This was how I watched everything go wrong for Corey Oswalt and the Mets tonight: I looked down at the floor, slightly to the left of my foot, stealing glimpses between bites of chicken and potatoes.
The floor was where my phone was, with MLB At Bat set to Gameday. Could I tell exactly what was going on? No — I’m nearly 50 and a phone is a relatively small rectangle. But I could see enough: the red circles of strikes, the green circles of balls, the blue circles of an at-bat decided.
And I could see this note: IN PLAY, RUN(S).
Yeah, I could see that one over and over and over again.
In truth, I wasn’t fooling my dinner companions and nobody much minded — my family members knew I was on recap duty. But it felt right for watching this dismal, effortlessly futile incarnation of the Mets fail at their craft. There should be something shameful about continuing to pay the slightest bit of attention to this shambolic dysfunction. You should lower your eyes and hope nobody notices what you’re doing.
Think of everything you could do to improve the world — or at least yourself — if you weren’t wasting three hours a night watching a beautiful game wantonly disfigured. You could be exercising. Picking up trash. Teaching people to read. Making birdhouses. Perfecting cold fusion. (Hey, why not? It’s not like we’re imagining Mickey Callaway figuring out the double switch.)
After dinner I washed dishes, a 20-minute stretch in which I was not tortured by the Mets. (It was great!) I then turned on the TV and watched them lose, except I kept drifting off. They put a couple of guys on, I drifted off, awoke with a start and watched things come to nothing. That happened a couple of times until finally Asdrubal Cabrera had struck out, they had lost and of course I was awake.
I’m barely at 300 words and I’ve already used a number of them to belittle and denigrate the Mets. Which they thoroughly deserve. As they deserve this: watching them, discussing them and even thinking about them has become a chore. That’s about the worst thing one can say about a sports team, but then “the worst” and “the 2018 Mets” go together perfectly.
Wow. You’re hitting a real stride here. Beautifully put.
The worse the Mets get, the better your writing becomes. You’ll be dashing off recaps in iambic pentameter by August.
He may win a Nobel Prize.
After the Famillaway disaster of Wednesday night, I give thanks to Oswalt for putting the Mets out of their misery early in the evening.
So many good books to read.
Move to Sydney Australia mate…I did…and now I am a free man…10,000 miles of distance can really give you perspective on where your devotions lie
It’s like the car wreck on the shoulder of the highway . . . you tell yourself that you’re not going to slow down to rubberneck over it, but then you just can’t help yourself and do it anyway.
Next time go see the new flick on Moe Berg (Paul Rudd), “The Catcher Was A Spy.” Also he was Jewish and gay, besides catching Lefty Grove in an early scene and then going off to maybe shoot Heisenberg. But mainly because Wikipedia tells me Moe’s final words when he died at 70 were, “How did the Mets do today?” So they probably killed him. How many will this year’s team slay?
At the moment, mets.com is featuring a “highlight” entitled “Bautista scores on a double play.” The description reads: “Wilmer Flores grounds into a 6-4-3 double play, scoring Jose Bautista from third to cut the Mets’ deficit to 7-2 in the 8th inning”.
…
Just putting that out there.
Great recap, Jason, sums it up perfectly.
Look, it can’t keep going on like this, can it? Something has got to give, right?
Right?
Uh-oh…
a sad poetry in following game in secret and in maintaining a posture associated with shame,dejaction, mournfulness.
indeed sad times for fans of the mets.
and jeez for his 27mil a year price tag can’t *somebody* compel cespedes to say *something*??
between him and wright it’s $50M per year.
at least the latter has made it clear he actually wants to come back.
and wow, talk about spinning BS into…mold.
when wilmer was up i thought maybe just maybe he makes it a two run game.
only the mets would celebrate a gut-punch failed rally
maybe mickey’s wrirtng for the PR dept now too.
in this time of general political unravelling maybe the baseball gods are indeed telling us fans of hard-earned, well-worn character that mets baseball can no longer bring joy – or even the occasional enjoyable game.
per those gods: yankee fans need not apply ;0]
Dejaction is a good word right about now.
It’s the shame that happens after you get more worked up than your date deserved.
I had a busy day, it was hot, so while sitting in an easy chair watching the (for lack of a better word) game, I kept dosing off. Figured if the Mets were asleep, I could be too.
I swear, what with all the extreme wackness occurring on the daily, in both Mets and politics, I’m convinced that a time machine experiment from 2038 failed, and that the 46 year old time traveling Wilmer Flores somehow killed a butterfly, or actually hustled after the ball, during his stint.