Beat the Mets, beat the Mets
Step right up and sweep the Mets
Sorry kiddies, they’re playing flat
Guaranteed to want your money back
Because the Mets are really sucking this year
They’re 12 behind; it’ll get worse I fear
From Dodgers to Giants, everybody’s comin’ round
To beat the M-E-T-S Mets of New York town!
Growing up on Long Island, I was pretty much the only non-Yankee fan in my neighborhood and I must have heard that several hundred times, which seems to have left it stuck in my head forever. (The dirt-bike kids’ version was a little different; I altered some socially Neanderthal lines for our nominally more enlightened times.)
That song was playing in a loop in my head while the Mets took a very long time to wind up with nothing against the Dodgers. The game was mildly diverting for a spell, particularly when Kevin Plawecki [1], of all people, connected for a game-tying three-run homer. Even in the worst season, a three-run blast will make me smile, at least a little bit. Another Kevin, Kaczmarski, made his big-league debut and almost beat out a little trickler for a hit, one he would have been forgiven for slowly morphing into a sizzling line drive over the coming decades. I got to see Drew Smith [2] a day after being MIA for his debut, and the kid was one of just two Met hurlers to emerge unscathed in Mickey Callaway [3]‘s Reliever-a-Rama. I thought Brandon Nimmo [4]‘s hand was broken but X-rays were negative, meaning the Mets won’t be stripped of one of their only players worth watching. (Though it’s not like the Mets haven’t missed fractures before, so we’d be advised to wait and see.)
But the mildly diverting part of the afternoon did nothing to alter my certainty that the Mets were going to lose, and the only question was how. Granted, the Mets losing wasn’t a bold prediction, not with the Dodgers connecting for Citi Field homers at a record-setting pace. My money was on a Joc Pederson [5] homer in the ninth, and Pederson did go deep — but in the seventh, so what do I know. Anyway, I knew they were going to lose, and when they did [6] I just shrugged. Maybe the frown was a little deeper than it would have been without Plawecki’s brief rebellion, maybe the shrug was a little wider — but does it matter? A Mets loss is perilously close to a sure thing these days, as this once-promising season staggers along, accompanied by my childhood tormentors’ favorite tune.