Friday, May 05, 2006

May 5, 2006: Mets vs. Braves

The Braves. Again. After last weekend’s trip to our personal chamber of horrors - WHERE WE TOOK THE SERIES!! - to face them at home. 

I don’t have SNY at home - we are waiting for TBF to come home for good before we make that investment - but I can finally listen to a baseball game on the radio, and that combined with Gameday on the Mets web site is enough for me to follow. I find that, unsurprisingly, that I prefer listening to the game to watching it on TV, my imagination can put the tiny players on the field and make them move around like I’m playing Risk—or something like that.

But this game! Me understanding vividly why they refer to Trachsel as “the human rain delay.” Reyes/Delgado/FLOYD, “that tall glass of chocolate milk,” as per my seatmates.  I love watching Billy Wagner walk in, extended ridiculous theatrics and all. It’s perfect. Even the fact that you have seen it before doesn’t change it, it makes it better, like knowing that Bruce Springsteen is going to jump on the piano at some point during “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”.

Somewhere around the 10th inning we got restless. People behind me are switching seats. “What are you *doing*,” one friend asks the other. “You’re gonna ruin our mojo.” He moves back.  We are all bemoaning the fact that beer sales were discontinued three innings earlier. By the 12th inning, we start surmising that if we, in fact, begin what looks like AN ENTIRE OTHER GAME, perhaps the beer regulation should be revoked.  TBF sends a text informing me that he believes there will be another 7th inning stretch in inning 14… which there is.

And shortly after which Mr. Wright brought it all home for us, 14 innings, I drift off to the 7 train on the phone to the baseball-fanatic-friends out West: “I just got out of my first extra-innings game.” I come back home to Brooklyn dazed and smiling and utterly unable to fall asleep, like a 10-year-old kid.