Taking a moment to respect the abrupt sadness of the 2022 Mets and their fans

It’s Friday night, Oct. 14, 2022, and the Mets and Dodgers are about to begin Game 3 of the National League Division Series. Just before 8 p.m., Daniel Murphy, superhero of the last Mets/Dodgers playoff showdown, emerges from the dugout to a wild ovation to throw the ceremonial first pitch.

It’s a sublime moment at Citi Field, but the Mets manage to top it two weeks later, when David Wright makes his long-awaited return to Queens for his own first pitch to open the World Series.

Wright jogs to the mound, waves to all corners of the ballpark, then throws a strike to, say, Pete Alonso, crouching behind the plate. It is the perfect conclusion to a season that invited so many Mets alumni back into the family.

Neither of these moments will happen, of course. But they actually might have. They were ideas being kicked around for a magical present that suddenly, abruptly, became unrealized fantasy.

That is what happens to every playoff team that fails to win the World Series: a day begins with excitement and runs on adrenaline. Plans are underway in the front office, clubhouse and executive suites for how to make the month special. Then it all just ends.

For players, it’s the sudden dissolution of temporary fraternity, or summer camp ending a week before it was supposed to. For fans, it's spending the spring and summer engrossed in a novel, falling in love with the characters and finding the last chapter ripped out.

For Max Scherzer, the spiritual leader of these new Mets despite his playoff clunker, it’s “a kick in the balls,” as he put it an hour or so after the San Diego Padres eliminated his team.

A playoff loss raises natural questions about the team’s future. It asks for interpretation and commentary. For these few hundred words, though, let’s not manufacture an opinion on whether the season ended with a horrible or modest disappointment. Let’s not wonder about Jacob deGrom’s contract, or Brandon Nimmo’s.

Let’s just take a moment to acknowledge how hard it is for fans when the story you’ve been following ends.

“The Mets,” Buck Showalter said in his mournful postmortem, “are a very precious thing to a lot of people.”

Under that banner are the approximately 120,000 ticket holders who huddled in the cold as the season slipped away. The families and friends who watched at home, or alone while texting and FaceTiming with distant loved ones throughout.

And the future Hall of Fame pitcher whose failure proved too much for the team to overcome.

“I really loved the guys we had in this clubhouse,” Scherzer said. “I really thought we could do it. … You sacrifice everything in your life to be able to go out there. You push through every injury. Guys are playing through injuries. We make so many sacrifices. All the training that you do for these moments and get to the postseason and it doesn’t work out. It’s the worst day of the year.”

I don’t claim to know how Mets fans will perceive this season. It might take time to process the turn it took. That will certainly be the case for the manager and players.

“About three weeks after this is over, you finally get a moment where you’re able to see things more clearly,” Showalter said.

Tonight, at least, we can note that special moments -- moments that connect the Mets to their history while simultaneously building a prouder way forward -- marked the year. There was Tom Seaver’s statue and Keith Hernandez’s Day. The Old Timers' game and Francisco Lindor, Edwin Diaz and Alonso.

That all augurs an exciting future for the franchise. But for right now, just wallow in the additional moments lost.

Imagine what it would have felt like to see Wright and Murphy return, and the team to once again host a Fall Classic. Be sad. It’s OK. Most of the time, baseball is supposed to feel this way.