The calendar goes dark when baseball stops. Its absence creates a void into which you heap reflections on what’s past and aspirations of what’s yet to come—wherein you step back and make meaning of what you’ve seen. The void is most pronounced in January, less so but undoubtedly there on a Monday after a get-away-day in San Francisco, and certainly present during the All-Star break, when the screeching momentum of July baseball is suddenly arrested, leaving you unmoored and searching for something to grab onto.
This past off-season, off the heels of the Mets 10-5 Game 6 loss to the Dodgers in the 2024 NLCS, I once again confronted the void. This time, unlike each time before, I was buoyed and enthusiastic and filled with possibility. The Mets had not only completed one of the special single-season rides in team history, but they had punctuated the first quarter of this century with it. Twenty-five years of Mets baseball in the new Millennium was now a matter of history. This felt significant to me; like I needed to make something of it. And so, as I hurdled through the darkness of the void, unmoored and searching for something to grab onto, I reached out for it and grabbed hold…
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