It was different tonight. I turned it on, I alternated between TV and radio, I rooted for us and against them. Just like always.
But it was different. I know I said I’d care, but I didn’t. I neither watched nor listened without distraction. There was a good bit of flipping and a little reading and maybe a few winks. I can see why game stories in the papers are so small for non-contenders in September. Is it really news when a team in a slide continues down that greasy pole to oblivion? Is an utterly predictable Mets’ loss to the impressive Cardinals more than bookkeeping? Except for it being baseball (and therefore not being football), there wasn’t much there to enthrall a baseball fan who wasn’t wearing red.
In whatever inning that I overheard something about Benson coming out, I got up and walked away to do something else. I was in the next room when I heard cheering. I wandered in to see if we were being uncharacteristically proactive at bat. No, it was a Cardinal rookie homering. I actually thought Benson was taken out for a pinch-hitter and that the Mets were up.
I would not have made that mistake 24 hours earlier. Or just about any time during the competitive portion of the season.
The sum total of the roll we rode to that long-ago zenith of 68-60 was 9-2. Since then, we are 2-10. From eight games over to right back where we started from on the morning of April 4 and the evening of August 4 and a zillion other times in 2005. Our kindred spirits at the Crane Pool Forum call it Galaxy .500. I hope gravity doesn’t betray us before we get to at least 81 wins.
At least?
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