(Sunday Paper, Year VIII, Issue 13)

Let’s cut right to the chase here:

I did something for the 2023 baseball season that I’ve always wanted to do.

I have become a Mets season ticket holder.

Well, they call them memberships now…so technically I’m a Mets ticket membership holder?

I like the old-fashioned terminology. It has a better ring to it.

We’re not talking a full-season package.

But the bottom line is I’ll be making a bunch of trips to Citi Field this year.

Perhaps obviously, this seed of an idea was planted in my head with my Sunday trips down to Queens to watch the Jets this past fall and winter.

As I thought about whether it was something I’d want to continue in the spring I figured it was at least worth exploring the ticket package prices.

The money wasn’t outrageous for roughly 20 games…and it would obviously be money spent on something I would be greatly enjoying. (Well, let’s hope. More on that in a minute.)

The cool thing about these tickets is if I can’t make it down for a game, I can either sell the tickets, or I can combine them for a different game.

Here’s how that works: I have two tickets for most of the Sunday games. (And a couple of weekdays sprinkled in.)

If I can’t make a Mets game because, say, we’re going to a Taylor Swift concert, I can take those two tickets and combine them with the two tickets I have to a different game, and instead of going with one of the girls, I can take all three girls to a game.

It’s very exciting.

And hopefully that excitement carries through the season.

Because here’s the deal: I am caught up in the hype for the Mets this year. Part of the reason I’m doing this is because I want to go to a World Series game. (KNOCK WOOD.)

But I know this - it is so hard to get back to the point where the Mets were last year. So many things have to go right.

And already, with some March injuries, things are going a little bit wrong.

But I believe in what the Mets are putting in place, and this year I am putting my money where my mouth is.

And I’m doing something I’ve always dreamed about doing. (Though when I was little I guess I imagined it would happen at Shea Stadium.)

I was thinking about it this week, and I didn’t even make it to Citi Field last year. We saw the Mets play in Atlanta, and that was it. I went to one game in 2021, and one in 2019. You have to go all the way back to 2018 for a year when I made multiple trips to Flushing. That’ll change this year, that’s for sure.

No matter how the season shakes out (again, hopefully positively), I’ll have the opportunity to enjoy my favorite team with some of my favorite people.

But worst case scenario…well, I’m setting myself up for a unique kind of disappointment with the 2023 Mets.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

Last week I had to wrack my brain to find a “What I’ve Been Enjoying”…this week was an easy one: On Friday we had our fantasy baseball draft. I won’t spend a lot of time telling you about its history - if you’re curious you can just look at what I wrote about it back in 2017. (I spent quite a bit of time searching back for that. I went back to last March, remembering it as something I wrote last year. Then I thought, Oh, maybe I wrote it in 2020 or 2021. Turns out it was six years ago. Yikes.)

Bottom line: this is when I’m always most optimistic about my team, of course - before they’ve had the chance to underperform. But it was a fun night. Too bad it only happens once a year.

Notes

*So here’s the other exciting thing about this baseball season. Since the Chicago Marathon is at the end of baseball season (and I watched the first spring training games when I was in North Carolina for the Wilmington Marathon, so they’re nice bookends), I’m hoping I can kind of blend marathon training and the 2023 baseball season and the usual week-to-week musings all together for the Sunday Paper over the next six months.

I know last week wasn’t my finest Sunday Paper effort….I’ve been trying not to use up all my good material because I was looking forward to this one and beyond. I promise it won’t be too much baseball - it’ll be baseball, but it won’t be ONLY baseball.

*Unless of course the Mets are bad this year, which of course is never out of the question. That would just blow everything up and make it a miserable summer.

*Did you do anything for “Amazin’ Day” yesterday? There were Mets-themed events all around the city. My brother was playing with his dog at Astoria Park Saturday morning and there was a Mets truck and he ended up getting me a Jerry Koosman bobblehead. Pretty good, considering I couldn’t take part in it in person. (Turns out he missed ‘86 Mets Tim Teufel and Mookie Wilson…and Mrs. Met, who all showed up later in the day.)

*Exciting week ahead. Let me be the first to wish you a Happy Opening Day.

*The social media links are below. Thanks for following along!