Friday, June 19, 2009

STREETS OF BALTIMORE. [6-18-09]

Mets v Orioles
6-18-09, Oriole Park at Camden Yards

“If we don’t win this game,” said the guy sitting behind me, “we don’t deserve to play baseball. Not even just in the American League. Baseball.”

It was the 9th inning. After being shut out for a few innings, and then tying it up, and then giving up a home run to Robert Andino - why are our villians the unlikely ones, always, why are the Mets the ones giving up the big moments, the special home runs, who did not know that Matt Wieters was not going to get his first home run this series? - they had eked themselves out a game. They got on the board. They got ahead. They took the lead.

That’s right, there was a lead at one point in this evening. There was a point in the game where the Mets were playing reasonably good baseball. Luis Castillo contributed. Alex Cora contributed. Daniel Murphy contributed. Good things happened.

Continue reading STREETS OF BALTIMORE. [6-18-09]

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

ON THE ROAD.

We’re off to Baltimore tomorrow for the rubber game. Early departure from Brooklyn so we can take the tour, see the city, and eat some crabs. Full update once we get home tomorrow night, and you can also follow along on Twitter throughout the day.

We’re back in Flushing for Friday night, and then we have no games for about two and a half weeks. Our St. Louis game was an afternoon game that we sold, and we traded our Friday Subway Series to get us into the House of Evil. That will be odd. We may need to make an interim purchase, or something, to get us through.

Livan’s been a gem, let’s hope he can pull out another one, that the offense decides to show up, and the defense decides to remember its fundamentals. Let’s Go Mets!

Monday, June 15, 2009

AFTERMATH.

Saturday night, this was the conversation Chez MetsGrrl:

TBF: “431, row 6.”
Me: “How much?”
“$85 a ticket, but will take best offer.”
“Offer him $150. Season ticket holder?”
“No, pickup in New Jersey.”
“First find out if we can go get the tickets tonight.”
“It’s 8pm.”
“Where does he live?”
“Lakewood.”
“Drop that price to $125.”
“What about these in 230? Same price.”
“Too far out.”
“Have you already called Ticketmaster?”
“Twice. There is nothing available in the Grandstand.”
“Are you really sure you want to spend that much money on a game at the House of Evil?”

Continue reading AFTERMATH.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

NOTHING AS IT SEEMS. [6-12-09]

Mets v Yankees
Yankee Stadium, 6-12-09

It is funny how much you can will yourself into believing.

It happened again and again tonight; hell, it happened just to to get me to the Bronx tonight. Taking the 4 train to the Bronx instead of the 2/3 to Times Square; standing amidst the pinstripes and the tourists and the just plain folks trying to get home after a long week and not appreciating their already-overcrowded subway line filled with clueless folks who don’t know basic subway etiquette. 161st St. is enemy territory, the shadowland, a foreign country. Two stadiums greet us at the bottom of the stairs, one standing mute, one barely broken in, so new it was gleaming in the sunlight. We file in; we look around; we take our seats and take a deep breath.

Continue reading NOTHING AS IT SEEMS. [6-12-09]

Thursday, June 11, 2009

FOGGY NOTION. [6-11-09]

SUMMARY OF THE EVENING:

• It was really, really foggy.
• Bunting is for losers.
• Tim Redding didn’t suck.
• “Sweet Caroline” was nowhere to be found.
• We went to extra innings… and lost again.
• I come home to find that John Maine is now on the DL.

Continue reading FOGGY NOTION. [6-11-09]

THE BASEMENT TAPES.

When we were watching the game last night, we noticed that JC Romero had something written in red on the underside of his cap. We started making jokes about it: was it lipstick? nail polish? did it say ‘I don’t suck’? I was going to Twitter some of the funnier ones, but then stopped, because I didn’t want someone to take it out of context and have it become a thing. (No, we didn’t seriously think that there was something on the underside of his hat that was influencing his pitches, but crabby fans of the opposing team sometimes might look for things to occupy their minds while their team gives up a perfectly good 4-run lead.)

Which brings me to Jerod Morris. A lot of you may not know who he is. He’s a blogger who wrote a long analysis of Raul Ibanez, which somehow got picked up by the mainstream media and turned into a crucible of condemnation, because Jerod was trying to prove that Ibanez’ numbers could be explained. At the end of it, he felt the need to mention that he could not definitively rule out PED’s.

I had written something about this last night, and then deleted it, because I thought it was getting silly, but then this morning Joe Posnanski wrote what is almost the definitive post on the subject. I say “almost” because I think Joe leaves one thing out.

If Jerod was just another guy sitting in his underwear in his mother’s basement, why did anyone give his blog post the time of day? That’s what I don’t understand.

Continue reading THE BASEMENT TAPES.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

I HAD SOMETHIN’ IN MY POCKET.

Our flight home from Seattle was at 3. We were not on Jet Blue because we were using miles, so we couldn’t watch the game.
“I need to stay quarantined,” TBF kept reminding me. “If you want to check Twitter or whatever on the way home, fine, I just can’t know.”
“No problem.”
“No, seriously, I want to watch the game when I get home.”
“That’s fine.”
“So I need you to not tell me anything.”
“I can do that.”

Continue reading I HAD SOMETHIN’ IN MY POCKET.

Sunday, June 07, 2009

LAZY SUNDAY.

Mariners v Twins
Safeco Field, 6-7-09

Baseball is a big part of the lives of the friends we are staying with here in Seattle. Obviously you don’t plunk down $40,000 for a personal seat license, and maintain a series of season tickets for 10 years running unless you are not, but there are baseball people and then there are Baseball People. They are the latter.  They have their attendance down to a science, where we can walk out of their house with their 3 1/2 year old twins at 12:30 and be in our seats at Safeco for first pitch.

We didn’t sit in the front row today. (Those are The Charter Seats.) We sat four rows behind the visiting team dugout:

Continue reading LAZY SUNDAY.