Sunday, May 08, 2011

TO ALL YOU MOTHERS OUT THERE, HAPPY BIRTHDAY. [5-8-11]

Mets v Dodgers,
5-8-11

This is not meant as a continuation of Friday’s post, where all I did was put up photos of Jose Reyes and talk about how tired I am of hearing fans of opposing teams coming to Citi Field and pretending they have a shot at getting him. It’s like that annoying girl in your Chemistry class who’s in love with the football captain and spends all day writing her first name and his last name together all over her notebook. I wouldn’t mind if they were doing all of this on their blogs or their local papers, but they’re waltzing into our house as though the Mets roster is some kind of smorgasbord available for any and all comers. I know, no one is untouchable, I know, we are going to lose Beltran, but jeez louise, if you’re going to sit two rows behind me making shit up, at least present some kind of trade with logical parity. Or ask Timmeh to share the drugs.

It’s even worse when I turn around and see that that idiot singing “Trade him, trade him, trade him, trade him” to the tune of “Jose, Jose, Jose” is wearing blue and orange.

I did Mother’s Day yesterday, so we were free and clear for today’s game. On the face of it, it was exactly our kind of thing - Dickey v Kershaw.  It wasn’t a great game. It wasn’t a terrible game. When I bemoaned around the 7th inning that I didn’t yet have a hook for my blog post, TBF offered “Mike O’Connor offering two innings of relief” which is not exactly what I was looking for.  I didn’t expect it to be a slug-fest with Kershaw on the mound, but I thought the Mets had a decent chance at getting the sweep. Dodgers fans around us were exhibiting extreme cases of memory loss and acting as though they were the ones going for the sweep.  Then there were the guys who were booing Uribe - and they were Dodgers fans. Booing your own guys at a road game? I don’t care what he did or how much you hate him, you don’t boo your own guys on the road. It makes you look stupid.

Oh, wait.

It was a beautiful, sunny day and there were quite a few tickets sold. It’s so easy at the start of the game to point at empty seats and say, “AH-HA! THE METS DIDN’T SELL TICKETS!” But you can’t do that at Citi Field, because people are still walking around, standing on the field level, in line at Shake Shack or wherever. There are places for people to go and congregate now, unlike Shea, and you can’t take that temperature of how populated the game is until the third inning. The promenade wasn’t sold out in left field (and those are the worst seats in the park during any game, but especially during a day game because they are in the sun for the entire game), but everywhere else, people were in high rows and on the edges. B.J.‘s Clubhouse was packed, those $20 adult/$10 tickets doing the job the Mets need right now.

Jason Bay’s offensive production leaves a lot to be desired. “It’s just not acceptable,” TBF noted, marking up the scorecard. We need that bat right now.  But I am also happy that people like Jason Pridie and Justin Turner and even Ronnie Paulino are not being useless. And I know that Scott Hairston was not useless today, but it will take more than random production or offense for me to be impressed with his presence in the lineup.

There was more disgruntled mumbling about the missing Nick Evans. You can probably guess when that mumbling took place.

Weekends are not good days to watch pitching duels. Too many people getting up and down and walking around, too many kids (and by that I mean, little kids are not going to patiently sit and watch two pitchers going at it, they want to see the Apple and they want to jump up and down and cheer). We picked up this game in exchange for a game that was rained out in 2010 - front row of 520, far enough into the row that we weren’t obstructed. It reminded me of my old Shea vantage point. Some day I will get that back again. I like the view of the field somewhere down the third base line. I like being able to watch the field from that perspective, I love looking into the dugout. I know this is not just because that is how I started watching baseball, years ago when I used to get my friend Steve’s season tickets at the Kingdome, they were in the front row of the top level right behind home plate and I would feel all kinds of confused trying to follow the game from there.

I should feel happier than I do about taking two out of three from the Dodgers, I should be happy when the Mets take two out of three when the third game is against the opposing team’s ace. But for some reason it doesn’t feel like the Mets just took two out of three. The Dodgers aren’t good; a smart Dodgers fan would tell you that (and many of my acquaintence have). I am glad we rejected a trip to Colorado to see this week’s series; I am not optimistic. I am more optimistic about the series in Houston, but I don’t even know any more when I should be optimistic. I am not allowed to specifically state how many games are in a particular streak because I am blamed by several friends for the last streak breaking. So I will just say LET’S GO METS and try to figure out how I will follow baseball in the Mountain time zone this week with everything else going on.