What are we up to now? The hot dog-eating dog? The All Star break is still a few days away, and the Mets have already compiled a veritable superteam of quirky icons. There was Seymour Weiner, the veteran who was honored on Opening Day and who subsequently became the face of a Citi Field dollar hot dog night, the fur-clad superfan, Grimace (obviously), Jose Iglesias’ “OMG” song and, most recently, a chain-bedecked chihuahua named Iggy, who was spotted wearing sunglasses and chomping on a hot dog during their July 9 win over the Nationals. It’s a ragtag crew of personalities — something akin to the Cardinals’ 2011 Rally Squirrel or the Angels' Rally Monkey — but in typical Mets fashion, it’s somehow five times more ridiculous, and not in a bad way.
After all, no one actually believes Grimace fixed the Mets (right?!). But all these little things — this search for signs that this team is special — speaks to a far less ridiculous sentiment that’s overtaken this fan base and, to a certain extent, the Mets as a whole. It is, at its core, an "us versus them" mentality and a pressing desire to find the magical in the mundane.
For all of the talk of this team being “competitive” in 2024, at the beginning of the year, there was a distinct sense that this was going to be a “bridge’ season to 2025, a time for the Mets to lick their wounds from being the worst team money could buy, develop young talent, and evaluate the players they already have. All that stuf.