The New York Mets managed to put together a perfect season last year, despite failing to win the World Series. This should be impossible — a title seems like a prerequisite for perfection — and for any other franchise, for any other fan base, it would be. But when you root for a team that’s won just two championships in its 63-year history, and none since 1986 — a team famous not just for losing but for losing with cartoonish flair and bottomless invention — you learn to be a little flexible.
For Mets fans, 2024 offered an unfamiliar combination: a feeling of accomplishment unlike anything we’ve experienced in decades (that’s easy — very low bar) and the total absence of accompanying anguish (that’s much, much harder).