Fishing around my desk for something or other as I prepared to pen a screed about the absolutely loathsome baseball game [1] I watched Tuesday night, I came across the following document, dated and notarized September 30, 2024:
“I the undersigned agree after today’s baseball game of New York Mets 8 Atlanta Braves 7 at Truist Park, the baseball game that clinched a playoff spot for the 2024 New York Mets and capped a fantastical ride from ‘oh and five’ to ‘OMG,’ I will accept, without issuing vociferous complaint, the outcome of exactly ONE future horrible baseball game between the same teams at the same facility.
“Such a future horrible baseball game may include one or all of the following conditions as they pertain to the New York Mets:
“wretched baserunning;
“wretched pitchcalling;
“wretched defensive decisionmaking;
“wretched defensive execution;
“wretched lead protection;
“and wretched collective offensive performance by a string of players attempting to bat in succession late but failing miserably.
“The disgust and anger associated with this ONE future horrible baseball game and all its wretched Met aspects, even if it and they occur on the heels of a three-game sweep inflicted by some baseball team besides the Atlanta Braves and therefore extends a modest losing streak to a skid encompassing something approximating genuine concern, is to be emotionally dismissed in deference to the absolute joy that emanated directly after the events of this date, the Thirtieth of September, this Year of Lindor, Two-Thousand Twenty-Four.
[2]They earned one. Just one.
“This agreement acknowledges that by punching their ticket to the playoffs in the fashion they did versus the opponent they did and at the venue they did, the New York Mets generated ONE free pass, a pass that may be considered valid, processed, and effective until the first pitch of the next baseball game between the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves at Truist Park following the type of horrible game and wretched aspects described above.
“The New York Mets will be instructed to thereafter not do that again, ‘that,’ referring to the horrible and wretched parts of the ONE future baseball game that will be excused.
“This agreement further acknowledges a Mets fan can only attempt to overlook the disgust inherent in having watched a game like that against an opponent like that at a place like that ONCE, no matter what great thing happened against that opponent at that place the year before.”
I can’t make out a signature beneath the accumulation of blood, sweat, and tears that must have dripped over it, but I’m pretty sure I agreed to it last September 30…or would have had anybody asked me to.