Six Hours to Go

I'm listening to the Yankees-Red Sox game and you can hear the roar after every pitch, and it hurts a little — though only a little — knowing our game tonight will be acoustically attended by the muttering of a sparse crowd and the lonely cries of Aramark dealers.

Last night I was pawing through my wallet for something or other and found the last page of my pocket schedule. I tossed it — I know the rest by heart, thanks. I left the full schedule on the fridge for another day for sentimental reasons. Pretty soon we'll be down to countable outs, then to pitches (here's hoping we're counting down Rockie outs and pitches, not our own) until finally we'll be on our feet, cheering for the final seconds even though a part of us will suddenly be hoping — score and situation be damned — whoever's at bat fouls off the next, oh, 73,000 pitches or so just to keep the end from coming.

Anyway, a wishlist for these final six hours, written as if I'd posted it early last night, as I intended to. We won't get all these things. We may not get any of them, except for the back-dated one. As with the standings and the reason there's wild cheering in Fenway now and won't be much at Shea tonight, that's baseball. If you're not willing to risk disappointment, best not to show up in the first place.

So here's the list:

1. A winning season. .500, while an accomplishment, would suck at this point. (Done.)

2. A big final-day crowd to bid Mike Piazza adieu. (Shame on Met fans if this doesn't happen.)

3. 400 homers for Mike. (Three more in the last two games? Possible, but unlikely.)

4. 100 RBI for Cliff Floyd. (He has 97. Doable.)

5. 67 steals for Jose Reyes. (He has 59. Ain't happening.)

6. A hit for Anderson Hernandez. (All it takes is one.)

And then — “then” as in “tomorrow” — it'll be winter.

Update: Oh yeah, duh…

1a. Finish in third place. Screw draft picks; our drafts all stink anyway. (Doable. We're there now, after all. Though — no surprise in our crazy division — we could still finish last.)