The New York Yankees have no problem attracting the wealthy and powerful—everyone from LeBron James to Donald Trump has been seen wearing a Yankee hat.  The New York Mets’ celebrity fans, meanwhile, are better known for something the franchise itself has long since mastered: making people laugh at them.  Chris Rock and Kevin James are frequent sights on the Citi Field scoreboard, shouting “Let’s Go Mets!” Jon Stewart ran a full segment on the Mets’ sudden surge into first place on his penultimate episode hosting “The Daily Show” this year. Jerry Seinfeld devoted an entire two-part episode of his sitcom to showcasing the particular comedic talents of Keith Hernandez. Bill Maher liked the Mets so much that he bought a minority share of the team.  “The essence of comedy is failure and things not working out and the guy slipping on a banana peel. That’s the Mets,” said lifelong Mets fan Michael Price, a writer and co-executive producer for “The Simpsons.” “I can’t imagine somebody who has a sense of humor being a Yankee fan.”  For the most part, he’s right. The Yankees have plenty of celebrity fans—probably more than the Mets—but outside of Billy Crystal and Larry David, not many of them are terribly funny.  The Mets, with their goofy mascot, kitschy fight song and propensity for spectacular meltdowns, could practically fill a dugout with the A-list comedians who are diehard fans.  “The names—Marv Throneberry, Choo-Choo Coleman,” Maher said, referring to members of the 1962 inaugural team. “They were funny from the start.”  Why comedians are drawn to the Mets, who will open the National League Division Series on Friday against the Los Angeles Dodgers, comes down to one word: suffering—something all Mets fans know intimately.  Being funny isn’t an innate quality. It is a result, as the comedian and actor Hank Azaria put it, of “some serious pain, disappointment or discomfort in your youth.”  Whether it’s because they felt like a nerd, like Price, or because they were overweight, like “Saturday Night Live” alumnus Jim Breuer, the comedians said they honed their sharp sense of humor as a defense mechanism to combat their own insecurities.  “Being a Mets fan goes right in line with that,” Azaria said, a longtime Mets fan who has provided voices for “The Simpsons” since 1989. “It’s forever the underdog and forever the outsider, and I think every comedian at their core felt that way when they were a kid.”  Azaria added: “No comedian grows up feeling like Lou Gehrig. They grow up feeling like, if they’re lucky, Ron Swoboda.”  That feeling of being an underdog doesn’t end with childhood. It continues into their professional life.  In many ways, the career path of a comedian mimics the early days of the Mets. In 1962, the Mets went 40-120, making them one of the worst teams in major-league history.  Comedians inherently relate to an origin story like that. Their road to success is almost always lined with setbacks—traveling around the country, playing two gigs a night to tiny audiences in dumpy clubs in the middle of nowhere, only to find out that nobody’s laughing.  “When you’re a comic and you start out, you’re literally a laughingstock. People aren’t laughing with you—they’re laughing at you,” said Maher, the host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” “All of us new comics are humiliated. That is similar to what the Mets were in 1962.”  Since then, the Mets have enjoyed some good times. They’ve won two World Series (1969, 1986) and participated in two more (1973, 2000). They had a brilliant stretch in the late 1980s and then another in the late 1990s. It hasn’t been all bad.  But it has been mostly bad. The Mets have won at least 90 games in just 11 of their 54 seasons, including this year, when they finished 90-72. They have been prone to monumental collapses and heartbreaking losses and moments of hilarious futility. Until now, they hadn’t been in the playoffs since 2006.  Their fans have learned how to cope with losing. Mets fans “have to laugh when we’re horrible,” Breuer said, “or we’re going to have an aneurysm.”  “Laughter really is a way to forget pain,” said Steve Hofstetter, a standup comedian and the “senior comedy correspondent” for Fox Sports. “The Mets aren’t tragedy, but, boy, are they pain.”  The same could be said about the Chicago Cubs, another franchise that, like the Mets, plays in a comedy hotbed and happens to have a legion of funny fans, from Bill Murray to Jeff Garlin. That makes sense: In cities with multiple baseball teams, comedians tend to choose the Mets and Cubs—the losers, the sad-sacks.  Hofstetter recalled a moment from his childhood when his loyalty was tested. Heading into the 1992 season, he denounced the Mets in protest after they traded two of his favorite players, Gregg Jefferies and Kevin McReynolds, to the Kansas City Royals for Bret Saberhagen.  “I couldn’t do it,” Hofstetter said. “I felt no connection to the Yankees.”  But the Mets usually being bad doesn’t fully explain the connection between the team and comedy. The Seattle Mariners haven’t played in a single World Series in their 39-year history. The San Diego Padres have no championships to their name in 47 years. And yet, the Mariners and Padres aren’t funny. The Mets are funny.  The reason is that Mets fans never seem to lose confidence that this year may be different. Or, as a Mets fan might say: “Ya Gotta Believe!” It is that faith—almost always misplaced—that turns the Mets into comedic gold.  Breuer invoked the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. The cartoon isn’t funny because of suspense—everybody knows that the Coyote will eventually plummet off the edge of a cliff. It’s funny because the Coyote actually believes that next time, he will catch that bird.  “No matter what happens,” Breuer said, “we’ll never stop chasing.”  Write to Jared Diamond at jared.diamond@wsj.com
From Jerry Seinfeld to Jon Stewart, the New York Mets could fill a dugout with A-List comics—ones who embrace suffering.