A Love Letter to the 2024 New York Mets

I listened to the final out of NLCS Game 6, closed out of the ESPN app and turned on Taylor Swift.

I knew I was mourning something. I knew I had just lost the greatest season of baseball I’d seen in 20 years.

Nobody said being a New York Mets fan was easy. I often joke that no man will ever break my heart because the Mets have done it 30 times over.

In all honesty, I blame my father 100 percent for this.

My dad is the most devoted sports fan I know. Sure, he’s a big lacrosse guy, as everybody in my family is, but he’ll always love his Jets and Rangers, and above all, his Mets.

I used to sneak out of bed to watch Mets games with my dad. One time approximately in 2009, I told him I wasn’t going to bed until my favorite player, David Wright, hit a home run – The Cap hit one out of the park in his next at-bat.

I didn’t always stick with it, though. At a certain age, I realized girls didn’t watch baseball, and I didn’t think it was a cool thing to do. In 2015, my family and I went to a Mets/Diamondbacks game, and I went kicking and screaming into the ballpark – and watched my life change for the better because of it.

If I didn’t go and feel the buzz of the future National League champions, I wouldn’t have fallen back in love with baseball, never would’ve chosen to go into journalism and most likely wouldn’t have gone to Penn State. So, the entire trajectory of my life changed.

In the past nine years, I’ve seldom missed a game, update, roster move or call-up. I’ve run a blog, podcast and TikTok devoted to blue and orange. And in all the years following these loveable losers, I’ve never experienced a season quite like 2024.

The Mets started out the season 0-5 and played in front of an empty ballpark. The big guys weren’t hitting, and the pitchers were just tossing meatballs down the middle. A part of me was ready to throw in the towel then, but the other part knew they’d break out of that slump.

Not only did they break out, the Mets started the greatest rally of all time.

Fueled by a veteran named Seymour Weiner, a dog dubbed “Glizzy Iggy” and a fan known as the “Rally Pimp”, the Mets began to hit the ball.

However, those good vibes didn’t last too long – on May 30, a fed-up Jorge Lopez chucked his glove into the stands and said he was the “worst teammate probably in the whole f***ing MLB,” to which outlets attributed him as calling the Mets the worst team in the league.

Lopez was released a day later.

That same day, offseason acquisition Jose Iglesias announced his new single, “OMG” would be releasing soon, and he hoped fans would like it. At a time where the team was dubbed king of the losers, nobody cared that the free agent/Latin popstar was dropping a song.

But how they cared…

“OMG” became the song of the summer. Mega Mets fan JayMacCustoms created an “OMG” sign for players to hold up, and Candelita’s song blasted over the Citi Field speakers when players hit a home run.

A new hero showed up at Citi Field: McDonald’s mascot Grimace threw out the first pitch on June 12 and saved the Mets season. Soon, the ballpark was filled with a sea of purple, and the team even dedicated a seat in the outfield to the purple guy.

The team went 61-38 post-Grimace.

Then, the All-Star Game rolled around, and Iglesias got to perform his anthem before the game. Though Francisco Lindor and Brandon Nimmo had shots, Pete Alonso was selected as the lone representative, partly because he wanted to Three-Pete the Home Run Derby (Alonso was a first-round exit).

Then September rolled around. The Mets and the Braves had a serious situation in Atlanta: a doubleheader, and if the Mets won one, they were in, but if they got swept, the October dream went away. The Amazins won an 8-7 nailbiter, with the help of a Linsanity homer in the ninth, to clinch the postseason.

Alonso, Jesse Winker, Sean Manaea, Mark Vientos and company took care of Milwaukee, and soon, Philadelphia. Oh, how great it felt to beat Philadelphia…

When the Mets clinched the NLCS, I texted my dad, saying we should try to get tickets. I didn’t think a few days later, he would send me screenshots of seats in the nosebleeds. I almost fell to my knees on College Ave.

I packed my Alonso jersey and drove home to New Jersey. On Oct. 16, my dad and I embarked on what I will consider the greatest game I ever went to.

I’ve seen some pretty cool moments at Citi Field – a Matt Harvey home run, countless Noah Syndergaard starts and the 2016 Wild Card pennant raised, but nothing will ever compare to postseason baseball.

After being stuck in the Bronx for some reason, we pulled into the parking lot, grabbed our QuickChek subs we packed, popped open the truck tailgate and sat and watched the sun set over the place I call home. Gates opened at 6:30, and we were right there, entering the gates with rally towels in hand.

Bucket list stuff went down before that game – because FOX was there, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter walked ten feet in front of us, and I got to chant “Yankees suck!” at two of the greatest Yankees in history.

With every minute that passed, I felt myself get more nervous. The pregame ceremony counted down, and rally cries of “Let’s Go Mets” poured out in the ballpark. I, too, chanted, on the brink of tears.

That was one of the pinch-me-moments I’ve had in life: my dad and I were seeing our favorite team in October. The two of us, together. We’ve come a long way from him saucing me foam balls to hit over my banister, then years later me screaming “baseball is stupid” at him in the parking lot.

We’d been talking about this game for a week, and with 40 thousand other people screaming, the only voices I heard were mine and my dad’s.

I know he’s reading this, so thank you, Dad. I love you – that was the best thing we ever did.

The Mets lost 10-2. They rallied the day after, then lost in a heartbreaker to the Dodgers. The MLB gets its dream Aaron Judge/Shohei Ohtani World Series matchup, and the borough of Queens and I are left to pick up the pieces.

This year’s Amazins made me feel 13 again. That dorky middle schooler who carried around an orange Mets folder, who would just write the roster in her notebook when class got a little too boring for her would have loved what they had become this season.

Every day at Citi Field felt like a party – fireworks, Purge sirens, flashing lights, “OMG” and electric bat flips. Baseball has become fun again.

If I fit everything that happened this season into an article, I’d be writing a novel. It was a season of rally pimps, veterans, dogs, gloves, Grimaces, viral sensations, Rizzlers, Latin pop stars, The Temptations, playoff pumpkins and unbeatable chances. Most of all, it was a season for unforgettable memories.

For that, New York Mets, I’ll always love you. See you in March.

Adrianna Gallucci is a third-year majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact her, please email amg7989@psu.edu.