Twenty years ago tonight, the Mets won their last World Series championship thanks in part to Mets icon Mookie Wilson and his ground ball though the legs of Bill Buckner.
Twenty years to the day later, I commemorate that moment by posting a picture of Mookie Wilson in a damn St. Louis Cardinals wool hat during Game 4 of the 2006 World Series.Why?
Why am I being punished? What did I ever do to you? Did you really need to pour salt in my gaping wound? I understand that you have a divine plan, but no divine plan should ever include Mookie Wilson wearing a blood red wool Cardinal hat twenty years to the day that Jesse Orosco threw his mitt to you as a sacrifice to your so-called "divine plan".
And was Tsuyoshi Shinjo in your divine plan too? You remember him, don't you? After all, five years ago, you helped hasten the Mets' descent to the core of the baseball universe by presenting them with Tsuyoshi Shinjo.
Five years later...
...Shinjo ends his career with a Japanese league championship as a member of the Nippon Ham Fighters.So let's review God: Tsuyoshi Shinjo fights ham, is a cult hero, and he retires on the very top of his game. Meanwhile on this side of the Pacific Ocean, Carlos Delgado attends the World Series as a spectator recovering from carpal tunnel surgery (probably from visiting this blog too often), Mookie Wilson is wearing a Cardinals hat, Satoru Komiyama still stinks, and I'm at home trying to calculate how many blows to the head with a whiffle bat would render me unconscious.
And did I mention the dreams I have been having? You know, the one where I'm playing poker with Mike Scioscia, So Taguchi, Terry Pendleton and Luis Sojo...and I go all in with pocket jacks but everyone else has pocket aces and the flop comes and it's three more aces? Surely you must be trying to tell me that everyone else in baseball has aces while all of ours are either hurt or old. Oh God, you and your symbolism.
Oh, and did I also mention that after I lose all of my money in the dream, Glenn Close comes out of the kitchen wearing her 1993 model Mets uniform and serves everybody boiled rabbit while Mike Piazza and Guillermo Mota are baking a bundt cake.
Yes God, that's a mighty weird dream. But it's no more weird than Mookie Wilson wearing a Cardinals hat!!!
By any chance, does your divine plan include ripping my still beating heart from my chest, rolling it down the streets of Pamplona to be stomped on by drunken tourists and bulls? Because at this moment I would welcome it. It would be less painful. If you had a sympathetic bone in your body, you would consider that course of action and end my pain and suffering once and for all before you do something really hurtful like embroil Gary Cohen in a money laundering scandal and replace him by re-hiring Fran Healy.
Yours in misery,
Metstradamus
(No rabbits were harmed in the writing of this post.)
14 comments:
Mookie rooting for (more or less) his own flesh and blood, OK, that was fine. Even when it was against us, stepblood is thicker than water.
But the cap...oy.
Let us give WHW the benny of the doubt. He was cold. He asked whoever takes care of VIPs if there was a hat. Somebody signaled a batboy who got Preston's dad whatever he got Suppan's dad or Eckstein's dad or whoever's dad. Mookie didn't think about it and put it on.
Mookie didn't think about it.
There's the rub.
I haven't laughed that hard at 5:21AM for a loooooong time!
See you in two weeks, bro!
I just keep saying, with a whimper, "that shoulda been us". Big time bummer.
But I'm at least glad that the National League team is winning, just to shut up those idiots who said the NL is sooo weak and the Mets and Cardinals were playing for second place. Assuming the Cards hold on, those guys can "put that in their books".
Braden Looper is one win away from owning a world series ring.
I don't even know what to say about this, except it makes me want to throw up more than Mookie.
Maybe Johnny Franco can get some of his mob buddies to shake down Looper on the way out.
Ugh.
I think this postseason put the final nail in baseball. Think NHL--maybe the MLB playoffs can now include 2/3 of the teams (wow! 20 champagne celebrations in September!), and may the best cheater win!
So there is one person watching this series. Fascinating...
I believe that Mookie went to the game NOT wearing that, then a couple of innings in, realizing how cold it was, he had no choice.
However, I have personal experience with a similar incident: Going to a Yankee game awhile back, I went with only a shirt and no jacket, in Sept. My friend offered to get me a sweatshirt to wear, but I refused the offer and I sat there freezing my ass off. I wouldn't wear a Yankee sweatshirt inside out, in the middle of Antarctica.
Give me a Mets shirt or give me death...via Pneumonia!
I'm schocked, nee stunned about this.
Metstra, what should I do with my signed pic (both Mookie and Buckner) of "The Grounder". It has a place of honor in the family room now. I'm not sure if it should be moved.
Per Newsday today, it appears the Mets offered Mookie a job this past offseason, but not one to his liking "I said I don't want a token job".
Gary Carter is angling for a coaching job with the big club, and is also being considered for hitting coach in Colorado (along with HoJo). I frankly don't see Willie wanting Carter on his bench.
Carter reminds me of the Reese Witherspoon character in "Election." The ambituous, obnoxiously perky, over-anxious student.
If I were Willie, I'd watch my step.
It's his own flesh and blood.
If my father took the side of his former employer over me, unless I was doing something illegal - and even THEN you take the side of your family unless someone's a pedophile or a rapist or a murderer.
Family is family.
Don't tell me I don't understand - trust me that I do. I don't fit in to this world sometimes because I have old-fashioned definitions of loyalty.
I am quite sure he thought about it. I am quite sure there was some internal angst.
I am quite sure when that hat was given to him, he may have thought: yikes. But he couldn't NOT put the hat on once it was given to him.
Maybe it was important to his son?
Maybe preston didn't give a crap, either. We don't know. Only they know. And it's their business and not ours.
At the end of the day: you choose your family. This isn't about putting on a Yankees sweatshirt because you are cold so you choose to be cold, ferchrissakes. The situations are not comparable.
This is because your son is playing in the World Series and you. root. for. your. son. Yes, irony. Yes, internal conflict.
I would think less of Mookie Wilson if he hadn't taken his son's side, frankly. We make hard fucking choices in life. There is that moment when you choose family over everything else.
He's not our Mookie Wilson right now. He's Preston's dad. We would do well to remember that. We need to measure his actions in that role, not as our myth.
I sat a row over from Mookie game 2 and he definitely looked conflicted. I didn't even notice he was there for most of the game as my eyes were on the field. But when I did, I just gave him a smile. However my friend saw him and got a pic on his camera phone (that didn't come out...foreboding indeed)...once people noticed they too started to pounce. He, his wife, and a couple of other people got up and left...then Mota, Wagner and company shit the bed.
I killed 3 rabbits after reading your post. Next year, my friend, next year...
Oh and don't forget that Mookie also wore a Toronto Blue Jays hat for a while to...and then their ring.
Mookie didn't trade Mookie...that falls on Franky C. and the boys upstairs. In my eyes Mookie can do no wrong.
I am, as the famous banner read on a long since past Banner Day, still Kookie for Mookie!!!
Gad,
I agree with you.
And I'm not going to kill Mookie...ever.
But the mere sight makes my eyes bleed.
I'm not killing Mookie either. My earlier post was meant in jest. He's gotta support his kid, I get that and support it.
It just hurts a bit is all.
With the problems the Mets had with Lefties and with Mookie's connection to the organization, I thought for sure they were going to pick up Preston Wilson when he was released by Houston. Not that Preston is all that. It just seemed like a good fit at the time.
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