Rancid

Game 64 - Mets

Dodgers 9, Mets 1
Record: 36-28

". . . I think a lot of us in the Township would quickly start to get past this atrocious, league-worst start to the month if we saw some real fire."

Not getting past it after last night's pants-soiling. Another Met starter wrecking his ERA, a dose of sloppy D, and oh, yeah, still not hitting worth a damn. Perhaps cutting ties with Louisville Slugger and signing on with Nerf at the beginning of this month was a bad idea. The "Used" Carloses resumed their stint of suck once again, with Beltran & Delgado taking a nifty 0-for-8 to defuse any meat-of-the-order rallies.

Saw this on a billboard in Mets Township the other day:

One day Carlos Delgado, by some strange circumstance, suddenly finds himself inside a large bag made of plain brown paper. His captor allows him one means of escaping these confines; he hands him a wooden baseball bat.

"Oh, crap," mumbles Delgado.

"Going through the motions" would be a particularly apt way of describing how the Mets spent three hours last night. Obvious losses of concentration manifested themselves in horrible pitch selection, multiple glove gaffes by Jose Reyes, Billy Wagner effortlessly allowing a home run to a left-handed batter (and a mediocre one, at that), and a general caliber of play we'd call soft. Granted, that assessment isn't fair to Jose Valentin (who's somewhat fresh, from his time off) or David Wright (who's our Golden Boy), but this team is under the weather.

I called for a little fire last night, a little ire to assuage the fans' increasing angst. It was probably poor timing for such a request. Southern California, where all of the drama is scripted and the passion is faked, is hardly the setting for real emotion. The irony of the city of Angels, a place utterly void of soul, is thick. Any incidents would undoubtedly have been pure theatrics. Even when Brad Penny seemed to try to start something with Shawn Green, Green gave him a look rife with Piazza's old "Just play baseball" scolding. It wasn't to be.

Oh, but fast-forward to Friday night, when the Mets visit the now World-Series-destined New York Yankees Baseball Club, and it's a different story. In New York City, the sentiments are sincere, and emotions are sewn onto sleeves. Especially when it comes to all things Yankees, the truest example of the love-'em-or-hate-'em cliché I know. With the Metcart careening towards second, maybe third place and the Bombers furrowing brows all the way up to Nova Scotia, there's every chance that the Mets could get torched three times this weekend in hideous fashion, and that will just shorten the fuse.

All we'll need is a spark, a Clemens HBP, an A-Rod schoolyard play, anything at all . . . and it could light up the New York skyline. We've seen what scuffles can do to galvanize squads before. It's a dangerous proposition, there's no guarantee such a brouhaha will help (it may even divide), and it caters to our most base instincts in an embarrassing fashion. Sure would be fun, though, and it might demonstrate some emotional investment on the Mets' part that these cool characters have been loath to reveal.

We fans are still waiting to be shown that we aren't the only ones regularly putting our frail psyches and eroding internal organs on the line. Wagner quipped after the loss last night, "I'm sure Omar didn't put this team together expecting this type of play, and Fred Wilpon didn't shell out this type of money for us to go out there and play like this." Hey, Billy, don't forget about the consumers in this economic dynamic; we aren't paying for tickets, concessions, satellite feeds, internet access, bloggers guild dues, ulcer treatments, hair replacement products, hand and foot casts, and psychiatry bills for you to go out there and play like this, either.

Dammit, dudes. Show us something.