Thursday, September 25, 2008

Oof

Let me take you inside the life of a Mets fan living in Eastern CT without satellite TV. You sit anxiously on the edge of your seat, occasionally chuckling at Jon Stewart's witty antics with former President Clinton, but mostly you make sure to keep sliding your finger around the touchpad of your laptop. See due to the illegality to broadcast Mets games in CT, even though you could have watched the game live on ESPN last night in Uzbekistan, you are relegated to the mlb.com gamecast. You cringe every time you see "In play, run(s)" when the other team is batting. You guess a solo homerun isn't so bad. DAMMIT! Why can't Ollie Perez get that bunt down? Ooo, a walk to Jose Reyes? Ok, we got something going. All right, a walk to Daniel Murphy! Two out rally! Two out rally! Tie game! Zambrano walked in the tying run! Yes! All right Carlos, let's get it done. "In play, run(s)!" YES! Yes! Yeah, baby...how many, how many...GRAND SLAM! Holy crap go Carlos! A little later on, if you're lucky, you'll notified that gamecast has posted a grainy video of the home run. If you're REALLY lucky, it'll even play for you! All right Ollie, got a 4 run lead, just bear down, throw some strikes, let's get this one home. Ok, 1 out single, that's all right, at least you're throwing strikes. No, fucking throw strikes. FUCK! D Lee walked. Come on Ollie, let's get out of this. AUGH! STOP FUCKING WALKING PEOPLE! All right, bases loaded, let's trade an out for a run. "In play, run(s)." Son of a bitch! How can you not get out of the 5th innnig? Fuck, this, you decide to go to hockey. Actually, you probably only do that if you're me.

Fast forward to a room full of sweaty naked men drinking Coors Light. Try not to get too excited. Hey, hey, hey now, bottom of the 9th, game tied at 6, winning run at third, no outs and oh baby, oh baby David Wright and his steely good looks are up! Come on little cell phone, refresh and tell me the good news! Struck out swinging? FUCK! That's all right David, I still love you! Ok, now they have to navigate the twin Carloses. Intentional walk? Well, I guess that makes sense, set up the double play. Intentional walk? All right baby, bases loaded, one out, you can win the game with an out. Come on Ryan Church! Your last name is a place Christians go to pray, you have to come through here, right? Right? Fucking force out at home plate? Fuck. All right, all right, still one more chance. Let's see Ramon Castro come through with two outs. He kind of looks like this guy so it's a forgone conclusion, right? Just need a little bloop single. Strike one. Man, a grand slam would be cool, but a little broken bat dribbler that no one could field works too. Strike two. All right I got a little greedy there, just a solidly hit ground ball in the hole. Nothing too fancy. Strike three! Well fuck, I know where this is headed.

Sure enough the Mets would lose a heart-breaker in 10 innings. A game in which they had a 5-1 lead and then had that incredible 9th inning. They managed to wrestle defeat from the jaws of victory. It's an incredibly difficult loss to take as a fan, especially with Philadelphia getting smoked by Atlanta and Milwaukee winning to draw even in the wild card race. What merely hours before seemed like a shot at the NL East title now feels like the penultimate blow in yet another Septmeber collapse.

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