No Luck For The Irish

And the day started so promisingly too.

But even after Frankie Rodriguez went all Braveheart on Brian Bruney (which might not have been the right thing to do but to me better than than being the "nice guys" the Mets are famous for being, so it's something I wholeheartedly endorse ... and how ironic was it that Mike Pelfrey played peacemaker), the Mets followed up by being taken out by the woodshed by the Yankees. Once again, the Mets inability to get one stupid hit with the bases loaded and nobody out in the third proved to be their downfall while they were down 4-0.

Well that, and the nine other runs that Santana gave up with his lower than normal velocity. Just tell me when the MRI's coming ... because that has to be next, right?

But the Mets fans are even turning on each other. I saw a guy during the game walking on the street wearing a Wright jersey when the score was 13-0 and I told him "hey, don't turn on the highlights and save yourself some grief". Thinking I was a Yankee fan he tells me "Keep walking pal". To be fair, I was wearing a Notre Dame jersey so he probably thought from that wardrobe choice that I must have been a Yankee fan. I explained to him that I was a Met fan and that I was trying to warn him. Then he yelled "F**k Notre Dame!"

(For the record, I could give a crap about Notre Dame in either direction ... my only connection to the Irish is that my father was Irish. But I won the jersey in a raffle yesterday, so I wore it today as if it was the leg lamp from A Christmas Story. It's a major award, so I wore it. Won it at "Blogs with Balls 1.0" by the way, so thanks guys for a great event and for the free jersey ... and can't wait for the sequel in Vegas so I can lose the rest of my money. You'll be happy to know that my major award has already almost caused an international incident.)

But the kicker is that the guy waited until he was a half block away entering a cab before yelling this. Great, I try to help a brother out and I encounter the Brian Bruney of Met fans who can't even address the issue with me face to face. Must still be upset about Aaron Heilman.

(But in the future, I'll keep my mouth shut while I'm wearing my "major award.", because no good deed does really go unpunished. Wow. A red letter day all around.)

The Bloggers To Beat

They're even obsessed with our logo!

It's an interesting idea that has been done before, but never with these two teams: Yes, there is a new Mets/Phillies blog making the rounds these days, and the authors were nice enough to find me for an interview about the rivalry. The blog is called, oddly enough, "We're The Team to Beat". And you can find my interview here.

Thanks to Matt (the Mets fan) and Mike (the Phillies fan) for having me. And if they don't kill each other by July maybe I'll make a second appearance. I wish them well.

It Hurts To Boo: The Epilogue

Half good livin'...half dumb luck...half minor miracle...but I'm able to sit down for a long stretch without dying when I get up. Looks like my demise has been nothing more than a drill. A trip to the back-cracker should bring me back to 100%. (Willie Randolph says that they're no need for me to go on a rehab assignment to blog about the Savannah Sand Gnats). Thank you all for your well wishes (including the phone call I got telling me what a wuss I am...you know who you are).

While in the midst of self medicating over the last 24 hours and nothing to sink my teeth into during this off day, it occurs to me...a microcosm of why the Yankee fan is so loathed in Queens.

I'm talking besides the obvious.

It's something I noticed in the crowd during the Sunday night game. The key...my friends...is in the chants. And it's a phenomenon you'll probably only see at Shea Stadium, but when Met fans chant "Let's Go Mets", it's in the general vicinity of the field, where the Mets are. The chant is delivered quite literally. We want the Mets to...well, go. So we chant "Let's Go Mets" to the Mets. The chant, you see, is used in the traditional method.

The "Let's Go Yankees" chant...a chant, by the way, rarely heard if heard at all before the mid-90's (despite the fact that the Yankee revisionist historian will probably have you believe that this chant was born the same day as Frank Crosetti himself...I will swear to my dying day that chant is a mere derivative of the "Let's Go Rangers" chant, which really has lasted since the beginning of time), was chanted on Sunday night by Yankees fans not in the vicinity of the field to exhort their Yankees to victory, but rather with their backs to the field, with pointed fingers at Mets fans as if "Let's Go Yankees" was a threat. Or perhaps a four-letter word...which many Mets fans consider "Let's Go Yankees" to be anyway...a cuss.

So how else, I ask, is a Met fan to respond to being cussed out?

"Yankees Suck!"

"Yankees Suck!"

"Yankees Suck!"

And while I'm not trying to exonerate the Met fans who went too far with their actions Sunday night, and neither am I trying to condemn the majority of Yankee fans who behaved (including, thankfully, the two that provided us with our tickets), this is more a way of trying to further delve deep into the psyche of the Met fan...what makes the typical Met fan lash out when confronted with "Yanksimus Maximus".

It's a mere sparkplug of the psychiatric melting pot that was Sunday night at Shea Stadium.