatic fan.

I didn’t think about how bad the team was.  I didn’t crane my neck, looking for a billboard imploring the owners to sell the team.  I didn’t even bother myself with thinking about whether Citi Field looked quite as special as Shea would have, if I’d driven by ten or twelve years before.

Winning cures all ills, up to and apparently including blood clots in the bladder.  Even when we’re bad, I don’t enjoy complaining about it, but sometimes, it’s impossible not to.  When Chris Heston struck out Ruben Tejada to seal his no-hitter that had, in reality, been sealed since the end of the sixth inning, all as I watched from the promenade, I kicked the seat in front of me in disgust.  That was a game worth complaining about: our offense had about as much chance at scoring as George Constanza at the pinstripe ball.  But even then, I couldn’t hang on to the anger for long: within days, I was already, as the older and much wiser man behind me had said upon conclusion of the game, glad that I’d seen it.

That team, the Mets of John Mayberry Jr. and Eric Campbell, was a bad team.  Now we’ve got a good team, a passionate team, a team that’s easy to root for and even easier to feel good about.  We’ve got Duda and Walker, Cabrera and Reynolds and the cap’n.  Cespedes, Grandy, and Conforto, Lagares and even de Aza.  D’Arnaud, deGrom, Harvey, Thor, Matz, big Bart, and Familia.

And we’ve got even more, as of yesterday: we’ve got new food options, a sign that should be exciting if not downright distracting, and a good time to be had by all in the Coke Corner.

In previous years, this, somehow, would have been cause for complaint — as illogical as it would have been, we would have made it so.  But things are different, and now, for the first time in what seems like ages but is really no more than seven or eight years, the primary emotion associated with the Mets is not a grumbling, resigned anger, but controlled, growing excitement.

And as Opening Day approaches and the home opener follows soon after that, excitement, whether it’s over our four aces, four infielders, or four new burger varieties, is all that true fans should feel.

An article appeared in the New York Times shortly after New Years, proclaiming 2016 to be “The year of yes.”  My mother, inspired, read it aloud.  I laughed at her, and as she realized the full ridiculousness of what she was reading, she laughed too.  And then I realized that I agreed.

Now, it’s months later.  Bartolo Colón has stunk up Spring Training.  Matt Harvey, today, was roughed up by the Cardinals’ triple-A team.  Asdrubal Cabrera is out and questionable for Opening Day.  Ruben Tejada is gone.  David Wright seems a daily question mark, figuratively and, given the state of his back, almost literally.

And I say: none of that.  It’s 2016, the year of yes, and we’re not the same old Mets that we once were.  The “2015 National League Champions” pennant currently hanging at Citi Field will attest to that, but even more emphatically, the players will.  We’re no joke.  We’re no longer the Mets of Campbell and Mayberry, four and five.  We’re here to win a World Series, and this time, injuries won’t derail us.

Consider it a sign that I’m even saying what I just did: in any other year — perhaps, and this is what worries me, this year as well — such optimism would be unspeakable.  Condemned.  Derided as wishful thinking, because we all know the Mets get injured.  It’s just what happens.  Paraphrasing Billy Joel’s thoughts on the pub culture of his youth, we just get injured.  It’s just what we do.  And if we do that for long enough, I suppose we’re going to have a problem.

And we’ve had our problems in the past.  Injuries derailed the 2006 postseason, the 2008 bullpen, and the last five months of 2009.  They cost us the arm of a franchise pitcher, the legs of a franchise speedster, much of the prime of a five-tool outfielder, and the back and playing time of our captain.  And that’s just to name a few.  They cost us a year of Matt Harvey and Zack Wheeler, the career of Ike Davis, and the Mets tenure of Vic Black.  They cost us months of Jerry Blevins and Travis d’Arnaud, and worst of all, they utterly failed to cost us Oliver Perez or Luis Castillo, while they were here.

But again, that was the past, and this is the present.  That was the era of empty seats and empty promises; of meaningful games in September and meaningless second base competitions.  We’re the team to beat now; even the clown himself admits it.  And teams to beat don’t lose their seasons on freak injuries like Asdrubal Cabrera’s.  Well, some do, but not the ones like us, who have absolutely got some good luck coming their way.

There are always reasons not to say yes, and while I understand the value of keeping expectations low and not overselling what we have, high expectations are part of what makes 2016 different, and say what you will, but we need something different.  I simply refuse to go into 2016 in the same way we went into 2012 and 2013, hoping for a .500 record, thinking getting close to a Wild Card will be enough.  We all know 2016 is different: we don’t want to say it, but we’re in for October or bust.  And I’m taking the liberty of saying it for us.

And if we want to go to October?  Well, let’s damn act like it.  We’re not the old Mets, who were build on a crumbling foundation of aging talent and couldn’t sustain anything more than a mediocre spark for more than three or four years.  We’re new.  We’re young.  We were built by the baseball maverick himself, and now that we’ve arrived, we deserve some high expectations.  I don’t want to be disappointed, but I don’t want to go through the 2016 season holding back happiness for fear of future disappointment either.

So I’ll say it right now: we’re a playoff team.  We’re better than the Nationals and the Marlins.  We can beat anybody in the National League and pretty damn close to everybody in the American League in any given game or series.  We’ve got maybe the best pitching staff in the league, and that’s before we get Wheeler back.  We’ve got a consistent, exciting offense: we’ve got Conforto and d’Arnaud the the perennially steady Lucas Duda and Grandy and Walker, not to mention Cespedes and the captain.  We’ve got Wilmer and Reynolds and Cabrera at short, all of whom can hit consistently if unspectacularly, and really, with our pitching, that’s all you need.  So, again, let’s act like it.

Now, I may be miles off base in my gut instinct that we’ll get a respite from injuries this year.  We may lose all the pieces we have in April, or, even worse, in September.  But if we do, it won’t change what we had going in.  Just for the sake of it, let’s say Thor goes down on April 15th with elbow soreness that we all know will turn into Tommy John surgery.  Will we feel better because we didn’t feel better?  Will our attempt to lower expectations and avoid disappointment have succeeded?

Of course not, because whether we admit it to ourselves or not, we know what kind of team we’ve got, and it doesn’t make a whit of difference what we say about it.  We know the potential our guys have got, and if they don’t live up to it, we’ll be disappointed whether or not we pretend to have anticipated it.  No sense keeping ourselves unhappy in the meantime.

Baseball can change in an instant: a ball off a hand, an awkward slide, or a twinge in the elbow can change a season in a heartbeat.  We’ve all seen it.  All that’s certain is right now, tomorrow, and the upcoming game.  Beyond that, we’ve got no idea who will be around to play.

All we’ve got is today’s game, today’s lineup, the team on the field.  And right now, it’s a damn good one.  And what’s the sense in pretending to oneself that our team isn’t as good as we know it is?  I’m taking 2016, and I’m saying, yes we will.

Repeat as division champs?  Yes we will.

Back to the NLCS?  Yes we will.

Another National League pennant?  Yes we will.

A World Series Championship to put a lit on an incomplete 2015 season?  Yes we will.

Or maybe we won’t.  But today, with the team we’ve got, we can, and that’s what matters.  And knowing how quickly things can change in baseball, all we know for certain is that we’ve got a good team right now.  So let’s be proud of it.  Let’s look forward to it.  And let’s do absolutely nothing to suggest that we can’t keep winning longer than absolutely everyone else.

Until further notice, we’re the team to beat, and maybe, further notice is not forthcoming.  We won’t know until it does, in any case, and it hasn’t come yet.  So let’s make 2016 The Year of Yes.

The wait is inexorably shrinking: day one of the 2016 season approaches, and soon after that, day one at Citi Field.

Unfortunately, Opening Day at Citi Field is off the table for me this year: there’s simply too much going on.  But I’ll be back soon after Friday’s celebration of a new year and the defending National League champions: one day, to be precise.

That’s right – the tickets are booked, the plans made.  I’m going back to New York, with two days to take in six hours of Mets baseball and then get out while the getting is good.

The first game of the year at Citi Field and, formerly, Shea Stadium.  It’s an annual pilgrimage, almost a rite of passage, and seeing as how, since I started going to Mets games, I haven’t stopped, I have a “first game of the year” every year.

My first game of 2004, my first ever, was an April afternoon matinee against the Pirates.  Jae Seo on the mound, the heart of the Art Howe era.  And boy, did they play like it.  We lost 8-1, on the way to a lost season.  It was before David Wright, after the heyday of Piazza, during Reyes’ bad year…there was nothing much to get excited about.  And I was over the moon.

How could I not be?  It was a Mets game — a real, live Mets game, like I’d been watching on TV.  All the stories I’d heard about Mike Piazza were right there behind the plate for me to see.  All the talk I’d heard about how cool Shea Stadium was was instantly visible firsthand.  An 8-1 loss couldn’t ruin that, especially when, in 2004, that was, resignedly, the norm.

My first game of 2005 wasn’t until the last week of August, and again, Jae Seo was on the mound.  This time, he got the job done, as was starting to happen somewhat routinely in 2005.  It was a 6-4 win over the Phillies, moving the Mets to 69-62, five games back in the division.  Jose Reyes had two hits.  Beltran was three for three.  Ramon Castro hit a three-run homer in the eighth to give the Mets a lead that Braden Looper would protect (strange, how ridiculous it seems to imagine Braden Looper protecting a lead).  The Mets were solid winners.

The Mets hadn’t yet established dominance in the division at the time of my first game of 2006, a 3-2 victory over the then-Florida Marlins.  Glavine pitched, back when hearing his name wasn’t something to get immediately angry about.  We went down in the sixth, and tied it in the seventh on a David Wright triple.  Wright was already, in my nine year old mind, a superhero.  It was about the most routine, ho-hum walk-off you can imagine: Beltran singled, Delgado singled him to third, Wright drove him home with a sac fly that we all knew would be deep enough.  One run winners.  Very soon, I would realize that the Mets were a lot more than one-run winners against the Marlins in an inconsequential game in April: they were on their way to a division championship.

Of course, we all thought the same in 2007, including myself, when I attended my first game of the year.  I didn’t know enough about the Mets, at that point, to tell myself that nothing good was ever assured.  It was Glavine again, and maybe I should have seen the signs: he was fine, allowing three runs, all earned, in six innings, but then the bullpen took over, and thus the game was lost.  A veritable who’s-who of reviled relievers: Ambiorix Burgos, Scott Schoeneweis, Aaron Heilmann.  Nine runs, six earned.  We scored five in the sixth, gave back three in the seventh, and went down three more in the eighth.  Sean Green came to the plate as the tying run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.  He grounded out, and my first trip to see the defending N.L. East champions was a loss.

2008 should have been a rebound, but at the beginning, it didn’t look like it.  On the mound on that early April day that I journeyed out to Shea for the first time of the season — the last first time at Shea, what a waste — was a young pitcher who we said good things about — I like to think we knew how wrong we were, but I doubt it — named Oliver Perez.  You can guess what his line looked like without looking it up: 4.1 innings, three walks, six runs, all earned.  Two batters in, we were down 2-0.  We took a 6-2 lead; Perez gave it back.  Jorge Sosa gave up two in the sixth: Schoeneweis, another in the seventh.  2008, like 2007 but unlike 2006, opened with a loss.  Maybe we should have seen what was coming.

My first game of 2009 was a blur of confusion: getting to Citi Field (by subway, for the first time), wondering where the oft-mentioned Shake Shack was, getting to our seats in time to see the Mets score three in the first against Daniel Cabrera.  The Mets scored eight runs, only three earned, back when the Nationals were a laughingstock.  2009, before the injury madness of late April and early May, didn’t look half bad.  And we found the Shake Shack eventually.

In 2010, my first game, for the first time, was part of a doubleheader, although I didn’t see both games.  We saw Johan Santana in game one.  It was the first time I’d seen Johan, although by then, although the fans didn’t yet know it, his arm was slowly but surely disintegrating.  We scored two in the second, on a home run from Henry Blanco.  We had one hit the rest of the game.  Santana gave it back, and we sank a game closer to the .500 mark, which, of course, would not be a low point for long but something to strive for.

I got back into rhythm in 2011.  Jon Niese beat the Diamondbacks 8-4, Wright homered, Jason Pridie deposited a hanger on the Pepsi Porch, and Ike Davis extended his RBI streak.  Niese left after seven, and was replaced by D.J. Carrasco, who gave up two hits because that was simply what D.J. Carrasco did.  Tim Byrdak got three outs, and Ryota Igarashi sealed it.  My 2011 season was off to a sizzling start: in fact, I was 4-0 in attendance, statistically belying the Mets 34-47 record at home.

2012 saw Niese on the mound once again, and, seemingly well on his way to transitioning into the Jon Niese of more contemporary remembrance, he gave up a three run homer to Jay Bruce in the first.  Wright, batting .357 at the time — and this was in June, mind you — doubled home Murph in the first, but that was all we’d get.  Homer Bailey went eight, and Aroldis Chapman shut down the ninth, starting a 2012 season that would end on the high note of Matt Harvey’s debut with an offensively putrid loss.  I would see Harvey in August of 2012: we lost that game too.

My age of Mets independence began in 2013, as I made my way to Citi Field alone for the first time, meeting a friend but braving the seven train myself.  It was perhaps my best first game, and one of my most memorable: with the eternally mediocre Aaron Laffey on the mound, the Mets somehow avoided Jose Fernandez, then walked it off in the ninth against Steve Cishek, Marlon Byrd driving in the tying and winning runs.  2013, also, ended on the highest of notes, with Frank Francisco bookending his Mets tenure with one-run saves and Mike Piazza’s induction into the Mets hall of fame — we knew they wouldn’t be a playoff team, but if nothing else, my first game of the season had that positive feeling that continued most of the year.

At the time of my first game of 2014, the Mets were in one of their patented offensive funks, some of which have been known to last entire seasons.  This one didn’t quite get that far, but regardless, it wasn’t fun to watch.  Lagares singled home Ike Davis in the second: after that, we had nothing.  Inning after inning, we trudged up to bat, looked at pitches until we made outs, and jogged despondently back to the dugout.  Niese gave up two in the sixth, while we had one hit after the third.  Together, we had a 2-1 loss.  The goodwill that would end 2014 would come later: for now, we were the same old offensive failures that we’d always been.

And then, in 2015, for the first time, I attended Opening Day.

***

It wasn’t a simple process: I lobbied my parents, finished school assignments early, and made it clear, on the whole, that this was absolutely essential.  I was a second semester senior, and I’d already gotten into Northwestern: my parents relented.  On the Monday morning that would open the Mets home season, I got on the subway as soon as I woke up, and, an hour later, descended the steps to the Citi Field parking lot.

It was packed, as I’d known it would be but hoped I could avoid.  Stuck in line in front of gates that stubbornly refused to open on time, I enjoyed my time among fellow die-hards.  I engaged the two pin collectors on either side of me in good-hearted banter.  I snapped a picture of Nelson Figueroa, newly hired SNY analyst, in the midst of his live pregame show.  I saw cowbell man and pin man, not to mention multiple sign men.

It was similar when the gates finally opened: with hours to kill, I took advantage of the park.  I spun the prize wheel and won a t-shirt.  I bought a steak sandwich from a newly added concession stand.  I climbed the ramps to the promenade and took in the view over suburban Queens from both outfield corners.  And then, finally, I sat down to watch Jacob deGrom pick up where he left off.

Of course he did: he was Jacob deGrom, these were the Phillies.  He was legitimate: they were a joke.  DeGrom went seven scoreless.  Lagares drove in Murphy in the fourth, on a line drive that Aaron Harang couldn’t find.  Michael Cuddyer, before we realized that he was done, singled in the eighth, went to third on a misplayed sacrifice bunt, and scored on a d’Arnaud sac fly.  DeGrom to Jerry Blevins to Familia: worked like clockwork.  We had a 2-0 win, to the delight of the crowd.  They’d have been all the more delighted had they known that there were nine more to come.

Opening Day 2015 set the tone for the season, and although we’d all like to forget the period from early May to late July, the good vibes returned in full blast in August, when Wilmer cried, Cespedes crushed, Familia saved, and the captain returned.  We didn’t expect, on April 13th, 2015, to find ourselves in the World Series six months later.  But after watching deGrom, Familia, and an offense that looked not quite as bad as it had been, we couldn’t help but think that there was hope.

***

This is the first game legacy that I’m adding to.  Jae Seo, Tom Glavine, Oliver Perez, Mike Pelfrey, Johan Santana, Jon Niese, Aaron Laffey, and Jacob deGrom.  A 6-6 record.  The highs, the lows, and everything in between.  A delightful compilation of Mets good and bad, memorable and unforgettably mediocre, thrilling and absolutely dour.

Game One, 2016, approaches.  Nothing much is clear: I don’t know who will start, let alone what the lineup will look like.  I can give myself permission to look for a win, since we’re playing the Phillies, but if I’m honest, it hardly matters.

I’ll be back at Citi Field, baseball sounds and sights and smells in the air, sun warming the seats, shaking off months of dreary, inactive offseason.

I’ll be over the moon.  How could I not be?

We saw it today, as we’ve seen it year after year, as it seems destined to be until the end of time.  It’s a cycle that has repeated itself so many times that it seems absurd to be forced to see it again and again — don’t we know how this goes already? — but nevertheless, we saw it again today.

A Met slid into second relatively inconsequentially.  30 seconds later, his season was in doubt.

When Asdrubal Cabrera took off alertly from first, tagging and advancing to second on a deep fly ball from Cespedes, he probably examined his surroundings.  He noticed the center fielder retreating, not in good footing to make a throw.  He noticed the wind, taking the ball ever deeper.  He noticed the second baseman at less than full alertness, and knew that he could take the base if he tagged.  It would all go according to a simple and relatively fool-proof plan.

Here’s what he didn’t notice: he’s a Met now.  And fool proof plans don’t mean a thing.

Statistically speaking, I doubt we have substantially more injuries than the average team.  I’m sure it’s a fluke, just as all teams likely believe that they’ve been cursed with bad injury luck as well.

But, I mean, come on.  We’re absolutely cursed with injuries: we know it.  Why pretend otherwise?

Travis d’Arnaud, sidelined when he took an erratic fastball to the hand.  Jerry Blevins, a line drive to same.  Juan Lagares, a perpetually rehabbing elbow that seems just a nudge away from a full-blown pop.  David Wright, injured running to first, tagging a runner, and sliding into second.

Murph pulling his groin.  Clippard’s back acting up.  Uribe’s normal dive somehow injuring his chest.  An evil slide breaking Tejada’s leg.  Flores breaking his ankle in Winter ball.  Vic Black’s routine injury putting an end to his Mets career.  Tommy John Surgery for starting pitchers, two years in a row, plus our lefty specialist.

A beaning.  A taxicab.  A dugout step.  A hedge trimmer.  A protective boot that made a misdiagnosed injury exponentially worse.  A face-to-face collision.  Valley fever.

Pulling a muscle while running in from the bullpen to celebrate.  Pulling a muscle after having gotten to the celebration.  Dislocating a hip after slipping in the dugout.  Slipping off the sidewalk.  An accidental collision with a golf club.  Food poisoning from the Shake Shack.

And now, the relatively tame case of Asdrubal Cabrera and the Strained Knee Tendon.

Who knows what happens now?  Maybe Ruben Tejada becomes the starting shortstop, after it’s already being implied without being stated that Cabrera will not be ready for Opening Day.  It would be fitting: Tejada is coming back from a Metsian injury of his own, namely a slide so illegal that they hadn’t even considered it seriously enough to outlaw it, and it seems fair for him to get his chance.

Or maybe things will go even further, and we’ll finally – FINALLY – see the long-awaited major-league debut of Matt Reynolds.  Reynolds surely deserves it: he’s been waiting in the minors, hitting consistently if not spectacularly for a few good years now, and far too soon, he’ll become that guy who may have been good, but just never got his shot.  No one wants to see that; he seems like a good guy.  It would be nice, if not ideal in the current circumstances, to see Matt Reynolds get his chance.

Or maybe we’ll see something even more ridiculous, something truly Metsian, and before we know it, we’ll see Eric Campbell at short, Kevin Plawecki playing third, and Antonio Bastardo at backup catcher.  That, in some strange, multilayered way, might be the most fulfilling situation.  It almost certainly would not lead to the highest win total.  But it would reaffirm my faith that the Mets remain truly transcendent of all logic and reason.

Why do I want that?  Who the hell can tell?  I’m a Mets fan.  I myself moved beyond logic and reason some time ago.

So yes, I’d love to see Hansel Robles in the outfield and Anthony Recker re-signed as a third baseman and Rob Johnson brought back when we need an emergency reliever.  It would be, as we always want the Mets to be, completely unique.

But even more than that, I’d like the Mets to be inspiring, uplifting, and just plain nice.  So, more than anything ridiculous, I’d like to see Matt Reynolds finally make his debut.

Sometimes it’s the little things, the trivial occurrences, the throwaway comments, that conspire to turn something good into something barely better than terrible.

Tonight, for example.  It should have been a good one.  All the factors were lined up, as they say, for an enjoyable, if not spectacular, time.

Then those damn little things kick in.

It’s the things you’d never think of, because they just don’t come to mind.  The circumstances that, while you didn’t even plan for them because they came up so spontaneously, are no fun to lose either way.  The tentative plans go awry through no fault of anyone involved, but because sometimes, things simply go wrong.

I wanted to spend a night watching The Office with a friend, laughing at the funnier side of the presidential election, and not worrying about tomorrow.  Well, we all want some things.

Now Hillary is losing, my friend called in sick, and to top it all off, Opening Day isn’t for nearly a goddamn month.

I’ve got a countdown running, on the board outside my door: 25 Days until Opening Day, it currently reads.

Just this morning, as I left for class, I marveled at how quick those 25 days would go by.  Now, I’m uncertain about the end of the week.

Well, uncertain may be the wrong word.  The week will pass, as weeks have passed since before we knew what to call them.  It just won’t be fun.

Imagine it — just this morning, I was excited about my new haircut, a slice of pizza for lunch, and the Michigan primary.  Now I’ve got a losing candidate, nothing to do tonight, and class at 9:00 tomorrow to look forward to.

Over one crazy week of the 2015 season, things changed around Citi Field more dramatically than we’d ever seen.  In two or three days, we went down, up, down, and up again.  We could barely settle in one place long enough to know how we felt about it, and just as soon as we did, we moved a different direction, and how we felt about where we’d been became unimportant.

That ridiculous roller coaster of emotions — it’s something we’ve all experienced time and again as Mets fans.  And thank goodness for it, because although the Mets do seem to dominate our waking lives, there are other things, and those other things go up and down as well.

In that sense, Mets fandom is an inoculation: against premature and unmerited celebration, yes, but also against bitter devastation.  We’ve seen the lowest of the low: compared to September 2007, anything real life can throw at us is a wave of the hand.

And tonight, in keeping with the 2007 theme, I’m disappointed.  But I’m not devastated.

Life goes on, things get better, and when they do, it’s all the more enjoyable for having been through the bad.  I learned that this year, having been through 2007-2014 before embarking on the nonstop torpedo journey of awesomeness that was the 2015 season.  Baseball, at least in that sense if not in many others besides, is a perfect metaphor for life.  My BABIP is low right now, but my line drive rate is high.  Things just aren’t working out well.  But they will.  If there’s one thing we learned as the Mets gave up three huge runs over five games on weak ground balls, it’s that luck, like everything else, regresses to the mean.  Bad things now mean good things later.  I have to believe that: I’m a Mets fan.

Yes, Hillary is losing and I’ve got no one to watch The Office with and I’ve got papers — albeit, not due for a while — to write, and before Opening Day, I’ve got a veritable mountain of less pleasurable tasks to get through, not to mention the raw time.  But I’ll get through it; I’ve been through worse.

Hillary will win eventually, and even if she doesn’t, things will turn out fine.  My friend will recover from what I’m sure is nothing but a passing bout of sickness, and we’ll watch The Office tomorrow.  I’ll get through everything I’ve got to do, and have a ball come Opening Day.

That’s the Mets fan in me talking.  And I know he’s right.

Bad things happen.  Good things do to.  All things, good and bad, will pass.  Mickey Rivers once said something to the effect of whether or not you’ve got control over something, there’s no sense worrying about it.

I know all this, and I know that come tomorrow, I’ll more likely than not see things in a whole new light.

I’m a Mets fan: I can get over the bad, and learn to make the good last.  But it’s easier, dozens and dozens of times easier, when it’s May or June, and there’s a ballgame on in the background.

UPDATE 11:49 p.m: Class tomorrow morning was canceled.  Things are already looking up. Also, only 25 days until Opening Day!