Mr. Met Pride Night ABBA dance brings Mets fans some rare joy in a dismal season

Welcome back to Talkin’ Gaysball where Money, Money, Money must be funny to give to Kodai Senga…

The New York Mets find new lows the way Shohei Ohtani finds MVP-level skills.

Even their blooper reels look like they were directed by Werner Herzog.

Get off the sidelines and into the game

Our weekly playbook is packed with everything from locker room chatter to pressing LGBTQ sports issues.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

If you’re trying to find someone whose kink is humiliation, just search their dating profile for #LGM.

With all of that said, last week was a special kind of abomination, even by Mets standards. They lost seven games in a row. During that stretch of misery, they got drubbed by 15-3 by the Phillies and their pitching staff found a way to give up a three homer game and a cycle in the same evening.

Then they followed that by dropping a doubleheader to the Cubs and committing six errors in the nightcap, with every infielder contributing at least one miscue. 

As public embarrassments go, it was the baseball equivalent of Valentina telling RuPaul that she’d like to keep the mask on.

To no one’s surprise, this culminated with the firing of manager Carlos Mendoza on Friday. 

After the axe fell, the mood around the last place Mets clubhouse was funereal. Just in time for Pride Night. The only way the Mets could have made the vibe any worse was if they traded for Landen Roupp.

Related

Dudes kissing, drag queens dancing: Cubs and Red Sox Pride Nights deliver queer joy
Talkin’ Gaysball: After Giants pitchers left us reeling, this gay baseball fan found salvation at Wrigley and Fenway.

A Giants Pride cap sits in Cooperstown. It belongs on the players’ heads next season.
Talkin’ Gaysball: The best way for MLB to fight back against anti-gay players is not to cave in to their homophobia.

Yet somehow, in spite of all the forces that were lined up against a Happy Pride, one beacon of rainbow fabulousness managed to shine through the gloom.

During a pregame segment on the field, SNY reporter Steve Gelbs spoke about Mendoza’s firing with the kind of mournful gravitas usually found in the eulogy for a head of state.

“You know, there’s no one easy answer for how the team got here,” Gelbs intoned, “If there was, they’d fix it.”

But as “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” incongruously blared through the Citi Field speakers in the background, over Gelbs’ shoulder emerged a figure with rainbow-clad arms pumping as if he were about to take over the dance floor at The Boiler Room.

Mr. Met was not having it with the grandiose mourning. It was time for ABBA.

Undaunted by the sudden appearance of rainbow joy, Gelb attempted to carry on. With an authoritative lilt in his voice to reflect the solemnity of the situation, he opined, “There’s a lot of layers to this. But what I will say is it’s become clear that the Mets simply changed too much this offseason at one time.”

His Edward R. Murrow impression was somewhat undercut by the image of a giant thrusting baseball head bobbing over Gelb’s left and right shoulders to the pinnacle of Swedish disco kitsch. It was like Walter Kronkite reporting about the Saigon airlift to the tune of “Waterloo.”

The segment played out as a battle between baseball’s enforced code of seriousness and Pride. And Pride was winning so decisively, it was as if it were playing the Mets.

Nonetheless, Gelb still had a job to do and he wasn’t going to break his important baseball insider face, opining, “There’s every reason in the world to say that last year’s team collapsed, we’re going to make some changes. But when you turn over an entire roster, the entire coaching staff, you put the team in the position.”

I’m sure Gelb was going somewhere very thoughtful with this. But at that point, Mr. Met was moving his gloved hands furiously in front of his own face like a baseball that had come to life for the sole purpose of dropping acid for the first time. 

There’s not a piece of sports analysis in the world insightful enough to compete with that.

This surreal moment was the latest reminder that the joy of MLB Pride cannot be dimmed by the misery of the team on the field. Not even if that team was the Mets.

On top of all that, Mr. Met might have just showed Fox Sports a way to finally make John Smoltz tolerable.

Subscribe to the Outsports newsletter to keep up with your favorite out athletes, inspiring LGBTQ sports stories, and more.