Thrills and Spills

Nothing like a few wins over a bad team to put a little spring back in your step, no matter how unseemly those wins may be (and man, check out the hops on Reyes there!).

Once again, the Mets seemed to play down to the level of their opponent, yet somehow managed to eke out a few reverse-jinx victories against the Nationals over the weekend in spite of some shoddy play.

It sounds a little strange, so I'll elaborate.

On Thursday night, El Guapo and I convened at Ballclub HQ, East Village bureau to watch the Mets close out what we hoped would be a series sweep over the miserable Pirates. To date, the Mets had not lost a game that we had watched at that location. When I walked in, the Mets had already charged out to a 5-0 lead. When we left, the Mets had pissed away a sure victory, helped by some miserable efforts from the Bullpen and another alarming string of runners left on base, in a game where their 7 could have easily been a 12. We were drunk, annoyed and arguing with each other over, among other things, the grammatical correctness, or lack thereof, used in this Blog, and whether or not it is acceptable considering the respective styles in which we both happen to write.

But I digress.

A loss like that, following Wednesday's game, which the bullpen made their best effort to blow, but couldn't, led me to believe that the Mets were about to charge into Washington and lose 2 of 3, or, worse, get swept and come home with a giant egg on their face.

But that didn't happen. 3 games, none of which were especially pretty, featuring a lot of late rallies to win, a couple of Bullpen-induced Heart Attacks and about 40 different times over the course of the weekend where you thought that this was where the bottom was going to fall out. Jorge Sosa wriggling in and out of a jam on Friday. Oliver Perez gutting his way through 6 hideous innings on Saturday. Jon Rauch's 6' 11" worth of implosion on Sunday. And all of a sudden, here are the Mets sweeping the Nationals. Whoda thunk it?

Funny game, that Baseball. Funny indeed.