Sunday night’s game got off to a great start. Our Zambrano pitching out of a jam. Their Zambrano struggling. Beltran, Floyd and Wright all having fun in the Build-A-Run Workshop. An excellent game right into the bottom of the third.
Which is when I turned it off.
Sunday night. Nine o’clock. Six Feet Under. Third-to-last episode ever. Nate’s funeral. Hey, I didn’t tell ESPN to reschedule the Mets and Cubs into the middle of my other obsession. I’d been waiting 167 hours — since the end of the fourth-to-last episode ever — for this. Godspeed, Mets; gotta go.
They indeed buried Nate. It was a green funeral, just as he requested before the unexpected reflaring of his eventually fatal AVM. Meanwhile, the Mets buried the Cubs without me. I grabbed a score when SFU ended, but otherwise stuck around for Entourage (Vince copped to his continuing obsession with Mandy Moore) and even The Comeback. By the time I was done with HBO, the Mets had finished off the Cubs, 6-1. Brenda never should have encouraged Nate to go see Maggie, but I could trust the Mets with a lead.
I dug up the remaining relevant details on Mets Extra, most notably Jose hitting in twenty straight. Five more, kid, five more. Most relevant of all, the Mets, despite appearing as dead as Nate as recently as Thursday when they went all Narm! against the Brewers, are three out of a playoff spot. Now they have to do something Nate couldn’t do: stay alive in Southern California. It’s also something they rarely do themselves, but they’re not six feet under. They’re three games over.
Wish I could say more about Sunday night’s game, but I have to pull a Phil Rizzuto on my scorecard and mark most of it WW. It was one of the few times all season when I wasn’t watching.
All apologies.
You know the rules. (Well, my rules.) Don't stick around for the fifth. No victory.
Your metaphors are making little sense here. Going “all Narm”? If I have to turn the Mets off to get a references with which to understand the Mets, all is lost, is it not?
I'm not a cable household, but I hear they have these crazy new machines that allow you to record one program while watching another.
Also, if HBO is the HBO I remember, they'll be re-running this episode a dozen times a week.
It's true Greg. This makes no sense. It fits neither your fandom rules nor common sense. I mean, is your 6 Feet Under obsession so great that you couldn't wait until tonight to find out if Nate was really dead?
You missed a good one. I was so proud of my Victor. I of course enjoyed the game more than the pot-smoking–complete with bong–that was allowed to go on around me (good old Shea), but still. The Real Zambrano triumphed. He was freakin' awesome. (They did replay the game at 3 am, you know.)
I watched it (so there) — or at least it was on while I continued to do stupid chores. Here are some things you missed:
* John Miller and Joe Morgan (dressed entirely in peach and looking like a Willie Wonka extra) having an insipid argument about stats. Miller started talking about OPS in a patronizing, look-what-these-crazy-kids-do-today way, then expressed his desire for a stat that would credit a hitter for getting on base because of an error. Um, on-base average? OPS? Are you there John, it's me modern stats? Morgan, being Morgan, grunted that there were enough stats and if he got his way there'd be no stats at all, just old-timers who played the game right talking about other old-timers who played the game right. And between innings they'd all take hatchets to some of these devil computers that are ruining the game, America and life on our once-green world. (OK, he said some of that.)
* Joe Morgan said that five years ago Mike Piazza was “all the Mets had.” Thankfully, one of his producers couldn't let this larger-than-usual mound of steaming horseshit pass and quickly cut to a shot of the 2000 NATIONAL LEAGUE CHAMPIONS banner. Joe had no comment, probably fuming that the producer got that from one of those devil computers. In Joe's day the Reds kept no record of championship years because assigning numerical years to accomplishments is no substitute for having been on the field and makes you value the wrong things and that's not good for the game.
* Jose Reyes's hit streak wasn't noted at all, at least not that I heard.
* Sam Ryan went on and on about the band Staind.
* There actually was a decent discussion of Willie wanting Reyes to learn how to hit before working with him on the approach a leadoff hitter has to take. It made sense to me, even if I was horrified to hear Ol' Joe Ludd passing it on. Did I mention he was a vision in peach?
Joe Morgan was booed when he was shown on DiamondVision. (Then again, who ISN'T booed at Shea?)
The question is: was Morgan booed for being a former National League enemy who built up much of his conserable cv against the Mets, or was he booed for spreading ignorance by displaying in the booth and in print none of the intelligence and awareness that characterized his brilliant career?
Considering that Shea these days seems to be mostly populated by folks who probably were either not alive or not aware at the time of Joe's previous infractions, I'm guessing he just annoys them on ESPN.
Yes.
“I'm not a cable household”
I apparently have too much cable but you my friend have not enough. How do you exist as a baseball fan let alone Mets lover? I mean, yeah, I bow down before Gary and Howie every night (enjoyed my three innings with the TV sound down), but no cable? Very little televised baseball, DC or otherwise? I don't mean to be messing with your household budget, but wow.
Not only does HBO rerun Six Feet Under but ESPN reran the game between 3 and 5 in the AM. Guess what I was watching between 3 and 5 in the AM.
NARM: It's what happens when one's arm grows numb but one's brain won't allow the words to be spit out. Also what happens when a team blows a 9-7 lead in the ninth.
There was one more discussion of note: John and Joe speaking of steroids. It was notable not for the light it brought upon the subject but for the Cirque du Soliel-like contortion (sic) ability of both men to avoid taking a thoughful stand one way or another. They must have had a list of “bad”, (i.e. thought provoking) words they could not use in discussing Mr. Palmero and his hobbies. It went one for one complete half inning. I do not believe they called balled and strikes at any point during this frame. It was so bad my 6 yr old yelled at the scream “Could you stop talking and show the game!!”. I, of course, was so proud I almost wept.
Proud Daddy
I couldn't even exist without MLB Extra Innings, let alone cable. Yikes! Needless to say, as a result, my fridge doesn't hold much more than mustard and mayonnaise and I haven't been to a movie or a restaurant in I don't know how long. A girl's gotta have priorities.
Joe Morgan and his reaction to all this flippety-floppety nonsense that passes for modern-day baseball puts me in mind of Joe Garagiola guffawing at the way the players “these days” rely on batting helmets and batting gloves. “In my day, we'd take one on the coconut and we'd sprint to first. Not like today with the trainer and the protective padding. Things sure have changed.”
Indeed, baseball was so much better in Nineteen Dickety Six.
They had to say Dickety because the Kaiser had stolen the 0's. And they wore an onion on their belts, which was the fashion at the time…
I get my game feeds through the internet.
If I let cable into the house, I'd spend my time watching Patty Duke Show reruns (and wondering just how identical cousins can come to be) and never have the time to become the success story I am now.
Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say…
Meet Victor who's pitched near a couple of bays
Flushing and Tampa, those Devil Rays
But Carlos has always been a Cub
Losing to some other club — though they have their days!
They're Zambranos…
Identical surnames all the way
Venezuelan, yet not related,
No matter what people say
While Victor can struggle with his control,
Thinking too much — which takes a toll
Carlos would rather work real fast
Doesn't mean that he will last — when his back goes out!
Still they're Zambranos
Identical surnames you can state
Don't pitch alike, don't talk alike –
But what's really great..
Is each Zambrano…
Wears Thirty-Eight!
Our (MY!!) Zambrano's better than theirs, so there. And to think I was disappointed when I first heard that theirs was not actually ours! I'm glad ours is ours. I love ours.
And if there are Patty Duke reruns on cable, I have yet to come across them. I wish!
and why are we all in italics now? ADMIN!!!!!!!!!!!
Cuz italikz rulez! FAFIF iz pwned!
“What is that, some sort of Quaker thing? You f*** somebody's husband to death and then bring them a quiche to make up for it?”
Tremendous.
Then the rest of you win.
The italics are my fault. I didn't close my italics code at the end of The Patty Duke Show.
But there. I did now. Sorry about that.
The show was re-run on cable the last time I was a subscriber. Now there's really no reason I should let that garbage in my house.
I'm sticking with getting my getting my Mets through the internet… along… with… a bunch of different… garbage.
Great job, Gretg