I Am Dork Legend

Realization #84,024 That You Are a Hopeless Met Geek:

At the beginning of “I Am Legend,” the not-at-all-bad Will Smith postapocalyptic thriller Emily and I saw last night, we’re fed exposition about how an anticancer treatment becomes a virus that turns people into Yankee fans retarded, ultraviolent zombies who live in packs. We’re brought up to speed by watching a properly awkward give-and-take between a chirpy morning anchor and the researcher who created the anticancer treatment. During this interview, there’s a news crawl along the bottom, offering tidbits of news from that day in 2009.

During that scene, this caught my eye: The Mets had signed young pitching prospect Thomas Baker to a four-year extension through 2013.

Whoa! The Mets have a pitching prospect? He apparently hasn’t blown out an elbow? He’s good enough to lock up for four extra years! Never mind the bad stuff the trailer indicated was coming — this is exciting!

But then I kept thinking.

Hmm. I’ve never heard of him, so I assume Baker (who you know his teammates call “Bakie,” since Chris Berman was like a runaway virus that killed all the good nicknames) was a 2007, 2008 or 2009 draftee. But wait a minute. Why would the Mets extend him, then? Don’t they still control his rights? Was he a Super 2? Why not lock him up longer than 2013?

Maybe he’s an El Duque-type refugee or a Japanese posting? WIth a name like Thomas Baker? Well, maybe his parents were expats. Or, I dunno, missionaries. That’s it — he was a missionary’s kid who grew up listening to Armed Forces Radio in the shadow of Mount Fuji and signed with a Japanese League team. That sounds awesome!

So while Will Smith was hunting deer in Times Square and looking at the shattered Brooklyn Bridge and getting back to Washington Square Park by dark, I was paying fitful attention because I was still wondering about Thomas Baker.

Then, later, when Smith explained that of those who contracted the virus, 90% died and 10% turned into zombies, and 1% of the population was immune but they pretty much all got eaten, I decided that was probably it for Thomas Baker, and I should stop worrying about him. (And David Wright and Jose Reyes, for that matter. Something tells me Michael Kay survived as a cannibal zombie, if he isn’t one already.)

Shit, our whole team died or turned into zombies or got eaten, I thought. And if any Met’s left huddled in a bunker somewhere, it’s probably Schoeneweis. We never get a break.

Yes, I am completely insane.