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And if they do hang on, what about those defeat-happy fans? Many psychologists—accredited and armchair—predicted that if the Mets ever started winning, the boisterous crowds would grow indifferent. Sheer nonsense. Now that the Mets are winning, they rank No. 1 in National League attendance by a handsome margin of 225,853. They passed the 1,600,000 mark during the Los Angeles series, and by October they should top 2,000,000.
If nothing else, the figures indicate that baseball still rates its claim to the title "the national pastime." True, the flagging Detroit Tigers, last year's world champions, have been all but abandoned by their fair-weather followers, and the Oakland Athletics, a strong American League pennant contender, drew only 5,000 fans on the night that Reggie Jackson slammed three home runs. But Boston, Atlanta, the Cubs and the new Montreal Expos are attracting huge crowds. Washington has already passed last year's total attendance. In nearly every National League town the Mets, once the worst draw in big baseball, are pulling more customers than ever before.
The Mets, however, were drawing huge crowds at home when they were incontestably the most ludicrous team in the chronicle of baseball. Why? The answer probably lies in the visceral feeling shared by most New Yorkers that mere existence is one long losing game. Choked by traffic, suffocated by fumes, drained by the highest taxes and the highest cost of living on the continent, they form a bond with the underdog that transcends their reputation for lofty indifference. So right from the start they clutched the hapless, hopeless clowns to their beleaguered bosoms, chanting "Let's Go, Mets!" and unfurling brave banners that proclaimed:
WE DON'T WANT TO SET THE WORLD ON FIRE—WE JUST WANT TO FINISH
NINTH.
Bed Sheet Banners
New Yorkers saw in the lurching ineffectuality of their anti-heroes a reflection of their own uphill struggle with life. As New York Post Columnist James Wechsler wrote: "The Mets are a symbol. They embody the furtive hopes and desperate dreams of every underdog and lost soul in the universe, of every historian who maintains there are no iron laws of history, of every philosopher who sees man capable of rising above his seeming limitations, of every theologian who truly believes in the power of prayer, of every incorrigible long-shot bettor who refuses to be intimidated by the hardened experts." Another Mets fan puts it more prosaically: "No one likes to lose—I can tell you something about that. Of course we want them to keep on winning. That kind of spirit is catching. It makes everything seem possible." Those heartfelt words came from New York's Mayor John Lindsay, who himself is a decided underdog in his battle for re-election this November.