The fans try so hard. I can say that as an observer rather than as a participant on Saturday, sitting as I was in the zone of detached decorum known as Citi Field’s press box. I couldn’t react, except in my head, to every entreaty from the A/V squad that urged the crowd to keep urging on the Mets. All day the call and response was effective in that the sound system and video board called for cheers and the cheers materialized. When you’re watching or listening from home, you might question your engagement, never mind your sanity. Your team has lost seven in a row. Your team is almost actively eschewing a playoff spot. Your team is doing its version of its best to overcome a one-run deficit that materialized after your team had very recently led by two; it would have been so much easier to have continued leading, but that is no longer here nor there. It is your team and you have opted to be in their midst. You 41,000 or so are on hand to enjoy and, when enjoyment becomes less accessible, engage.
“Let’s Go Mets!” and associated noises considered helpful to the home-team cause rose as requested. They might have arisen, anyway. The fans are familiar with the chant. They invented it in 1962 at the Polo Grounds. They kept it going in good times and less good times, both of which permeated Shea Stadium prior to its closing in 2008 and Citi Field since it opened in 2009. The undercard to Saturday’s game was a friendly clash between Team Shea and Team Citi in the Mets Alumni Classic, a stylized version of Old Timers Day. Old times weren’t so old when you realized more than half of the alumni were Mets at Citi Field or had returned as opponents to Citi Field. Even those whose career splits are exclusive to Shea didn’t go back as far as Shea itself did. A handful from Team Shea played in the majors in the 1980s. A bunch more showed up at Shea in the 1990s. That’s apparently not recent, somewhat to my dismay. I’ve lodged an unofficial protest that the 1990s can now be accurately classified as relatively ancient. We’ll see how that goes.
No doubt many among the 41,000 or so were on hand specifically to enjoy the Alumni Classic. I know I was in the press box for that reason. Who wouldn’t want a chance to see dozens of former Mets put on Met uniforms? Who wouldn’t want to see how gray in the beard complements the white of the unis? Who wouldn’t want to be reminded that the Mets in the past quarter-century have provided a base of operations to several superstars and strings of supersubs, all meshing enough so that they may have lost ballgames but never our faith? We rooted for all those guys. Quietly, I continued on Saturday to root for those guys. No rooting aloud where I sat, but we all had a good laugh when a pop fly Josh Thole should have had fell in on the infield in the mini-game the older fellas played and the official scorer got on his mic and announced, with a wink in his voice, “E-2.”
Josh Thole is an older fella now. He’s a whole lot younger than I am, but we know how baseball works. The kids become veterans, and the veterans become old-timers, and we at heart stay kids, even if we were 46 when we first saw Josh Thole catch. One night in 2012, Josh Thole did all he was supposed to, as did Mike Baxter, as did Johan Santana, and one afternoon in 2025, we were glad to see them again in the same place that they combined on the no-hitter we had dreamed of since we’d really been kids. There was a lot of that kind of confluence with the alumni present. Prior to the game, a few answered questions about what it was like in the good times — which for a few of them referred to most of 2006 — and the less good times — which meant 2007 for those same guys. Funny how the shortfalls of September 2007 would come up inside Met walls in September 2025.
Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, and Carlos Delgado all lived beyond September 2007. They seemed happy to be back representing Team Shea. They seemed enamored of being with one another and mingling with the others on the press conference podium: Curtis Granderson, Benny Agbayani, Ike Davis. Loosening up on the field were the likes of Mike Piazza and Kelly Johnson and Pedro Martinez and Kevin Plawecki and R.A. Dickey and Jay Payton and Matt Harvey and Rey Ordoñez and Bartolo Colon and Josh Satin. Even if they weren’t all teammates back in the day (or technically today, given the Shea vs. Citi motif), they were all Mets once and they were all Mets now. Some won awards. Some won pennants. Some never exactly excelled nor moved the needle in the standings. Everybody was applauded, including former managers Jerry Manuel, Terry Collins, Willie Randolph, and Bobby Valentine, each of whom was told at some point to clean out his office at Shea or Citi. Festivities of this nature are an opportunity to remember the best and only the best of those who relished putting on a Mets uniform again.
[1]“Don’t collapse.”
Still, hard not to look at a few of those guys who didn’t hold onto an in-the-bag division title in 2007 and not think of that. Those who collapsed as Mets got up as people and expressed empathy for the Mets who are unwittingly in the process of repeating their history. Each among Jose and the Carloses preached positivity, a one-day-at-a-time approach, and playing hard. If only advising made it so, but athletes of all vintage thrive on steadiness and confidence. The Alumni Classic game itself didn’t necessarily exemplify the hard-playing ethos (Edgardo Alfonzo is beyond the age of diving for grounders to third), but fun is fun and this was fun. I saw Rick Reed pitch to Juan Lagares. If I were ranking surreal scenarios, this would lead the league.
Sixty-three years since “Let’s Go Mets” was first emphatically suggested across the bleachers, the box seats, and the grandstand where the franchise first cleared its throat, those three little Team Polo words inevitably come up on their own at Mets games, because it feels good to say and it feels like a contribution to make happen what we want to happen. We can’t hit, hit with power, run, throw, or catch — nor can the Mets when it matters most this month, you are tempted to add — but we can chant with purpose and shout with encouragement. It’s not the sort of thing you do at home. But you’re not home. You’re in a ballpark where noise is made intentionally. You want the Mets to make noise not synthetically but actually.
In the bottom of the ninth, you want Juan Soto to touch home. He’s on third, having done his job very well his last couple of at-bats. The Mets had led, 1-0, since the fifth, when Francisco Lindor’s friskiness on the basepaths blended beautifully with some Texas Ranger clumsiness on a ball Pete Alonso had lifted to the not very deep outfield (“E-4 on the throw” was announced with a straight voice). The Mets hadn’t won a 1-0 game since July of 2024. Mets fans would have settled for that modern rarity. Brandon Sproat did all he could do give it to them. In his first Citi Field start, Sproat exhibited nothing but command. Seventy pitches, all but seventeen of them for strikes over six innings. You could have seen him keep doing what he was doing and have plenty to cheer organically about.
But Sproat was removed after six (something was muttered about his velocity dropping), and the 1-0 lead was passed to Brooks Raley for safe keeping in the seventh, then expanded upon by Soto when he homered toward College Point Blvd. in the bottom of the inning. Nobody who has watched every game Juan Soto has played as a Met would term his day-to-day performance spectacular, but an examination of his productivity belies impressions. That home run was his fortieth of the season, accomplished the same week he ran past thirty in the stolen base department. In 2025, Juan Soto messed around and got a 40/30. Just another year at the office.
Soto’s blast made it Mets 2 Rangers 0. The best efforts of Tyler Rogers and Edwin Diaz, combined with some not great moments from others stationed away from the mound, didn’t prevent making it Rangers 3 Mets 2 by the bottom of the ninth. That’s where things stood in the ninth when Soto came up with one out and singled. Yes, Juan was doing his job very well his last couple of at-bats. Ronny Mauricio did his job extremely well in his one and only at-bat, which came with two outs. Gathering dust most days, Ronny was pulled from the shadows to pinch-hit. He lined a single to right. Soto, who usually uses his deceptive speed to steal, dashed from first to third, carrying with him the winning run if he could be driven a final ninety feet. And if Mauricio could get an uncommon jump, and Brandon Nimmo could lash the ball somewhere that would let Ronny get on his horse, well, that’s what all the cheering was for. The call was for noise. The response was absolute. Everybody being urged to urge on the Mets urged on the Mets.
Nimmo no doubt understood the urgency and attempted to respond in kind. Brandon’s played in front of Mets crowds longer than any contemporary Met, not to mention a lot of those Classic alumni. His Met tenure exceeds those of Fonzie, Mike, and Al Leiter, to name three Mets Hall of Famers who had soaked in their share of applause hours before. He’s been on the right side of myriad Let’s Go Mets chants, the programmed kind and the spontaneous kind.
Saturday, when he struck out with the tying run on third and winning run on first, he heard boos. Nobody told the fans to boo. They figured it out for themselves. The Mets had just lost their eighth in a row [2]. They had, for a few hours (until the Dodgers crushed the Giants), lost their fingertip grip on the final Wild Card slot. They had transformed a beautiful day at the ballpark into yet another chapter in their ongoing horror story.
[3]A true-life story.
The fans try so hard. Ultimately, however, they can only respond to what they see, not what they are told.