The Curse of Pup-Peroni

Hindsight being 20-20, I should have known we weren’t clinching about 11:10 this morning.

That’s when Emily and Joshua and I walked into Madison Square Park, home of Shake Shack — and site of some American Kennel Club carnival that looked like it had been put together late last night by a couple of AKC volunteers who’d been smoking pot and knew this guy who kind of had, like, some A/V gear? The PA — if you can call one speaker that — played a succession of calculatedly inoffensive, dog-related hits, like (wait for it) “Hound Dog.” Hi-larious! And the AKC folks had forgotten how to play musical chairs. Really, it was avert-your-eyes sad.

But as part of this event, there was the black spot from Friday night — a Pup-Peroni banner.

Pup-Peroni? What the fuck? Will Paul Maholm arrive and offer to strike me out? Will Jason Bay show up, snatch away my Shackburger and tell me I can’t have it until tomorrow?

We should have known, but we didn’t. Preparing for our Saturday evening out, Emily and I perused the various Met blogs before (duh) I realized our own blog had a link to Mets bars. (Honest. It’s down there on the left.)

I’m not a stranger to booze or booze-related misdeeds. Quite the contrary, in fact, as too many stories and my expanding middle will attest. But baseball and booze don’t particularly mix for me. I don’t like drinking at Shea because it’s expensive, you miss things while peeing, and the subway ride home becomes a horrifying test of bladder elasticity. Bars are better, but the sound’s rarely on, after a few I lose track of the little things that make baseball rewarding, and if we lose the boozy belligerence means running the risk of saying something stupid and getting my ass beat by someone a lot bigger and meaner than me.

But tonight was different: The babysitter was coming, Emily and I were headed out, and we needed a Mets bar.

As site of last night’s Metsblog frustratapalooza, McFadden’s seemed steeped in failure, and was a little too UES for our us anyway. Broadway Dive Bar sounded good, but 102nd Street may as well be in Vermont. I tossed Scruffy Duffy’s out because it violated a basic principle — never go to a bar if you’d be embarrassed to die there and have the name of the bar in your obit. We thought of Loki Lounge in Park Slope, but I’d had a previous misadventure there and wasn’t eager to return. In the end, we decided to forget about Mets bars (that said, if anyone has a good one, email us) head down to the northern precincts of Red Hook (Cobble Hill West, if you wanna be all realtor about it) and try the Moonshine, a excellent dive bar just north of Hamilton Avenue with a lovely view of the Brooklyn Motor Inn.

There weren’t a lot of Met fans to be found, sad to say — the Moonshine had Access Hollywood on the TV when we arrived, in fact. But they switched without argument and we sat at one end of the bar and watched most of the game while drinking Stella, munching peanuts, and trying not to be filled with dread. Which all worked just fine while the Pirates kept getting doubled off first and El Duque kept getting out of leadoff-runner troubles.

Emily had a good feeling in the top of the 7th. I’m not sure why. Then, around the 8th (I was drunk by then, so my recall may be off), the black spot appeared: Pup-Peroni. We didn’t score. They did. Emily was off to the bathroom before Joe Randa even touched home plate.

Well, fuck. Anyone up for some afternoon champagne?