SITES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
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Games 4 and 5
The Phillies were the Mets' chief nemesis last year, but I still can't summon the hatred for them that I can for the Braves. I mean, intense, white-hot, primal hatred. The kind of hate displayed by a cornered animal, lashing out at its aggressor, knowing that his fury is the only thing standing between escape and a claw to the jugular.
It doesn't matter that the Braves were only mediocre the last two seasons. It doesn't matter that I actually kinda like Jeff Francoeur and Brian McCann (I even broke my No Braves Policy and drafted McCann for my fantasy team this year, which he has repaid by sucking so far). It doesn't matter that virtually all of the perennial heartbreakers circa 1998-2001 have scattered to the four winds.
They still have John Smoltz. They retrieved Tom Glavine (aka The Manchurian Brave). And they still have Chipper Jones.
In my Pantheon of Hatred, the top tier is reserved for genuinely evil super villain types like Osama bin Laden. One step down is the level for greedy bastards who put their own accumulation of personal wealth before the good of the planet.
 Who's got two thumbs and loves Hooters? This guy! |
Right below them is Chipper Jones, registering on the Personal Hate Index below Rupert Murdoch, but above Bill O'Reilly. Somewhere between Paris Hilton and Dick Cheney.
Why? Because Chipper Jones was the douchebag who told Mets fans to "get their Yankee gear on" after a sweep late in the 1999 season put a serious hurt on their playoff hopes. Because he's constantly lauded as one of the game's "good guys" even though he knocked up a Hooters waitress. (Imagine if any black athlete had done that--can you imagine one single middle-aged white sportswriter ever calling him a "good guy" for the duration of his career?) Because he bitched about David Wright winning a Gold Glove this past off season, not so subtly implying that he deserved it.
How about the fact that he's a grown-ass man who insists on being called Chipper? What is he, one of Barbie's friends? Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ on a bike, how old are you?
Oh, and he has punished the Mets his entire career. Again and again and again. Fifty years from now, if the Braves reactivate him to pinch hit for one game, he will hit a grand slam that both ends a no-hitter and eliminates the Mets from the playoffs. Even if they have to roll him up to the plate with an IV tower and a colostomy bag.
But it was never just Chipper. Oh no, if only it were so simple. When the Braves have beaten the Mets, nine times out of ten something weird happens along the way. Like an ump blows a call at the plate. Or an infield that has made no errors all year suddenly gets the yips. Or they score the winning run of the league championship series on a bases loaded walk.
No matter how good they might be on paper, just being around the Braves turns the Mets into a team full of morons. Witness this weekend, wherein the Mets played really stupid, their manager managed really stupidly, and their stupidity was aided and abetted by some stupid umpiring.
Saturday's game pivoted on two key plays. With the bases loaded and the Mets trailing 4-1, Reyes poked a ball to left center that should have easily scored two runs. But because the umpires initially said that Mark Kotsay caught a ball that bounced into his glove--and the play wasn't even close, not even to the naked eye--it looked like a sure 2 RBI hit would instead result in a double play and the end of the inning.
To their credit, the umps reversed an awful call. But they only allowed one run to score. Another run scored on a Castillo groundout, but that was all she wrote. Thanks to a pinch hit grand slam by Kelly Johnson (off of Jorge Sosa, who Willie Randolph stuck with in his typically stubborn and bewildering fashion), that was all she wrote.
But just as big, I thought, was a two-strike pitch to Mark Teixeira in the first inning. If this pitch wasn't a strike, then I give up watching baseball, because the rules must have changed overnight. Instead, Teixeira walked to load the bases, the Braves got a run on a sac fly, and John Maine's pitch count skyrocketed further. I truly believe that if Teixeira had been called out on strikes like he should have, the whole game would have changed.
Or Maine would've given up a 3-run homer to McCann. Whichever.
I can't decide which loss is more disheartening, Saturday's or Sunday's, in which a 1-run, 7-inning, gold glove performance by Santana gets him nothing but an L. Does it matter? It's like comparing stab wounds and trying to see which one is bigger. In the end, they both really fucking hurt.
What was troubling was to see the Mets do exactly what they should have done--run up Smoltz's pitch count so he was in the 90s by the end of the fifth inning--only to do absolutely nothing against a terrible bullpen that got shellacked by the Pirates (the Pirates!) last week.
If one can take any heart from this weekend, it's the fact that Rafael Soriano looked utterly lost as closer. Despite being given a three-run cushion after Teixeira's 2-run homer (thanks, Heilman, ya fuck), he had the terrified air of Calvin Schiraldi about him. Were it not for Teixeira's great play on a rope by Brian Schneider, it's quite likely he would have blown the game. So, you know, good luck relying on that guy to close out games all year. And between Smoltz, Glavine, and whoever the hell's at the back of their rotation, that bullpen's gonna log a lot of mileage before the All Star Break.
Tomorrow is the home opener, which I will attend for the fourth year in a row. I managed to snag some not horribly expensive tickets. I'm sure the Shea Faithful will boo Jimmy Rollins and company lustfully. But I don't care how the Mets fell apart last year. There's still only one team that can truly sap the Mets of their mojo. Other than the Mets, that is.
Posted 04.07.08 08:17pm * Permalink
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