As this crazy year of yo-yoing around the mundane .500 mark has unfolded, I've blamed a lot of people. Carlos Beltran for feeling the pressure. Jose Reyes for not getting on base enough. Kaz Matsui and Miguel Cairo for being useless. Mike Piazza for daring to get old. Victor Diaz for being dopey. Victor Zambrano for being maddening. Tom Glavine for being stubborn. Kaz Ishii for being bad. Braden Looper for being…no, I can't talk about Braden Looper right now. Heath Bell for being absent. Dae-Sung Koo, Danny Graves, Jose Offerman and Gerald Williams for being present. Willie Randolph for being overly loyal, bizarre about lineups and weird about tactics. Omar Minaya for being deficient at day-to-day roster management. Shea Stadium for being junky. The West Coast for being far away. The Cardinals, Braves and others for being better than us.
But as the drain gurgles flatulently on our wild-card hopes, I realize it isn't the fault of any of these variously esteemed entities. In fact, it's my fault. If the Mets are Antaeus, I'm the earth they need to be in contact with, or something like that. (Sorry. Ma done raised me on Greek myths. Made me turn out funny.)
Consider: On May 22 I got on an airplane for the West Coast, fuming that I wouldn't get to see Pedro try and demonstrate the truth about his parentage to the Yankees. I landed to find we'd lost that game in horrifying fashion. Then we got swept at Turner Field while I fumbled with hotel wireless connections and MLB.TV in San Diego and San Francisco. I returned home on May 26, seeing Rusty Staub in the San Francisco airport on the way, and watched happily as we bludgeoned the Marlins, 12-4. Record for my time out of state: 0-4.
On July 8 I got in a rented truck with a bunch of furniture and miscellaneous crapola and drove to Maine, picking up the beginnings of our game against the Pirates through static as the sun started to go down behind the pines in the Mosquito State. That night Braden Looper lost in horrifying fashion; we got pounded the next, then rebounded to salvage the finale before the All-Star Break arrived. I returned on the 13th; the next night we got the second half rolling by beating the Braves, with Mike Piazza showing Blaine Boyer that the old man's bat still had some blasts in it. Record for my time out of state: 1-2.
Early in the Maine trip you begged me to return, even kindly offered to trot black bears and what-not by for that Maine feeling. Did I listen? No — on Sept. 3 I bundled Emily and Joshua into the rental car and we headed down to Long Beach Island for idyllic weather and horrible baseball. We've covered this of late, so let's just skip to…. Record for my time out of state: 1-6.
Total record when I'm outside the Empire State: 2-12.
So anyway, now that it's too late, I'm back and apologetic. But just in case we do have a late run in us, some bad news: I'm heading down to D.C. for Sept. 24-25. That final nail in the coffin, if for some reason it's still needed? Taken care of.
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