Ready for a change of pace? What’s on my mind is baseball and my beloved Mets. At the end there will be a little baseball related politics. I’m a member of a Met fan group and seeing what other people post there made clear that Met fans act like people in an abusive relationship. We love the Mets but are always waiting for them to hurt us. Why? That’s what they’ve done for so long. Two years ago, our evil stepfather Fred Wilpon sold the team to Steve Cohen. While I have always loved the Mets for the first time in years, I feel the teams loves me back. Cohen has made it noticeably clear that he wants to win, and he wants to change the Mets culture. Last year there were some bumps in the road, Rome wasn’t built in a day. One glaring problem was lack of depth. What did Cohen do in the off season? He addressed that. We lost the best pitcher in baseball, Jacob deGrom until last week and are still in first place with a comfortable lead. Why? In the off season we signed the second best pitcher in baseball, “Mad” Max Scherzer. When he got hurt things did go sour. The team played only .500 ball. That was partially because the best position player Cohen acquired caught his finger in a door and spent a month not hitting. He got healthy and Scherzer came back and now Jake, and the team has been on a tear since the All-Star break.
I’ve gone to the Met game two days in a row. On Sunday I saw deGrom’s first home start in over 400 days. Anyone who thought he wouldn’t come back 100% was right, he came back at 105%. He was perfect for five innings and two-thirds innings. As is coming off an injury he had a strict innings count of six. In that time, he struck out 12 batters. He threw 18 sliders before any batter could do as much as foul it off. It was like watching It Happens Every Spring. Ray Milland played a chemist that put a chemical on the ball that made it swerve to avoid bats. No Met has ever been able to do what deGrom does since Gooden in 1985. I felt sorry for Atlanta’s batters, they were helpless. That it is Atlanta is important. They’ve been the best team in the NL East for years and are the defending World Champs. The Mets had a 10.5 game lead till Scherzer got hurt and Atlanta won 30 of 35 games. The lead shrunk to just half a game and the PTSD Met fans saw nothing but doom. I didn’t I could feel the difference. Scherzer and deGrom came back, Lindor got healthy, and the Mets just beat the Braves 4 out of 5 and beat the Reds yesterday. Their lead is back up to seven games.
The atmosphere at games is different than it’s been in years. When the game ends after a win we leave the stadium shouting “Let’s Go Mets!” When deGrom came out it might as well have been the Second Coming. It WAS the second coming; the Messiah is here to lead us to the promised land. I’m an atheist but this feels like religious fervor, or a great concert. The experience was transcendental enough that I don’t want to distract from it by telling you about my commute or what I ate or anything external to the game. The Met fans are talking to each other like Falcon Ridge campers. We feel so good we want to share the feeling with others. We have become a community.
Oh, hell I’m going to skip the politics. I’m all about peace love and understanding now. Over the last two weekends I’ve been to Falcon Ridge and to and Jacob deGrom’s return. How magical is it? I have a friend whose politics offends me. He’s a Trump supporter and says things that make my stomach turn. I’m sure he feels similarly about me. But we are both Met fans. It feels like he’s making an extra effort to be friendly with me on Facebook. I am making an extra effort to be friendly to him. I look for him at games after I found out that he was sitting right near me one game. If I see him, I’ll go over and say hi and if there’s room sit with him for tomorrow. Politics divides but the Mets unite. We should all want that. The Mets are making us kinder. Right now, they are a force for good.
There is no guarantee that the Mets will win the World Series. Fivethirtyeight gives them a 13% chance. It just went up though as each game that deGrom pitches make it more likely that he’ll be available for the series. It will be difficult for any team to beat the Mets when deGrom and Scherzer pitch four games of any series. There’s also a sad reason their odds just went up. Clayton Kershaw, perhaps the greatest pitcher of his generation just got hurt. He might not be available for the Dodgers come the post season. The Mets might even catch them and have the best record in the NL and so the home field advantage until the World Series.
I almost forgot to mention the Mets’ most popular player, recent acquisition Daniel Vogelbach. He’s a 6 foot 270 lbs first baseman/DH. He is round, he does not look like a baseball player. He’s not a star, but he does just what the Mets acquired him to do, mash righthanded pitchers. In the 14 games he’s played since the Mets got him, he’s batting .333, his OBP is .480 and his SLG is .564. Those are Ted Williams type numbers. He got the loudest applause when the team lineup was announced yesterday, not Alonso who leads the league in RBIs or Lindor their best player. He’s just so much fun to watch. When he hit a double the crowd was on its feet.
I’m done gushing. To come back to earth, I have to walk to the post-office to pick up my shipment of masks. I wasn’t home when it came the first time and I arrange for them to deliver it the next day. They didn’t. Yesterday I got an email reminding me to get ready for the redelivery on August 4. Yes, four days before they sent the email. I checked online and found out that I now have to go to the post office. It better be there. Its so hot that instead of walking I’ll take the subway. I’m so busy this week that the unlimited rides will kick in. After 12 trips all rides are free. I’m taking advantage of it. Now back to what’s important.
Let’s Go Mets!
Wise Madness 