[1]Old Timers Day at Foley’s, as we celebrate 10 years of blogging for and with Mets fans who like to read. (Photo by the versatile Sharon Chapman.)
In the brightest days of 2006, which is what passes for 1986 in our era (at least until 2015 reveals itself to be the One True Successor…if only we could get some of these Spring Training games to count), Jason and I were each moved to dive into the word “we” as it applied to the Mets and our reflexive self-identification with them. You know, we win [2], we’re gonna play tomorrow, we just got Roberto Hernandez back from the Pirates, that sort of thing. We came to the same conclusion: no, we are technically not part of the team; hell yes, we are “we” [3] even if we don’t personally go get ’em.
I revisit “we” here because there’s another we on the Met-aphorical diamond to consider. We who are in this together. We who cheer together, care together, commiserate together. We who get together now and then to remind each other how much we like being us.
Saturday afternoon, we gathered at Foley’s, the baseball bar on 33rd Street to commemorate Faith and Fear’s 10th anniversary. We as in Jason and me, but we also as in a marvelous cross-section of Faith and Fear readers, which is to say the Faith and Fear family, which is to say all of us.
It was a very nice time. It was an even nicer feeling, knowing that the first-person plural settles into place so comfortably. We want the Mets to win. We want the season to start. We are going to have another beer now.
It works really well.
Though it was spoken in an entirely different context, I’m reminded of something the President of the United States and White Sox fan-in-chief said a few weeks ago in Selma, Alabama:
“The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ ‘We The People.’ ‘We Shall Overcome.’ ‘Yes We Can.’ That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone.”
Potent stuff that first-person plural. Without it, you wouldn’t have “Let’s Go Mets,” or its more formal construction “Let Us Go Mets.”
Just don’t too hastily throw a comma in there, because if we were congenitally capable of being let go by the Mets, then this blog wouldn’t be in its eleventh record-breaking season. Also, “Let Us Go, Mets” sounds like something a hostage scribbles on a scrap of paper and slips under a door in desperate hopes that some passerby finds it and rescues us from the clutches of circumstances we can’t hope to control.
Don’t bother. It’s too late to save us from our rooting instincts.
Thanks to all who showed up and expressed such nice thoughts about what we’ve been doing this past decade. Much love, too, to those who couldn’t make it but sent beautifully sincere sentiments. Strong shoutout to Sharon Chapman for organizing the affair. Appreciation to Foley’s for providing such fine space and service. Applause to Jacob deGrom for dominating the Nationals and several TV screens. And happy Agbayanieth birthday to Mets 360’s Charlie Hangley [4], our very own CharlieH from way back. All of us together…we’ve got the teamwork to make the dream work.