Games Like These

The Mets seem to have thudded back to Earth after their briefly winged tour of Cleveland and Pittsburgh … or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that a habitually ground-bound team is once again craning its collective neck to peer up at the clouds and wondering what the world looks like to entities such as birds and successful baseball teams.

Still, I find myself in a better place with the prospect of six more weeks that will bring their fair share of games like these.

Zac Thornton isn’t going to navigate a smooth, well-marked path to reliability (and is no guarantee to get there at all), any more than Nolan McLean or Christian Scott has. Dedniel Nunez will have good days and bad days as he negotiates with his surgically repaired elbow and figures out a reconfigured arsenal. Auditions for the bullpen will go well and not so well, with jams escaped and jams exacerbated.

We have a friend visiting up here in Maine, so the first few innings came to me  driving away from a lobster shack (we play the hits up here) and the last few reached me via MLB Audio on our screened porch, where we were watching Perseid meteors streak across the night sky.

I knew Luis Robert Jr. had connected for a home run before Keith and Pat informed me of it — the sound of impact was obvious and satisfying. That made it 3-2 Braves with some time yet to go, and hey, why not?

Except I also heard the sounds made by Nunez offerings leaving the bats of Mike Yastrzemski and Austin Riley in the bottom half of the inning, one pitch apart. 5-2 Braves, and Why Not was whisked away by the wind, replaced by Games Like These.