Mets May Only Live Twice

Watching James Bond as this is written in “You Only Live Twice”, a real classic, and it appears my Metsies will have to live twice as their first life seems to be ending rather rapidly, and a little too abruptly in my mind. No pitching, no hitting, and before you could say “Jackie Robinson”, the Mets had lost 2 of 3 to the Reds and have so far lost 2 in a row to a Braves team that looks pretty scary right now.

Earlier today I watched the Phillies play really tough to eke out a sweep of those same Reds that just took my Mets apart. Sooo….the Phils are coming on, the Braves keep keepin’ on and the Mets are just in a bad way, the pitchers and hitters all faltering, and, just to add injury to insult, Jose Reyes had to come off the field after making a very nice throw to first base from deep in the hole.

Deep in the hole, that’s where the Mets will find themselves at the break, and, if they can’t take this last game against the Braves to at least salvage some face and avoid a series sweep to the division leaders. It’ll be Johan facing Derek Lowe, still another pretty good Braves pitcher. Geez, this reminds me of the Braves heyday with Glavine and Schmidt…..see how quickly a Mets fan can start losing it?

They’re five games back now and I’d sure like to see them cut it to 4 to finish off nicely before Tuesday’s All-Star Game. It’s not as if they’re even playing badly, they’ve just been getting beat by some pretty good teams, and some pretty hot teams, come to think of it, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.

At least I don’t have to worry about them shedding some good players for a Cliff Lee rental. Dickey and Niese still look pretty good to me, and we’ll all have to hold our breath or say a little prayer for Mike Pelfrey to come back from mediocrity. And I think Takahashi is starting to fade but I hope it’s just my imagination. I really need Johan to come through tomorrow to restore my dwindling faith.

It’s good that the Mets aren’t the only game in town when it comes to sports entertainment though. (They’re just the most fun). The Knicks are making their bid to get better, and to me it’s a lot more fun to do it without a superstar, not that Amare Stoudemire isn’t one, but he’s not LeBron either, or even Kobe. But Raymond Felton is Raymond Felton, and he should definitely be an upgrade over Chris Duhon.

The Knicks got more athletic too with their big Cliff Lee deal. Now, I know everybody loves Lee in New York but Stoudemire will be replacing him. The Knicks got Ronnie Turiaf, who can play center, and Anthony Randolph, a former first round pick with nice potential and he’s long too at about 6’10 or so. And, if that wasn’t enough, they also got Kelenna Azubuike, who can score bigtime. All these guys can defend a little too, something I was never sure of with Cliff Lee.

The Nets haven’t done much but sure have a lot of cap space so we have something to look forward to.

Then there were the Yankees, losing a heartbreaker to the Mariners, not my heart of course, just theirs. That bloated roach of an organization, that tried its damnedest to extinguish the rest of the league’s hopes by grabbing up Cliff Lee, was thwarted in those efforts by the Rangers, who don’t even really have an owner anymore. I love a good Yankee burn.

The afternoon went by a little quicker too when the Germany-Uruguay World Cup match turned out to be a really good one, something that tournament badly needed, I think, after that horrible Germany-Spain game. And tomorrow will feature that Netherlands-Spain matchup, one I suppose Spain will win but it sure could be a close one.

I wish I could get more excited about the All-Star Game itself, but the ridiculous voting process really turned me off. I like Nick Swisher a little less now. I never cared for politicking and that’s pretty much what he and the Yankees did to secure that All-Star berth. I know I won’t stay mad, how can you stay mad at Swisher, but the game really won’t be the best against the best.

It will be for home field in the World Series though, a fact that all by itself should justify a smarter selection process. If the league is making a sham of the selection process, I’d rather just have the game be a totally meaningless exhibition. When the NL loses again, at least it won’t have any lasting effect. The AL doesn’t need any more advantages.

Especially if the AL rep in the series winds up being the Yankees, it certainly doesn’t need any favors. I know it’s just an aberration that the AL keeps winning that infernal All-Star Game, but it’ll be even worse if the AL keeps winning the World Series. Not that I’m a National Leaguer, heh-heh.

I know I’m taking all this much too seriously. It’s not as if I had money on any of these games. But what the hell, they haven’t won anything, the Mets that is, in such a long time and last year, the year they finally had all the ingredients, they all got hurt. I hate talking about fairness, but I thought this year that surely the good fortune would be rolling our way.

It may just be that the Mets have started to exhaust their luck this year. Maybe it’s time for them to come back to the pack. Maybe all those rookies performing a lot better than anybody expected, maybe that was the aberration. The Mets started bad, got much better, then faded, came back but are fading once again.

And you only live twice.