The Man Who Left Earth

I don't sit in bars and watch entire baseball games because that shit can get expensive and you can't whoop and holler if no one else is paying attention to the happenings on TV. Well, you can, but everyone just looks at you like you're weird. Still, I stuck around from the second inning on for this game because I wanted to watch a master at his craft. And Chan Ho Park did not disappoint.

Does anyone miss Carlos Gomez? Yeah, thought so. As The Reign of Santana continues its ridiculous domination, I will say with only a little bit of hyperbole that I feel privileged to watch Johan pitch. It's like watching Paul Offit create the Rotavirus vaccine or if there was a real life Rambo, watching him kill a bunch of Washington cops. Or Chinamen. Whichever one you like I guess. In Johan Santana, the Mets have a new dominating, star attraction in their pitching rotation they've been lacking since Pedro Martinez ended his 2005 season.

Oh sure Johan pitched last year too, but there was a feeling out period, that was obvious. You can't argue with his results since the All-Star break last year though, an obscene one loss in 23 starts. It just isn't possible to have a prolonged losing streak when every fifth day you've got a guy who has allowed less earned runs than number of games he's started and has three double digit strikeout games in six starts.

Even the offense again taking a snooze in their non-support of Mr. Wonderful could barely raise my ire. I just wanted to keep watching Santana paint corners and throw ridiculous change-ups that dropped off this plane of reality and made Jayson Werth consider suicide. Hell, I got the feeling Johan walked Chan Ho Park twice just so he could remember what pitching from the stretch was like in case the unfathomable happened and he got in trouble.

The scary thing, if you're not a Met fan, is that April and May are typically Santana's worst months. I don't know what that means for the rest of baseball outside of a lot of soiled drawers every fifth day for players with "Marlins" or "Cubs" or "Padres" sewn across their jerseys, but for Met fans it means more performances that are becoming baseball's version of heroin: soothing and addictive. I missed Seaver and Koosman and Ryan, I was two when the '86 rotation ran roughshod over the league and was a little too young really to form any specific memories about David Cone, but one day when I have kids I can tell them the story of the time Johan Santana struck out ten Phillies en route to having an ERA under one for the entire season. Those damn kids better listen.