We're still a long way from pitchers and catchers reporting, and actual baseball news has slowed significantly since the Winter Meetings, so in lieu of timely baseball commentary, I'll offer some mindless, months-late baseball-related theorizing.
Here it is: I finally watched "Avengers: Endgame" and had one major takeaway: The Mets were contracted.
Yes, in the concluding chapter to a massive saga about good vs. evil, the value of teamwork and friendship, and the complexities and ethics of being a hero, the thing that stuck out most to me was that MLB had downsized. This is one side effect of viewing so much of life through a baseball lens.
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Obviously, this conclusion probably wasn't the intention of the Russo brothers when they made their 3-hour adventure, which, by the way, is the highest-grossing move of all time. But, in full disclosure, I'm not a huge Marvel guy, which is why I saw "Endgame" on New Year's Day instead of last spring when it came out. Don't get me wrong: The movies are fine. I've seen most of them, but I tend to view them as individual experiences, rather than pieces in a bigger story. I know enough to follow along, but I've never made a point to study all the intricate details and every inter-connecting plot point.
So, if you're a huge Marvel fan who loves to discuss fan theories and expanded universes, you'll have to forgive that my contribution to the conversation is so very minor and silly.
Anyway, here are three reasons why I think the Mets were contracted in the "Endgame" universe:
Citi Field is still there: In an early flyover shot of New York, we clearly see the Mets' home appearing to still be in excellent shape. In other words, it wasn't destroyed in any battles or in the chaos that resulted from the blip when Thanos snapped and wiped out half the Earth's population. Perhaps the city keeps the stadium in good shape in hopes of landing another team, or perhaps it still hosts other events or other sports. But from the few seconds we see, it doesn't appear the stadium has been converted into a shelter or anything else. Maybe Yankee Stadium was destroyed and that's where the Bronx Bombers play now. In any case, it's curious.
Sports still exist: It would be easy to suggest that the tragedy of the blip caused all sports to cease, as it's a safe assumption that people just wouldn't care about such frivolous things anymore. We can assume that thousands of pro athletes across all sports would've fallen victim to Thanos' snap, gutting rosters and farm systems everywhere. The whole sports ecosystem would've crashed. But that's apparently not what happened. How do we know? Because when Banner/Hulk goes to Fat Thor's house to recruit him on his time-travel mission, Thor mentions that sports are "fuzzy" on his TV. So, at least some sports are still happening. Perhaps they're shells of what they used to be, but they still exist. But does that mean baseball is still a thing? Well, that brings me to my next point.
The guy in the therapy scene says he misses the Mets (not baseball in general). This seems like a big clue. The guy, played by co-director Joe Russo, talks about being on a date and mentions how he and his date "miss the Mets." Notice that he didn't say "miss baseball." Even if someone is a huge fan of a particular team, it seems more likely that they'd say they miss baseball itself if the sport had ceased to exist. I guess it's possible that someone doesn't really like baseball as a whole and only enjoys watching one team, but that seems weird to me.
That's it. That's the evidence. What do you think?
I guess it's possible that the Thanos blip would result in all two-team cities or states losing one of their teams. After all, it would be hard, if not impossible, to support two MLB teams in one geographic area if half the population vanished. So maybe MLB shrunk by several teams.
Or maybe something else happened. Maybe the entire Mets team got blipped. Statistically, that seems unlikely. But also, it would be so Mets.
