Saturday, July 07, 2007

ALMOST SATURDAY NIGHT.

[Bear with me. The Mets do actually appear in this post. Towards the end.]

It is too early to be posting on a Saturday, but TBF and I are shortly off to the netherlands of New Jersey to provide babysitting services to my niece and nephew for the day. This is our opportunity to try to bring my nephew away from the Dark Side; no, he’s not a fan of that team in the Bronx, it’s worse than that.

He’s not a fan of any team.

My sister’s husband comes from Boston. He has been part of our family for a very, very long time. In all of that time, I never heard him voice any sports affiliation, much less a baseball affiliation. However, once I started dating TBF, the household was suddenly an avid Red Sox household. When we purchased the young man a left-handed glove and a practice ball for a birthday last year, my sister and brother-in-law almost had apoplexy before the gift was open, because from the wrappings (it was in the bag we bought it in - he’s FOUR), they were sure we had gone against their explicit wishes and bought him Mets gear.  (While I’d love to see my nephew in a tiny little David Wright jersey, I’m not the kind of a**hole that does the opposite of what a parent of a child that is not my own asks me to not do.)

All of this makes TBF cranky, because he’s convinced my nephew will grow up without any strong team affiliation, and then he’ll be that guy who has no one to really root for. He wouldn’t even care if it was the Red Sox, as long as it was A baseball team.

Over Memorial Day at the family picnic, we learned that this halfhearted attempt to join Red Sox Nation (TBF will flip at that one, he hates it) was not working, mostly because all of my nephew’s friends either like the Yankees or the Mets.

We see this as our big opening.

If nothing else, there will be a southpaw clinic on the front lawn again, as the nephew is a lefty, just like TBF. I gotta wake him up to make sure he doesn’t forget his glove.

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Now, onto the Mets. I didn’t write anything about Thursday’s game because, well, we all wrote the same thing: Yay, they won. I am not even sure that our collective enthusiasm lasted past Willie’s post-game press conference, because at this point we’re all so damn skittish about these 2007 Mets. I admit that I started the game skeptical in the extreme, until I realized that John Maine seems to be immune from whatever malaise is affecting the rest of the Mets, and that we might actually KEEP our early lead this time.

I don’t know what it is about John Maine that doesn’t attract the rest of the baseball world’s attention. Maybe it’s because he’s just a white boy from Virginia (although that works well for someone else on the team). He’s not overly cute, but it’s not like he’s Ricky Ledee, either. He’s not controversial. He is always composed and well-spoken when he faces the media, and doesn’t overly garnish his conversation with soundbytes (unlike our other Virginian). He’s always struck me as intelligent, measured, thoughtful - much like his pitching.

There should be more John Maine shirts at Shea. The Mets should be making it easy for people to acquire John Maine merchandise. It is beyond ridiculous that the only way you can get anything with #33 on it is to custom-order it.

I passed up attending a viewing of Friday night’s game with my homegirls, Coop and Zoe, in favor of a night on the couch with the cat. TBF was going to the House of Evil (work event), so I had the place to myself. And I was looking forward to enjoying watching a game, relaxing a little bit, without the edge of tension that results in our house when the Mets play like crap (I get cranky, TBF paces between the TV and his computer, the cat has to dodge both of us and hates it).

And even though we weren’t scoring, and Pelfrey was like a bad funhouse ride, I still didn’t get upset at the way the Mets were playing until the very end. As Keith kept pointing out, several of our hits would’ve been home runs elsewhere, and several of theirs wouldn’t have been home runs anywhere else. (F the Crawford boxes). I didn’t get angry until the end, when I realized that, no, the Mets actually aren’t going to score one bleeping run tonight.

Maybe Willie felt that way too, with benching Jose. But as the peanut gallery echoed on WFAN last night, if he’s going to bench Jose, then bench Julio Franco (as if), bench Delgado, bench anyone who isn’t giving 100% out there. Because I don’t think Jose Reyes is the problem here, and I could actually forgive him for getting fed up for a split second in one game (although I realize that, well, he’s a professional and he’s not supposed to get fed up, ever, right? That’s what you’ll all come in here and tell me).

I was optimistic with the head shaving because I thought that maybe solidarity was what we were missing. And then Lo Duca’s bad night and subsequent media debacle galvanized them further. It just feels as though there is no force drawing the team together, and they’re all out there trying to fight individually to make the team win, instead of, well, being a TEAM.

I believe we can still win the division, but not out of superior performance or the kind of Mets baseball this team is known for playing. We’ll win it because the other teams suck worse. Maybe that kind of win can solace you. It’ll bug me. And I believe it will bug the 2007 Mets, at least just a little bit.

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DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN PLEASE GET RID OF THOSE MC DONALD’S COMMERCIALS, I CANNOT REACH THE REMOTE TO HIT MUTE FAST ENOUGH.