“Spring cleaning starts next week,” my husband said, last week. My Regan MacNeil-spinning cocked head’s wide eyes landed on his face. “What was that, honey?” “Spring training starts next week,” he repeated. Hubby is an expert in matters of the human condition, one of his most-offered reflections being ‘we see things as we are, not as they are.’

I’ve been thinking a great deal about spring cleaning for a few weeks now, literally and metaphorically. It’s time for me to pick up sticks after the winter storms, after the volunteer efforts of the past five or ten or twenty years or so, and get ready for a fresh season. I’ve put my own affairs aside for quite awhile in order to help & support others, or, as you readers of this blog know, to nudge the universal karma, and now it’s time to tidy up. I’ve even bought a new lipstick.

As the New York Mets home opener against the Marlins approaches for Thursday, April 8, 2021 at 1:10 pm, the fifteen-person Pray4Mets chorus that usually puts their hands together at CitiField has both seats reserved AND rare, paper tickets from opening day March 26, 2020, a game that never took place. (They’re particularly special because very few paper tickets were printed for the 2020 season, as Major League Baseball put on a full-court press for digital ticketing.) The circumstances around both are fantastical in ‘magical realism’ style akin to that of writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I wonder if, through his lens, Marquez would be able to perceive our & the Mets’ trajectory for the home opener & for 2021: ‘Chronicle of A Baseball Season Foretold.’

Being perpetually & professionally pragmatic (as our team is in their spring training), yet motivated by the beauty, power and – yes, “magic” – of being in the stands of our American baseball shrine in Flushing each opening day, I’ve been keeping up with my Mets relationships & resources over the dark winter in order to put our seats in those seats on April 8. The signs portending success are fair, but a very nice omen just arrived yesterday from my friend & die-hard Mets fan, Assemblyman Jay Webber of New Jersey: Assembly Resolution 232, encouraging the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum to admit Mets founder Joan Whitney Payson to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. What a very nice, early start to the season…join me however you see (or say or sing) your style of hope, to lever us through to a successful opening day and 2021 Mets baseball season … and much, much more…

Email me if you’d like a copy of New Jersey AR 232: Pray4Mets@gmail.com.

Stay focused, uplifted, and Let’s Go Mets!

Maureen Edelson, Creator, Pray4Mets

Montclair, NJ USA

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