By the time Saturday afternoon rolled around our 2024 beach vacation was at an end: house cleaned, last Long Beach Island breakfast consumed, farewells said, and car filled for the trip back to Brooklyn, the heat wave we’d been happy to miss, and normal life.
Heading up the Garden State Parkway, your correspondent was frankly weary. You’ve been there: thoughts wandering, eyelids heavy, brain feeling full of static so that bearing down on the task at hand is faintly painful. I was weary and it was going to get worse before the obvious remedy made it better.
I should stop, I thought. Which was good advice and the responsible thing to do. But we weren’t that far from home. We had things to do. And there wasn’t a good alternative. Emily was asleep in the passenger seat, head bent at an angle she’d complain about once fully awake again. The kid doesn’t know how to drive yet, and I doubted a helicopter zooming overhead would drop down a learner’s permit and an instructor. Nope, this one was on me.
I decided I’d stop at the Jon Bon Jovi rest area (yes it’s a real thing) if I wasn’t more awake by the time I approached it, and flipped over from a Spotify playlist to MLB Audio, as the Mets and Cubs were preparing to resume hostilities at Wrigley.
Ten minutes later, I was sharp and alert. The JBJ rest area went by without us, perhaps awaiting Tommy and Gina at the end of their long days spent at docks and/or diners. To them and all other weary prayer-livers, whoo wah oo wah oo wahooga.
What had changed? I was laser-focused on my irritation with Tylor Megill, who’d given us the full Tylor Megill Experience in a nightmarish first inning: nibbling and missing, nibbling and missing, until five runs were home and I wanted to jam a spork — made in whatever country — in my eye. Just like that, we’d gone from a laugher so nice we had to recap it twice to being the laughee and looking to Sunday for redemption.
Still, by the time it was mercifully over I was home and alive, people and automobile intact. Thanks for that, Tylor, even if you can keep the rest.
It’s hard to remember that Tylor Megill is the same guy whose first three ML games were Goodenesque, who once pitched a sparkling opener, and started one of the only two no-hitters in Mets history. Now he just looks like Jon Niese redux. Sad.
By the way, I prefer the previous name of the Jon Bon Jovi rest stop. To me, it will always be the Cheesequake Rest Stop. And yes, that was a thing.
Cheesequake was definitely more fun to yell while zooming by.
The problem is we still don’t have a real starting rotation and/or an ace.
Big picture, and sad for we true fans who really (used to) love the drama of the regular season.
Too many teams involved in this WC playoff mishmash, so nothing really means anything at this point.
First, it was ‘it’s only April,’ then ‘it’s only May,’ now ‘it’s only June,’ and soon it will be ‘it’s only July.’
When exactly are we supposed to begin to feel true emotion DURING the season rather than the fake stuff we have all been feeling up to now?
When will these games TRULY matter?
September 15th?
Tylor is expendable
Tylor’s a serviceable #5 or 6, like Peterson.