I generally keep track of what the Mets are doing even if I’m away, sneaking looks at MLB.tv, popping an airpod into an ear, or at least letting GameDay do its pantomime thing in my lap.
But combining a trip to Iceland with the Mets’ Road Trip from Hell was a perfect recipe for being well and truly out of pocket. With the additional time change, the games started after I was asleep and concluded before I was awake. I heard Paul Blackburn [1]‘s debut against the Angels, with the last out recorded shortly before boarding a midnight flight (oh, things looked so promising then). And I caught the first couple of innings of the middle game against the Mariners because I couldn’t sleep.
Between them, nada: I’d look at my phone over skyr and coffee in the Icelandic morning and try to make sense of things that had already transpired. There’s always a funny moment when you look at the score of a baseball game and your brain needs half a second to parse it: Oh, the bigger number’s here and the smaller number’s there, that’s good/bad, and now that I’ve got it straight, let’s figure out exactly how that happened.
What this sequence of revelations told me was, above all else, frustrating: We can’t win a series against the Angels, really? Figured they’d drop that dumb makeup game in St. Louis, so whew. OK, nice bounceback series in Colorado. And then the buzzsaw of the Mariners’ starting staff and the bats returning to slumber.
I got to watch the Mets uninterrupted for the first time in nine days on Sunday evening, and for a while that even seemed like a good idea. Luis Castillo [2] was dealing, but so was Luis Severino [3], with the shadows of a Seattle afternoon game turning an already tough job for hitters on both teams into the stuff of borderline farce. But then a taut, tight duel turned when the Mets let in a run on a little infield hit that Francisco Lindor [4]‘s best effort couldn’t quite convert into an inning-ending out, Severino left a changeup in Cal Raleigh [5]‘s wheelhouse, and suddenly the Mets were down 4-0.
Down 4-0, and it was about to get a whole lot worse. Jeff McNeil [6] homered to keep the Mets from being shut out all three times in Seattle, but that was all that went right. In the sixth the annoying ESPN crew ooh’ed and ahh’ed over a bald eagle soaring above Seattle; a moment later I was fervently wishing this majestic bird would swoop down and carry Ryne Stanek [7] off to Syracuse or the Ross Ice Shelf or some other place where I’d never have to see him again. Soon after that I was imagining other eagles dropping by to remove Adam Ottavino [8] and Danny Young [9] from view. Alas, those relievers stayed around to do unhelpful things until the Mets were mercifully allowed to slink back to New York, grateful the whole thing is finally behind them [10].
Except it isn’t. The Mets apparently pissed someone off in the MLB scheduling department, as they’ll be heading back to the West Coast in 11 days.
Maybe I’ll go back to Iceland and miss that one too.