Friday, July 30, 2010

MY WAVE. [7-30-10]

Mets v Dbacks
7-30-10

It wasn’t until I arrived at Citi Field, wearing my WE LIKE IKE shirt (it was on the top of the pile) that I realized that Mike Pelfrey was pitching tonight. That shirt was still at the laundry from the trip, so even if I’d wanted to wear it, it wasn’t an option.

But I wouldn’t have worn it even if it was.

I feel as though I have given up on Mike Pelfrey in some ways; I bought the shirt, I have a pin, I considered a jersey. It was so exciting there for a while, wasn’t it, when we thought that Pelf was going to be one of our aces? That between Santana and Pelfrey, that was going to be a mighty one-two punch in the rotation?  Instead, both have become nail-biting odysseys in their own very different, very sad, very maddening ways. Pelf is the worst, I think, because Johan executed on his promise already, while we were waiting for Pelfrey to come into his own.

None of the agonizing frustration over our pitching is made easier when there are critical fielding errors. I have rarely heard Citi Field groan in such agony en masse.

So the Dbacks got three on us, and then we got three back on the Dbacks. David Wright stepped to the plate; he took a pitch or two.
“DO SOMETHING,” said one of the women who sit in front of us (whom we do not like, and the feeling is mutual; they do the wave, and frown on us for not participating and for yelling DON’T DO THE WAVE, IDIOTS, THERE’S A BASEBALL GAME ON).
“He is doing something,” TBF muttered under his breath. “It’s called ‘taking a pitch.’”
But then David swung, and he made contact, and that ball flew out, out, out, out, out past the apple, out into the batter’s eye, almost to the hollow of the TV cameras.

As we are cheering and the runners are coming in, we see a fan fly out onto the black batter’s eye in pursuit of the ball. At first I thought there were multiple fans, but then I realized it was Citi Field security.

They do that in Arlington; the batter’s eye is a grassy hill and the first time fans from the bleachers on either side sprung into action in pursuit of a ball hit out there, I remember feeling visceral shock, because I know what happened at Yankee Stadium during the Home Run Derby when someone went chasing after a stray ball. I had to admire his spirit.

Now the game was tied. We could sit back, we could relax, put our feet up. Pelfrey could soldier on, we could break the tie in an inning or two.

Wrong.

I could bitch about the strike zone; I could bitch about more fielding errors or gaffes (I was asking for a good equivalent to the TOOTBLAN for fielders; both GOALASM (Giving Outs Away Like A Stupid Moron) or GOALAFI (Giving Outs Away Like A F*cking Idiot) were considered, and may be put into future usage.

Okay, what would you do if you were sitting there tonight? I was bookended by two families with children (suddenly, our row is full every time we show up) and have people behind us that boo EVERYTHING and people in front of us that glare angrily that we don’t put our HANDS UP or jump up and down during the t-shirt toss (no shirts are coming into row 14 of the upper deck without someone from the Pepsi Party Patrol walking up to row 14 and handing it to someone personally) or dance during the dance-cam. We actually only frown at people doing the stupid wave, because it blocks our view of what’s going on on the field.

But nothing was as bad as the idiocy the Mets marketing department launched on us tonight. It was t-shirt night, and the shirts were actually not bad at all. All of this was fine, until this appeared on the scoreboard:

I’ll be honest - at first I had no idea what that meant. But apparently everyone else did, as they picked up their tshirts and started twirling them around their heads.

While there was a Mets batter up.

And before you point out the batter’s eye, I’d say fine, except for the fact that they didn’t do it when the Dbacks were at bat, because the Dbacks would have likely, and quite rightly, complained. Do we not already have enough trouble hitting the ball? Is there some reason we want to make it harder, by waving white things above our head all over the ballpark while our guys are trying to hit white things? Seriously? What did this do, except be incredibly annoying, and unbelievably distracting? And it didn’t happen once, it happened over, and over, and over again. Was it supposed to be encouraging to the Mets? Did someone imagine that fans standing and twirling a tshirt above their head because Citi Vision told them to implied some kind of special support for the team? “THIS ISN’T MINNESOTA,” a wise gentleman somewhere in the section said at one point. If I knew who it was, I would have just pointed out that that reference was just going to go over the head of anyone standing and waving a tshirt around their head like a deranged cowboy in a baseball game in which their team was losing, badly.

TBF related the story of a game at Shea in 2005 that was tshirt night, and it went into extra innings, and people got excited and of their own volition started waving the tshirts around their head. Which would have been fine, except nothing could have been further from that situation here. This was dumb; it was bush league; it didn’t make the fans feel included or do anything for the fans or the sponsor. It did, however, do a lot to make a bad game even worse.

If all of this wasn’t bad enough, this happened:

I normally refuse to show photographs of people running on the field, but I will make an exception for political protest over dumb chick who runs out to grab Jose Reyes. (That woman tried to friend me on MySpace over, and over, and over again. Her profile picture was the press photo of her being escorted off the field by security.) Secretly, I hoped it rattled the Dbacks, or did something to mess with someone’s head because of the pause in the game and yet more security running after people doing something questionable. I don’t think anyone should ever run on the field, but if you’re willing to go to jail to make a political point it seems more worth of mention than an idiot running onto the field just to be an idiot.

We gave up some more runs, right after Jerry took Pelfrey out. The scoreboards flashed PELF and astonishingly, people stood up and applauded. These people were booing Pelfrey and everyone else on the field earlier.  But that was nothing compared to the booing when Raul Valdes promptly gave up some more runs. Things were still possible up until that point, but when it went 9-5, it was going to be one helluva lot harder. The wind went out of everyone’s already fading sails. Families started to gather up their stuff, tourists started posting at the edge of the railing to take their photos, ansy kids started asking “WHAT’S THE SCORE?” every five minutes as though it had suddenly changed.

Just when we thought the agony was about to end, Aaron Heilman came into the game.

I like Heilman; I do not hold the same vitriol towards Aaron Heilman that many do. I was not going to stand up and applaud him like TBF was (although I appreciated and respected that line of thinking), I was just tired, and had no hope that there was going to be any kind of comeback.

There wasn’t, of course, and on the way out, we had to listen to Ed Coleman talking to Heilman on the field and how Aaron Heilman got the save. I suppose there is a cosmic justice there, it is just not in our favor.

P.S. Apparently you at home had the added agony of the Kid’s Broadcaster contest calling the game. Ellie over at Mr. Met Is My Brother offers the teenage perspective on the outing.