What a difference a day makes.
The weather forecast for LBI today: rain. But around mid-morning, Emily and I realized there were shadows outside. The sun was out. And a couple of hours after that, the Mets started playing baseball. A whole lotta baseball.
Yes, a rainout is a gloomy thing, perfectly designed to make children (and some 37-year-olds) rail at the hostility of the cosmos. But lots of rainouts are followed by a decidedly ungloomy thing: a doubleheader. A whole day of ballgames. (OK, yeah, it's probably harder to win both ends of a doubleheader than it is to win two games in a row, making them a mixed blessing. Dude, don't be a bringdown.)
If you live at least vaguely near your team's hometown (or even far off, thanks to Extra Innings, MLB.com and XM), a doubleheader can become a pleasant companion for an entire day, following you from TV to portable radio to car radio to XM radio to laptop video to whatever you have. We caught the first few innings of Game 1 on the beach (portable radio that cost like $5 before some years-ago vacation), in the house (SNY) and then in the car (WFAN) on the way to pick up our friend Eddie in Long Branch. Game 2 tagged along with us on the car radio, on three overhead TVs at Barnicle Bill's in Rumson (some biiiiiiig houses in that town), and on the car radio again. With glad tidings all around.
Of course it's easy to enjoy having a doubleheader riding shotgun when the sun's shining, you win both games and your magic number drops into the single digits (with 8 a possibility pending the outcome of Houston/Philadelphia). But I'd like to imagine that it would have been a nice day even if we'd split or (perish the thought) dropped both games. Because this is the time of year when I start realizing that there's a lot more baseball behind us than there is ahead of us, and I begin to cling to what's left. I thought this year would be an exception, what with October back on the calendar and all, but it doesn't feel that way.
Ah well. The Nationals are eliminated. We cut the Braves' tragic number from 8 to 4. We've got pitching depth. Beltran is fine. Shawn Green looks like he's settling in. And the forecast? It's most definitely for sunny days.