Your 2009 AAAA Flushing Mets
I find myself more or less an optimist on this first full day of summer.
Sure, the days will only get shorter from here on out, the nights creeping in closer and closer to dinnertime, eventually leapfrogging the meal altogether. The afternoons will get warmer, then hotter, then miserable. The trees are in their fullest form, but they aren’t gaining any new leaves, and we’ll all watch them shed their bounty slowly at first, then all the rest in a defeated shrug.
The baseball season will continue, culminating just before my early November birthday, a small ray of excitement at the end of another long year.
I find myself an optimist today because my daily evening slate has been wiped clean. In this age when time finds new ways to waste itself, I get three hours back per day.
No, it’s not a version of daylight savings, a Da Vinci kind of sleeping regimen or a shorter commute. It’s the Mets season, now a paradox – while it continues, it’s actually over.
Carlos Beltran is headed to the DL.
He’s the latest in a legion of Mets talent relegated to the sidelines. Some of them, perhaps the veterans among them, may be lucky enough not to have to watch career minor leaguers not filling their shoes.
It’s an absolute farce, and it can only get worse from here. I can already see the Mets trading away what few good young players they have to get stopgap players to man recently vacated positions, all in an attempt to convince the wonderful fans, about whom they care so much, that they haven’t given up on the season, despite what is clearly happening right in front of their faces.
The only way for Mets management not to fail epically would be not to do anything. Now that there’s some room, let Daniel Murphy play every day at first. Don’t just platoon him with Fernando Tatis, who’s done nothing for you lately. Let him get his at-bats, even against lefties, and continue to give him the opportunity to make some mistakes. If you coddle him now and never left him face lefties, he’ll never learn. Let Sheffield (the next to go on the DL) play left, spelled by Tatis, and throw Reed in center. Martinez needs more than two more weeks to learn anything at this level this year. Send him to Buffalo so I can see him play vs. the Toledo Mud Hens on July 19th (There’ll be fireworks!).
Do not trade Bobby Parnell for Aubrey Huff.
Can we get Carlos Gomez back? Unlike Reyes, he’d have 20 triples in his spacious home park.
I just sighed. I know this speculation is just that, and makes me feel only marginally better about the Mets. What sound does a towel make when you throw it in? It’s a thud, but not a dull thud. It’s a delicate thud, maybe not even a thud, more like a fft. The thing about throwing in the towel is that even when you’re livid, and get some good speed behind it, the fft only gets so loud. The world only acknowledges a small part of your sad energy.
Which is why I’m choosing to be optimistic. At least for today.
There is time now.
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