Just Shoot Me, Peg

Being a Mets fan can be horrible. How many innings can feature Tatis, Church and Santos? Oh God!! I know it was just one game but the Phillies don’t have these problems. Everybody they send up to the plate has at least some percentage chance of getting a hit. Watching Sheffield try desperately to draw a walk was pitiful. Then there’s the return of Brian Schneider. Somebody kill me.

Of course, if you are the type who cannot obsess too much about the actual results, you’re in good shape. These two Mets-Phils contests have been baseball at its finest. And the two Red Sox-Yanks games haven’t been too shabby either. I wish I could make out what the fans in Boston were yelling at A-Rod. I couldn’t make it out but it was funny anyway. Real mean-spirited stuff. God, I love baseball.

A_Rod wound up walking in that at-bat late in the Yankee game. I thought it showed incredible poise and courage. (Damn , there I go sayin’ sumthin’ nice about a Yankee, and, horror of horrors, friggin’ A-Rod).

I have to say I’m having trouble focusing, just getting these various images of Beltran just missing that long drive to center, or Swisher diving to his right to snare somebody’s drive to the gap. Just saying “drive to the gap” makes me glad to be alive. Then, a little later, the Phils Jayson Werth made much the same catch in much the same fashion in much the same place on the field. (I was going to say “on the diamond” but the outfield is well outside the diamond, isn’t it)?

But Swisher’s a lefty and Werth’s a righty so the catch was actually quite different, but I digress.

I have to say the Mets are hangin’ in there. Pelfrey was mostly great tonight, and that was following Santana’s gutsy performance the night before. Wright was out of his mind at the plate, but geez, I wish he would’ve made the play on that bouncer and helped stop that 3-run outburst in the 7th, I think it was. And why was Pelfrey still in there, I wondered?

Then I found out. Aah! I really shouldn’t blame Parnell, I guess, but it’s difficult. The Mets reliever I had hoped would fill Putz’s shoes hasn’t quite done it yet. But then it was Chase Utley up there, right? And if it wasn’t him, it would’ve been Howard or Werth or Victorino or Rollins. Geez.

Technology is great as it applies to a baseball fan, though. I watched the complete Mets-Phils first game this afternoon as I was caulking the cracks between my house and the little side patio. (Caulking isn’t really that interesting, y’know)?

Why does the question mark follow the right paren’ anyway? It sure doesn’t exactly flow from the keyboard. But let me get back to technology. So I can just touch the “last” button on my remote and watch Jeter do his inside-out thing, then flip to watch Jimmy Rollins take out Alex Cora at 2nd base to foil the double play. It was a play that kept the Phillies alive, but K-Rod would have none of it.

The Mets games are done on the tube by Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling and Gary Cohen, and if there’s ever been a better triumvirate doing any kind of game, somebody let me know because I want to watch it. Darling is a great straight man for Cohen and Hernandez, who are a riot together, and they both are very knowledgable about the game, sharing their interesting insights on the way the game is played, or a bit of history, or what they had for lunch. And it’s all pretty funny.

Then there’s the basketball. It’s been tough to ignore this Lakers-Magic final, even if you’re down on basketball, which I have been for many a month of Sundays. If the officials don’t control the game, and if the NBA doesn’t control the officials, it really becomes a very great game, basketball.

There’re always big guys in the middle of course. And a man with the unlikely name of Pau Gasol is trying to play with the modestly-named Superman in the center of things, and so far anyway, he’s not been bad. The there’s Bynum and a couple of other bodies Phil Jackson could dream up to put against him, the big man, Howard.

Kobe Bryant’s been playing like Kobe Bryant can play, and that’s pretty darned good. That’ll eventually be the reason the Lakers will take this final, or these Finals, Kobe just taking things over when he needs to. So that’s not all bad. Let’s see if anybody can stop him.

I spent last week with a lot of people who hated sports, or just thought it was so very stupid. And who could disagree with them? They’re usually people who never had the occasion to play a game of any kind, so I can understand them not being interested. What I can’t figure out is why they seem so obsessed with stamping out anybody else’s interest. It’s really a puzzler to me.

I can’t dance. (That became obvious at this wedding I attended in the midst of our vacation). But I don’t hate dances, or hate anybody who participates, or who watches the participants with some level of enthusiasm.

These are the same people who could watch an opera or a ballet and appreciate the extraordinary talent displayed for them. So why can’t I do the same for baseball or basketball? And what business is it of theirs anyway? Maybe they’re just put off by the money it eventually costs each of us, even if the local politicos would have you believe differently.

There’s the New Yorker’s Smokers Quit Line, for example. How much are those gruesome commercials costing us? I smoke on occasion and just hit that same button on the remote within a couple of seconds. God, I do love technology.