Feel better [1]?
Before tonight's game, I told Joshua “Tom Glavine is going to throw a no-hitter tonight.” Emily rolled her eyes. Joshua wanted to know what a no-hitter was. (See, he's already a Met fan.) So I told him, and then I decided to offer a twist on my usual no-hit ritual. Normally, each inning a Met pitcher completes without allowing a hit, I blithely (i.e., I affect what I imagine is the tone of a fan who's used to no-hitters) announce: “[# of outs] to go!” Tonight I decided I'd do that at the beginning of the game. “27 to go!” I chirped as Glavine got set on the rubber. And I decided I'd count the outs down one by one, something I'd figured I might do if a Met pitcher ever took the mound after I got to say “three to go.” Unless that happened and I was convinced changing would jinx things. (Probably doesn't matter: If we ever get that far I'll undoubtedly be huddled in a ball behind the couch, unable to speak.)
Anyway, it didn't work. Though Glavine did get to 16, which isn't bad. And don't tell me that was tempting the baseball gods, because all the superstitions of millions of superstitious Met fans haven't been worth a damn for 40+ years.
But nearly everything else worked. Glavine pitched exactly the way you'd want a crafty old pitcher with a big lead to pitch (and hit like a lithe young power hitter), the boys hit doubles and home runs and took advantage of errors and kept the hammer down. And I'd say the leather got flashed, but we were even better bare-handed: I'd barely gotten over oohing and ahhing over Reyes' flip to Matsui's bare hand and nice turn to Delgado (Kaz apparently rehabbed his knee under the tutelage of Bill Mazeroski) when Wright made that stunning bare-handed grab of a ball pinwheeling off the third-base bag. (At the time, that one looked potentially significant: It got Glavine to “21 to go.”)
Whew. It's nice to relax from a third inning on. Rubber game tomorrow, weather permitting.