This is everyday life for a New York Mets fan. My wife, Tracey, has died and died with the Mets for years, watching them every single night, enduring loss after loss just waiting for a kid like Matt Harvey to show up one day to make the pain and suffering worth it.

So we were going to take a night out of a vacation week to see Harvey or Zack Wheeler, another one of those everybody's all-Americans, and the schedule worked out for Wheeler at Citi Field on Monday night against Cliff Lee. I like to get to a game or two a season without wearing a media credential, without banging away on a laptop in some godforsaken press box, just to remember what it was like when I was allowed to be a fan.

Matt Harvey gave Mets fans of all ages hope. AP Photo/Kathy Kmonicek

But this wasn't about me. This was about her. My wife, who didn't care that the Mets were 19 games out of first place when they faced the Phillies, who were also 19 games out of first place. She didn't care that I paid $150 a pop on StubHub for good seats to watch a bad team.

She only cared that we were going to sit in the stands to watch hope in the form of Zack Wheeler. Winning isn't everything, or the only thing, no matter what Vince Lombardi did or didn't say. A sports franchise can sell something else besides winning to a fan base.

Hope. A losing team can sell hope as surely as it can sell a $12 beer at the concession stand, and my wife was 45 minutes away from hopping into our car Monday afternoon for the ride across two bridges when I told her that 50 percent of the Mets' hope might have just gone up in smoke.

"Matt Harvey tore up his elbow," I said to her. You would've thought I told her our beloved beagle had just passed away in her sleep.

Tracey recoiled, her face tightening into a knot as she ripped off a series of questions shaped by anger and shock. What do you mean? When did this happen? His elbow? Are you kidding me?

I assured her I was not kidding. I told her Harvey had a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament, and she said, "That's Tommy John [surgery], right?"

She called her mother, because that's the first person you call when your heart is ripped in half.

No, Matt Harvey didn't die Monday. In fact, before we started the drive to Citi Field, reports were coming in on Twitter that GM Sandy Alderson wasn't sure that Tommy John surgery would be necessary, that the team needed to wait for the swelling to go down first. Harvey himself said he would do everything he could to avoid going under the knife, but in the end, there's only so much he can control.

He's had forearm problems for a long time -- and tried to pitch through them -- and loyal Mets fans like my wife know there's always a price to be paid for that. Johan Santana pitched the first no-hitter in franchise history, and that turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory, too.