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By N. R. KLEINFIELD
Published: April 9, 2012
Enjoy it. Brag about it. Dine out on it.
It won’t last. It never does.
This is about the way it is right now, and for Mets fans it’s undiluted sweetness, a blip of rapture to relish while it lasts, even if for only a day.
After Monday night’s game, the Mets were still undefeated. First place, the envy of baseball. The fact that we’re only talking 4-0 is just nitpicking. Another 90 or so wins and they’re a lock for the playoffs. The World Series will be simply a formality.
But what makes it sweetest of all is that the vile Yankees are struggling. Their victory against Baltimore Monday night was their first, with the prospect of few to come. And Bernie Madoff didn’t steal any of their money. They didn’t lose Jose Reyes to oranges and Florida sunshine.
“It’s a new beginning,” declared Jodi Darowitsch, 46, a teacher and fierce Mets fan from Glendale, Queens, who doesn’t dismiss three games against the Braves as insufficient evidence to validate the start of a dynasty.
Think about it. On Sunday, Jon Niese dusted batter after batter and took a no-hitter into the seventh inning. These Mets — they’re good!
Shopping on Monday at the Queens Center Mall with her son and his friend, Ms. Darowitsch wore a Mets necklace. She carried in her wallet a treasured autographed baseball card of Keith Hernandez, the former Mets first baseman.
“This is their year,” she insisted.
Yes, Mets fans need not hang their heads or admit to Mets allegiance only after dark in deserted Queens alleyways.
Neil Abramson, 50, a workers’ compensation lawyer, grew up in Queens and enlisted as a Mets fan in 1969, the year they first won the World Series. He thought he had bonded with an elite team that would reward him with limitless joy.
Even as he learned what he had actually gotten himself into, he rooted unswervingly for the Mets. He possesses what he imagines is the biggest collection of Mr. Met bobblehead dolls — about 30 varieties, including a Mrs. Met from a minor league squad. He has two seats from Shea Stadium.
As befits any genuine Mets fan, he hates the Yankees “with a burning passion.”
“It’s heaven,” Mr. Abramson said of the unblemished start to the season. “I just hope it lasts longer than the eight days of Passover.”
What he doesn’t want is a return to normalcy, where, as he put it: “I’m back watching the Mets with the sound off so I can do something useful. And then you pick your head up now and then to see how much they’re losing by.”
The opposite starts of the Mets and Yankees dominated caller talk on WFAN Monday morning. Mark Chernoff, the radio station’s operations manager, said: “We were trying to figure out what was the bigger story, the Mets’ winning or the Yankees’ losing. At first, it was the Yankees’ losing three, but by the end it was the Mets’ winning three.”
He said Yankee fans presumably were aware that their team could drop the first three and still win 114 games, as it did in 1998. The Mets have reached the century mark three times, topping out at 108 wins in 1986.
Yet their fans can dream hard.
Jesse Mancuso, 25, a security guard at Rockefeller Center who lives in Middle Village, Queens, owes his name to the Mets. He was named after Jesse Orosco, the Mets’ relief pitcher whose strikeout sealed the 1986 World Series championship.
Mr. Mancuso was buying an Ike Davis jersey at Modell’s in the Queens Center Mall. Most shoppers were checking out Knicks memorabilia, but what did they know? “Hopefully they keep it up,” Mr. Mancuso said. “You gotta believe.”
Good times for the Mets and bad times for the Yankees have intersected before. The same beginnings occurred in 1973 (when the Mets went to the World Series with 82 wins and the Yankees finished below .500) and 1985 (when the Mets took 98 games and the Yankees 97). If there is anything to divine from this history, the Mets will win more games this year than the Yankees.
Several hours before Monday’s game, some fans were gathered outside Citi Field hunting for player autographs. Among them was Ralph Pietromonaco, 47, a season-ticket holder from Williamsburg, Va., who shows up once a month for games. The last four digits of his phone number, he pointed out, are 6387, the associated letters spelling METS.
“We’ve got just as good a team as anyone else, but everyone talked bad about us because of the Madoff thing,” he said. “But we have the pieces together.”
Still, all Mets fans can’t be expected to blot out the unrelenting, merciless betrayals.
Mark Evans, 28, a security guard who lives in the LeFrak City development in Queens, had his Mets cap on as he walked to the post office. It has been two years since he attended a Mets game, but taking in a game is on his to-do list for this year. “The Mets always do good in the beginning of the season,” he said. “But by the end they mess up.”
Ivan Pereira contributed reporting.
A version of this article appeared in print on April 10, 2012, on page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: However Fleeting, the Rapture Of the Mets’ Undefeated Season.
