Sucks To Be Them, Good To Be Us

So the Phillies managed not to be swept a four-game series by the Mets. So the Phillies can continue to entertain the possibility that they are in a three-way race for the Eastern Division lead. So the Phillies, for one more day, can avoid their date with destiny.

The Phillies are the Chinese food of the National League. A half-hour after hating them, I've forgotten I ever saw them. Mets fans seem to invest a great deal more antipathy and anxiety in them than merited. They're dangerous, just not lethal.

If I sound a little more mellow and less vindictive than an annoying loss merits, so be it. Part of it is the way the June Gloom (4-14) 180'd into the June Boom (8-1). The rest we'll call goin' fatigue (as in “I got fatigued goin'”). Philadelphia is close enough to Long Island so that goin' on two consecutive railroad daytrips is not wholly inconvenient, but it ain't a mere hop on the 7 from Woodside either. I'm glad I went and glad I went again to the first and third games of this series. Of course I am. I was riding a four-game losing streak in Philadelphia before this weekend, one that dated back to August of '86 when Fred was just intrigued enough by the notion of a ROAD TRIP! to join me for the hell of it. The Mets lost that night. They lost 10 years later when I convinced Stephanie that the fourth-place Mets, the fifth-place Phils and the sixth-rate Vet were worth three hours of our attention. They lost three years after that to cap off a frighteningly memorable week of losing that nearly killed off a wonderfully memorable year. And they lost three years ago when Steph and I were determined to add spankin'-new Citizens Bank Park to our ledger.

Leaving Pennsylvania twice with wins, no longer Oh-and-Philly after 21 years, was a most welcome feeling. Being surrounded by Mets fans in another state was most welcome, too. These weren't home games but they weren't away games. They were Fourthmeal. If the gift shops weren't lousy with Phillies merchandise and the public-address guy hadn't overdone the introduction of “J.C. RoMMMMEEEERRRRoh!” you would have thought it was a neutral site. My Saturday section from top to bottom was about 3:1 Mets fans. The men's room line afterwards was so orange and blue that I felt compelled to feign amazement when I saw a Phillies cap within the friendly confines. I was honestly surprised when “Takin' Care of Business” wasn't cranked after the last out.

The only obnoxiously vocal Phillies fan I encountered Saturday sat behind me (natch) and his expression of frustration boiled down to this: “Mets…BOO!” Lame? You bet, especially when repeated about fifty times for two innings until somebody countered him with “Phillie fan…BOO!” Beer consumption also distracted him.

Though I came home Friday night giddy from my fling with the Cit and the day-night sweep it encompassed, by Saturday I was able to take in their ballpark/our second home with a little more reserve and perspective. As was the case in 2004 when I first encountered it, I came away thinking this is The New Normal, meaning Citizens Bank is the bare minimum of what a modern retro ballpark should be. It functions very highly. It offers all the stuff you would need or want (at costs slightly less than you would think and they give you noticeably more of whatever you're buying). It is run beautifully. It certainly kicks the ass of what it replaced, more important to the local fans than to the daytripping dilettantes like me.

But it's not special. PNC is special. Camden is special. Phone Company of San Francisco is special. I go to those places and want to pitch a tent and camp out on their grass until they nudge me gently awake the next morning for batting practice and pierogi races. Citizens Bank is, in a perfect ballpark world, adequate to the task at hand.

Come 2009, let's do what we did three times this weekend and beat the Phillies. Let's be more than adequate in our next ballpark. And if you can pile as much soft ice cream into a batting helmet as they do, that would be much appreciated.

Sitting in the outfield for two games was instructive to our future since Citi Field will put a lot of seats out there and there won't be nearly enough seats to begin with. I sat high in Harry the K's territory yesterday, the height-equivalent of the mezzanine, probably, and it wasn't too bad a view (unless you're a stickler for what happens in deep left). What they say about the bandbox nature of CBP resonates in person. Every popup looks like a home run. Every fly ball is a home run unless we hit and one of their leaping demons lunges and grabs it. Every home run looks like it's headed for the stars. Ryan Howard not only would have hit his Saturday shot out of Shea, I think he it to Shea.

I did cherish the ability to get up and walk around and still keep an eye on the action. Two years ago, just as my blogging had begun to bring me into contact with new and wonderful people whom I would be meeting for the first time at Shea, I had arranged to hook up with a friend in the middle of a game. He and his wife had tickets in one place, I had them in another. “I'll see you in the top of the fifth behind Section X,” I said. And we did that and it was lovely but we were each craning our necks at the one nearby monitor to peek at what we were missing. That part wasn't lovely.

On Friday, I went with one of my oldest friends in the world, Dr. Fred Bunz, whose only character flaw is not being a Mets fan (but his willingness to humor and indulge me forgives that quickly enough). We watched a couple of innings from our seats and then got up to find some food and then found there were dozens of little spots where we could land-graze-amble-chat-repeat, yet stay on top of what was going on (I groaned when I heard the crowd roar, until I realized it was our crowd roaring at the Mets' three-run fourth). Since I don't get to see Fred very often now that he's ensconced in Baltimore, I was more interested in talking with him than I was in watching every pitch, thus the Cit's situation struck me as ideal. We didn't get back to our seats until the sixth and I didn't feel I had missed all that much.

Quick aside on Fred's non-Metsdom and how it can be mistaken by association with me. I had arranged, thanks to all this blogging, to hook up with a reader and online pal who was also making the trip from Maryland (the guy with impeccable taste in t-shirts). I introduced these two to each other as “you're both from the same state.” My new Maryland buddy immediately asked my old Maryland buddy, “do you see the Mets in Washington a lot?” I could tell Fred hadn't heard him clearly because he said, “not that much, it's kind of far away.” I told Fred later that I didn't think he quite caught the question. Fred didn't. He thought he was asked if he took the Metro to Washington a lot. Fred told me he was glad he didn't accidentally blow his cover. I'm somehow relieved that I can still maintain a few relationships that have almost nothing to do with the Mets…and that they are with people who will gladly accompany me to Mets games.

Saturday I did my walking around and face-stuffing early then hung with my new favorite family of Mets fans, the Chapmans of Central Jersey. Mom Sharon, whom you've also seen in the world's greatest tee, invited me to join them and a slew of disparate types in Section 242 where she had secured a big block of tickets. When I mentioned I'd be coming by train, I was immediately invited to get off at the NJ Transit stop near them and spend some time at their house, which was a trip unto itself. They built a patio that looks a baseball diamond (Dad Kevin pointed out that it's 69 feet to their backyard/centerfield fence, as the sign on the fence helpfully indicates). Their living room is a Mets shrine (three Bill Goff prints commemorate the three ballparks where each of their children saw his or her first game). Their youngest, Ross, is a bona fide genius of the game (for example, he won't ever buy a Ford, he informed us, because of Derek Jeter's incessant shilling for the car). And all of them couldn't have been nicer or more thoughtful hosts. As with Fred and bmfc1 Friday, seeing the Chapmans Saturday made this detour into the belly of the East a very homey adventure.

Now the Mets wing west, four up on the Braves, five up on the…who was that we just played again? Congrats to Jose, David, Carlos and Billy on their All-Star berths. A hang-in-there-and-channel-it-for-good to John Maine who was denied a selection but deserved it far more than Cole Hamels, the punky LP from Friday night (nice control, schmuck). Our All-Stars and their occasionally stellar teammates have played almost a full half — 80 games. I have been to more than a fifth of it — 17 games. Me and the Mets, we're having a pretty good season together.