Scenes from a Baseball Game
Sunday August 23rd 2009. Citi Field, New York
Philadelphia Phillies @ New York Mets
Bottom of the ninth: Phillies 9 Mets 7
1st batter: Angel Pagan: grounder to first, error on 1b Ryan Howard, Pagan reaches 3rd. 0 outs.
2nd batter: Luis Castillo: grounder to second, error on 2b Eric Bruntlett, Pagan Scores, Castillo on 1st. 0 outs.
3rd batter: Daniel Murphy: grounder to second, Castillo on 2nd, Murphy reaches 1st. 0 outs.
Jeff Francoeur at the plate.
My mind is a flip chart right now. On each of it's white pages is laid out an eventuality, a way this at-bat will end, a way this game might end. The first page is the page I cling to, the page I have sunk all my hopes into; this page has Jeff Francoeur hitting a three run homer and me celebrating a Mets walk-off win.
I find when I watch baseball my mind races with these scenarios all the time. The home run is certainly the most common, I skip forward a few batters and think 'if he could get on base and then the next guy hits a homer...'.
So this is where my mind goes first when Francoeur steps up. I'm a realist though. I've watched enough unsatisfactory sporting endings that the self-defence part of my mind now tries to set the rest of me up for disappointment. I've also watched enough of Jeff Francoeur to know that a strikeout is a distinct possibility. But still, page one of the flip-chart is at the forefront of my thoughts.
The rest of the pages are kind of a descending order of events based on my preference. Somewhere near the bottom, behind even Frenchy striking out, is Francoeur grounding into a double play and killing this little slice of fortune the Mets have serendipitously slipped into just at the right time.
Yesterday was the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the 1969 miracle Mets, the unlikeliest of World Series winners. The mantra of everyone who experienced that seemed to be something along the lines of "nothing is impossible, look at the '69 Mets!". Compared to that, scoring three runs in one inning right here is nothing.
What would make a Mets win even sweeter is the fact that Brad Lidge is pitching for the Phillies. Every time someone tells me they think the Phillies are going to win the World Series again I say "no, of course they're not! Look at Lidge! How can you win the World Series with a closer who's ERA is around 7?!". I was also very begrudging towards Lidge's perfect season last year (converting every save opportunity that was presented to him), "well, yeah of course it looks impressive but really it's just luck, I mean, if you look at his home runs to fly balls ratio...". And here stands Brad Lidge right now on the field in front of me, the tying runs on base, facing down another blown save this year. I knew his luck couldn't last!
Right from the start this had seemed like a lost cause. The sporting pessimist inside me, what a strange guy he is! It almost feels like he wants things to go badly. The starting pitchers today were Oliver Perez for the Mets and Pedro Martinez for the Phillies. Pedro would surely be out to show the Mets what they were missing out on by not signing him again this year. Ollie would be terrible, I was sure.
Sure enough the first time we saw Pedro was not when he stepped onto the pitcher's mound but when he came out to bat with the score at 6-0 Philadelphia in the top of the first, 0 outs. Ollie got as far as a 3 balls 0 strikes count on the former Cy Young winner before, bizarrely, Jerry Manuel saw enough and removed Ollie mid at-bat. Oh yes, just as I expected, another embarrassing outing from the man the Mets will owe another $24m to over the next 2 years. 6-0 down before Pedro had even thrown a pitch. Well, there's clearly no way back from here.
Except, Pedro looked mortal today. All of a sudden I was reminded not of the myth of Pedro - perhaps the greatest pitcher who ever lived, but of the Pedro I knew as a Mets fan, the Pedro who can struggle, the Pedro who's lost velocity, the Pedro who relies on his changeup. And the Mets could handle him alright! If only Ollie had been just a bit bad in the first inning! If he could have just given up maybe 2 runs!
So maybe I should be just enjoying the fact that, right here in the bottom of the ninth, we even have an exciting ending. Except, as I'm sure you know, that's not the way it works. We're greedy by our very nature as sports fans. Very rarely, if ever, do we take stock and think "I don't care how this ends, I'm just glad to even be here at this point". Being competitive is our bare minimum expectation, winning is what we desire, no matter how unrealistic.
So here is Jeff Francoeur, and there was a brief summary of what I was thinking as I sat in the Sunday sun at Citi Field. The pitch comes in from Lidge, Francoeur makes solid contact, he lines it up the middle, the runners are in motion, Eric Bruntlett comes into focus, a blurry haze on the horizon of my conscience. I just sit there, speechless.
You know what happened, right?
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