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.
Someone mentions their “lord and savior,” and you later realize they’re talking about Jacob deGrom
This may sound sacrilegious, but Mets fans are nothing if not aggressively hyperbolic about our favorite players. On the 2020 roster, Jacob deGrom is at the top of the “revered” list. He has proven his worth to this franchise time and time again, from his remarkable rookie season to his gritty pitching performances in the 2015 playoffs, to his Cy Young-worthy brilliance in 2018 and 2019.
It will be darn near impossible for deGrom to top Tom Seaver in terms of historic Mets greatness, but for right now, he is the best pitcher in baseball, and he is a New York Met. He lets his performance on the field speak for itself, and he inspires respect from all of his teammates. deGrom, of all people, absolutely deserves every bit of praise he gets from fans, media members, and fellow players.
You overhear a conversation where someone insists that ERA is MUCH more important than win/loss record for Cy Young consideration
Continuing on the “deGrom hype train,” his historic 2018 season in which he went 10-9 with a 1.70 ERA and handily won the NL Cy Young may have single-handedly destroyed the legitimacy of the “pitcher win” statistic. Before deGrom, Felix Hernandez held the record for fewest wins in a Cy Young-winning season, when he went 13-12 in 2010 en route to the AL Cy Young.
But something about deGrom’s season made people seriously stop and question why pitcher wins were considered such an important stat for Cy Young voters. The combination of the Mets’ paltry offense in 2018 and their beleaguered bullpen led to many no-decisions for deGrom, often in starts where he pitched brilliantly for seven scoreless innings. He also set a single-season major league record in 2018 for consecutive quality starts, and the Mets still couldn’t get him more than 10 wins.
Luckily, the tide seems to have shifted on how baseball views pitcher wins. When deGrom won the award in 2018, there were still rumblings of “how could someone with only 10 victories win the Cy Young?” By 2019, when deGrom won the award again, there was much less chatter over whether his 11 wins qualified him to win the award.
You ask someone, “who’s your second favorite MLB team?” and they reply, “whoever is playing the Yankees”
There is truly nothing like the Subway Series rivalry. Other cities have interleague rivalries between their two teams, such as White Sox/Cubs and Angels/Dodgers, but none quite have the luster of Mets/Yankees. Unlike New York area football, where there are some fans who root for both the Jets and Giants, there are virtually no avid baseball fans who support both the Mets and the Yankees.
Not only do Mets fans hate the Yankees, but they would rather see the Yankees lose than just about any other team, up to and including their own division rivals. This logic may not make a lot of sense in the context of the MLB season, but it reflects years of losing back pages to the Bronx Bombers, having Mets wins overshadowed by Yankee losses, and eye-rolling when Yankee fans campaign to fire their manager while the team is comfortably in first place.
You overhear someone mention polar bears, squirrels, goats, and buffalo in a single sentence, and they’re not talking about the local zoo
The 2019 and 2020 Mets teams have featured a lot of colorful characters on the roster, many of whom have animal-themed nicknames. Pete Alonso is “Polar Bear,” Jeff McNeil is “Squirrel,” Wilson Ramos is “Buffalo,” and Jacob deGrom is of course, “deGoat.” There are also a few other amusing nicknames that have surfaced on past “Players Weekend” jerseys, such as “Quarterrican” for Seth Lugo, “Toddfather” for Todd Frazier, and “Scooter” for Michael Conforto.
Throughout the team’s history, Mets fans have loved referring to many of their favorite players by their nicknames. Some famous former Mets’ nicknames include “Nails” for Lenny Dykstra, “Mex” for Keith Hernandez, “The Dark Knight” for Matt Harvey, and of course “Tom Terrific” and “The Franchise” for Tom Seaver.
Generally, endearing nicknames stick around longer when a team is good. This group of animals on the 2020 Mets roster is a fun bunch, so let’s hope that the team wins enough games over the next few years to match that fun clubhouse spirit with on-field success.
Thank you so much to my friend Barat for helping out with this article. Mets fans like us have dealt with a lot of strange, almost unfathomable news coming out of Queens. We have increased our knowledge of muscular terminology and rare diseases thanks to the Mets’ various IL stints. We now know, for sure, not to mess with wild boars.
Want your voice heard? Join the Rising Apple team!
Somehow, all of the craziness that comes along with being a Mets fan makes us even more devoted to our favorite team, year in and year out.