Thursday, September 20, 2007

SMALL FAVORS.

I was in an office supply store in downtown Brooklyn late yesterday afternoon. I don’t know if it’s owned by Orthodox Jews, but the place was full of workers in varying degrees of orthodoxy. I was perusing the file folders aisle when one of them noticed my hat.
“I like your cap,” he said, pointing. He wasn’t Hasidic or he wouldn’t have initiated the conversation, but he was definitely Orthodox.
“Thanks.”
“They’re not doing so well right now, you know.”
“Erfhgdhghghm.”
“A sore subject?”
“Did you see that game last night?”
“I was working overtime and I turned it on around 10pm, thought we were safe.”
“Not so much.”

He then went to help a customer, and passed me a few minutes later as he carried a box to the front counter.
“So, you think we have a chance?”
“B’ezrat ha-shem,” I answered in Hebrew. (With god’s help.) And then, worried that I may have possibly blasphemed in a store full of people who were actually religious, followed it up with: “The churches of Brooklyn used to pray for the Dodgers. Perhaps it’s time for the synagogues of Brooklyn to pray for the Mets.”
I got a big chuckle and a thumbs-up in response.

I don’t know who intervened last night but right now I don’t care much.  I am not ready to do the happy dance quite yet, but at least last night I felt like the team actually meant it. And, at least we were not totally humiliated BY THE NATIONALS.

MEMO TO PAUL LO DUCA: Paul, please take a chill pill. I know that someone needs to actually get upset and Willie won’t be that person, but you cannot keep getting thrown out, or close to thrown out. We know. We see it. It’s why the crowd at Shea chants your name at the least provocation. But we cannot afford to have you suspended any more, nor do you want to keep pissing off the umpires.

And can I just say, I [heart] Luis Castillo? No, seriously. Has this guy been anything less than totally stand-up since he got here?

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO THE NEW YORK METS.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

IF YOU DIDN’T LAUGH, YOU’D CRY. [09-14-07]

Coop via text: “Score, please”
MG: “Fhdjdjfyryreggd.”
Coop: “Do I want to know?”
MG: “F BRETT MYERS . 2-3 PHUCKING PHILLIES”
Coop: “Anyone but him”
MG: “Word”
Coop: “What happened”
MG: “Books never written: ‘In Game Strategy’ by Willie Randolph. ‘How To Use The Suicide Squeeze When Gomez and Reyes Are At The Corners.’ etc.”
Coop: “Story of our lives.”
MG: “Yeees.”

Really, you know, it shouldn’t have ended that way. Starting the game with a home run by D. Wright in the first inning is a great way to inspire confidence and tell the Phillies to take an, um, hike. (What’s that you say? That you saw me in Section 12 giving gestures to Chase Utley that shouldn’t be repeated in a family setting? I don’t know what you’re talking about.) There was that great save by Moishe out in Endy-land. Or Luis Castillo stealing two bases in a gesture that had to have more than a little bit of hearty PHUCK U to Grampa Jamie. Even Lo Duca’s ejection (which was completely uncalled for) wouldn’t have killed us. Or a strike zone so large for Jamie Moyer my response was to yell, “HEY BLUE, IS THAT A CHEESE STEAK STICKING OUT OF YOUR BACK POCKET?”

We could have gotten through all of that. The problem was that David’s run sat alone on the scoreboard for far too long, which is the element that continues to be the Mets’ Achilles heel, and is the thing that WILL ABSOLUTELY MURDER US IN OCTOBER.

It will not be the pitching. It will not be Moises Alou in left field. It will not be Carlos Delgado at first base. It will be squandered opportunity after squandered opportunity, players swinging for the fences when a walk is as good as a hit, players bunting to get a hit instead of a sacrifice, players not taking the bat off their shoulder, and so many ducks left on the pond it will start to feel like one of those carnival games where you pick up a plastic duck-shaped object to see what prize you’ve won.

In this case, the prize was the Phillies beating us at home when they shouldn’t have. Period. End.

And then we got home, and I turned on the TV to see if the Red Sox game was still on, and came in just as Papelbon was up. “Good,” I say, “This will make me feel better.”

I guess it was supposed to be that kind of night.

[Flickr feed, such as it is. Reyes being held back by Rickey. Lo Duca being held back by Willie. Dogs on the warning track.]

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

SKY OF MEMORY AND SHADOW. [9-11-07]-

The game, not so much worth talking about.

Saturday, September 08, 2007

THE HOT DOGS ON THE FIELD LEVEL ARE BETTER. [09-07-07]

If I even began to tell you what kind of two weeks I have had - okay, wait, how about I just tell you. Let me start with walking into work two Mondays ago and being laid off (from a job I barely started and hoped to stay at for years) along with half of my team. I’ve been pounding the virtual and literal pavement and I am lucky that I have a resume that makes me in demand, but it’s more exhausting than actually working. (This will also, I hope, explain the lightness of recent entries.)  Today, I had a 10am interview and then a 2pm interview and then a 3:30 “meet and greet” and I am walking the streets of Midtown in my best suit (which is wool and silk) and heels (not my kind of footwear) and it has been like this all week (and last week too) and I am just WORN OUT.

So when my 2pm finished at 2:45 and my 3:30 cancelled, my first thought was: how quickly can I get home, get changed, and get out to Shea? By the time I got back to Brooklyn, I just wanted a nap, but I knew that I would feel better just being at Shea, even if I only caught 15 minutes of BP. So I changed clothes and reversed course and made it to Shea a little after 5pm. Although I was bitching about the MTA (the reason it took me an hour to get back to Greenpoint from Midtown, and then half an hour from Greenpoint to the 7 again) and wondering if it wouldn’t have been better just to wait for TBF to get home, when I got off the 7 train and walked down the stairs, I realized that just being able to walk around Shea without 60 gazillion people there and have it be somewhat calm and empty already brought my blood pressure down several notches. I walked over to Gate C, around the morons who do not understand the concept of the bag line and the no bag line (e.g., people with no bags go into the bag line and then stand there waiting for their non-existent bags to be searched), up to the field level and down to the row behind the photographer’s pit like I owned the fucking place.

(Which, to some extent, I feel like I do. On some level.)

BILLY JOEL AT SHEA?

This story from Idolator makes me wince, and then before I start to get whatever about it, think about the logistics of getting people and equipment into the stadium for this level of concert, and realize that it’s probably half true: the half true part about it is that Billy Joel wants it to happen. But, I know the editrix and I know she knows 1) her shit and 2) her baseball.

[tip o’ the hat to MG reader krup]

Thursday, September 06, 2007

JOEY VOTTO.

It was all well and good to be charitable to the rookie coming up for his first at-bat on Tuesday, especially when he whiffed all three pitches, especially since we were winning (although that 11-7 still makes me wince). But it didn’t mean much to me until I visited Sister Daedalus at The Church of Baseball (“Reds fan by birth. Nats fan by residence. Baseball fan by the grace of God.”) and saw her post reading, ” I sure hope Votto starts tonight…because he’s the only reason worth watching at this point.”

On Wednesday, I had lunch with TBF, and then headed off to a meeting, and couldn’t keep checking the game updates. When I got out later and checked the boxscore on ESPN, and saw that Joey Votto had hit one of those 7 runs, well, I was glad because 1) the freaking Mets phoned it in and 2) the rookie got a HR and 3) someone I kind of sort of know was going to be happy in that way baseball can make you happy unexpectedly, especially someone who is a fan of a team that has pretty much rolled over and played dead in terms of postseason activity. Call me a traitor if you want.

On the note of being a traitor, here’s an amusing anecdote from last night. I am sitting in the running car standing legally on Bedford Ave., while TBF runs into DuMont Burger to pick up dinner. On the way over, we had been listening to the Mariners at Yankee Stadium, hoping for our friends that the Mariners can pull it off. A car pulls up behind me, doesn’t really park, but no one gets out. Another minute goes by, and then someone gets out of the car and comes up to the driver’s side window.
“I’m waiting for you to pull out.”
“This isn’t a legal spot, and I’m waiting for someone inside.”
“Right, but I want the spot.”
“I’m waiting for someone to pick up dinner, and there’s a hydrant here. You can’t park here anyway.”
“Oh. *pause* You listening to the Yankees game?”
“No, I’m listening to the Mariners game.”
“Oh, sorry. Thought you were listening to the Yankees game.”

There is football on the television now, and the only baseball I could watch is the Cyclones. The nights are cool, the baseball tickets dwindling, and I have no idea what I am going to do when the 2007 season ends.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

“LET’S START THAT RUMOR RIGHT NOW.”

Denis Leary and Jon Stewart discuss Kevin Youkilis, Shawn Green (who’s now “that guy on the Mets”) and David Wright. You have to wait until about the 5th minute in on this 6 minute clip, but it’s worth it. Warning: do not ingest foods or liquids while watching.

[HEY DENIS, STOP TAKING ALL THE PARKING IN MY F’ING NEIGHBORHOOD ONCE A MONTH WHILE YOU FILM ‘RESCUE ME’. KTHX]

Also via Joan Walsh, Salon’s “The 18 best Jewish ballplayers.” Avoid the comments if you don’t want to be reminded how terrible people can be. As the girl who avidly leapt upon Dave Marsh’s list of Top 10 Jewish Rock Stars, the vitriol is—well, racism and anti-semitism will probably always surprise me, and I guess that’s a good thing (that I’m not numb to it at this point, not the existence of racism and anti-semitism).

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

CANDYGRAM.

Hey, Keith. THIS is the shark you were freaking out about for almost the entire broadcast the last two days. Feel better now?

Monday, September 03, 2007

PAPA WAS A ROLLING STONE.

It is with great sorrow that I inform you that I am writing this from my couch in Brooklyn, and not posting via laptop hookup to cellphone somewhere on the way back from Cincinnati. Had TBF mentioned on Friday or even early Saturday that he had an itch to drive to Ohio to watch Pedro’s first start, we would have ditched the family barbeque, gotten some sleep, and started driving late yesterday afternoon. As it was, he didn’t mention it until about 8pm last night, and at that point it was too late, really, and too little baseball in exchange for too much driving in one 24 hour period - not that that would have stopped us had the stars been aligned right.

So instead of getting on the road to Ohio and Skyline Chili and hometown boys the Afghan Whigs played at the ballpark (*at the ballpark!*), we stayed home where I made homemade garlic knots, enjoyed Pedro Being Pedro, and opined what jokes I could make about a pitcher named McBeth (“something is rotten in the state of Ohio” or “oh, that this too, too solid pitch would melt”). And, to put the icing on the cake, the 2007 Mets once again showed up to play, and play well. Despite Gary and Keith and Kevin intoning how, by the time Pedro’s start was announced, airfares were $1000 to Cincinnati and so no one would be there, plenty of blue and orange and “Jose, Jose, Jose” resonated from the stands. (Unlike Red Sox Nation, we travel because we can and because we want to and because we feel like we should be there, not because we have to. Although that said—hey, gang, when we’re up by 7 runs, can we simmer down on the “Let’s Go Mets” chants?)

TBF made a comment last week (which may or may not be his thought) that as long as we don’t try to compare the 2007 Mets to the 2006 Mets, it’s a lot less nerve-wracking. The other problem, of course, is that we’re still playing What’s My Line? with the 2007 Mets. They’re not the scrappy, score-five-runs-in-the-first-inning team from 2006, or even the feisty team from the beginning of this season. Reyes has had a slump. Wright has had a slump. Delgado has been AWOL. Endy went on the DL. The faces and personalities we as fans could key off and that the team could key off were down or missing for a lot of the season. I feel like what I’m seeing now is the personality of the 2007 Mets.. but it’s SEPTEMBER, so all I’m really seeing is the 2007 Mets Who Are Trying To Stay In First Place. (As to who those fellows were that put on Mets uniforms and played at Citizens Bank Park earlier this week, I’m going with the theory that the entire team was captured by aliens or that the Phillies had them kidnapped and held for ransom at an undisclosed location somewhere in South Philadelphia. Hey, it works for me.)

Aside from Tuesday night, I didn’t get to see many games this week, and I’m okay with that. The house was so colossally cranky after the Phillies losses that it was probably a good thing that we didn’t continue to subject ourselves to continually running into a brick wall out of choice. It’s supposed to be fun. And when it’s not, it’s time to step back and maybe do something else for a little bit until it is fun again.