Hate to Say I Told You So

Game 75 – Red Sox

Red Sox 10, Mets 2
Record: 47-28

Well, that was...anticlimactic. What started as the most highly anticipated regular season game in my memory quickly turned into a vaguely unsatisfying rout. In the words of the less-than-immortal Hives, I hate to say I told you so.

Whit and I were well into our stash of thematically selected domestic brews (Smuttynose Pale Ale for me, Brooklyn Pennant Ale for him) in the bottom of the 4th when he turned to me and said, “We need a game to play”. If you know Whit, you recognize that he has a pathological need to be entertained – and Pedro and his Mets failed miserably on that score last night.

Around that same time, yet another rainstorm blew through Northern Virginia, interrupting my DirectTV signal for the eleventeenth time this week. We quickly deemed it a mercy killing, and set to quizzing each other on Mets and Red Sox trivia. If you can name the Mets top 5 all-time homerun hitters without any help, you’re almost as smart as I am. We made calls to Wheelhouse Jerry, who was celebrating the Nets’ successful draft. We watched the American League continue its mastery of the so-called Senior Circuit – 50+ games over .500 now, for all you NL apologistas. Hell, we even watched a few minutes of a Food Network program about pancakes. Anything to avoid focusing on the carnage in Boston.

As I’d hoped, the Fenway crowd showed their appreciation for Pedro with a 55-second standing ovation as he walked to the mound before the bottom of the first. And as I’d predicted, he was way too amped up, costing himself at least 1 run (and maybe 4) by failing to start a double play on a David Ortiz comebacker. I’ve seen Pedro pitch worse, but not by much and certainly not often. To be honest, I was really pretty disappointed – not that he lost, but how he did.

Whit and I concurred on the fact that Lastings Milledge probably couldn’t play outfield for our softball team, and on the near certainty that Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez are celebrating their reunion in the Mets’ broadcast booth by doing lines from the small of a hooker’s back. And if I were to call him now and wake him, he’d likely also concur that drinking that much on a school night is a bad idea, despite our repeated tests of that theory.

Lots at stake tonight as Curt Schilling faces local boy Tom Glavine. The Sox are looking for their 12th straight win, while the Metros are trying to pick up some momentum in advance of their upcoming series with the Yankees. Far more importantly, Whit needs his boys to pick him up, or he faces the unhappy prospect of owing me 4 cases of the finest ale in the land to settle our bet on the series.