Saturday, August 11, 2007

ROLLERCOASTER OF LOVE. [08-10-07]

I wasn’t going to write about this game. To be honest, I was praying fervently for a rainout all day. I should have taken two days off work after being sick, but I only took one, and then paid for it the rest of the week. Work was relentless, the subways crashed on us on Wednesday, and I’ve felt like the greyest, most washed-out rat in the proverbial race all week. All I wanted to do tonight was come home, put on my sweats, and get in bed with the cat and a good book, even as I made my usual goodbyes to my teams at work about heading out for my baseball therapy. The fucked-up 7 train tonight (not running express, and almost not running, period) meant that although I left work after 6pm, TBF was on the same train that I was. Leaving work at 5 and coming home to get the car still should have put him at Shea well before first pitch, much less both of us standing in the tunnel watching the last out of the Marlins’ at-bat in the first inning.

Yeah. It was That Kind of ending to That Kind of week.

Seeing the Section 12 regulars, most of whom straggled through the rain and the cold to be there, did lift our spirits to a certain extent. (Thank god the arrangement of the going-home-on-Fridays-before-the-game meant that a sweatshirt could be acquired for me, since I left the house this morning believing Mr. G when he said the rain was going to “clear up”. Uh-huh.) Even then, my promise to myself was that I could just sit and watch and enjoy the game, or even just enjoy the experience of being at the game, without having to photograph or document or take notes.

I have to admit that I was using Coop’s nickname for Mr. Beltran in the 5th inning when he stepped to the plate, and surprised us all with that glorious, truly unexpected three-run homer. Even though by that point, the company around me had done its job to plant my feet back on terra firma again; I felt like myself, and even if the Mets were still leaving far too many men on base, baseball was performing its therapeutic wonders. My stomach stopped hurting, my pulse calmed down, the lingering headache faded away. And the spike in adrenaline as that ball sailed into the outfield - is it? oh, man, IT IS - and we all stood up and cheered and high-fived and forgot that we were cold and hungry and there were Yankees fans in our section AGAIN.

There was a two-man cheering section just to our right. I appreciate people who keep the “Let’s Go Mets” chant going, but these guys had a cheer ready for everyone. I could get behind a “Car-los Bel-tran *clapclapclapclapclap*” right about now, but the “ahhh.... LOU! ahhhh....LOU!” didn’t really pick up much steam. The next guy in the lineup got the “shawn… GREEN! shawn....GREEN!” treatment, only for me to suggest that perhaps “ahhhhh...JEW! ahhhhh....JEW!” might be more appropriate.

So the rest of the game continues, and the fact that we’re ahead and how we got there tends to overshadow the fact that, once again, no one is really hitting, and that once again, we are leaving men on base, and these are the Marlins, and we’re supposed to win ALL THREE OF THESE GAMES. We need to win all three of these games. They’re the MARLINS. They suck.

TBF and I were eyeing the Armitron clock, and debating the merits of going to Kitchen Delight for a cheesesteak or something, or whether we wanted to drive into the city for a quick run to Katz’s instead, when Mr. Billy Wagner was on the mound. So perhaps what ultimately happened is our fault, because I am not going to go off on a long, WFAN-inspired revisionist history rant about Billy Wagner blowing this one for us, not the way he’s held up this year.

But we didn’t win, and we should have won, and we needed to win, and this is going to be a game we’re going to look back and say, “Dammit, we should have won that game against the Marlins in August.” Coop said this a couple of weeks ago, that right now, giving up these easy series to teams we should handily be tromping all over is going to cost us later, when we’re up against the Braves and the Phillies in September and instead of having the padded luxury of a few extra games, each and every one of them is going to count.

This was my cranky rant as we clomped down the ramps and onto the 7 train, where we got into a cranky tirade against a guy wearing Yankees colors (IT MAKES NO SENSE. IT MAKES NO SENSE.) and then came home and ate local instead of going to get the sandwich we really wanted because we were cranky and wanted to get home, where we sat on the couch cranky for more minutes than we should have, before the cat came over and made us realize we were acting like a pair of 3-year olds.

IT’S THE MARLINS!

So at the bottom of the rollercoaster, the guy running the thing (who suspiciously looks like a serial killer, or maybe it’s just Jamie Carroll) pulls the lever back and asks us if we want to go one more time for half price. And we say “yes,” eagerly, not so much forgetting what it was like the first time, but because we’re willing to believe that it’ll be different this next time through.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!