Victor Zambrano is slower than slow death. In fact, the slow death store called to tell Victor Zambrano that they're out of him.
It occurred to me Friday night that for just about every one of Vaporous Victor's starts this year, I've been busy doing something else — working, traveling, napping (especially napping) — and that I haven't noticed what a slow SOB he is. Or maybe I just found other things to do (especially napping) because he failed to hold my interest. His torpor is beyond Trachselian. Gosh, back when Steve Trachsel would stare at his shoelaces for twenty minutes between pitches, at least matters resolved themselves once he released.
Trachsel stares in for the shoes. And stares in for the sign. And stares in for the shoes. And then the sign. And then the shoes. And the pitch. It's a deep fly ball…
Eventually, like my cats, Trachsel got fixed and he was OK. When are they gonna take Zambrano in for his procedure? 'Cause until they do, he's just gonna spray baserunners all over the place.
Yet with all that, as anybody who watched the sinister sixth unfold knows by now, he could've escaped. Like a very deliberate Houdini locked in a chest submerged under the sea and reading a novel, he was inches from escaping his own mess. Then Matsui, our Matsui, played javelin catcher instead of second. Even after that, though he didn't deserve to, Zamby the Magnificent still almost wriggled off the hook almost unscathed. We could've called him Ty Wriggleton. Then Mientkiewicz, our Mientkiewicz, played jai-alai instead of first.
One can debate, chicken-egg style, whether the somnambulant, high-and-outside, low-and-inside style of pitching lulled the defense to sleep or whether the gloves just weren't there when the pitching was, but one also has to notice that the Mets forgot to score much in the way of runs, legitimate or otherwise. By the time it was over, all that harrumphing we've been doing under our collective breath for the last two weeks over the quality of the Yankee winning streak (harrumph…it's only Oakland and Seattle) would have to be amended to include us as another pitiful opponent. We looked no better than any garden-variety A.L. West chump.
If this had been one of those glorious Subway Series victories, you can bet I'd have stayed up for hours absorbing every syllable on-air and online about it. Instead, after listening to Gary and Eddie remind caller after caller that you liked Kaz just fine when he was whacking the Reds a few days ago, I stayed up for hours absorbing the first five episodes of our just-arrived third-season DVD of Six Feet Under. It's a show that takes place in a funeral home.
It was the most cheerful thing I watched all night.
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