Mets have real chance to turn Amazin’ party into World Series run

Multiple Grimaces, including the genuine one, plus Mr. and Mrs. Met, Candelita, Frank the Tank and other assorted Mets-themed celebrities are living it up in Queens these days, luxuriating in baseball’s best story and, for now, maybe its best team, too. The Mets are hot, maybe just hot enough to keep this blue and orange celebration alive.

There’s a party going on in Flushing, and the way things are going, it may last awhile. They may not yet be the hot ticket among the Big Apple glitterati (though superfan Frank is super popular today), but they are undeniably the hot team, the team that puts on the best show and, at least lately, the team that prevails.

In this season of unparalleled parity, a rare year with no 100-game winner, where the Dodgers pitching looks decimated, the Yankees started October in underwhelming fashion and the Phillies seem less than themselves since the All-Star break, the Mets possess the most precious thing in sports. And that is a real chance.

Two years running, the No. 6 seed in the National League has somehow played its way into the World Series. A couple years ago it was this Phillies team, who had the misfortune to face the Astros, who were tough and clutch, and didn’t need to cheat, it turned out. Then last year it was the Diamondbacks, who ran into a team even hotter than them, a Texas Rangers squad that didn’t lose one game on the road. They, too, entered as a wild card, but rode the hot bats of Corey Seager and Adolis Garcia to their first-ever World Series title.

That Rangers team won only 90 games, the Diamondbacks 84. There’s no reason the Mets, winners of 89 games, can’t go that way now. That possibility seemed nutty even to me when I wrote on May 18 that they should make the playoffs. I was just figuring they were in the top 40 percent of teams, not that they could actually challenge the Yankees, Orioles, Dodgers or Phillies. I was just using common sense, which is out the window come October, it seems.

We certainly are a long way from the beginning of the season, back when the Mets started 0-5 and stumbled to 22-33, back when folks were wondering if Francisco Lindor was worth his $341 million contract (he may be worth it just for this year alone!), back when Jorge Lopez was firing his glove into the crowd and the Mets were looking like clear deadline sellers.

The Mets, not just their B-and-C-list celebs, are having fun now. There are ever-present “OMG” signs, the lucky little pumpkin that star slugger Pete Alonso seems to treat like a pet and more.

“We’ve got a lot going on. But we’ve got to keep the main thing the main thing, which is to go out and play baseball,” manager Carlos Mendoza said.