The River Styx

I can't stress how much I'm not kidding about how the Mets should not be allowed to cross west of the Mississippi River ever, ever again.

With Tuesday night's loss to the Padres in San Diego, their 2005 record in games played in that half of the country — The Dirty Thirty I've been dwelling on intermittently since late May — fell to 3-11. Their 2005 record in the first games of series played in that half of the country fell to 0-5.

That means the Mets are 54-44 when they don't make these treacherous trips, 57-50 if they could strike a bargain to have every series start with the second game.

When the Mets have entered a city that isn't New York for the first time this year, regardless of proximity to New York, they have gone 2-11. That means they're 55-44 when they're not getting adjusted to an apparently unfamiliar place. Such away games have finally gotten to Pedro the way they've gotten to the lot of them.

So I have a question:

WHAT THE FUDGE IS WRONG WITH THEM? Don't they fly charter flights? Don't they stay in nice hotels? Are the bases 92 feet apart in San Diego and Houston and Denver and almost every place else when the Mets are batting? Are they 88 feet apart when the other team is up? Is there some obscure “home team starts with a 3-0 lead” rule that I'm missing?

This is absurd. This is inexcusable. This is killing us. This is why we're not going to be playing in any town beyond October 2.

Nice tumbling, bare-handed, back-to-the-plate catch by Diamond Dave. Nice catch like Warren Buffett is comfortable. Very nice catch. So very nice that San Diego fans stood and cheered. They could afford to. They were home against the Mets.

There are things besides Mets games to be avoided on the West Coast. One is Larry Krueger. A take of sorts on his brain-dead contretemps at Gotham Baseball.