Hyper Sensitive Mets Probably Going to Take Series Personally
By Justin Klugh
Watching the Flyers game last night, I realized that there must be an important moment in each hockey player’s life when he has to decide whether he is going to be a serial killer or a hockey player. Will he contain his immense, mortifying rage to the ice, where intense violence and unbridled anger are not only permitted, but encouraged?
Or will he move more and more of his belongings into the basement until the majority of his belongings are down there and neighborhood pets start disappearing, all while the other kids grow up and leave town and everyone wonders “Whatever happened to that Peterson boy, he was always a little ‘off’?”
Those Mets–those flailing, unwatchable Mets–are back in the picture tonight, as the Phils storm Citi Field. The Mets just won two of three from the Yankees, and according to most New York newspapers, this means they are the crown fucking kings of baseball. Except that they can’t stop themselves from once again allowing the bullpen to de-evolve into a slumber party full of moody teenage girls.
They’re even bringing in a knuckleballer to shut us down, based on the success of Tim Wakefield in doing just that. R.A. Dickey, the man tapped by the Mets, actually learned his knuckler from Wakefield, which means we are in serious danger of seeing that one game out of ten where it actually works.
But the Mets are riding their own little hot streak, and the Phillies are rolling through their schedule like a wall of trash on Broad Street, so the timing here is going to be our biggest detriment. Can we use this series as the turnaround from a sack-dragging slump, and put a little more destruction in the Mets’ season? Or do we let the bitching, moaning, and Jeff Francoeur-ing of our rivals echo hauntingly in our heads–enough to allow them a victory?
Okay. Somebody get that bat away from him.
If there’s anything to be excited right now, its the relief pitching for the Chicago White Sox. Now, now, I know what you’re thinking. “The White Sox? Aren’t they just a stain on the AL Central carpet?” And oh yes, they certainly are. In fact they, like any team not from Minnesota or Detroit, will spend a chunk of this year getting kicked around by teams from Minnesota or Detroit. So they’re relief corps can’t be the strongest in the universe.
But you don’t have to be the strongest pitcher in the universe to get the Phillies attention. In fact, you don’t even need a reasonable amount on intelligence. Just get out there, give up as many runs as you can, and go look dejected in the dug out while Joe Blanton fantasizes about drowning you in tangy BBQ sauce and eating you whole.
Well, the breaking down White Sox-mobile is about to start dropping off parts, and two of them are Bobby Jenks and J.J. Putz. Putz, if you’ll recall, was one of the 2,000 names for a possible late relief or closing job with the Phils during the offseason. What we wound up with was Jose Contreras and Danys Baez, out of a pool that included Fernando Rodney, Brandon Lyon, John Smoltz, and a host of others. Good pitching is hard to find, and both of these guys have about 12 K’s per nine innings.
And because of that, if these guys do wind up face down on the trading block (The stipulation being whether the White Sox can get it together, so you know. We’ll be lucky if the suspense hasn’t killed us), the Phils will not be the only ones foaming at the mouth.
Onward to Citi Field, where the home runs don’t count and “mold, flooding, and faulty electrical wiring” is just how they roll.