Baseball: Embrace the Grimace Magic

“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year... It’s the Hap-Happiest Season of All!”

Most people associate these iconic lyrics by Andy Williams with Christmas time, which makes sense. It’s a Christmas song. And Christmas time can absolutely be an enjoyable time. But for me, my father, and my grandfather, those words were more apt to describe October rather than December. For us McKnights, the hap-happiest season of all… is playoff baseball season.

The only thing we liked more than watching TV was watching baseball…usually on TV.

What does it mean to be a baseball fan?   I mean, a serious baseball fan?

Baseball is often called “the thinking person’s sport,” and it’s not hard to see why. Compared to the other big spectator sports, baseball is slower paced, strategically complex, and prioritizes the importance of stats as part of player and fan culture like no other. I can tell you not just about stats everyone has heard of like batting average or wins, but also OPS+, WAR, and Park Factor, and why they are all critical to the passive spectator experience of watching a game.

Only in baseball will fans argue that the more you understand this image, the more you’ll enjoy being a fan.

But I think baseball is actually more of “the creative person’s sport.”  Being a writer or a musician like Sandy requires subjecting oneself to the emotional investment of pouring your heart into a piece and then enduring negative reactions to it, or sometimes (even worse), complete apathy. Being an artist humbles you, just like being a baseball fan. But at the same time, being an artist requires an unconditional faith in people and their ability to appreciate and understand your work and an unconditional faith in yourself – an unshakeable feeling and desire to create, even if the creation isn’t “successful” in a way our culture deems.  Sandy never had a song sell millions of records or get billions of streams, yet he never wavered in his desire to keep writing.

Being a serious baseball fan requires a similar level of faith in yourself and others, because the team you choose to root for - even if it’s a good team, even if it’s a championship-level team - is going to disappoint you. They are going to lose at least 60 times before the season ends (probably 70-80 times), and every one of those losses is going to upset and mystify you. And yet, you’ll tune in tomorrow, because each game represents a new beginning, a new chance to believe you’re going to go to sleep happy that evening.

Baseball is the sport that handles the concept of failure most graciously. An elite hitter will fail 70% of the time, several hundred times per season. If a pitcher lets their opponent score less than 3 times and allow them on base less than 8 times in an average game, they will receive serious consideration for, and probably win, the award for best pitcher in the league. If that pitcher can manage to avoid letting any opponent get on base during a game more than once, they are basically a lock for the Hall of Fame. Every single game, all 162 per season, requires each team to fail 27 times before it can conclude. Every single game will probably frustrate you in some way, but hey, if they win? That’s all that matters. If they don’t? They will tomorrow.

Baseball is the most superstitious sport as well, and often the silliest or funniest. Baseball has countless unwritten rules and team- or stadium-specific customs, not just on the field, but in the stands. Players and fans alike believe in karma, “the baseball gods,” irrational probabilities, good luck charms/routines, and omens. Sandy’s team, the historically hapless New York Mets, seemed headed to another forgettable season this spring. As he was in the hospital in April and May, he watched every day as the team stumbled out of the gate, yet still believing they could turn it around, even as they lost 30 of their first 50 games. “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over,” is an iconic idiom about baseball, and Sandy knew very well how true that really is.

When someone made a documentary about Mets fans, it was literally titled “Mathematically Alive.”

One thing that fandom is NOT is logical. From an objective standpoint, being a fan of the San Diego Padres, New York Mets, and until 2017, the San Diego Chargers has been an overall net negative. All 3 of those teams have been bad much more often than they’ve been good. We may love postseason baseball, but Sandy, my grandpa, Liv, and I weren’t the best at choosing teams that participated in it on a frequent basis. In 62 years, the Mets have made the postseason 11 times, and in 55 years, the Padres have made the dance 8 times. Our teams have produced intense negative emotion in us much more frequently than intense positive emotion in our 2 centuries of combined fandom. It would certainly benefit my mental health not to be a fan of these teams at all, or at least not at this level of intensity.

Being at Petco Park with 47,000 of my fellow San Diego Padres fans for my first-ever live playoff game in 30 years of fandom was magical… my long-term health be damned.

But I would a less rich person if I weren’t a fan. Not in a moral sense - I’m not a better person than someone who doesn’t follow sports. But abandoning my fandom…?  Would Sandy be the person we knew and loved if he wasn’t a loyal and unwavering Mets fan who watched/listened to nearly 10,000 games in his life and attended hundreds in person?

Three weeks after Sandy left the world, the Mets hosted the Miami Marlins on a random Wednesday afternoon and because of a recent campaign for a partnership with McDonald’s, the ceremonial first pitch was taken by Grimace, their purple vaguely pear-shaped mascot. Donning a Mets cap, he threw a perfect strike, and the Mets won the game that day. Then they won the next day. And the next day. By the end of the week, they had won 7 straight games, something they hadn’t done in 2 years. The Mets continued to steadily win, and within a month, they were on the fringe of playoff contention.

Mets fans immediately knew what had changed, and it definitely wasn’t the coaching staff or the players adjusting their approach. It was Grimace. The summer of Grimace magic had descended upon Queens, and the more the Mets kept winning, the harder it was to argue. Yes, baseball is the one sport that values stats, numbers, and analytics more than any other, but it’s also the sport that values vibes – chemistry. Don’t try to be a nerd and explain how statistically the Mets were getting luckier with balls they made contact on or how they were committing fewer defensive miscues. Just embrace Grimace – and the fact that one of the players was a Latin pop recording artist who’d released a track called “OMG,” which became an unofficial anthem at Citi Field.

Grimace is love. Grimace is life. And if the Mets win the World Series, he is why. Not the players or coaches. Grimace.

The Mets made the playoffs on the final day of the season, painted a seat at Citi Field purple in honor of Grimace, and had him ride the 7 train to the stadium during their playoff series against their hated rivals, the Philadelphia Phillies, who they would eventually defeat despite being heavy statistical underdogs. As I wrote this, they were playing the Dodgers for a spot in the World Series, but sadly, the magic started to wane.  The Dodgers managed to end the Mets miracle run. There is an important lesson from this as well, one that people often don’t like to acknowledge: sometimes the good guys don’t win.

Sometimes the “evil empire” team, the one that spends the most money on its players, the one that has been the most consistently dominant over the last decade, the team that only its own fans like and everyone else hates… sometimes they win. And sometimes, like in 2024, they do so by defeating both of my favorite teams in the playoffs. This year’s World Series will feature Sandy’s most hated team (the Yankees) facing off against MY most hated team (the Dodgers). Do they deserve to do so? It depends on how you think the world should work.

For example, if you’re annoying and think it’s good when bad things happen, you probably prefer the Yankees over the Mets.

And yet, as the Mets season ends this weekend, as much heartbreak as Mets fans feel, there will also be a tremendous sense of gratitude. Sandy was never a cynical man. In every interaction I had with him, I never got a sense that he believed in expecting the worst-case scenario to avoid disappointment. I’ve always felt that doing that, while perhaps logical, is a cowardly way to live. He always had faith in those around him and saw the best in them, as well as himself. Did that leave him vulnerable to being burned? Sure. But I don’t think he saw cynicism as a valid option, something I feel also. Even when the Mets looked hopeless in May, he would have believed (and did) in the long shot of the Mets going from atrocious to within a game of the World Series, because what’s the point of just wallowing? Why make yourself miserable when you can ride the thrill of “why not us?”

Even if they don’t win it all, maybe you’ll take a cherished picture and a lifelong memory.

He believed every single year for 6 decades that his Mets could and would win the World Series. Did that make it hurt that much more when it didn’t happen in 59 of 61 full seasons he watched? Undoubtedly. But in those two years, 1969 and 1986, when his faith was validated, the ecstatic feeling of triumph and catharsis was probably indescribable (particularly because my San Diego Padres have never won a championship, so I definitely don’t know that feeling… yet). That’s what fandom is all about.

It's again the most wonderful time of the year for us McKnights, but it feels bittersweet without my dad. How happy would he be right now to see his team defy the odds and make a miracle run? Would he have embraced Grimace magic (or at least found it funny in its ludicrousness… he did always love surreal and nonsensical humor)?

Liv’s best friend Karen told me that one of the last texts she got from Sandy was him talking about the still hapless Mets in May: “It makes me laugh, smile, and cry all at once.”

…and…

A perfect description of the experience of being a Mets fan. But also, a perfect description of how he felt life needed to be lived. He embraced the positives and negatives in life with an open mind and an ability to feel creative inspiration from those emotions. Few of us have the talent and ability he had to translate those emotions into art, but we can all choose to feel our emotions fully, avoid cynicism, view our challenges as learning opportunities, and embrace the Grimace magic when it happens upon us… in all its beautiful absurdity.