Monday, March 31, 2008

GAME 1 OF 162. [3-31-08]

Well, the quarantine succeeded, even with the MetsBlog party being literally down the street from my office. I overheard someone in the office informing someone in from the Omaha office that today was Opening Day, and promptly announced that I was in quarantine and that anyone who thought they might be talking game specifics would… well, let’s not get into specifics, but I obviously made my point. I brought headphones today but I cannot wear headphones and do my job effectively, but I changed my Google homepage from iGoogle to Classic, closed the RSS feed, and deleted every comment notification that came into my email. Opening day cupcakes in hand (what, you don’t have opening day cupcakes?), I arrived home around 7:30 to a lovely dinner and settled in to watch the first game of the year.

We can talk about how great Johan was, we can talk about David being David, we can talk about Jose hitting that nice one right down into the outfield and not out into the bleachers, we can talk about Marlon Anderson being The Best Pinch Hitter In The World and how Ryan Church may allow me to stop holding my breath every time a ball gets hit into right field… it’s still one game out of 162 and tomorrow is another day and all that.

To me, the sign of the season was during the team intros, the look on David Wright’s face as he stepped onto the field for the first time, fierce and proud and determined all at once, wrapped up in that glad-to-be-here Virginia farmboy smile. That said it all, and gives me confidence that he’s going to be setting some kind of tone, or doing his best to anyways.

And while hell yeah it was nice to win, more importantly, it was BASEBALL. The Mets. Again. Watching with TBF, him keeping score, me taking notes, the cat running interference. Tomorrow there will be more, and next week, we’ll be back at Shea for the last season.

Man, it’s been one long goddamn winter.