Sometimes it just ain't happening. It's not so much that you're playing badly, but you're certainly not playing well. You're just playing, the other guy's getting the breaks, and you're going to lose. This one [1] was practically a sand-in-the-gears roll call:
* Jason Lane's nice catch off Marlon Anderson denies us two more runs in the first.
* Another stupid bunt in the second. Zambrano's a converted shortstop and a good enough hitter to swing away there. Giving up an out just to move Matsui to second wasn't worth it. Of course Reyes then promptly strikes out.
* Floyd gets a bad read on Biggio's long but catchable fly, which goes just over his glove to tie the game.
* Beltran, Floyd and Castro all strike out after Cameron's at second with nobody out.
* The Astros take the lead after Wright makes a nice play but can't quite get Ensberg at first — on a ball Ensberg hit one-handed after the ump refused to let him call time. (For Pete's sake….)
* Dan Wheeler, a bad pitcher for us last year, manages to walk Matsui but then looks like an awfully good pitcher against Woodward, getting him on an evil breaking ball. With Lidge waiting in the bullpen, that was the ballgame.
Nothing in that list is truly awful in a lie-awake-at-3-am-fuming sort of way — it's plays not quite made, plays and pitches made by them, that sort of thing. But it's a loss nonetheless, on a night when the Nationals, Phillies and Marlins all won.
Speaking of roll calls, the morons in the bleachers who called out the names of the Met starters the way the Yankee Bleacher Creatures do better be on a plane to Gitmo as I type. I have to (grudgingly) admit the Yankee roll call is fairly cool, but that doesn't mean I want to hear it in my park. Particularly not emanating from that sad construction we call bleachers. There's nothing wrong with hiring a Yankee coach or signing a Yankee second baseman — the coach grew up a Met fan and played for us, after all, and the second baseman was a smart addition and seems to have shed the stink of brimstone. But you can't bite the other team in town's rituals. You just can't. How is this not incredibly obvious to any right-thinking Met fan? What were those people thinking? Let us never speak of this again.