It's Why I Don't Eat Before Watching Met Games

"Living with you is like living in a living nightmare."
-Tad Ghostal

Our next possible GM (l) and his brain trust

Since it happens to the Mets only so often, I've come to like West Coast baseball. There are a few reasons, like being old enough to stay up and watch games and no longer needing to rely on the next day's paper to get a score and the fact that it happens mostly during the summer. When I was in school and used to be home for summer, I'd go out to my car, parked in front of the house, turn on WFAN and smoke while listening to the Mets play the Dodgers or Giants or Padres. The A's too a couple times, I guess. Of course, usually the Mets weren't doing too hot, courtesy of some kind of gypsy curse that doesn't allow them to win once they cross the Rocky Mountain range.

Jason Fry and Greg Prince have a much more encyclopedic knowledge of the Mets' Pacific Coast failures than I do, although I'll always remember last year's balk-tastic, base-running gaffe filled (oh look, both of them in one Top Ten list), impossible to believe losses. Because of those memories, I wasn't at all comfortable watching the Mets cling to a 1-0 lead last night. I went back to work hoping that Johan Santana would be rewarded with a win, but knowing full well it wasn't a guarantee.

Of course, isn't that why K-Rod was brought in? To erase memories of Braden Looper and Luis Ay-ay-ay-ala? That would be the case for a normal team maybe, but the nightmare of being a Met fan must go on, which means our heralded closer now has a save percentage with the Mets that's comparable to a barely acceptable stolen base rate. K-Rod has blown almost 20 percent of the games he's been brought in to tamp down. Not all of them involve blowing a game the Mets need to turn a disastrous road trip into a good one, but all of them hurt. Especially because in the off-season two years ago it was conventional wisdom that all the Mets needed to do to fix their rotten bullpen was bring a dump truck full of money to Anaheim.

So much for that. Between yet another sub-.500 road trip and the ongoing saga of Oliver Perez: Unkillable, the Mets are showing consistency in one department: being the baseball equivalent of that dream I have where I'm stuck in a warehouse district somewhere and people are trying to kill me but also reminding me I'm late for work and my bosses won't accept "lost in a maze with hired killers" as an excuse as to why I'm late. So thanks guys, I need something like that while I'm awake.