The Quads Match The Collars

Instead of a players only team meeting, maybe the gang should have had a seance to try to conjure up some ghosts from 1986 to give them some luck.

Actually, I thought they already took care of that in the ninth inning tonight, when three straight hits with two outs in the ninth all of a sudden looked very eerie, and very familiar. Let's just say that if Chad Cordero had thrown a wild pitch at Ruben Gotay's feet, I would have dusted off my Ouija Board.

But Gotay struck out to end the game. There are no ghosts resurrected from 1986. Keith Hernandez's chair at RFK Stadium had no more hits in it. And Gene Mauch is playing craps in heaven, rolling seven after seven while yelling "Let it ride! Let it ride!"

I wonder if anyone inside that clubhouse during that players' only meeting realizes how close they are to the brink of history...as in the worst historical regular season collapse this side of the California Angels. Nobody has ever been seven or more games up past September 12th and been overtaken. However, our team is doing a really good job of trying to execute this trick.

(Editor's note: If the trick is turned, then 1964 would no longer be Baseball's Most Memorable Collapse, now would it? That would mean that somebody would have to write the story of Baseball's New Most Memorable Collapse. The author of this blog would like to volunteer his services to you publishers out there.)

Do they realize what they're doing to us? Think about it for a second. Think about all the firepower contained in the lineup of the team we root for...yet we're reduced to depending on the offensive production of Miguel Cairo.

Oh, you remember Miguel Cairo don't you? Once, he was the bane of the Mets existence when he wore your uniform in 2005. Now, he's the third place hitter on a team that regularly decides to bat their pitcher eighth. And now we're hoping that Cairo has a four hit day so that the Mets can stay 2 and 1/2 games in first place.

That's pathetic, but that's what our troops have reduced us to by giving up 47 runs to the worst hitting team in the National League...you know, part of that "easy" schedule we were "lucky" enough to draw these past two weeks. Don't they know nothing comes easy? Nothing comes easy to the team that has one pitcher in a boot, another pitcher in need of a boot, a third pitcher designated for assignment, and a fourth pitcher who was designated as the latest pitcher to blow a four run lead.

Oh yeah, and a 40-year-old left fielder with a tight quad...to match everybody else's tight collars. Joy.

So what's tomorrow's meeting going to cover?