UPCOMING EVENTS

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Abandoning Ship

Tuesday night's Mets-Giants game had everything you could want out of baseballing. Two young lefties dueling each other. Monster home runs. Several tense extra innings. And best of all, a come-from-behind win, aided by the complete psychological and physiological meltdown of a former Mets closer.

Plus, I was there. It would have been one of the greatest games I've witnessed in person.

That is, if I had stayed past the tenth inning.

When it comes to Attending Events, I never leave anything early. Be it a baseball game, rock show, or cock fight, I stick it out until the bitter end (especially cock fights). Eighteen crappy bands before a headliner that may or may not be any good? I'll tough it out through the Larry Davis Experience. Home team losing 18-3 in the 7th inning? Hey, maybe I'll see someone get hit with a line drive in the face.

Of course, this was all contingent on being responsible for only me, myself, and I, which is no longer the case. Once upon a time, I could just up and go to Stuff on a weeknight and worry about catching up on sleep on some future Sunday. But nowadays, I have a roommate who likes to scream me awake every Sunday. And every other day of the week.

I got to go to Tuesday's game thanks to my job, which had organized an Outing to Shea. I thought it would be nice to bring The Wife and The Baby. But as soon as we got to the stadium, The Baby started knocking back bottle after bottle, and before I knew it, she was shitfaced.

Childhood alcoholism--hilarious!

In actuality, The Baby was quite well behaved. She had a brief Feed-Me-Change-Me Fit that ended as soon as her needs were met. With a little breeze in the air, The Wife wrapped her up in a blanket and nestled her in what we call The Papoose. (It's actually called the Baby Bjorn, but I refuse to call it that because it makes me sounds pretentious and European.)

Somewhere after the Seventh Inning Stretch, The Baby fell completely asleep, her face smashed against zipper of The Wife's hoodie. The latter third of the game zipped by with many threats but no runs, and it became apparent that I would soon face a dilemma. How late do I dare stick around, and should that threshold be based on time elapsed or innings?

Of course, I was also hoping that the Mets would just pull ahead and make such a debate academic. They teased me by getting two on in the ninth, but they were thwarted by an unbelievable play by Omar Vizquel (not to mention Willie Randolph's continued delusion that Julio Franco is an effective pinch hitter). Scott Schoeneweis did his best to hand over the game to the Giants in the top half of the tenth, but Aaron Heilman bailed him out.

In the middle of the tenth, I looked at The Baby sleeping in her vertical hammock. I reflected on how peaceful and angelic she looked while slumbering. I also reflected on how pissed off she would be if she woke up smashed against her mother's chest and still at Shea. I further reflected on how similarly pissed off The Wife would be if this were to happen. So I decided that, regardless of outcome, the tenth inning would be our last.

Of course, the Mets had to play cocktease by loading the bases, getting my hopes up. David Wright lined out to the center fielder for the third out, and I was forced to concede defeat. Based on the number of people I saw leave the stands at that exact moment, I wasn't the only one.

Thanks to the brisk pace of the early innings, the tenth inning concluded at around 10:20 pm. So we'd gotten 10 innings of baseball in the time usually allotted for 9 innings. I pulled out my crappy Radio Shack headset and struggled to find a radio signal. Certain parts of Shea have excellent radio signals, while others have terrible reception. For some reason, the signal tends to be clearer the closer you are to home plate. By the time we exited the arena, the Giants had gone down 1-2-3 in the top of the eleventh.

The Wife, who is quite the enabler, indulged me as I stood near the door on the 7 train, which was the only way I could pick up a radio signal. It was distant but audible, and I was able to hear the Mets do very little in their half of the eleventh. The Baby, meanwhile, remained comatose and oblivious to my vigil.

Our usual game day ritual is that we drive to a stop on the 7 train, since we live a mere five-minute ride away from the Purple Line. As we got off the train and descended the steps onto Roosevelt Avenue, Joe Smith was already in trouble in the top of the 12th. And once we'd gotten The Baby strapped into her car seat and I'd started the Olds, the Giants had taken a 4-3 lead without benefit of a hit. I'm glad I left, I thought, because if I stuck around for that crap, I'd be super-pissed.

During our short drive home, the Mets mounted a strange rally thanks to a Jose Reyes walk, a balk, and a sac bunt to move him to third. But as I pulled up in front of our house, Carols Beltran grounded out, so it seemed as if the late effort would be all for naught. The Wife carried The Still-Sleeping Baby out of the car, and I pulled away to search for parking.

The second I left the curb--the exact second--Armando Benitez committed his second balk of the inning, and the game was tied.

From this point on, I tried to drive extra slow so I could hear what happened next. But damn my neighborhood and its lack of alternate side parking--I found a spot way too quickly. I contemplated sitting in the car until the inning came to a conclusion, but I envisioned The Wife having to deal with The Baby all by herself. Plus, there were a bevy of dirty dishes and bottles and whatnot that we'd neglected when we went to the game, and these would need to be dealt with posthaste. So I put my crappy headset back on and trudged my way back toward my house.

Let me explain something about this crappy headset: it's super crappy. I got it at Radio Shack for fifteen bucks, and it would be a ripoff at half the price. Its main function is to allow me to listen to the radio when I go running, so I won't be afraid to drop it or short it out with my perspiration.

Let me also explain to you something about my neighborhood. I live in a bizarre no-man's land of FCC oversight where WFAN, a self-proclaimed 50,000 watt station, is often superceded by Radio Disney. In the last year, I have heard more Radio Disney by accident than I'd ever want to hear in a hundred lifetimes (which may just prepare me for what I'll no doubt have to listen to in my own car in a few years).

While running, or just walking around the neighborhood, I have to play a little game of dexterity with my radio: how do I need to hold it so I can hear the Mets game and not The Crazy Frog version of "We Are The Champions"? The challenge of this game comes from the fact that there is one exact position the radio needs to be in order to catch WFAN, and that exact position changes with each micron the radio moves in time and space.

So as I stepped out of my car, I heard a bizarre and infuriating mix of the Mets and Radio Disney:

2 and 2 count...HEY, I'M CALLING FROM SADDLE RIVER...Benitez gets *squawk* sign...I WANNA HEAR 'KISS THE GIRL' BY...[unmistakable sound of ball hitting bat]...[horrible static and weird oscillations]...WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE RADIO STATION?...HIGH AND DEEP...[strains of "Can't Touch This"--I SWEAR TO GOD RADIO DISNEY STILL PLAYS "CAN'T TOUCH THIS"]...FORGET IT!...[the noise of a crowd going apeshit, or is that just ear-splitting static?]

I break into a full-on run, not a jog, but a run to get back to my house faster. This doesn't help the radio reception; if anything, it makes me hear that fucking "So Lonely" song even clearer. But I figure if I get back to the house quickly enough, I might be able to catch a replay of whatever the hell just happened.

And it's a good thing I did run, because for some reason The Wife didn't have any keys on her person. She sat on our stoop, anxiously awaiting my return. I tried to choke out what had happened, but I couldn't get too many words out between my excitement and lack of breath. BALK. TIE GAME. DELGADO. HOME RUN, I THINK. CRAZY FROG, I gasped as I struggled to open the front door. The Baby remained asleep, dreaming dreams of full bottles and fresh diapers.

I blew in the front door like a hurricane, clicked on the TV, and saw Carlos Delgado run straight into the dugout, his shirttails flapping behind him. Two seconds later, my brother--who had accompanied us to the game, and who had elected to stay behind, and who has no small children to care for--texted me: BEST METS GAME EVER.

I responded, IF I KNEW HOW IT WAS GONNA END, WELL, I STILL WOULDA HAD TO BRING THE BABY HOME.

By the time I typed all of this out, commas and all (dork), The Baby was sitting in her bouncy chair, completely wide awake, fully rested, smiling and laughing. Not the least bit cranky.

Would she have been so cheery if I'd kept her at Shea Stadium all that time? Doubtful. But her cheeriness seemed to mock my panicky dash, as if her little giggles and coos meant, "What the hell were you rushing home for? I was fine!"

So this one will have to go in some asterisked subset of the best games I've ever seen live. But I finished the scoring in the trusty scorebook I bring to every game (double dork). So when posterity picks over my archives, they'll be none the wiser. Take that, history!

Posted 05.31.07 08:05pm * Permalink

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