Under Our Skin

"I would sacrifice anything

Come what might

For the sake of having you near

In spite of a warning voice that comes in the night

and repeats

how it yells in my ear...

'Don't you know you fool

You never can win

Use your mentality

Wake up to reality...'

But each that time I do

Just the thought of you

Makes me stop just before I begin.

'Cause I've got you...under my skin."

Anthony J. Causi
Photo via https://nypost.com

Fandom can truly be a funny thing. We add this stress of how the team is doing to our daily lives, at least for the serious fanatics who live and die by what their team is doing. I can't tell you how many times I've seen on social media, from various people, say something like, "I swear, if they lose tomorrow, I'm done with this team." Yeah, right. I don't believe them, I won't believe them now and I'll never believe them ever. All of a sudden, the team, and the Mets in our instance, perform the way they did last night and even though it is one game, they have us believing once more.

17-20 made 37 games of a 162 game schedule. There is and was no reason to believe the Mets were done other than certain years' track records. The Mets of the Wilpon era have more often than not let hot starts slip away at various times of the season. No matter all those different factors, our team is under our skin, and they pull us back in just when we thought we were out.

It is only one game of course, but I like to look at the context of where this game entered the scene. They were coming off a miserable road trip with a desperate need to show their home fans they weren't about to roll over and let what happened last year, or many years, for that matter, happen this year. It doesn't matter who the Mets are facing. It never matters. This idea of what the competition's record is going into these games never matters when the Mets are battling against themselves first and foremost at every moment they live. Consistency, or at least the consistency of smooth and inspired play, is what they need to practice.

Yesterday was a great new start. Tonight, however, to use a cliché, is the first game of the rest of their lives.

And us fans are not going anywhere.

KEEP. ON. PUSHIN'.

LET'S. GO. METS.