Here’s a no doubt scintillating look behind the curtain at Faith & Fear headquarters: We divvy up games by having whoever’s more engaged/worried about the next week or so send out an email proposing a more or less equal division of labor:
Jace Th, Sat, Tues
Greg Fri, Sun, Wed?
That sort of thing. Then there’s some horsetrading, based on whoever’s stuck with non-baseball plans, actually attending a game and so wanting to chronicling it, or otherwise demonstrating some compelling reason to recap something or beg off said duty.
Which brings us to the last such email, from Greg: Fri, Sun, Wed for me; Sat, Tues, Thurs for him?
Friday was fine. Wednesday was fine — in fact I was going, as the Mets had scheduled a giveaway of Topps cards, and a little glance via TV ads suggested they were some unique spinoff. But Sunday was no good — I’d be in a kayak for the entirety of the game as scheduled.
Sure! I replied.
Why did I do that? In part because my blog partner has put up with waaaaaaay more of his share of my boozy dinner plans, vacations, conventions and miscellaneous running around over the nearly two decades we’ve been doing this. But I also did that because it’s only the 2023 Mets, and they’ve forfeited the right to dictate my schedule. When things are good the Mets’ schedule is what I arrange the rest of life around, if possible. Hell, when things are merely “not catastrophic” that’s also true.
It would be a stretch to call things “not catastrophic” right now. The team looks variously too old and too young, too tightly wound and asleep at the switch, and they’re failing both the quantifiable and the un-.
So I said Sure. Honestly, the exclamation point was more than the Mets deserved.
Friday night I managed to work myself into being fleetingly outraged [1] about the negligent way Justin Verlander [2] was handled. Saturday I was out seeing a rock concert and tuned in after the show just in time to hear Mark Canha [3], Brett Baty [4] and Luis Guillorme [5] string together three of the most pathetic at-bats [6] of a season that hasn’t exactly been lacking in lowlights.
This was not really the kind of thing to suggest one ought to be devoted to one’s duty.
It rained cats and dogs Sunday morning. No kayaking, but also no Mets. The game was pushed back to 5:10 pm, which removed the no longer relevant kayaking conflict but put the rescheduled game up against my mom taking us all out for Emily’s belated birthday dinner.
In a non-catastrophic year this might have meant an earbud in whatever ear was most removed from the conversational center of gravity, or Gameday ticking along in my lap, or at least surreptitious check-ins while dishes were getting cleared and new drinks were arriving.
But you know what? I didn’t look at my phone once. When we were in car going home, my kid told me that the Mets had won [7]. Great, I thought, and it was an hour or so before I got the details of a game that sounds a lot like other 2023 Met games. Max Scherzer [8] pitched very well (that’s at least kind of new), the Mets didn’t score for him (not new), there was a bullpen lapse that threatened to ruin everything (also not new). The difference was that this time no one got hit in the face with a pop-up, or otherwise failed egregiously in public: Guillorme poked a ball down the first-base line in the bottom of the 10th to bring home Baty as Rob Manfred’s phantom runner, and the game was won.
Like I said, great.
The Mets are off Monday. I’ll watch with my mom Tuesday. I’m going Wednesday and will recap. So I’m not going to pretend the last two nights’ lack of attention is some principled protest or doofy fan walkout. I’ll be watching Tuesday and Wednesday, but that’s because doing so suits my schedule. The Mets are welcome to demonstrate that they deserve more attention than that, but as it stands, I think I’ve got things calibrated correctly.