The New York Mets and the 40-Year-Old Curse

In the 1950s, a musical – and later a movie – came out called Damn Yankees. In it, a middle-aged sad sack named Joe Hardy laments the fact that his beloved Washington Senators are perpetually beaten by those titular damn Yankees. While watching yet another disappointing ballgame, Joe becomes convinced that his team could finally come out on top if only they had a long-ball hitter, and he says that he’d sell his soul to get one. Almost immediately, the Devil himself appears and grants Joe’s wish, albeit a little skewed; the next day he wakes up a home-run-hitting Adonis. He then joins the Senators and proceeds to help them win the pennant.

A nice little daydream for sure, and certainly many fans have had their own versions of it at one point or another. If we just win this one game or make this one play or hold on until the final out or the clock runs out, I’d sell my soul. With little chance of El Diablo actually showing up, what’s the harm of this little fantasy?

But that’s all it is, right – a fantasy? It’s not something with any basis in reality? Silly to even consider it, yes? But what if thousands or even millions of people have the same thought at the same time? Could it possibly come to fruition then? Well, probably not. But in the case of the New York Mets, maybe it actually did. Let me explain.

Not unlike the older Joe Hardy, sad-sack franchises have been prevalent in New York for decades. These are the teams that just can’t get out of their own way and perpetually disappoint. Up until very recently, the Knicks were on this list. The Jets, clearly, are firmly entrenched, and each year they seem to redefine what it means to be dysfunctional.

The Mets, however, are kind of a different story. Unlike the Jets who rarely have anything resembling high expectations, the same isn’t true for the Mets. Seemingly every year they’re touted – both internally and externally – as a top contender. And sometimes they even match the hype – for a little while anyway.

They tease. They tantalize. One week they look like they could win it all. The next they get swept by the Rockies. They have a bad year, rebound, and show enough to think that maybe – just maybe – success will be sustained. They spend a lot of money, they bring in a bunch of free agents, they stock their farm system. Then they have another bad year and the whole thing starts all over again.

After the 2024 season in which the Mets made a surprising run to the National League Championship Series, ESPN writer Jeff Passan wrote an article ostensibly saying that there was a new day in Queens. It ended with this sentence:

The dawn of the Mets' resurgence has arrived. It's just a matter of time until the full breadth of that reveals itself.

And what have the Mets done since then? They coughed to the finish line in 2025 – missing the playoffs by one game – and 2026 will probably end up being their worst season in decades.

So, is this just bad luck? Poor management? Flawed decision-making? All of the above? Or is it something else? I think it’s something else. I think the Mets are cursed or hexed or whatever you want to call it, and I believe it began with a game I was at.

This October will mark the 40th anniversary of the Mets’ last World Series victory. A lot has been written about that ‘86 team – the talent, the brashness, the never-say-die attitude, the drunken escapades. And while they had a dominating regular season – winning 108 games – the playoffs were quite different. If you’re a fan, you of course know all about the drama, the marathon 16-inning Game 6 versus the Astros, the scuffing Mike Scott, the scuffling players in an after-hours bar, losing the first two WS games at home to the Red Sox before rallying to take the next two.

Then, of course, there’s Game 6, which marked the apex of Mets achievement…and hastened its steep decline. My dad and I were at this game, sitting way up on the third-base side at Shea Stadium. I was eight years old, and most of the night is a blur, though I do remember the guy who parachuted in from that plane (who I later found out was an acquaintance of my best friend’s dad). I also remember us leaving early, and we were probably in the car on the way back to New Jersey when Mookie Wilson’s grounder went through the legs of Bill Buckner. And it’s that “little roller up along first” that I believe has cursed the Mets. The past 40 years (with a few bright spots here and there) have mostly been marked by heartbreaks, what-ifs, near misses, and flat-out failures.

They’ve had sure-bet Hall-of-Famers flame out because of drug use or chronic injuries. They’ve traded good players who became great elsewhere. They signed players who were great elsewhere and were awful in New York. They’ve suffered massive late-season collapses. In big games, managers took pitchers out too early or left them in too long. So many can’t-miss prospects missed. Team owners were bilked out of millions of dollars. They had a star outfielder miss an entire season because he broke his ankle running from a wild boar (seriously, you can’t make this stuff up). One of the more recent examples: The team decided to give up on Pete Crow-Armstrong after a year, and now it looks like he might be the NL MVP. It goes on and on.

So, are the Mets really cursed? It certainly looks this way, and I’m not the only one who think so. Addy Baird, author of a book called The Magic Game, which is all about superstitions, rituals, and curses in baseball, believes (perhaps with tongue firmly in cheek) that both Mets’ championships are the result of teams they faced dealing with their own demons. Says Baird:

“I think the Mets are cursed because both of their World Series victories were the result of cursed teams' collapses. In 1969, they played a pivotal series with the Cubs, who had hope to win it all for once, and during the game, a black cat walked out onto the field. The ‘Miracle Mets’ went on to win the World Series. And then of course you know the deal with Buckner in ‘86. They were the beneficiaries of two curses, and I think it's cursed them forever.”

The Red Sox had the Babe, the Cubs had the Billy Goat, and the Mets have Buckner. Of course, the Sox and Cubs have since broken their curses and won titles in recent years, so maybe there is some hope for the Mets. But until then, fans will have to make like the old Joe Hardy and endure the ineptitude, surely cursing the whole time.