When I was a kid the Mets usually stunk. There would be a point every season where I’d more or less check out, and it was the late August road trip to the west coast.
Back in the day that meant two weeks of newspaper coverage being limited to “Mets at Los Angeles, night.” No late scores, no internet, no WFAN, no ESPN. “Mets at San Diego, night.” Maybe the paper would print what my friend Tony called a “scorecard story” – something generic like “Joel Youngblood loves bicycles.”
I was looking at the standings this morning while trying to stave off despair* and looked ahead at the schedule. When I get back from this eek’s road trip the Mets will be in Arizona, land of 9:40 starts. Then some weeknight games in San Francisco that will start at 10:15. That means I won’t watch and won’t hang on twitter (I need my sleep.) They go to San Diego after that – I had wanted to make that my cool summer baseball road-trip before I realized how busy I was this summer – which means more off-rhythm start times.
By the time they get back to the normal 7:10 starts it will be August 7th. Given the absolute free-fall this team is in, who knows what the standings will look like. I’m not heading for the hills, but I think it’s less likely that I’ll be hosting Mets-watching parties on the deck the way I did in May.
What an awful awful two weeks.
* it is hard to stave off despair when the rotation is a Niese, a journeyman knuckler, a taped on shoulder, I dunno and I also dunno.
….
Here’s a little something I wrote late on the night of June 1st:
What an exciting night! Lots of us were hanging on twitter and discussed the pitch count. Yes I wanted to take him out after 7 and yes I feared and still fear putting that much wear on Johan’s shoulder…but that’s tomorrow’s problem. In a one game universe that was exciting….
In a 162 game universe I don’t think it was worth it.