- Faith and Fear in Flushing - https://www.faithandfearinflushing.com -

Think of This One When You're Knee-Deep in the Snow

The baseball gods have a vast assortment of cruelties, but one of their better tricks is the rainout-turned-blowout: You think there's no way the game will be played, only to have the weather hold off so you get a game after all — and then this gift turns out to be a numbing basket of suck that leaves you wondering why it couldn't have freaking rained like it was supposed to.

You knew that eventually the Nats' collection of ex-Mets would punish the current Mets, that Jesus Flores and Lastings Milledge and Odalis Perez would find a way to victimize us. (What? Joe Morgan's convinced Odalis is a Met, so he ought to count somehow. I don't mind if my facts are wrong, as long as they're gritty facts that present themselves right.) I'm sure Lo Duca was putting the whammy on the Mets somewhere, too. Between all that and the sucking, why watch a mess like this [1]? Well, because it's part of the contract [2] — but also because during the winter, when the trees are bare and the grass is covered with snow and the howling of the wind makes you think of wolves on the Russian steppes, you stare out the window and try to think what you wouldn't do to watch, say, one crappy inning of the Mets going down 1-2-3 against the Nationals with 5,000 people vaguely watching. Well, remember this one in nine months — this is what it looked like.

But hey, it's baseball. You never know what might happen — a second baseman might turn the 14th unassisted triple play in baseball history. (Oh, sorry — that was 500 miles to the west [3].)

Since there was no triple play, what to take from this one? Nothing I didn't already know. Damion Easley should be our second baseman. Joe Smith should stay on the team. Jorge Sosa should be DFA'ed. Elijah Dukes shouldn't lead cheers on the bench, though it's only fair to note that's the least-scary thing he's done in some time. It shouldn't be 52 degrees with 25 MPH winds in mid-May. And to ease the annoyance of games like this, they should play baseball most every day.

Oh, wait — they do. Score one for the baseball gods after all.