Well Thank God That's Over

Somewhere along the way, my hopefulness turned to sadness,
Somewhere along the way, my sadness turned to bitterness,
Somewhere along the way, my bitterness turned to anger,
Somewhere along the way, my anger turned to vengeance.

-Julian Casablancas, "Out of the Blue"

Starting a blog post with a song lyric (starting anything but a song with lyrics) is fucking lame. Having established that, this bummer of a baseball season is perfectly summed up in the first four lines of that song, so I guess I'll just have to live with myself.

I've been a Met fan my whole life, and I'll say I have twenty years of conscious memory about my team. I can say without a shadow of a doubt, no season was nearly as painful as the one that just ended in probably the worst fashion I could have imagined short of Johan Santana being fed into a wood chipper in some kind of kidnapping scheme gone awry.

Yankees/Phillies. It seemed more and more inevitable as the season went on, especially once the Giants and their playoff perfect rotation fell out of the race in the middle of September. Then the Rockies, Twins, Dodgers and Angels proved completely inconsequential competition and I had a doomsday scenario on my hands. For awhile I told myself I could ignore the World Series, except that, oh, I live in fucking New York City, so yeah, good luck with that. Then I earnestly hoped for something like a meteor or another great flood to prevent a champion from ever being crowned. As a back up plan, I swallowed my pride, decided a Phillies win was better than living in the middle of a two week Yankee victory buzz and followed along with my hands over my eyes as the doomsday scenario to end all doomsday scenarios slowly unfolded.

I watched tonight on my lunch break, reasoning that I'd hear about the game from people at my job even if I completely skipped it. It was a mistake though, because the game went from being a distraction to being a burden. It should never be a burden, sports, even when they totally suck. Still, the utter hopelessness of the situation dredged up a bunch of other shit and made the rest of my time at work a living Hell.

People had worse days than me today I know. My friend got her bike stolen and her car blew up, and some people don't have cars or homes or blogs. Even with that serenity prayer kind of philosophizing, I felt plenty bad as I walked through the (fortunately) quiet streets of Bushwick carrying an actual burden in my flat tire having bike, I told myself that no one felt worse than me. The Yankees won spectacularly, the Mets flamed out early and never stopped embarrassing themselves. Whatever joy I had gotten out of baseball was pretty far gone and I was still in thrall to it like some kind of worthless junkie,

When I wake up in the morning I'll feel a little better. I've got a day off and I can avoid collectible Daily News covers and twenty pages of special coverage stuffed in the middle of the Post. I'll get my bike fixed, do my laundry, get clean. Then I'll see if the Rangers are playing, because it's hockey season.

As for the possibility of congratulations:

I'm a bitter person and can't stand losing. Sports, politics, job hunts, love, writing projects; I don't handle these things very well when they go badly. I don't think I pretend to though and therefore, I'm not going to do the right thing, the mature thing and congratulate the Yankees and their fans. They can rot, as can the Phillies and their fans. The great part about not actually playing the game is that you don't need to be a good sport about it.

Answers Like They Oughta Be

Matt Cerrone posted a tweet from some fan asking why the Mets didn't trade for Aubrey Huff. No, not in 2006, like, now, as in 2009 in August. Matt runs a family friendly blog and also seems like a level headed guy, so obviously he didn't respond the appropriate way. Instead, he was very diplomatic, pointing out that it's not June and the Mets are very much out of it. Still, I think jma201 deserves an honest answer and I'm very much prepared to give it to him.

Are you fucking brain damaged buddy? Have you looked at a little thing called the standings? Because if you had, I'm sure you would realize that the Mets currently sit eight games under .500, and it's August. Fucking August! In what possible world would giving away a minor league player, any minor league player, for Aubrey Huff make sense when your team is obviously dead in the water? I mean, if the player you trade ends up becoming even David goddamn Eckstein, YOU FUCKING LOSE! You've traded league average production for a quarter season's worth of utter crap. And for what? Obviously you live in some kind of fantasy world, but if Aubrey Huff on the Mets is your fantasy, your parameters for this endless world of imagination are completely fucked up. You need to get out more, you really do.

Why wouldn't the Mets trade for Aubrey Huff? Maybe because since June 1st, Aubrey Huff has put up the following Ruthian Aaron XXIV line: .242/.307/.347. Well good fucking God, who could possibly look at numbers like that and not be blown away...by how brain meltingly dumb you are for suggesting the Mets import that. For comparison, Daniel Murphy's numbers in the same time period: .249/.303/.357. Yes, that's right, Daniel Murphy, widely considered an enormous disappointment has been outclassing ten year veteran Aubrey Huff at the plate. But no, you're right, it makes perfect sense to bring him on board and displace Murphy so that we can watch our "left handed power bat" be outslugged by Luis motherfucking Castillo.

Honestly, it's going to be a certified fucking miracle if Aubrey Huff manages to hit 20 home runs this year. And this, this is the answer to you? What else do you have on the MENSA agenda after fixing the Mets' offensive woes with this trade? Solving global hunger through a "Food Is Good" campaign? With some posters and large rallies and imporant celebrity PSAs? Because you're so smart? Aubrey Huff was never the answer in 2009 and the idea that anyone thinks he was should just go play in traffic on the Van Wyck for all the good you're doing as rational human beings.

Aaaaaaaaaand I'm Spent

Somewhere across the country (OK, San Diego) the Mets are getting killed by some team (OK, the Padres). Daniel Murphy just hit into a rally killing double play with two men on and nobody out, making the score 7-3 Padres. I'm too lazy to look up the last time the Padres, the worst team in baseball not named the Nationals scored seven whole runs this season, but I'll just assume it's never because their offensive strategy consists of "clone Adrian Gonzalez when the technology becomes available".

Who's the ace keeping the Mets' powerhouse Little League offense under wraps? Why none other than future Hall of Famer Jake Peavy Clayton Richards! This is the life of the Met fan this year, a guy with 23 career starts walks four in 5.2 innings and the Mets can only manage three runs and you're left hoping that Angel Berroa can keep an inning going. Spoiler Alert: He pops up.

That the season is done isn't even a question at this point, considering the Diamondbacks are closer to catching the Mets in whatever race they're in than the Mets are to catching the Wild Card leaders. Everything the team had moved towards in that five game winning streak came apart at the seams, and it's tough to know what was worse: dropping three of four to the DBacks or splitting a pair with the Cardinals but somehow losing three more players to injury. The former is disheartening because the DBacks were talked up (down?) as a terrible team the Mets could steamroll and get over .500, the latter because when you lose someone to the dugout steps you realize that the baseball gods have turned their backs on this team a long, long time ago.

So as I listen to Tim Redding struggle and go 3-1 on Tony Gwynn (Jr.) [UPDATE: Walked him with the bases loaded. What do you want for nothing? Rubber biscuit?] I can really only think of next year. That the Mets can't in good conscience bring Jose Reyes back this year or push Johan Santana, or even David Wright. As for Carlos Beltran, if he comes back in September, despite the looming spectre of microfracture surgery, there'll just be nothing to say about the competence of the Mets' front office. Carlos Beltran needs to start getting healthy for next year, competitive pride be damned, there's absolutely nothing he can do for the team this year except help them finish 82-80. There isn't a Met fan on the planet who would care about that, especially if he ends up sitting out all of 2010.

As the Mets face their looming mortality in this game, with four outs left, and their season, with 55 games left, it's hard to pay attention, much less care, but despite one eye on 2010, I'll keep on with them. Baseball, like summer, is more fleeting than its long season would promise and you always miss it after Game 162 no matter how bad a season is, like you miss those sweltering days in August when compared to a bitter cold February morning.

Just Use The Time Machine

Can we go back to Thursday at around 4:00 PM? Because things were looking pretty effing good for the Mighty Metropolitans that afternoon and I was feeling pretty good as a result. I woke up at noon on my day off and took advantage of the lazy opportunity and turned on the radio to bask in Johan Santana's glory. And what glory it was. No hits until two outs were left in the third inning, only one walk, eight strikeouts, seven innings of a pitching clinic. Not even the concerned tones of Howie Rose and Wayne Hagin discussing the velocity of Johan's first two fastballs could dim my mood. After all, I was laying in bed listening to baseball. Does it get any better than that?

By the time it was all over, the Mets had dinked and dunked their way to a 7-0 win, a win that included a totally unexpected Angel Berroa double. Seriously, I was listening, it happened, it wasn't just a dream. Wayne Hagin even proved useful, relaying the story of Jeff Francoeur's scouting report on Jason Hammell sometime in the second or third inning. Maybe the fourth? Get off my case. At that point, I started wondering if Frenchy would end up more useful than anyone ever imagined, even if he never fucking walks.

So I got out to enjoy the weather. I rode my bike to Williamsburg, to Two Bridges, onto the Brooklyn Bridge, sat on a bench on the Brooklyn Bridge and watched dusk fall over Manhattan. I thought of a lot of things, and one of those things was the possibility of the Mets sweeping the Rockies and then plowing over the Diamondbacks this weekend. It wasn't just the nice day getting to me or the exhaustion from riding all the way from Bushwick to Manhattan and over two mile-long bridges, the team was playing crisp baseball and maybe was (finally) finding its identity.

Then I went to a bar during the sixth inning of the second game and proceeded to argue with some moron who insisted that Luis Castillo was totally worth the money and Orlando Hudson was garbage and would never acclimate to New York if the Mets signed him. And that he was happy with the team as it was now constructed because "it's a bunch of kids." He also insisted that Jerry Manuel have Jonathon Niese finish the seventh inning so that he would "earn it." Nevermind this was after Niese had given up a double to the pitcher, a lucky out to the lead off man on a fantastic catch by Fernando Tatis, a home run to Clint Barmes and a hard hit single to Todd Helton, so there was no wi to earn. This guy couldn't even verbalize what Niese would "earn" if he kept getting knocked around but still finished the eighth. I let it go, watched the Mets lose and shrugged it off, knowing that they can't win every game and that the Rockies weren't some cream puff team. Hell, the Mets had even mounted a threat in every inning, which was way better than the laying down and dying they had been excelling at earlier this year. Then I watched the Yankees lose with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and felt a little better.

Tonight I got score updates from a friend at work and left when it was 2-2 late in the game. I went to see True Romance at the Sunshine and kept baseball off my mind. Apparently Sean Green was busy doing the same thing. Maybe he was thinking of Patricia Arquette circa 1993, which I will give him, is quite distracting. That's the only way I can explain how a guy who was clawing his way back into the hearts of the New York Met fan managed to botch a game they really needed against a terrible opponent. A wild pitch of all things. The Mets already lost a game becuase of balks earlier this year, so I guess it only stands to reason that they would lose a game on a wild pitch as well. And of course that it would be Sean Green throwing said wild pitch. The poor guy just seems destined to have the Schoeneweis/Heilman role this year as the reliever who gets saddled with terrible things happening to him. Not like he didn't earn it early this year with his godawful pitching though.

If the Mets are going to go 91-71 and be a viable wild card team, they have 18 more losses to dole out over August and September. I say this just to show how bleak things really are. It would have been nice to win tonight and have 19 losses to fall back on for the rest of the year, but nothing this year has been easy. And if by the end of this week the Mets have only 15 losses to lean on, the only easy thing to do will be to tune them out and wait for basketball.

Circus Tricks

I haven't watched a Mets game in some time, nor have I even caught a glimpse of one in close to a month. This is what happens when your team bottoms out and runs a minor league line up out every fucking night. But check this reversal of fortune. Last time I saw a glimpse of a game, I stopped outside of a bar in Williamsburg to look in and get a score. Instead, I saw the Dodgers stepping out of the dugout and congratulating each other before the SNY graphic with the score popped up. Dodgers 11, Mets 2. Fucking yikes. Tonight, as I rode down Atlantic Avenue after work, I looked into the local watering hole to see the Mets congratulating each other on the infield. "Son of a bitch," I muttered to myself as I rode, "they won again."

Of course, that doesn't change the fact that the circus is still in town. But fuck it, as long as the circus is still here, why not go all out and add some death defying feats? THRILL to Mike Pelfrey putting 10 MEN on base in 6.1 innings and still somehow giving up NO RUNS! COVER YOUR EYES as he loads the bases in TWO different innings! STARE IN AMAZEMENT as Jeff Francoeur sees SEVEN pitches in three at bats and still somehow manages a base knock and an RBI! ASKK YOURSELF SERIOUSLY if a team with playoff aspirations should go TWO MONTHS before winning four straight games again! WONDER ALOUD how Sean Green pitches a scoreless inning!

OK, so maybe that last one is a cheap shot what with Bad For The Irish's turnaround since his April troubles, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let that go so fast. If it takes Luis Castillo having the third highest OBP among all the second basemen in baseball to get Met fans to accept him, Sean Green's going to have to cease giving up runs from here until the end of the season, whenever that is. WHOOPS still don't believe there'll be a game 163! The Mets still owe me a game and half in the standings before I start doing desperate things like going and getting drunk down the block and watching them on their lunch break, or even going to a game with a couple of Cardinals fans next week.

So before we get all jacked up on hope and start screaming to the world about the Mets being back and this blog getting two new sets of eyeballs in Yitzie(sp?) and Brian (shout out accomplished), let's look at two ugly facts, sponsored by the Ugly Truth, starring Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler. Hah hah hah, sellout. Even if the Mets sweep the Rockies in this series, they still need to climb over the marginal contenders: the Brewers, Astros (sorry Tex), Marlins and Braves. Then they need to climb over the Cardinals, Rockies, Giants and Cubs, and two of those teams are good enough to have been picked to win the NL Central. Second, the Mets are still three games under .500. Fucking yikes.

Good Things Come To Those Who Wait (A Really Really Long Time)

It's been a really, really long time since anything good has happened to the Mets. You can tell not by looking at the standings or watching a press conference, but by listening to Howie Rose call Fernando Tatis' game winning grand slam. He sounded surprised about everything: the ball going back, the ball clearing the 125 foot wall, Fernando Tatis being the guy who hit it out, the home run kind of maybe counting in a grander sense than just scoring runs. Not that Howie was the only guy that was surprised considering I was zoning out playing video games and only half listening to the maddeningly unlistenable Wayne Hagin. Shit, I was one more DP away from renaming Fernando Tatis "Fernandoubleplay Tatis." No it doesn't roll off the tongue, but either do most of my sputtering curses as he kills another rally.

Of course, if you want to get technical and don't want to bother listening to a confused Howie Rose, you can look at the Mets' schedule and note this is the team's first three game winning streak since May and that Jim Tracy apparently thought so little of this game that he brought in a pitcher with a 6.00 ERA and a 1.59 WHIP and sat and watched him walk the first two hitters he faced before deciding drastic action needed to be taken. You can wonder what the hell is going on in the front office and why all of a sudden the usually media savvy Omar Minaya declared open war on Adam Rubin at a press conference designed to sweep bad feelings away from the team.

Shit, look at the box score too and note that Jeff Francoeur saw 8 pitches in the three at bats he had before being intentionally walked and that his intentional walk was his first as a Met. Or take note that Oliver Perez walked four batters in five innings. Actually, that one could be construed as a positive, since it means he pitched more innings than the number of men he walked, a feat he's accomplished less than half the time he's started this year.

Oh right, they won tonight.

Fuck, what do you want from me? Matt Cerrone was watching with playoff intensity and Greg Prince isn't sure what to make of all this. At this juncture in the season, Tatis' grand slam has a better shot of turning out like Ramon Castro's home run against the Phillies in early September 2005: the last roar of an underachieving team up to its neck in water. I don't want to be a downer, but wake me up when the Mets are four games back and they don't have a AAA line-up and Johan Santana isn't giving up career highs in everything bad. I'll still listen because I'm an idiot and because I'll miss baseball when it's over, but I'll be damned if I'll believe.

Unless of course, I wake up and they're four games back.

TGME on Twitter - A New Frontier

Forget about all that Iran Revolution crap, the real news on Twitter is that your good friends at The Gil Meche Experience have decided to grace that world with our presence.

No, this has nothing to do with my lack of a desire to write anything longer than 140 characters...but I digress.

So follow us at http://twitter.com/gilmecheexp, and may god have mercy on your souls.