PORT ST. LUCIE — They are four words you never want to hear, never want to say, never want to even ponder regardless of subject, regardless of context, regardless of whether you are talking about a date or a vacation or a baseball team or anything else.
If everything goes perfectly … she’ll be pretty, she’ll make me laugh, I’ll make her laugh, I won’t have a bad hair day, the food will be glorious, the wine even better, the movie one of the year’s five best, and there will be enough conversation left for one more nightcap afterward.
If everything goes perfectly … my flight won’t get cancelled, and the plane won’t be diverted to Detroit, and I’ll be upgraded to first class, and the room will be waiting for us when we get there, and there won’t be any unwelcome guests of the critter variety waiting for us, and it won’t rain once we get there and we’ll get bumped into the presidential suite.
If everything goes perfectly …
Well. You are a Mets fan. You know better than to expect perfect at this time in your existence, but it is spring, it is 80 degrees on Florida’s Treasure Coast, there is a sky so blue it hurts your eyes and grass so green and lush that all you want to do is lie down on it, since it looks more inviting than any of the five best mattresses you’ve ever slept on.
There is the record: Nothing to the left of the hyphen, but nothing to the right either. There is the manager, who you know will suffer and bleed right along with you across the next seven months, for better or for worse. There are the fences back home, more inviting for the Mets’ batting order than ever (and since it’s February, there’s no requirement to point out that they’ll be more inviting for everyone else, too). There is Johan Santana, whose muscle memory surely knows what it’s like to inject hope every fifth day, even if his left arm may need a refresher course.
There is all of that, and is the time of year when, even if those four words are the sure sign that something apocalyptic might be waiting on the other side of the hill, you might as well use them.
If everything goes perfectly … then Jason Bay and David Wright will press the rewind button on their careers, and Lucas Duda and Ike Davis will press fast forward, and Daniel Murphy will figure out a way to stay out of the way around second-base pileups, and Ruben Tejada’s knack for getting on base will give you at least one substantive argument against the segment of your soul that already misses Jose Reyes.
If everything goes perfectly … then Santana will deliver 25 to 30 starts that resemble what he used to be, and Mike Pelfrey will — all together now — “finally figure it all out,” and Jon Niese and Dillon Gee will patch together a six-month season, rather than the three-month fragments they have specialized in, and the bullpen will catch magic, and hey, why not, if the Giants can uncover a Victor Cruz and the Knicks can unearth a Jeremy Lin, maybe the Mets can find someone somewhere who we’ve never heard of this morning and will be all we can talk about four months from now.
Is that a hard way to approach a season? Sure it is. The Wilpons still own the team and for now that means the Mets will be Wal-Mart in a Tiffany’s sport and a Rolex city. We hear a lot from the angry fans, the alienated fans, and there are plenty of them, and there should be, the Wilpons have brought it on themselves, and deserve every ounce of scorn.
But there are still plenty of Mets fans who retain their devotions through it all, who still talk helpfully and hopefully of their team because it’s still their team, despite it all. Who still will watch, and follow, and care, and may even take in a few games this year because watching a game in person is still a hell of a way to spend a summer night.
And who still believe. Stoutly. Maybe stubbornly. Maybe inexplicably. And will take advantage of the spring by singing their holy mantra.
If everything goes perfectly …
There’s plenty of time for angst if it doesn’t.