“I made a mistake, I feel bad, I feel bad” Luis Castillo
“If ever there was a manager who’s dying on the inside, it’s Jerry Manuel…” Vin Scully

Let’s not get into the debate over the relative merits of interleague play, neither shall I get into criticising Jerry Manuel’s truly beguilling managerial decisions (“get me…Jon Switzer!”) all of these debates could have been saved for another day, too busy would Mets fans be celebrating a much craved win. If only Luis Castillo could catch the simplest of pop-up flys,

I don’t generally like to do the ranting/raving tubthumping kind of fan blog but sometimes there’s an event in baseball that sticks with you throughout the next day and beyond. We all have our teams that make us feel this way, mine is the New York Mets.
The funny thing is, I’m not sure I was entirely surprised. I would never have turned the game off when Alex Rodriguez popped that ball up in the air, expecting Castillo to make the catch and the Mets to win. You don’t do that if you’re a Mets fan. Already this season we’ve experienced Carlos Delgado making an identical mistake (fortunately in a game we went onto win) and Ryan Church’s homage to hero of this blog Marv Throneberry, not to mention Daniel Murphy’s numerous rum outings in left field. Just once you’d like things to go according to plan though.
It shouldn’t surprise you that the culprit was Luis Castillo. Luis was also part of something that took my breath away last weekend, a running error that resulted in him running back to first being over taken by Emil “one time only” Brown and both runners being called out at second in a double play that I didn’t previously know existed.
Nor shold I be surprised that this mistake was against the Yankees, the slick professional Yankees capitalising on a little league error by those loveable Mets. New York, New York rang out as Jeter and co. mobbed Alex Rodriguez and I tried to make sense of what happened, none of this should have surprised me.
One of the oft-repeated mantras about baseball is it’s capacity to redeem, there’s always tomorrow. Tomorrow is now today and the Mets and Yankees get back at it in 7 hours with Andy Pettite taking to the mound against…erm Fernando Nieve (“who?”, was my Dad’s response). Luis Castillo is going to have to do one hell of a job of redeeming himself and yet, as I write that, the optimistic Met fan in me can suddenly see Luis batting left-handed against Mo Rivera in the 9th and taking a swing for that Home Run vortex that is the new Yankee Stadium’s right field. Let’s go Mets. 

“They have always shown me ways to lose I never knew existed.” Casey Stengel.