Not everything about Friday’s night trip to Citi Field was terrible. Let me make a list of things that did not, in fact, suck:
1. It was nice spending an inning on the Shea Bridge with two old friends: longtime Faith and Fear reader Charlie Hangley (who’s now a pretty fair blogger in his own right over at Mets 360 [1]) and his wife Sarah, making her first-ever visit to Citi Field.
2. The night was gorgeous — perfect temperature, next to no humidity. Then, in the late innings a full moon that was so beautiful it looked fake rose majestically behind the stadium for us to ooh and ahh over.
3. I got to enjoy three hours in the company of my lovely, wise, baseball-mad wife.
4. El Verano Taqueria is always a good thing. Plus we’ve hit upon a winning strategy: three orders of carnitas for two people. One order isn’t enough; two orders is too much. “Genius” is sometimes an underutilized term.
As for everything else, “terrible” would actually be an understatement — it was a total suckfest. The Mets couldn’t field, betraying R.A. Dickey on two double-play balls that led to five runs. The Mets couldn’t hit, particularly with runners on base. Ryota Igarashi couldn’t pitch, which isn’t news — when he went 2-0 on John Mayberry Jr. I groused to Emily that “here comes the meatball,” then was out of my seat and stalking off before Mayberry arrived at second base. (Figures Igarashi was the Japanese hurler who got an extra year for his Omarpalooza gift, while the actually useful Hisanori Takahashi decamped for Anahaim.) The end result? We’re one bad weekend from being more than 10 out in the wild-card hunt, which essentially means a Do Not Resuscitate order for our playoff hopes.
A loss [2] wasn’t a great way to start the second half, but not all losses are created equal. This one alternated being boring and being annoying, with most of the offense a side effect of inept defense. Only Angel Pagan’s catch of Ryan Howard’s deep drive and Carlos Beltran’s uncatchable homer were plays you’d conceivably want to see again, let alone things that could lead you to wax rhapsodic about baseball’s majesty. For the first couple of innings I was happy because there was baseball again and I got to see it up close. For the next few innings I was bored. Then I was pissed. And then I went home.
Sigh. Did I mention the moon?