For the Mets, it was the final off-day of the regular season. For me, it was a preview of some enforced downtime.
On Saturday afternoon I'm doing something utterly ridiculous from the perspective of faithful and fearful alike. I'm getting on a plane and going to London. From there, Vienna. And Milan. And Lausanne. And Geneva. (And then home for 50-odd hours before a day and a half in Utah, of all places.) When I'm done traversing these baseball-free cities, it'll be Sept. 29, just four days from the opening of the division series. (Why would I do something so foolish? It's for work. I'm not totally insane.)
I don't have anything against Europe. If the timing were different, I'd be intrigued by all these places, none of which I've ever seen, with the exception of a seven-hour layover in London 15-odd years ago. (I took the tube, cars drove the wrong way, and they tell you which way to look crossing the street so you don't get killed. Seven hours wasn't enough time to make it stop feeling like trying to do something in the mirror.) But my goodness, there's a pennant race going on, and I'm going to miss it.
And I am going to miss it. Seeing how 7:10 starts will turn into 12:10 and 1:10 a.m. affairs, I seriously doubt there are expat bars where satellite dishes pull in Gary and Keith and Ron. (And let's not kid ourselves — if there are such bars, they'll be showing the fucking Yankees. Why should Milan be any different than, say, 14th Street?) So it's MLB.tv to the rescue. Or maybe Gameday Audio. Do European hotels have Internet access by now? Is it free? I suppose I'm about to find out. Even if all's well technologically, can I possibly stay up until 3 a.m. every night?
I've calculated scenarios and tried to figure out if there's some way I might yet see the clincher — perhaps during the Europe/Utah interregnum? But after some fretful attempts at math, I gave up. The important thing is that the champagne get sprayed and the cigars get lit, not whether or not I see it. I can peer at it on the Internet later or try to relive it on TiVo. (And of course there will be 10,000 opportunities to see it as a Met Classic.) In the meantime, I'll be relying on my co-blogger and our wise commentors to paint the word picture. Sigh.
But since this is the Internet and a global audience and all, I'll throw it out there — if any of you know the places I'm going, drop me a line [1]. Any and all wisdom greatly appreciated. Who knows, maybe that mythical overseas Mets bar really does exist.
P.S. Anybody get good news from mets.com? Yours truly was 0-for-2. They throw ungodly breaking shit in the NLDS lottery.