A Kaleidoscope of Connections

Saturday’s game against the Rockies, the last tilt of May, was observed by your chronicler via a kaleidoscope of information sources from way out here in Tacoma, Wash.: looking down at MLB.tv on my phone during one of the Pacific Northwest’s never-quite-remitting rainstorms, via MLB Audio when the bandwidth pipe was a little too narrow for video, or via the marionettes of GameDay when neither medium was available.

The game was never particularly in doubt after the first inning, when a 1-0 Colorado lead popped like a soap bubble thanks to a three-run triple off the top of the wall struck by Brett Baty, with a Tyrone Taylor single to follow. As Antonio Senzatela trudged around behind the mound you could see the Rockies sag, a collective oh no not this again. The Mets extended the lead on back-to-back homers from Brandon Nimmo and Juan Soto and then a late, cherry-on-top round-tripper from Jeff McNeil. Meanwhile Kodai Senga was untouchable until tiring in the seventh, with Jose Butto putting down a last little flurry of Rockie resistance.

With the Rockies mustering little resistance for most of the game, it was the kind of day that lent itself to miscellaneous reflections:

So much purple: The purple in the Mets’ City Connects is a nod to the 7 line and has nothing to do with the Rockies, but the combination was still an odd one, and left me thinking that at least for a day it was better that the Mets had hedged their bets a bit on how much purple to highlight. (But seriously, the City Connects would pop a lot more if the NYC, player numbers and names were purple outlined in white instead of black.)

My mom and the mouth breather: I have a long tradition of taking an irrational dislike to certain Mets, declaring them Jonahs whose presence casts a pall over the entire team. This is apparently genetic, as my mom is on at least year two of a jihad against Brett Baty. She watches every game and texts me out of joy or frustration, and those texts have become a record of her (perhaps slowly evolving) opinion about Baty. “Chew that bubble gum, Brett,” she’d scoff last year, when Baty had once again failed to come through or misplayed a ball in the field, and yes, Baty did have a habit of chomping on his gum in consternation after failures.

This year my mom’s favored dart has been to scorn Baty as a mouth-breather … and yet there’s been a slow warming as he’s finally shown signs of emerging. “OK Brett, but you’re still a mouth-breather,” my mom texted me after Baty homered off Jameson Taillon a few weeks back. Days later, Baty was the key to the Mets edging the Pirates, and my mom offered the texted admission that “I’m eating crow.” (With an accompanying corvid emoji.) Baty helping beat the Dodgers earned him an “yes to Mouthbreather,” a mixed verdict but no longer a completely negative one. Today, after Baty gave the Mets all the runs they’d need against Colorado, I texted mom to point out that Baty was determined to win her over. Her response? “Let him keep trying!”

Little by little, Brett.

We’re all Jetsons: So I was walking in a drizzle outside the Tacoma Mall when I did the time-zone math and realized the game had started in New York. I reached for my phone and a moment later I was watching SNY in HD, and over a cellular signal no less. I wish I could have told my younger self — the one who spent endless money and time on fanciful antennae and tin-foil origami extenders to make a faint radio signal a little clearer — what was coming. These really are the days of miracle and wonder, and we all get to be Jetsons.

A messy month: Saturday’s win meant the Mets posted a 15-12 record in May, which really sums that month up perfectly: Not as bad as you thought, perhaps, but still not all that great. Here’s to the calendar turning.

Little things: One of my favorite oft-repeated sequences in baseball is the little dance between the runner at first and the first baseman on a pickoff. The throw arrives from the pitcher, the runner dives back in safely, and then the runner scoots himself clockwise around the bag 180 degrees before putting a foot on it and popping up, making sure never to break contact between his fingers and the base … because the first baseman is looking for a little daylight and a chance to pounce. It’s the product of a perfect little arms race, and it always makes me smile.

Pity: The Rockies may or may not surpass the ’62 Mets and ’24 White Sox in terms of futility, but they certainly have the look of a team stalked by disaster. They lose in ways big and small, expected and not. They’re the antimatter version of a good team you figure will win whether the formula demands a bit of small ball or big inning or a well-executed relay — you expect the Rockies to fail in whatever way necessary on a given day, and you can see they expect that too.

I’ve endured Mets teams like that, and it’s dreadful — a near-daily lesson in defeat that corrodes your fandom. What’s truly disheartening is the Rockies’ core problem isn’t fixable: Dick Monfort is the worst owner in baseball, a head-in-the-sand relic who fantasizes that the coming labor war will serve as his own personal time machine. He’s tops on the MLB Bad Owner leaderboard, edging out Pirates cheapskate Bob Nutting and loathsome nepo baby John Fisher. As those of us who survived the post-Madoff Wilpons can attest, there’s nothing a fan can do in this situation: No one’s firing the owner, he never shows his face so you can boo him, and the other owners aren’t going to lift a finger against one of their fellow lords. All you can do is wait for the world to change.

Old friends: We’re in Washington because my kid is a student at the University of Puget Sound; with the Mets having concluded their business, we went to Cheney Stadium to watch the Tacoma Rainiers take on the Salt Lake City Bees, a battle between the Triple-A squads of the Mariners and Angels.

Cheney Stadium is charming, in a little dip surrounded by pines, and it’s rich in history: Its Hall of Heroes includes nods to Jesus Alou and Ron Herbel, as well as Wayne Garrett‘s brother Adrian. And the light stands turn out to be from Seals Stadium, the San Francisco park that was home to the Giants before Candlestick.

Starting at third base for the Bees was old friend J.D. Davis; late in the game he wound up facing Adonis Medina, his 2022 teammate. If Medina struck out J.D. we’d all get a free Chick-Fil-A sandwich. (Medina retired him on a hard grounder.) With the Rainiers clinging to a 5-4 lead, J.D. hit into a double play against Zach Pop that ended the game.

Two other former Mets were in uniform: Yolmer Sanchez for Salt Lake City and Trevor Gott for Tacoma. (Deploy an asterisk and you could also count Tacoma’s Rhylan Thomas and Shintaro Fujinami, never Mets but teammates at Syracuse last year.) Neither Sanchez nor Gott got into the game, which was fortunate because I told my family that I was booing the shit out of Gott if he made an appearance, regardless of what the hometown fans thought of that. (Remember the discussion of Jonahs? Boy was Gott ever one.)

That’s the wonder of baseball — you go to a minor-league game on the other side of the continent and find players bound up with your own rooting interests. The connections aren’t always as obvious as they were at Cheney Stadium, with a beloved ex-Met facing down a one-day hero with a sandwich on the line, but dig through any roster on any night and you’ll find them — and all the delights they bring.