Can you hit a punching bag that is hitting .387?All right, all right ... so he's more like slapping .387, but a slap looks like a hit in the boxscore. And two slaps and two RBI's look like the first walk off hit and the first dogpile at Kitti Field as the Mets took a 5-4 decision from Willie Randolph's Brewers, and Castillo avoids punches and scorn for a few hours.
More firsts: Gary Sheffield provided not only the first 500th home run in the history of the park, but I believe the first curtain call as well, which is something you can stump your friends with in ten years or so. (I don't believe that David Wright was called out of the dugout after tying the game on Monday but if he was, I'm sorry. Don't kill me.)
I kept thinking about our friend Wallace Matthews, and how he basically called Mets fans suckers for daring to get excited about Tom Glavine's 300th victory back in '07. And I'm wondering if he's doing the same thing now that Mets fans at the park dared to cheer for the first player in history to hit his 500th home run as his first for a team. At least Glavine was with the team for a good four years when 300 happened. 500 was just as odd for me as I thought it would be. I'm just glad the home run was a big one and not a dinger that made the score 9-3 Brewers, setting the stage for Castillo's walk off.The weird part came for me afterwards, just as the ninth inning started and I'm trying to do something on my e-mail account, and I swear to you the following message pops up:
"Oops ... the system encountered a problem (#500)"Is that a higher power telling me to lighten up on Sheffield? Okay, I'll give him this: He's said and done all the right things, and the team seems to have received him warmly after the home run. Maybe he's having that Dewey Cox epiphany where he's reflecting on his life and is ready to write that masterpiece he kept promising his brother's spirit, or in Sheff's case, maybe his uncle Doc? I don't know. For Gary Sheffield, the beautiful ride at the end of his baseball road need only consist of behaving ... as he's done so far to his credit. Home runs, even milestone ones, are gravy.
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In an unrelated story, to welcome Randolph back to New York, Omar Minaya had a pizza delivered to Willie's hotel room at 3AM.
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I now have a valid reason for being disgusted with the black home uniforms: For some reason, they make the dopey hideous patch stand out. I hardly noticed them on the white ones.
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Irony? It's when the "durable" catcher is on the disabled list.
3 comments:
eh, give the guy his due. we're mets fans but also baseball fans and 500 even in the steroid era is something to celebrate. better to have excited fans than ones sitting on their hands.
I tend to like the uniforms, and care less about patches, but you're right, it does stand out more. it's the orange.
I'm on board with Sheffield now. screw it, I hated the signing, but whatever, he's a Met now. I still hope it's mostly a first man off the bench pinch hitting type role with the occasional day off for Church and/or Murphy, but he's a Met now. At least until they find a reason to get Evans up here.
Were Matthews and Francesa separated at birth? Their mission seems to be to try to strip away any small pleasure Mets fans might take in a particular moment.
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