Both teams look like garbage, Dad. All's I know is Da Bears could be kicking some major butt right now.
—Denise Swerski
I never realized how boring this game is.
—Homer Simpson
I'd hide under the sink except Tommy Lasorda beat me to it.
Endy Chavez himself could not save this matchup from sailing out of Consciousness Park.
Where's that 1988 division-clincher when we need it?
It's not who's not playing in this World Series. It's who is. The Cardinals I completely begrudge and the Tigers, scattered familiar personages notwithstanding, I simply do not know.
No doubt Detroit is populated by deserving fans pulling for swell fellows, but given my weekend-long dwelling upon of the events of last Thursday night (Bunt? Nah. Maybe. Nah. I dunno.), I am not in the mood for introductions at this late date. That's Pudge, and there's Casey, and I think that guy helped lose 119 games, and Leyland as ever appears three Marlboros from a lung transplant…yeah, that's about it.
Good luck Tigers, whoever you are.
Surprisingly, La Russa's only the second-smarmiest bastard I've encountered thus far. Even he takes a back seat to that smug, self-congratulatory SOB CEO who bought his employees ergonomic chairs and a puppy with Mastercard. I hope he and Tony the Genius go into business together and are charged with sexual harassment by Yadier Molina.
And that Molina falls down a hole.
I'm doing my duty, Judy. I'm watching. I'm not saying I'm not dozing off here and there, but I've got it on. Maybe something interesting — like Kenny Rogers washing his mysteriously filthy left hand again — will occur and I'll be compelled to revise my initial impressions. But compelling is the last thing I'd expect from these teams.
(And to think somebody told me he was impressed by my complete lack of bitterness the other day.)
yes, me too. about the bitterness, i mean.
i managed to not know anything about game one and was pleased with myself for that until i caught a random word on the radio about the cards winning. so, with the cone of silence shorted out, i grudgingly gave some time and space to game two last night, on the basis that We Only Have A Handful Of Games Left This Year.
know what? that song doesn't sound too good when your team should be playing them.
let some other team's fans enjoy their run. i don't even want to engage in that debate about who we should root for. that long winter descending upon us? as far as i'm concerned, it already has.
Greg…
I absolutely expect some bitterness from you….don't disappoint me.
For me,too, the game is on …but just background noise. I'm not ready to let go of the cadence of my summer. The last nail will go in when we turn the clocks back on Saturday…the countdown to pitchers and catchers starts…..
YOU'RE BACK!!!!! Oh my God, that was the longest weekend EVER. Don't ever do that again. I couldn't sleep, couldn't understand what I was watching and couldn't get that freakin' Lasorda to leave me alone. Who's Judy and why shouldn't I beat her to a pulp, anyway??
Joel (with tears streaming down his face)
Not me. I'm watching every minute. I don't want to be deprived of the pleasure of seeing the f***ing Cardinals get the ever-loving crap kicked out of them.
Go Tigers.
(I wanted post this under Jason's entry, but for some reason, comments there are disabled…)
I must make a confession:
I called Floyd's at-bat.
Just after the 6th, when we left 'em loaded.
I said: “How poetic would this be?” (pause, while I made sure I got everyone's attention)
“A Floyd walk-off.”
And my cohorts in the bleachers — mostly Mets' employees, I might add — all nodded and said “Wow, yeah, hadn't thought of that, that'd be pretty cool, etc.”
Now of course — by way of defending myself — I made this call under the assumption that the game would still be knotted at 1 when the time came.
So when he came up with 2 on & none out, everyone was high-fiving me & going, “Oh my GOD I don't believe it! Holy Shit! You're good, etc.” The guy directly in front of me gave me the Howie Mandel fist bump and said, “Wow. It's on you.”
So now when I hear all this To-bunt-or-not-to-bunt talk, I find myself wishing I weren't so damn precient.
I feel more than a little responsible for how things turned out…
Didn't watch in '88 and didn't watch in '99 and didn't regret either decision. Now I remember why. Surely there's a seven-game World Series on DVD I could watch instead.
I keep checking the forecast for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to see what the weather would have been for Games 3 through 5.
Bad job by Charlie in the picnic area, Mikey. He called Floyd's number and Floyd goes down. Very bad job.
I still wouldn't have bunted.
I have the 2001 WS on DVD if you want to borrow it. Never fails to cheer me up.
Thanks for the perspective, brotha… ;-)
Well, I think if Willie were ever intending to bunt, he'd have sent up Andy Hernandy or Glavine to do it. Cliff would've been nailed to the pine…
Ding ding ding! We have a winner! Honestly, I've been listening to this “why didn't he bunt” crap for days… and have concluded that no one asking this question actually watches the Mets, only subscribes to hackneyed baseball “wisdom” that doesn't take into account the specific people involved in the play.
Hi, everyone. I refrained from posting on Friday morning, because I was not feeling as charitable and proud of our boys as everyone else at that point. I was certain that if I vented what I was feeling, I would have stunned and appalled everyone and sullied this fine forum. I went through an abbreviated Kubler-Ross progression – Anger, Depression, and Acceptance – over the weekend, and am finally able to talk about the series with friends and family.
I disagree with all who claim '99 and '00 were tougher. If you're honest with yourself, you know we lost to superior teams both times (Kenny Rogers and his newfound strike-throwing ability would have been nice back then). However, this was patently not the case in '06. The Cardinals stink, and we choked this series away. (If you think I'm getting all vitriolic here, you should have seen me last week.) There were too many individual failures, and strategic questions (I still can't decide if I would have bunted) to blame any specific person, and what's the point anyway? But Carlos – next time, swing the F-ing bat, please?!
That said, this was an outrageously fun season, capped by a whirlwind postseason of which I only missed attending one game. I'm no longer dying inside, questioning my life's loves and all that has ever gone wrong for me. I was actually able to watch some of game 2 last night (apparently, it's my duty) and only yelled “This should be US!!!” a dozen or so times. Soon, I'll be able to look back on '06 fondly, as I do all the other years we fell short. And before you know it, we'll debating the rotation, and whether to trade Milledge, and who we want to play 2B, and counting the days to P's and C's (if you're not already… I think it's like 115). Because, well, You Gotta Believe!
Again, kudos and thanks to Gerg and Jason for adding so much to our season, and giving us a place to root and rant and regret and reminisce.
GERG?
I don't get all the after-the-fact hand-wringing over the failure to bunt. First of all, why give up an out when you've just gotten your first two hits since the first inning? Second, it's not like subsequent events proved Willie wrong. If the bunt had been successful, they'd have had second and third with one man out, instead of first and second with one man out. Well, Jose lined out to center for the second out, which probably would have scored the man from third but still left a man on second with two outs. And then LoDuca walked, which put the tying run on second with two outs anyway.
I realize that you can't really engage in this kind of historical reconstruction, but it's not like Reyes singled but only one run scored because men were only on first and second instead of second and third, and then LoDuca hit into a double play.
ha, I know. I wish we could edit comments.
As for Carlos swinging the bat… spare a thought for the poor guy. He had a millisecond to make a decision. He saw a pitch he knew he couldn't hit, so he had to decide… swing and miss for sure, or take a chance that it would be called a ball. He made the decision that gave him the greater odds… unfortunately sometimes when you roll the dice, you lose.
It looks so easy when you're not the one up there, doesn't it? ;-)
I agree. This was much much tougher than '99 and '00. In fact, this was probably tougher even than '88 and the bitter losses to St. Louis in '85 and '87. The loss to Oakland in '73 was bad but only because they just needed to win one of the last two — they were clearly the inferior team.
This one is definitely the worst, I think, and will hurt longer.
I agree. This was much much tougher than '99 and '00. In fact, this was probably tougher even than '88 and the bitter losses to St. Louis in '85 and '87. The loss to Oakland in '73 was bad but only because they just needed to win one of the last two — they were clearly the inferior team.
This one is definitely the worst, I think, and will hurt longer.
The Piazza beaning? The hurling of the shattered bat? Jogging Timo? Armando spitting the bit when facing O'Neill?
Vizcaino in the 12th? Luis Sojo's 20 hopper up the middle? Satan himself spraying champagne on our lawn?
Sorry kiddies, but compared to 2000, this was jubilation.
I don't hold Carlos any more responsible than everyone else. But c'mon, baseball 101: protect the plate.
Obviously, losing to satan's minions is worse than losing to a bunch of nobodies from a nondescript midwestern town… it's just to come thisclose and then let it slip through your fingers to such a mediocre club is so crushing.
I suppose in 2015, Armando's choke will stick in my craw more than this years' game 7. But right now, this is killing me.
I think this one hurts more in a way because we were SUPPOSED to win. This was supposed to be “the year.” In '99 and '00, we were underdogs and so a win would have been an unexpected joy, while this year we were the favorites and expected to win it all.
I'm just going to assume that Carlos Beltran is more experienced at the plate than I am, and give him the benefit of the doubt on this one. If he thought he could hit it, he would have.
I give all the credit to the kid on the mound. Most pitchers in his shoes would have been totally rattled in that situation (the 9th). He showed balls of steel. Good for him. I hate his guts, but good for him.
My other half said it too: “Valentin, Chavez, Floyd PH”. And you don't bring Cliff Floyd on to bunt, you bring him on for a walk-off HR. I do not mean to insult you at all, simply to indicate that it occurred to other people as well so our loss is not your fault :) :) :)
I can't watch. I don't want to watch. I don't even want to know the f'ing score, as I found out the other night when TBF offered it to me and I accepted and then had a tantrum when I heard the Cardinals won the first game.
I changed the cable settings so that SNY is not the default turn-on channel.
And the other night when TBF wanted to clean off the DVR, I refused to watch pregame or post-game or any game. I cleaned off all my freaking gilmore girls episodes I couldn't watch because of baseball, we have plenty of room, we don'[t need to watch ANY baseball right now.
I am reading Roger Angell instead.
Every once in a while, I will tap TBF on the shoulder and say, “I am still sad about the baseball.” And he will tell me that he is too, but in a few weeks it will be better.
I hope he is right. Because I am monumentally sad. And I have nothing to compare it to.
BTW – apparently, in St. Louis, the fans call La Russa “La Genius”. I have two words for that. I think the whole team is smarmy. It incenses me to think that they used to call US “pond scum”. Pujols is a jerk. La Russa is smarmy. And to hear what they were singing in the locker room – my god, what a bunch of classless idiots.
Then again, go to Cliff Floyd's blog and read what the Cardinals fans ran there to post (if MLB Big Brother didn't delete the posts already).
That's right. What makes '88 and '06 the two worst of the bunch are that they're the only ones where both of the following are true: (1) the Mets were clearly the superior team; and (2) they lost in 7 games after blowing at least one of the earlier games in late innings.
What makes '06 worse than '88 is that: (1) the Mets blew Game 7 in '06 but were out of Game 7 by the second inning in '88; (2) in '88 we could still warm ourselves from the afterglow of '86; and (3) they lost to the fu***ing Cardinals in '06.
The first cut is the deepest. It won't be long before you learn to take losing in stride. It's part and parcel of being a Met fan. Like Greg always says, “you can't call yourself a diehard unless you've died hard.” (For us, that's A LOT.) It gets easier. Sometimes too easy. Lowered expectations and all that.
I'm watching not only because I'm a baseball fan (and sort of a Tiger fan, after watching them regularly all year), but because I want to see the Cardinals get theirs. As humiliatingly as possible. It's all I have left. This year, anyway.
Onward P&C!!!!!!
I'm typing this from a hotel room in Chicago. It's a really depressing hotel room. In fact, it makes me want to shoot myself, and I'm in a perfectly good mood.
The funny thing? I'm here for one night, when my work really should have me here for two. Because when I made the travel arrangements for this trip, I was goddamned if anything was going to conflict with Game 3 of the World Series, and my either watching it from my own couch or, possibly, from the stands at Shea.
Now every time I decide to call the airline and figure out how much it will cost me to stay the extra night, I realize that I'm having to make that call because we got beat by the frigging Cardinals who then sang the “Jose Jose Jose Jose” song. And I get too depressed to pick up the phone.
Ack. It's the hotel room again. It's getting to me.
Dude, get out of Chicago. It's too close to St. Louis…or the Loo (not too many cities are self-confident enough to refer to themselves as a bathroom, but then again, not too many teams call Flushing home).
HAHAHAHA Greg, you're too much.
Jace, I feel your pain. Tomorrow is my birthday, and I was supposed to be at Game 3 at Shea. I've been pretty stoic up until now, but tomorrow I know I won't be nearly as stiff-upper-lip.
PS: By “stoic” I mean “angry and bitter at the f'ing Cardinals and fiercely protective of my precious, pookie-wookie Mets.”
Yeah, I'm emotionally stable…
Hey, happy 25th birthday, Laurie.
Why, thank you! ;-)
you know…if glavine would have come in to bunt, and the mets still lost…how much worse would we be second guessing that?
cliff had to get that shot.
Happy birthday Laurie
Thank you :-)
Hope it's a great one, Laurie.
Heh, I love using F&F as my own personal birthday card…
Thank you, everyone! All I wanted for my birthday was… well, you know. I've revised my birthday wish now. It's now “14 runs and a no-hitter against the Cardinals in what was supposed to be MY game.”
F**kers.
Pedro's got a pretty good track record against those clowns, look for said post-all star break next year.