What I think about when Met fans whine ...

Mets fans are so cute.

I don’t say that in the patronizing manner of a Yankees fan, who looks down with equal parts pity and mockery. No, I say that as a Mariners fan who finds it adorable that Mets fans think they know what suffering is. At least that was my reaction to David Brooks’s column in the New York Times on Friday.

Apparently, when you live in the same town as the Yankees you can delude yourself into thinking you’ve got it rough if you happen to root for the other franchise.

Dude. The Mets have reached the World Series five times, the most recent being in 2015. They’ve won two titles. So I will take your tortured Prometheus reference and raise you a Sisyphus. The Mariners are the only one of the 30 Major League teams never to have reached the World Series.

It amuses me to come across fans of other teams who think they have cornered the market on misery.

My man, the Mariners have had the bases loaded with no outs late in a tie game twice in the past month, and in each case, I was absolutely rock-solid certain they weren’t going to manage a single run. They did not disappoint. Wait. I mean they did disappoint, failing to score a run in either instance, but when this happened, I did not wail or curse, no gnashing of teeth or rending of garments. No, I laughed. I laughed the laugh of the person who knows they’ve chosen this particular path in spite ample warning that the results will be underwhelming. I’ve opted in for this suffering so I deserve everything that comes my way.

It’s funny that I’m writing this now because the Mariners are actually kind of hot. They’ve won seven of their last nine games, which included two against Tampa Bay and three against the dirty-no-good Astros. Seattle is 45-44 as baseball reaches the All-Star break, three games back of the Yankees for the third and final wild-card berth and six games behind the division-leading Rangers.

Now, I’ve seen this act enough that you’d think I’d be impervious to getting my hopes up. Nope. I’m absolutely getting my hopes up in spite of the fact that I know there’s a 99-percent chance this is nothing more than a tease.

That’s the thing about fandom, though. It isn’t rational. If it was, I would have never started rooting for the Mariners, and now that I am, the one thing I fear more than being disappointed (again) is that I would give up before they experience their breakthrough success and in doing so forfeit some of the equity I’ve earned by sticking with the Mariners in spite of ample indications that this would be an unfuilfilling enterprise.

Because the Mariners have to win eventually, right? In a world where the multiverse has become a part of common lexicon (not to mention major motion-picture releases) it’s only logical that at some point this franchise is going to win and when that happens I don’t want to be one of those people who has dumped my Mariners stock because my tissue-paper constitution couldn’t take the losing.

In fact, I take some sort of sick pride in my ability to withstand discomfort. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a superpower, but I do believe that I can endure in miserable circumstances for longer than most people, which is why my reaction to Brooks’s thoroughly lovely column as to regard him as a rank amateur.

OK, first of all, the Sidd Finch hoax was funny as hell. I remember reading that issue in the library at Sacred Heart Academy. Second, the Mets won the World Series THE VERY NEXT YEAR.

See, Mets fans are just adorably naive. They think they’ve had it hard. They have absolutely no idea.