Mr. Met should embrace his new heel turn

Mr. Met gave a fan, or fans, the finger. The human being inside the costume lost his job. The Mets organization scrambled to issue an apology. Like most Mets stories, it is powered by the twin engines of scandal and tragedy.

It doesn’t have to be this way. This is the perfect opportunity to rebrand Mr. Met as a heel — the first true heel in sports mascot history. There are mascot antagonistes, of course: The Philly Phanatic is notably puckish; Miami’s Sebastian the Ibis was once arrested. Plenty of mascots have creepy, dead-eyed stares. But no team’s official mascot has ever truly worn a black hat.

New York City, and Mets fans in particular, would love to hate a Mr. Met who hated them back. This is a city where even acts of kindness are wielded with an edge, and millions of people carry the subdued anger of humans deprived of personal space. All day long, New Yorkers battle the subways, and tourists, and rats, and dripping wall-unit air conditioners to earn enough money to pay the exorbitant rent for their insultingly small apartments. “Why do I do this to myself?” New Yorkers say, not always about supporting the Mets. These are people who long to voice their anger and who need an outlet for their rage.

Now imagine: Mr. Met, his permanent smile traded in for a sneer, stepping onto the diamond while the boos of 40,000 people rain down on him. Mr. Met soaks it in like Hollywood Hogan entering the ring; he places his hand to the stitches where his ear should be and leans into the wall of noise.

Mr. Met goes to the edge of the stands and knocks a child’s nachos out of his hands. More boos. He feigns an apology and pantomimes making it up to the aggrieved crowd. He raises a T-shirt cannon and fires several T-shirts into the crowd. In lieu of firing the last shirt into the stands, Mr. Met unfolds it to reveal what all of the shirts say: YOU SUCK. He doubles over in mirth.

Mr. Met’s entrance music draws boos from the fans before they even see him. He zooms onto the field on a four-wheeler and blasts the bleachers with a Super Soaker. He kicks dirt on home plate then pretends to spank the umpire when the ump bends over to dust it off.

When a man proposes to his girlfriend on the jumbotron, Mr. Met shows up with roses and tries to win her over. When she chooses her boyfriend, he falls down and beats his fists on the ground.

He buzzes the grounds crew wearing a TEBOW jersey, throwing footballs errantly with his non-dominant hand.

Mr. Met sets off fireworks when the Mets lose.

Mr. Met dons a Trump wig and, I don’t know, bulldozes low-income housing? I’m still fleshing out the ideas.

And always, always, Mr. Met is chased off by someone deserving a cheer: a pitcher from the bullpen, a bat boy, or a young fan wielding a foam bat. When Mr. Met stumbles, falls, and runs away in defeat, the young Mets fan will receive a wild roar that forges a diehard fandom for life.

Please. Please, Mets, I need this to happen. I want to take my children to Citi Field and teach them to hate the gruesome stitched face of the baseball-headed heel. We shall boo him together and form lasting bonds across our generations — a truly New York bond: the shared dislike of something vile in the city, like Murray Hill or suspended L train service.

New York City is a crowded, angry pustule of steel, and concrete, and rats with nutria ambitions. The Yankees have their history and pinstripes and Aaron Judge. The Mets have cocaine, an apple in a hat, and a mascot who flipped off the fans. It’s time they steered into the skid.