QUEENS, N.Y. — It's funny how a packed tunnel of New Yorkers exiting a train station at rush hour can dissipate into such an underwhelming baseball crowd.
Normally, this is not how I would lead off a story about a breezy 10-1 win for the Mets over the Nationals on a balmy night in the final days before autumn, but I entered and exited the ballpark on Tuesday with crowd size on my mind. It's been a point of anxiety for those around the Mets, enough that it was mentioned on both the radio and TV broadcast during Monday's walk-off triumph: The team's fighting with Atlanta to get into the playoffs with only a handful of games remaining, so where are the fans?
I don't know what the announcers said on Tuesday, but from my vantage point it was more of the same. The Mets arrived a game up on their rivals for the third and final wild-card slot, and despite the Bark At The Park promotion and $5 concessions, the upper levels were a ghost town, and the atmosphere felt indistinguishable from early May. Officially announced attendance was 24,932.
Don't get me wrong: I had fun at the old ball game. (The soft pretzel was a disappointment.) But that's in part because I am the kind of girl who's interested in scoping out how tall James Wood is in person, and who savors a Pete Alonso PA because she's worried about the lifespan of her jersey, and who delighted in Luisangel Acuña's first career home run as he slotted in for an injured Francisco Lindor. Baseball is fun in basically any permutation I can imagine (besides "rain-delayed").
But Tuesday night undeniably lacked the emotional turmoil I associate with high-stakes September action. Part of that's the comfortable final, but the park felt relaxed from the very beginning. When Tylor Megill surrendered the game's first run in the third, then put two Nats in scoring position, the collective energy was less "We're gonna puke from this stress" and more "Oh, dang." When the Mets ignited for a 4-1 lead in the bottom half, the celebrations weren't cathartic so much as pleasant. When the Atlanta loss went final, some of those who hadn't left early started a "Let's go Reds!" chant, but that was the only real clue that anything about this game mattered.
I attended with someone who brought a C.S. Peterson scorebook, so this doesn't apply here. But I've been thinking about how, anecdotally at least, the Mets really seem to be lagging behind the New York Liberty as the local sports outing of choice for those in my demo who don't vacuum up stats and highlights on the daily. I can think of plenty of ways to pitch Liberty games to pals—Ellie the Elephant is an icon, the crowd is good people, a bunch of players are gay, I saw Malala Yousafzai there once—that just don't really apply to Mets games. It's baseball! Outside! You can eat a hot dog there!
Infielder José Iglesias did his part by recording a catchy song that's served as the theme music for the season, and the franchise's embrace of the McDonald's character Grimace (whose purple seat is pictured up top) during a win streak was briefly buzzy this summer, but those feel more like little memes and touchpoints for the established community. At this game, you wouldn't learn any Mets lore if you weren't already in on the bit; the downtime stuff is really just your bare-bones cap shuffle, T-shirt toss, trivia game gimmicks. Comparing the Mets experience to the intensity I felt visiting Philadelphia in July, or the San Diego enthusiasm I see regularly on TV, it's easy to wonder what they're doing wrong. But I can't blame the Mets alone for a wider lack of pennant fever.
This September has only affirmed my belief in the reality-distorting effect of the expanded wild card. The playoff spot that New York and Atlanta are fighting for didn't exist three years ago, meaning, essentially, that their entire audience grew up in a world where this kind of season—on pace for about 88 wins—wasn't good enough. Whatever the standings say, it's ingrained in a fan what a playoff team feels like, and for as well as the Mets have played after a horrendous start, "sixth-best in the National League" just doesn't quite tug the heartstrings.
For a race to have stakes, there has to be the underlying dread of something to lose—that a team has worked hard all year to earn a spot that's currently in peril. The Mets feel like they're playing with house money, and there's no guarantee anyway that making the playoffs is a real reward. In 2022, a 101-win team that I loved saw their postseason wrap in just three games, two of them blowouts. The 2024 edition is significantly worse.
Earlier this month, the Mets made an innocuous trade for 34-year-old Eddy Alvarez, who owns perhaps the wildest resume in the league. An Olympic medalist in speed skating and baseball, Alvarez has played in 56 career MLB games, but he's a possible asset to a team with playoff hopes because he is very, very fast. The game firmly in hand when he made his only plate appearance in the bottom of the eighth on Tuesday, I saw him reach base safely for the first time as a Met when he drew a full-count walk. Starling Marte followed with a base hit, and, knowing what Alvarez is on this roster for, I was fully prepared from my spot in left field to witness him make the dash from first to third, his arms churning and legs a blur. I found joy in seeing that, not because I dreamed of Alvarez's usefulness as a pinch runner in a Game 7, but because it's cool to see a guy run fast. Where he finishes is out of my control.
