Tuesday, July 25, 2006

“no. the OTHER carlos.”

I swear that the guys at Joe’s Busy Corner—whose food is usually incredibly delicious—deliberately make us crappy sandwiches if we walk in wearing Mets gear.  I was sitting there tonight, eating a seriously less than enjoyable sandwich (the North 8th and Driggs: mozzarella, prosciutto, sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil), and not wanting to mention it, since TBF did especially go out of his way to get us these sandwiches. Finally, a grimace from me caught his attention.
“Does your sandwich suck?”
“It was so sweet and considerate of you to go to Joe’s for the sandwiches,” I say.
“I didn’t make the sandwich.”
“Okay. Yeah, it sucks.”

I was going to pull a TBF and talk about everything under the sun except the game - his usual modus operandi when we lose, and lose badly - but that stopped me from posting last night (did ANYONE watch the whole thing last night? I mean, besides TBF? Most of the Tues-Fri regulars in our section were all grumping how they just couldn’t f’in watch the damn thing), AND the game beforethat. And the whole point of this is to chronicle the experience, and sometimes the experience is about WATCHING THE GODDAMN METS LOSE…

...three times in a row.

To the CUBS.

*expletive*

Glavine, in a very non-Glavine-like way, let the Cubs drain his mojo with those two homeruns in the first inning. I mean, who could blame him - but this is TOM GLAVINE. Not some kid just up from the minors. This is the guy who uses Guns N’ Roses as his theme song (although I suspect that it has to do with the title and his kids than it does for any nostalgic love for Axl Rose & Co.). This is “The Professional”.

It was a happy, chatty evening, a light wind blowing, not too warm, not too cold. But it didn’t take long for that mood to deflate like a child’s red balloon on a Saturday afternoon at the zoo.  It wasn’t that we didn’t want to cheer, we just couldn’t rouse ourselves when we saw the Mets - our Mets - yet again not quite bringing the bats. There was defense, I couldn’t really get angry at much there, but our days of leading early and often seem to be gone, and I don’t understand who thought that was a good idea, or where that went.

The only ray of sunshine for me tonight was #10, Endy Chavez, whose Ariel-like, near balletic acrobatics in right field never cease to raise my spirits.  God, I want to love Xavier, really I do, but I always feel better when Endy is out there.

I am reasonably certain that Mr. Willie Randolph on right now in the manager’s press conference, talking about how glad he was that we came from behind and we started to come back, but I’m going to say BULL PUCKY. Sure we did, but where was it the rest of the game?

That last inning, standing there, rally cap in place, the sisters next to me not wanting to look - me thinking, I CAN’T look, but then realizing that I have no choice but to watch every second of it, that this is part and parcel off all of it, the good and the bad, that I can skulk into the other room at home but if I’m going to trek out to Shea then I am going to watch every last second - and then the rollercoaster of hope, me optimistically thinking maybe we’ll get extra innings and forget work tomorrow or how tired I am right now, I can see my first extra innings game with TBF - and then - LoDuca! It’s LoDuca!

It was LoDuca.  And after his reaction when he was tagged out at first earlier in the game, I wouldn’t want to be near him in the clubhouse after that last at-bat.

As we were walking in silence back to the car, cutting through the parking lots and over the muddy fields, I took a deep breath and realized that the smell was no longer of summer, but of late summer, of the end of 2006, not the beginning.  It’s more than half over now, and now we are 11 1/2 games ahead ofthe Braves (down from 12. down from 12 1/2. down from...), and I wonder if we are both letting it slip away too fast.

Or maybe I am being ridiculously maudlin.

Probably, since earlier the Mets Grrl household bought a Sunday plan for the rest of the year - or rather TBF did, since the Tuesday-Friday is already in my name. Do I have to tell you why?

WOO!

Ah, the rollercoaster.