For America’s 250th birthday, the New York Mets have presented us with a pair of slightly misshapen bookends they’ve been crafting for over a year. The club begs our indulgence regarding the way they don’t quite match. While the Mets realize the Semiquincentennial is an occasion worthy of the bookends’ unveiling, they ask if we can give them just five more days, and there’s a chance they will get the pair to match exactly.
We, of course, give them our indulgence on the Fourth of July. And on the Third of July. And on just about every day, inherently celebratory or not. Our indulgence is our gift to them. I was out and about and sweltering on the Third of July in 2026, thinking not, “Isn’t it something that our country has reached a notable round number since its founding?” but “Hey, the Mets are on tonight!” Few Mets teams have been less worthy of an anticipatory exclamation point than the 2026 Mets. Awareness of their itinerary at this point is becoming surprising.
But we are their fans, and this is how we are, at least until they come on the air and remind us how rarely they contribute to a celebratory mood. On Friday night, the Third of July, the Mets took the field in Atlanta, and lost to the Braves [1], 5-3. Juan Soto [2]’s opposite-field, third-inning, two-run homer, caught in the left field bullpen by Cionel Perez in the role of Tom House [3], put the Mets on the board. The Braves had beaten the Mets there via Michael Harris II’s own two-run shot a half-inning earlier.
Ozzie Albies took back Atlanta’s edge in the bottom of the third with a solo blast. In the fifth, Matt Olson went very deep with nobody on. The Braves were up, 4-2. Christian Scott, who gave up the first two Atlanta longballs, and A.J. Minter, who gave up the next, didn’t allow anything else in terms of singles, doubles, or triples. Nor did reliever Kodai Senga, until Olson invited him on a lunar exploration mission in the eighth. All the hits for the home team were home runs until two outs in the eighth, when Harris snuck a single through the infield to negate the curiosity factor of what loomed as yet another dull Met loss you wouldn’t think to detail for public consumption unless you and your friend got in the habit of detailing every Mets game for public consumption in April of 2005 and you two never broke yourselves of it.
The Mets’ ninth tantalize the fan who looked forward to all this during the afternoon. God, that fan is silly. Essentially asleep since Soto’s 262nd career homer in the third (Juan is 493 behind Henry Aaron and exactly 500 from Barry Bonds), the Met offense stirred just enough to make keeping one’s eyes open an almost worthwhile endeavor. Luis Torrens singled off closer Raisel Iglesias with one out, and took second on defensive indifference with two out. God, the Mets inspire so much indifference these days. Soto singled Torrens to third. Bo Bichette, fresh from feeling the love in Toronto, made himself useful to New Yorkers in Atlanta with an RBI single that scored Luis. Juan went to third. Francisco Lindor came up as the potential go-ahead run à la September 30, 2004. Or he could just keep the first sustained Met rally of the night going. Alas, Linsanity was not in evidence. Francisco grounded to second (score it 4-3) to end the game (score: 5-3).
None of this spoke well for the Semiquincentennial spirit. Or maybe it spoke precisely to the Semiquincentennial spirit, as that’s a word you haven’t heard all that much and will likely hear very little after this weekend. Still, as we inveterate daily viewers of New York Mets baseball and dedicated annual viewers of 1776 will affirm, the eve of the Fourth of July is the eve of the Fourth of July. Every ten years on July 3 in years ending in 6, the Mets are at least modestly interesting.
JULY 3, 1966: The nation turns 190 years old. The Mets split a doubleheader with the Pirates, losing the opener, 8-7, taking the nightcap, 9-8. It was as if Wes Westrum had gathered his charges between games and informed them, “Boys, I know you’re all fond of letting Pittsburgh score eight runs, but if you’re gonna do that, you fells simply gotta score nine.” Lesson learned, especially in the bottom of the sixth, when the Mets erased a 6-3 deficit with six runs built on five singles and two doubles, all enough to withstand Willie Stargell’s inevitable ninth-inning two-run homer. (Willie Stargell hit more home runs at Shea Stadium than any opponent; somewhere, I believe, Willie is still hitting them.) South of Shea that very day, in Atlanta, future Met Moises Alou [4] was born. Moises’s dad Felipe was employed by the Braves then, thus explaining why when Immaculate Grid asks for a player born outside the fifty states and District of Columbia, you shouldn’t pick Moises Alou, even though Moises Alou — onetime Pirate, Expos, Marlin, Astro, Cub, Giant, and Met — is otherwise a most versatile Immaculate Grid answer.
JULY 3, 1976: It was Medallion Day at Shea Stadium. Promotions were rare enough in those days that the promise of a coinish object commemorating the 200th anniversary of America and the 100th anniversary of the National League could draw more than 47,000 paying customers. Maybe those medallions have appreciated in value in the succeeding half-century. I wasn’t there. I had a gloriously gaudy Bar Mitzvah gala to attend in the evening. It was in one of those places, in Jamaica, where multiple affairs are going on at once. I vaguely recall a rumble nearly breaking out between guys from my friend’s Bar Mitzvah and guys from somebody else’s Bar Mitzvah. Maybe a floral centerpiece was up for grabs. The Bar Mitzvah boy on our side of the divide was my Yankees fan friend Todd Feltman, who wasn’t necessarily kvelling that earlier in the day, the Mets had won their ninth in a row by besting the Cubs, 3-2, in ten. Tom Seaver and Rick Reuschel each pitched into the tenth, suggesting that in terms of how pitching is managed, 1976 was closer to 1776 than it would be to 2026. The winning run was set up by a Buddy Harrelson triple to deep right to lead off the tenth. Harrelson was asked if he thought the ball he hit uncharacteristically far looked like a home run as it traveled toward its destination. “Frankly,” he responded, “I don’t know what a home run looks like.” Cubs manager Jim Marshall [5], an Original Met, ordered two intentional walks — to Joe Torre and Mike Phillips — in the wake of Buddy’s three-bagger. Set up to get an out at any base is something they teach you from the Torah. It was a desperate ploy to escape the jam that had just materialized, but Marshall didn’t live to 94 years old without a few hunches paying off. A strikeout of Bruce Boisclair indicated the strategy had a chance of succeeding. But then Darold Knowles, he who appeared in all seven games of the 1973 World Series, thought he’d get cute and try to pick Phillips off first base. As Phillips — who had cycled in Chicago eight days prior — dove back into the bag, the ball got away from first baseman Pete LaCock, and Harrelson scored the winner. It didn’t negate the World Series result from three Octobers earlier, but it did yield this Bicentennial-appropriate quote from Joe Frazier: “That’s baseball and that’s what makes this country great.”
JULY 3, 1986: Of the 108 regular-season wins the Mets amassed in the Year to Remember, this one rates as unforgettable. Back and forth between the first-place Mets from the East and the (entering the evening) first-place Astros from the West before a Fireworks Night crowd of better than 48,000 at Shea, perhaps proving fireworks are a slightly more popular attraction than medallions. The Astros scored two in the first. Ed Hearn homered in the second. Houston plated another run in the fourth. Darryl Strawberry tied it with a two-run blast in the fifth. The game went to extras. The frigging Astros took an apparently definitive 5-3 lead when Phil Garner homered with a man on in the tenth. But the 1986 Mets were all about defining things on their own terms. Lenny Dykstra walks to lead off the home tenth. Darryl lets loose with his second home run of the night. Tie game. Two outs later, Ray Knight [6] is up. This is how Tim McCarver described the swing of Frank DiPino that ensured a 6-5 final on Channel 9 [7]: “This ball is outta here, and this ballgame is over, and I don’t believe it! Ray Knight hits a game-winning home run, and the Mets have won seven in a row. They’re spreading the news that they are right now the DOMINANT team in this game — in either league.” Indeed, the Mets had raised their record to 53-21, 4½ games better than anybody else anywhere. Their next-closest competitor — in either league — was the Red Sox. Like the Astros, we’d see them in October. So much foreshadowing. So many fireworks. Meanwhile, somewhere in Indianapolis, an infant his parents, the Hunters, would name Tommy was born. Tommy would grow up to pitch for many teams, including the Mets in 2021. It was as a Met that year that Tommy Hunter [8] recorded his only major league base hit of a career that would span sixteen seasons. Though he would pitch in 2022 and 2023, Hunter never batted again, meaning he remains 29 games shy of the Mets’ franchise mark for consecutive games with at least one base hit. That record, of 30, is held by his fellow July 3 baby, Moises Alou.
JULY 3, 1996: We, which is to say sentient Mets fans, demanded the promotion of Alex Ochoa [9] from Norfolk. The Mets were in their extended mid-1990s doldrums. Ochoa was batting .339 versus Triple-A pitching. Hell yes, get him up here. Through nine games, he was scorching National League hurlers for a .344 average. In his tenth game, he took an ohfer, to fall to .306. In his eleventh game, this game, Alex went 5-for-5, including one of every kind of hit, which is to say Alex Ochoa made like Mike Phillips at Wrigley Field in 1976 and hit for the cycle at Veterans Stadium, leading the Mets past the Phillies, 10-6, and pushing us to the brink of a brighter day, we, which is to again say sentient Mets fans, were certain. Of course he was. Alex Ochoa was batting .390 after going 5-for-5 with a single, two doubles, a triple, and a home run. Bless those small sample sizes. By year’s end, Alex’s average would drop (it was going to rise?), but it settled in at a respectable .294 for roughly a half-season’s work. The five hits he totaled on July 3 matched the five tools we, which is to say sentient Mets fans prone to believe any positive scouting report, were told Ochoa possessed. The Mets lost 91 games in 1996 despite his presence. They won 88 in ’97, though Alex’s contributions were muted. He batted .244, without a ton of excellence displayed in any facet of the game. He’d be traded to Minnesota shortly thereafter. We, which is to say sentient Mets fans, moved on, but we’d always have that cycle.
JULY 3, 2006: Gotta be honest. This wasn’t an interesting game the way its July 3 in years ending in 6 predecessors were. No Met offensive explosions or Met walkoff triumphs. We — which is to say the Mets — lost to the Pirates at Shea, 11-1. But I did sort of, kind of, almost catch a foul ball. Well, not really, but the foul ball caught my left thumb. Upon reflections, I’m surprised the foul ball didn’t take my left thumb with it. Because my aforementioned habit for detailing for public consumption every Mets game was in full effect by July of 2006, your left thumb can vicariously experience [10] the same buzz my did twenty years after the fact.
JULY 3, 2016: WILMER! WILMER FLORES! WILMER FLORES WENT SIX-FOR-SIX, TYING EDGARDO ALFONZO’S METS RECORD FOR MOST BASE HITS IN A SINGLE GAME! WE SMASHED THE CUBS, 14-3! WE SWEPT FOUR FROM THE EVENTUAL WORLD CHAMPIONS! WHY AM I YELLING? BECAUSE IT WAS JUST THAT WONDERFUL [11]!
Compared to all that, July 3, 2026, comes up a little bit shy. Yet the Mets continued to work on that pair of bookends they appear so anxious to give us.
Over the final 93 games of 2025, the Mets put together a record of 38-55.
Over the first 88 games of 2026, the Mets put together a record of 36-52.
If we — which is to say sentient Mets fans who are tempted to nod off during their games, despite looking reflexively looking forward to them (but we can’t, thanks to whoever in the neighborhood insists on making every night this time of year Fireworks Night) — can show a bit of patience, and wait for the Mets lose to three of their next five games, the bookends will be perfectly matched. What are the odds the Mets won’t go 2-3 in their next five to get to the 93-game mark at 38-55? I’m confident that some MLB sponsor would happily post those odds if asked. I’m not confident that the Mets will get to 93 games at 38-55, however, because those mathematical goals that get close tend to turn elusive at the last minute. Witness the Braves hitting only home runs and nothing else on Friday night while scoring as many runs as they did. As mentioned on the telecast, that had never happened for the Braves before in their 151 seasons of operation. That single they got in the eighth foiled a neat statistical note.
Is this is to say I’m rooting for the Mets to go 2-3 in their next five games just so I can point to the team going 38-55 to end last year (which triggered the roster transformation that followed) and the team going the exact same 38-55 (with a tangibly different cast, indicating the inefficacy of said roster transformation) rather than rooting for the Mets to win every game they can?
That’s a trick question. It doesn’t matter what I root for. The Mets go 38-55 to end one year and 36-52 to start the next without seeking my consent. And how did not seeking consent work out for the British 250 years ago?