The Mets are baseball's ShamWow! (with an offense that is little more than Slap Chop). Night after night, they soak up the spillage of their crummy season and…voila! All gone. They're more efficient than paper towels.
Went to Tuesday night's quick and tidy no-muss, no-fuss loss with three fellow blogged-up fans: Dana Brand, Matt Silverman and Mike Steffanos. If the Mets played the game like we talked it, they'd have exuded a lot more passion than they did. But that's been the scene wherever I've sat, with whomever I sat, all season long.
I want to thank each of the guys for his company and Dana for the invite, but I particularly have to credit Matt with the top two observations of the evening. First was while we were gathering outside the rotunda, “treated” to a performance by the mariachi band hired to serenade us in honor of whatever the hell Night it was. Goya Foods had set up a table for a food drive, which was nice of them. Suddenly, there was an onslaught of security in its direction (not the same onslaught that snatched from me my bottled beverages because they had the nerve to have been previously opened; Aquafina alert! Aquafina alert!). Was there trouble? No, there was Pedro Feliciano, in pinstriped pants and batting practice jersey, coming out for a little grip and grin with the Goya folks. He was just a few feet from us, which was both very neat and, well, not as big a deal as I would have thought. You get used to seeing Pedro Feliciano, y'know? I'll bet we would have resisted the urge to smother him with kisses even without his retinue.
But the Mets weren't taking any chances with their most durable commodity. You would have thought Pedro was the president stopping by on his way to address the U.N. and that those 15 or so crimson-shirted security specialists (Go Phillies!) constituted the Secret Service. I'm surprised another dark red wall of humanity didn't envelop Brian Stokes, August Pitcher of the Month — and ponder, if you will, what kind of month rates as its flagship pitcher Brian Stokes — en route to an undisclosed location. Anyway, we watched unaccosted as the only Pedro we've got gripped, grinned and posed with Goya's finest.
“Does this count as another appearance for Feliciano?” Matt wondered.
Later, as the Mets were dutifully preparing to tuck themselves in for the evening, giving the Braves no trouble whatsoever, Matt wondered something else: When was the last time the Mets played an extra inning game? We were stumped. Matt thought it was August 4, the night Green surrendered a grand slam to Pujols and the Mets surrendered their final notions of competing in 2009. I looked it up and there was actually one that followed, August 15. It may not be remembered for going ten innings since we were all rather preoccupied by Matt Cain beaning David Wright, something still a little on David's mind.
So it's been 36 games and counting since the Mets played extra innings. Matt theorizes that's a sign of a team not exerting all that much effort, not really pushing itself to play one more damn inning than it absolutely has to. I'm thinking it's darn considerate of them. The way the Mets have gone on any given evening, I'd say nine is enough.
DUCK! THERE ARE BULLETS HEADING STRAIGHT FOR YOU!
• Dana Brand's Last Days of Shea is a thoughtful stroll through the final two years of ye olde stadium, with side trips into its history — available here.
• Matt Silverman's Shea Good-Bye, written with Keith Hernandez, brings a ballplayer's perspective to a not-quite season with a Mets fan's eye for detail — available here.
• Why be shy? My book — available here. And my rumination on Baseball's Most Magical Date, in case you somehow missed it, here.
• Mets Walkoffs continues the Sixty Greatest Met Home Runs countdown from 50 through 41 , while contemplating who's been giving up home runs to Mets all these years here.
• I've only mentioned it in conjunction with its coverage of Amazin' Tuesday, but Section Five Twenty-Eight is good Mets bloggin' any day of the week…here.
• Please participate in our readership survey here.
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