There are a couple of blogger standbys that I could resort too. But as I type this, I'm not sure which one fits better. I go back and forth between:- Proclaiming the 2009 season to be over, done, kaput, or ...
- Proclaiming that the New York Mets should volunteer for contraction and cease operations.
Consider if you will: I wrote a post not so long ago coming up with some too funny to be true scenarios on how much worse losses can get this season. If I had come up with Frankie Rodriguez walking Derek Jeter to get to Mariano Rivera (after throwing Derek Jeter a hittable pitch to lead off the at-bat), and then walking Mariano Rivera for his first career RBI, I would bet that none of you would have thought that was more remotely plausible than any of the others on that list.
Yet, here we are, left to pick up the pieces while we sit at our keyboards trying to make sense of another 21st century laughingstock moment for this franchise.
In the big picture, Frankie walking Rivera (and if I have to hear Jon Miller call him "The Great Rivera" one more f-ing time, I'm going to stab my eyes and ears until I'm bleeding all over both the hardwood floors and the Tuscany tiles) with the bases loaded had nothing to do with the eventual outcome of the ballgame. But in the bigger picture, gee ... how about not walking a guy with two lifetime at-bats in fourteen years with the bases loaded? How about that??? How about losing a ball game without walking Mariano Rivera on national television? Am I asking for a lot? I'm not even asking for a win, I just want to be able to be able to leave my apartment without having to wear a paper bag over my head!!!
I mean, for crying out loud, Derek Jeter is smirking at the plate!!! Everyone in the dugout is trying not to bust a gut laughing. This is a moment that's a big joke to everyone wearing gray. And Frankie goes out and turns the joke right around on the Mets, as usual. I mean, how hard is Brian Bruney laughing right now? How hard are the Yankees laughing right now? They go into their off day as the happiest team in baseball, the sun shining on their world as usual. The Mets, meanwhile, get to take a plane ride to Milwaukee to begin their own personal death march towards another disastrous end of the season. And the only thing left for Frankie to do is to whip off that mask and expose to the world that he's merely Armando Benitez in disguise.
Mariano Rivera!!! He's about as useful a hitter as Dan Warthen is when he stands in the batters' box in the bullpen to simulate a live hitter! Dammit!
And one thing I don't want to hear until the Mets reel off seven in a row is how resilient this team is. Everybody wanted to drink the Kool-Aid after the Mets won the first game after Carlos Beltran went down ... and maybe because we've all been so desperate to see some resilience in this team that to see the Mets win without the bulk of their production was cause for celebration. Well guess what? Taking three of four from the Cardinals is a distant memory. But I'm sure that if the Mets go and win on Monday, we'll hear all this chatter from Snoop Manuel about how resilient this team is and how they're able to bounce back from tough losses.Great! Then they'll lose two more to Milwaukee ... forcing the whole resiliency cycle to start again. So Snoop, how about laying off bragging about how the team is resilient until they actually get some distance between themselves and .500, the Braves, and the Marlins, whaddaya say? And while we're at it, how about letting go of the hallucination that Fernando Tatis can actually bunt? How about that?
And about that whole "shorthanded" thing? Sorry, marginal major leaguers should be able to get through an inning without kicking the ball around as if it had metal spikes laced with acid on them. And decent major leaguers should be able to handle a guy who comes into a game with an 0-6 record and an ERA of 11.60.
Eleven. Point. Sixty.
Oh, the Mets are shorthanded, boo-hoo. I was willing to go with that against CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett. Against Chien-Ming Wang? No, you're going to have to do better than that. I mean, David Wright's a legitimate major leaguer, right? Right. A bonafide major leaguer who leads the N.L. in hitting, and couldn't get a freakin' hit during this whole freakin' series. Not one!
So yeah, I don't want to hear anything about shorthanded, resiliency, nor do I even want to hear anybody tell me "But Metstradamus ... Ya Gotta Believe". Because let's get one thing straight: After Ryan Church misses third base with the winning run, Luis Castillo drops the final out of a game, and BB-Rod walks Mariano Rivera with the bases loaded in the same season, the statute of limitations on my obligation to believe has officially run out. And I don't gotta do a damn thing except pay taxes and die.
