Several times this winter, I’ll sigh and tell my wife how I’d do anything to watch any baseball game — even say, a June snoozer pitting the Brewers against the D-Backs. I’ll mean it, of course — nothing comforts me while staring out the window and waiting for spring. Not winter ball, not Mets Classics, not hot-stove talk, not tending to The Holy Books.
Still, if I had a choice between watching today’s Mets-Phillies game and sulking at the window, I actually think I’d sulk by the window.
The game clocked in at a tidy 2:23 but seemed to take three times that long. Sean Gilmartin [1] was fine but Jerad Eickhoff [2] was better, Darin Ruf [3] hit a massive homer, no Met other than Kirk Nieuwenhuis [4] hit much of anything [5]. Plus it was freezing and I think the uniformed personnel may have outnumbered the spectators.
The amazing thing? I almost went to this game. I hit a big book deadline on Wednesday and have a couple of days before I have to move on to the next project. On Wednesday night, with a little too much prosecco imbibed, it seemed like a grand idea to take the morning train down to Philadelphia for a Mets matinee. This morning, thank God, it seemed like an excess of fuss.
Proof that not every opportunity passed up is one you’ll regret. (Or, as someone put it on Twitter, this was my Carlos Gomez [6] trade.)
So here are the Mets, freshly swept by the Phillies but not booted out of their division title by way of punishment, trying to get all hands healthy and unsuspended and used to bullpen work. They’re tied with the Dodgers for home-field advantage in the NLDS, though recall that a tie goes to the guys in orange and blue. The next three days will settle that, weather permitting. (And if we think a Monday or Tuesday extra game would be inconvenient bordering on cruel, just think how the Nats and their fans would feel about it.)
It would be good to finish even with or ahead of the Dodgers, seeing how they’re much better at Dodger Stadium. But it would be better, I think, to be as healed as possible. We don’t like to admit it, but three games out of five is a crapshoot — just as we don’t like to admit that the entire postseason is a crapshoot.
If the Dodgers get home-field advantage, Mets fandom will of course have a collective stroke. But then that’s going to happen anyway over Yoenis Cespedes [7]‘s fingers and Steven Matz [8]‘s back and Wilmer Flores [9]‘s back and Juan Uribe [10]‘s sternum and Matt Harvey [11]‘s innings and whether it’s Gilmartin or Erik Goeddel [12] or Jon Niese [13] or Bartolo Colon [14] and Juan Lagares [15] or Nieuwenhuis or Eric Young [16] Jr. And Twitter will be the frantic heart monitor paging nurses and doctors with electrified paddles.
Until next Friday and first pitch at a park to be determined, it’s silly season. Which, don’t get me wrong, is a whole heckuva lot better than stale season, when you’re trying to convince yourself that the last dregs of a losing season are to be savored even though you’re secretly ready for a break from baseball. But it’s still silly. We’ll play life-and-death games in a week, but that week of waiting is going to feel even longer than this lost series in Philadelphia did.
So hang in there, rest up, and be kind to each other. And, of course, Let’s Go Mets.