The Mets Meet the Met

The similarities are uncanny.

Username ‘letsgocyclones’ on AmazinAvenue has a decent day job. As a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York city, he is surrounded by some of the most precious cultural artifacts our nation has to offer. No matter how grueling all that standing might be, he can at least look left at a Jackson Pollock, or right at a Jan Van Eyck. It gets much much worse than that, we can agree.

But letsgocyclones would trade it all in for a clipboard and a radar gun. Like many of us, he spends much of his day instead ruminating about the Mets’ second base situation or who their left-handed reliever might be in the coming season. There’s no shame in that, the distraction and entertainment sports provide beyond the actual moments themselves are a foundational part of being a sports fan.

As we’ve been showing – at least in some part – by our email interviews of Craig Calcaterra and Shannon Drayer, some of the best thinking is done by people mixing different sections of their resume. As Drayer used some of her history as a barista to focus on interpersonal relationships in baseball and baseball journalism, and Calcaterra has called upon his legal knowledge in parsing important moments in recent baseball history, letsgocyclones has found a genius way to mix his day job and his passion for his favorite team.

A diptych to the strikezone.

In two legendary FanPosts at AmazinAvenue, letsgocylcones has paired Mets’ icons with Met icons, to hilarious results. Some of the pairings are based on a shared line or perspective, some on gesture, some on content. In the case of this Oliver Perez – Jackson Pollock pairing, the two, together, have something post-modern to say about the strike zone. (Try the comments section here for a photoshopped version that hammers the point home.)

The original Dickey Face.

Though it’s all in good fun, there’s a little meat in there too. These pictures are an important part of our current culture. Though they seem ubiquitous, and are produced daily about eight months of the year, they are an art of a modern medium. It’s both meaningful and unmistakable that the same forms and subjects that humans have enjoyed in history are once again resplendent in our present. Just look at this picture pairing. On the left you find the subject of the popular “R.A. Dickey-face” competition, and on the right, a 17th century baroque piece called Magic Scene with Self-portrait by Dutchman Pieter van Laer, who went by “Il Bamboccio.” Magic, indeed.

Of course, I cannot let my art history minor fade silently into the night without a fight. So, I submit my own pairing. On the left, you have Ben Francisco avoiding a high-and-tight from Logan Ondrusek. On the right, Son of Man by Rene Magritte. Not quite as good as the work by letsgocyclones, I will admit. Perhaps I need a little more time in the museum.

Bowler hat, batting helmet.