Tuesday, July 28, 2009

RUNNING UP THAT HILL. [7-28-09]

Mets v Rockies
July 28, 2009

If it was any other team, it wouldn’t have been a remarkable game.

Yes, we won, and yes, there were some stellar defensive plays. Yes, Daniel Murphy stepped up and showed us what he is capable of. Yes, the team actually clicked, actually worked together well. No, there were no head-in-hands, utterly deflating errors that would cause the team to be the laughing stock of the major leagues for another few weeks. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was miles better than much of what I had witnessed in person recently.

We forget that that is supposed to happen every night. We forget that that is what 2009 was supposed to be, before the decline and fall of the Wilpon empire.

It is completely rare for us to have gone this long without seeing live baseball. But there was one homestand we did not have tickets for as part of our plan, and the All-Star break, and before you know it three weeks has flown by. I will be honest and tell you that I was not looking forward to this homestand. By all rights, the Mets would have performed well on the road and then come home and entered the bizarro world again, where fundamentals are seemingly sucked out of the Mets’ brains by invisible aliens hovering over the infield.

Don’t tell me you weren’t expecting the same thing. I didn’t say “wanting”. I said “expecting”. Big difference.

The way I decided I was going to handle 2009, once the carnival of errors got underway, was to expect nothing, and be pleasantly surprised whenever I got anything. I was not going to go through the heartbreak of the past three years one more time. I was going to show up, I was going to support my team, but I was not going to get into the land of myopic optimism. This is what worked for me. This is what stopped me from getting really cranky and hating the Mets and not wanting to go to games. You forget, there are two of us in this house, and I will be honest when I say that TBF is utterly unbearable after a Mets loss. He will admit that freely. I can manage that, but put the two of us together in similar moods and it’s pretty ugly. We don’t fight mean and we don’t fight angry but jeez louise, the two of us cranky and inconsolable is not fun.

I had a big grin on my face all night, and I can’t remember the last time that happened at Citi Field. The weather was just perfect, not too hot, not too cold. The promised rain did not show up in Flushing. Citi Field was unfortunately more empty than it should be for a team on a “winning streak” - when I came down the stairs from the 7 there were at least a dozen guys standing there with tickets, trying to get rid of them. (So if you want to check out the next couple of games, you should just come on out. It’s a buyer’s market right now.) More telling, TBF got there a little after 6pm and was texting me from the Blue Smoke line, asking me where I was and did I want him to get me anything. The only line was at Shake Shack and it was moving. I got tacos at 6:20 and we were upstairs in the plaza above the rotunda, eating our food with Mike Steffanos from Mike’s Mets and Greg Prince from Faith and Fear, who had sauntered up there from the Left Field Landing and we were lucky enough to run into.

The guys behind us hate Mike Pelfrey. Our section is filled with veterans of the Tuesday/Friday plan at Shea, so they are also veterans of the season of the endless Steve Trachsel start in 2006. Anyway, the guy behind us feels the need to state that Pelfrey is a poor man’s Steve Trachsel (or an unremarkable Steve Trachsel, or some variation thereof), at least 3-4 times during each Pelfrey start. While I think they’re just cranky curmudgeons who like to hear themselves talk (because whenever TBF offers a correction they look as though they’ve seen a ghost), tonight there were moments that I could see it. When Pelfrey loses his focus and steps off the rubber and starts fidgeting, I can see that sad puppy dog face, at least a little bit - and I don’t like it. Mike’s biggest enemy is his own mind, and that’s one he can conquer if he just figures out how to keep focus. He still deserved the ovation he received when he came out of the game. I was happy to see Delgado there welcoming him back (and had I know Delgado and Jose were going to be there for BP, I would have been there. Dammit.)

The other drama tonight, of course, was the Mark Buehrle situation. Yes, I Twitter during the game. So when I started to get the general theme, I turned to TBF and said, “Johnny Vandermeer. Which record was it that he broke?”
“Pitched two consecutive no-hitters.”
“Well, Mark Buehrle seems to be at it again.”
This was the time that I cursed our out of town scoreboard. I have excellent distance vision, but I have to focus for at least 20 seconds before I can see the damn thing, and then figure out what’s going on. Luckily, there is MLB AtBat, and you can make fun of iPhones as much as you want and tell me how stupid and pointless they are until the cows come home, but you cannot be a serious baseball fan and not think that that application is not the greatest thing since sliced bread.
TBF would read the out-of-town scoreboard and tell me when to turn on AtBat.
“Should we fire up the audio?” he asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “Too much going on here. 7th inning.”
And then, of course, it ended, but not before Buehrle would break a record anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Twins, and generally root for the Twins, but at that moment, I was rooting for baseball.

The biggest thing about tonight’s game wasn’t just that the Mets won - they’ve done that even when they’ve played like crap. It was that they won because they got their collective acts together and played well. They earned this win.

However, talk to me again on Friday, when we are back again (just like old times).

Tomorrow I am off to Baltimore to meet up with Twins blogger Jen from Lipgloss & Baseball, who is in the area on vacation and seeing as much baseball as she can. We are going to watch Zack Greinke pitch and eat some barbeque.

photoset from tonight’s game

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I am not going to comment on the Minaya/Rubin situation. I’ve talked about it to death on Twitter and also have no qualms in admitting that I am absolutely not qualified to comment or judge. I am not a beat writer; I am not credentialed; I have no sources. The best I could offer is an opinion based on nothing more than common sense, and well, you’ve all got your own.