New York Mets: Five easy ways to spot a Mets fan in a crowd

It’s not hard to spot a New York Mets fan in a crowded room.

If you root for the New York Mets day in and day out, you know there’s a few things that set this Flushing fan base apart from others. Mets fans are critical of their players, sometimes to a fault. Underneath any surface frustrations, we fiercely love our boys in orange and blue.

Mets fans are also extremely loyal. You’d have to be, to root for a team that hasn’t won a championship since before the Internet was around and whose owners have been embroiled in not one, but two Ponzi schemes. As Pete Alonso said at Mets Fanfest in January 2020, “There’s no casual Mets fans.”

But beyond these broad characteristics, there are specific, tell-tale signs that a random passerby might be a Mets fan. Here are a few things to look out for as you’re running errands, meeting “friends of friends” at gatherings, and generally going about your day.

You hear someone randomly grumbling about the Wilpons under their breath in public

I know I’ve done this, especially if I happen to check Twitter while out-and-about and some random disappointing news about the Wilpons pops up on my phone. The topic of Mets ownership also comes up at many family meals, mostly by accident, but once the topic is broached it’s impossible to ignore.

At this point, it’s almost a knee-jerk reaction for Mets fans to hear or read anything about the Wilpons and immediately start running through their list of grievances out loud. There’s a long list of things to complain about that I won’t bother rehashing here, but one thing is for certain. Any success the Mets have had in the twenty-first century has been in spite of, not because of, their owners.