Misery Loves Company: Two Guys Watch Baseball

Games 29 Through 31 - Mets
The Team That Made Milwaukee Famous

Brewers 7, Mets 5
Brewers 6, Mets 4
Mets 6, Brewers 5 (11)
Record: 14-17

Yeah. What Rob said.

Okay, I'll elaborate a little.

If you'd been near me any time between the close of Game 2 and Game 3's finish in this series, you'd have seen a far different picture than after the dramatic climax (okay, as dramatic as Mets-Brewers gets) of the final contest. What went from angst and frustration -- at the Mets and myself for a shard of optimism -- evolved into something mildly dissatisfied. And at that point, mild dissatisfaction was pretty satisfying.

After the first loss, I cursed myself for ever typing anything that might be construed as confidence in this club. I recalled the contentment I oozed going into the Pirates fiasco and saw far too many parallels. In hindsight, though, "Gotta continue to beat the teams you're supposed to beat" isn't brimming with hubris, and I tempered any pleasant reaction to the four-game win streak with plenty of doubt. If the Jinx Police gave me a citation for that posting, I'd have some N.W.A. lyrics for them.

After the second loss, when I figured it was a given that the Mets would surrender the second home sweep to a terrible team in the first six weeks, I had doses of Chuck D.-style vitriol for Kaz Matsui ("Don't Believe the Hype"), Tyler Yates ("6.04 is a Joke"), and Ty Wigginton ("Black Hole In the Hour of Chaos"), among others. By this writing, however, Kaz and Ty had saved a game and Tyler Yates is in AAA. So bringing the noise down on these guys might have been overly harsh, or worthlessly spent.

Late in the third game, after the Mets had magically turned a 3-1 lead into a 5-3 deficit (the Franco-Weathers tandem has produced more meatballs than Franco-American this year), I was beside myself. The Milwaukee Brewers were poised to sweep the Mets at Shea. The Milwaukee Brewers. Last seen contending as they gagged three-games-to-two and three-runs-to-one leads in the 1982 World Series. A team, I argued, for whom finding an All-Star caliber player could be harder than finding the sweet spot on Ricky Gutierrez's bat. One day, one comeback win, and a cursory examination later, I see the Brew Crew as not quite the dead zone I'd torn it down to be. Scott Podsednik gets mentioned among the best leadoff hitters in the league, Geoff Jenkins is a slugger for sure, Lyle Overbay looks like a solid salvage in the Richie Sexson dump, and Ben Grieve was a prodigy not too long ago. Meanwhile, they have a couple of good starters and a good closer, at least so far this year. And they're a game better than the Mets -- thanks in part to this weekend.

So it seems a little time (and one good win) has mellowed the ire that followed the first two games. Sometimes these blogless weekends offer a little retrospective reprieve for the boys in royal blue and blaze orange.

Just to keep the hardcore rap theme rolling, I'll finish with this: "By the Time I Get to Arizona" I'll have forgotten this weekend's screw-ups. Mets vs. D-backs, 9:35 EDT tonight. Fight the power.