For the first few games of the season happiness at having baseball back outweighs what actually happens on a given night. But then there’s a game that leaves you disgusted and sputtering profanities. Baseball, you think, is being very, very bad to you.
For me, tonight was that night. It was Dillon Gee [1] handing out doubles like party favors in a fifth inning that blew up on him [2], and the Mets’ rally getting short-circuited by balls that were hit hard but right at people, and the offensive output consisting of two Lucas Duda [3] hits and a Baltimore chop. Enough went right against Washington to put a certain spring in our collective step, but plenty’s gone wrong against Atlanta, the reports of whose demise seem to have been somewhat exaggerated. (And whose stadium can’t be knocked down soon enough, even if it means being party to another shameful bilking of taxpayers.)
So yeah, tonight’s game was no fun and — unlike last night’s [4] — had nothing particularly admirable about it.
Speaking of neither fun nor admirable, say a half-season’s farewell to Jenrry Mejia [5], who will get 75 more games to rest his balky elbow now that he’s been suspended for stanozolol [6], which you may know better as Winstrol. It’s an old-school steroid — the stuff Brian McNamee said he injected in Roger Clemens [7]‘s booty, to quote a famous line that I fear will be the last thing rattling around in my brain as I’m expiring in a nursing home one day.
Mejia, oddly, is the fourth pitcher in two weeks to test positive for this retro-steroid, which makes you wonder if someone changed the formula in some dubiously legal supplement or if people have come down with a case of the stupids.
I ran out of things to say about performance-enhancing drugs a long time ago — I’ll just let the last thing I remember writing stand [8]. Well, all right, here’s a bit more: I’m disappointed and irked that Mejia did something dumb, but except for practical reasons I’m not more disappointed and irked about it because he’s a Met. I wish we could stop talking and worrying about this stuff, but at least the penalties have become pretty steep: Mejia’s out half a season and $1.1 million, which has got to hurt even if you’re a young millionaire, and is the kind of thing that you’d assume would make you think twice.
Well, until four players disappear from rosters in two weeks.
A suggestion for the Mets, besides volunteering to take sledgehammers to Turner Field to make it disappear even sooner: Next year, don’t name a closer for Opening Day. Just shrug and make vague harrumphing noises and tell people to come to the ballpark. Bad things happen to Met closers, and those bad things happen quickly.
Oh, and here’s a weird way to assess whether you’re optimist or a pessimist: Mejia’s mistake means he’s ineligible for the postseason.