Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Silver Linings In Hurricane Clouds

With the perspective that 24 hours and watching the [WORLD CHAMPION] Red Sox drop another game to the Yankees brings, I am calmed from the lunacy I posted below and I'm reminded of a little nugget of wisdom I heard once upon a time:
"Truly, I was miserable all night last night. Intellectually, I know that there
are 161 games left, and that one loss is not terribly relevant, but I can't help
feeling that I've been down this road before. Dammit."

Can't place it? Well then you haven't been perusing the MLC archives frequently enough, because it's a quote from a blogger who calls himself "rob" on Tuesday, April 1, 2003. See, the Red Sox had just lost their Opening Day contest to the Devil Rays thanks to two homers in the bottom of the ninth, including the walk-off winner. The starting pitcher who was denied the win thanks to the sorry 'pen-manship?? Pedro Martinez. Whoa. Eerily similar, and though Pedro's got to be kicking himself for signing up for what will likely be the longest baseball season(s) of his life, I'm ignoring the dread in my cohort's tone and opting for the least practical application of that quote: We're only a season away from a championship run!

In truth, I was starting to see some similarities between this club and the 1985 Mets, anyway -- a significantly improved, pieces-are-starting-to-fall-into place kind of team with ever-increasing karma. This confirms it. Omar needs to start setting his sights on a Bobby Ojeda-for-Calvin Schiraldi-and-loose-change trade now. I'm thinking Bronson Arroyo for Felix Heredia. Then the Mets and Sox square off in 2006, 20 years after the original, in "Mets-Sox II: This time it's not nearly as personal since the talent was bought with unfairly large revenues instead of cultivated like a decent league would have mandated." Okay, so we've got some time to fine-tune that slogan. But hear me now and believe me later, this won't be the first bizarre parallel we encounter this season.

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