Something about the way the sun hits Shea in late afternoon when almost everybody's gone home appeals to me. Probably because it reminds me of the playground at East School. That's where I did most of my balling, if you could call it that, in my youth. It's where I played kickball and stickball and softball and basketball and football when I was in my single-digits and teens.
Never mind that I wasn't any good at any of it. Never mind that there was often some character of low degree waiting to target and harass the contemplative and unathletic. Never mind all that. I liked the East School playground [1], something about the way sun hit it in the late afternoon when almost nobody was around.
That's Shea at the end of a weekday afternoon like this one. That was Shea today. It looked a lot like it did at the end of April [2] when almost everybody vacated the premises via good sense. Then it was 13-1. Today it may as well have been [3].
I stand by my statement of clarity [4]: the Mets suck. A team does not have this stretch of games without internal suckitude defining its very soul. A team does not get the trademark Johan Santana start for which all had been waiting and then throw it away without some incredible suck.
Billy Wagner…somebody check his middle initial. I'll bet it's an S.
Let's not completely blame the bullpen. Let's blame the offense, too, the one that finds ways to leave tack-on runs forever untacked, the one that aims its line drives at Diamondback gloves until all it has left to give are wan popups. Let's blame Willie for whatever it is Willie did or didn't do while we're at it. There are no innocents when 4-0 leads are blown and 5-4 losses appear in their stead.
So much for momentum. So much for saving up energy by not effusively mobbing last night's game-winning hitter. So much for whatever illusions linger about the 2008 Mets. They are as scattered as the tenth-inning spectators were at Shea Stadium today, the playground abandoned, the sun setting on this very sorry team.