The Long Island Rail Road is on strike, while the one Met pitcher who’s stayed on track more consistently than any other is out of service. Any other good news from Friday night? Oh yeah, the Mets reverted to moribund form in losing the first game of the Subway Series [1], 5-2.
Not a shining moment for anything associated with mass transit. The Mets Express is bypassing good hitting, good health, and good luck. Good grief.
Whether my fellow rail-riding Long Islanders can get to the next pair of home games in a timely fashion is up for grabs. Whether anybody in the Metropolitan Area will be frothing to arrive at Citi Field to root for the home team is debatable. The incremental progress from this week’s sweep of the TIgers was blotted out initially by Cam Schlittler’s overwhelming six-and-two-thirds innings of two-hit, nine-strikeout ball. The ritual smothering of Met offense turned secondary once it was learned postgame that Clay Holmes [2] had his fibula fractured when a hot shot off the bat of newly minted unintentional Yankee villain Spencer Jones struck him on the right leg. The immediate result was Jones on first and a trainer to the field to examine Holmes. This was during the fourth inning. Clay stuck around to pitch into the fifth. It hadn’t been much of an outing before he absorbed that 111 MPH line drive (aren’t you glad they measure everything?), yet if ball making contact with bone had been cause for genuine concern, he wouldn’t have stayed in, you’d figure.
You’d figure wrong. Holmes said he was up for pitching in the moment and for some moments after, but X-rays said something else, something worse. Carlos Mendoza revealed the development with solemnity reserved for announcing the last commuter train would be pulling out of Mets-Willets Point any minute and we don’t know when the next one is. In the case of Holmes pitching again, we have a better idea when we’ll be able to catch the 10:36 to Penn Station. All that could be communicated Friday night was the starter who entered the evening with a 1.86 ERA in his first eight starts will be, per his manager, “down for a long time”. Clay thus joins a lengthy injured list that already includes…ah, it would just be easier to identify which Mets aren’t on the IL.
The Subway Series rolls on, whether we want it to or not. Connecting to the 7 at Woodside has rarely loomed as more daunting, logistically or spiritually.