Bizarro-Phils Continue Reverse-Sweep of Mets

Shane Victorino is my favorite player.  I don’t know how many quasi/full on-stalking jokes I need to make in order to drive that home.  I like his intensity, I like his attitude, I like how he always seems to be on base, always stirring up trouble.

I like how his hair feels, stuffed inside my pillow.

Tonight, there were a few instances where he was on camera, visibly chatting it up with Mets and umpires, a huge smile on his face, laughing it up.  I’m not saying you can’t fraternize with umps and other players, but we hadn’t scored a run in 33 out of 34 innings of baseball.  And now, we can say that number is 42 out of 43.

Zero runs.  42 innings.  Not really something to laugh about.

Mets 5, Phillies 0

"“A lot of times when you’re not scoring runs, you look dead.”"

Charlie’s right.  It sure feels like we’re dead.  It feels like the bus to Citi Field gets there, and 25 corpses tumble out past the bus driver and onto the pavement.  Team staffers slowly drag the pile into the clubhouse and prop them up in front of their lockers, where they give lifeless, silent responses to increasingly strongly worded inquiries from the press.

Then, they are forklifted onto the field, where they lie for nine innings, never really moving, except for the occasional fragment of hair lazily blowing in the wind as Jose Reyes skirts by doing some other annoying thing.

It feels like there is just not a baseball team out there.

Sure, we had seven hits, but if you can’t put the bat on the ball, let alone get it out of the infield, let alone get past second base before the sixth inning, let alone get a–*GASP*–base hit.

At a time like this, you’ll find a lot of people–bloggers–waiting for the first person to have a meltdown, just they can hurtle into the comment section and say “GAWD I AM SO SICK OF PHILLIES FANS FREAKING OUT ITS JUST A SLUMP K THKZ.”  Maybe its the shut outs, maybe its the wasted starting pitching (Joe was pretty solid through six, and on a normal night offensively, would have been holding the Mets just fine), maybe its the sound of somebody breaking into the hair salon across the street from me with a chain saw right now, but it’s got me on edge, because, quite frankly, this shit doesn’t happen.  Not to us.  And I’m a little surprised it’s taken Charlie this long to wedge a chair under the locker room door and have a word with his team.

Charlie put the place on lockdown for 15 minutes just after the last piece of incompetent sporting ended the bottom of the ninth, and the Mets left the field feeling good about themselves (Every time they do that, its like one of those episodes of “24” where a main character gets gunned down.  A Mets win should always be followed by a silent clock).  But, lo and behold, it was Smilin’ Shane who informs us:

"“There was no yelling. There was no screaming. You know Charlie, he’s not going to get deep.”"

Do I?  Do I know Charlie?

Do I know any of you?

The Phillies are obviously going to score a run again, someday, I guess, so do we even bother to dwell on why they aren’t right now?  It’s pretty easy to hurl insults and judgement from the comfort of my computer chair (though my comfort level is quickly declining as that chain saw keeps getting louder).  And no, I’ve never even come close to playing a professional sport, but I do know that I have never seen this offense suffer this atrociously at the hands of pitchers who are… not likely to have such luck a second time.

This is more than a slump.  And it will take more than a strongly worded pep talk and the end of Jayson Werth’s facial hair to pull the trigger.

Okay, that’s it, I’m calling the cops.