The number of "What would you do for a Klondike Bar?" cracks were flying around the 7 train the entire ride home. Perhaps it was all a bit tongue in cheek, but after sitting through all 2 hours and 53 minutes of the Mets latest debacle, it really was the least the Mets could have done for our suffering.
The palpable feeling of "Why, exactly, am I doing this?" has now become a regular occurrence for me when I go to Mets games, and that's not a good thing. I was delayed getting out of work, and problems on another subway line resulted in the 7 train out to Queens being beyond packed. I pushed on, though, ignoring that thought in my head as a woman jabbed her elbow into my back and someone's backpack was compressing my chest. Red shirts, Cardinal red, the worst kind of Red (not the same as the cheerful 49ers Scarlet) were abound. You could see the red almost outnumbering the blue. That wasn't a good thing. Still, I pressed on. I hadn't been to a game in a month, and a fortuitous meeting with an old friend netted me a pass down to the Field Level, the kind of seats I never sit in unless I'm handed a freebie. But doom seemed imminent. The Cardinals are the most nauseatingly praised team in Baseball, perhaps MLB's version of the Green Bay Packers. The pundits have their lips firmly glued to the Cardinal's asses, and they act as such. It's enough to make you want to vomit. The Mets, on the other hand, have earned nothing but continued ridicule. This team can't even beat the Marlins, what chance do they have against the Cardinals?
And you wonder why I was questioning myself?
The two runs the Mets scored in the first off of Cardinal unknown Michael Wacha were nice, until a) you remembered that this is the Mets and those are probably the only two runs they'll score all night and b) Michael Wacha remembered that he's a Cardinal and immediately started pitching like he was Chris Carpenter. It was only a matter of time before things fell apart.
Jeremy Hefner, who had actually pitched reasonably well his last few starts, started out that way again. It wasn't until the 4th that the Cardinals finally reached him, and even that was a run scored via the Double Play. But just as Michael Wacha turned into a true Cardinal, Hefner turned back into a true Met in the 5th, allowing an innocuous Daniel Murphy error to snowball into a 5-run massacre that pretty much ended the game right then and there. Given the number of unearned runs, you might be led to believe that Hefner got a bad break, but from where I was sitting, I don't think so. Hefner was mere inches from minimizing the damage to just a pair of run-scoring ground outs after the Murphy misplay (perhaps a side effect of his being unceremoniously shifted to 1st Base), but he had to go and hang one to Allen Craig, and Craig had to go and park it in the Left Field seats, sounding the death knell for the Mets once again.
My seats, by this point, were about 7 rows back of 3rd Base. As Craig's Home Run sailed off into the night, amid a sea of rejoicing revelers in puke red and Cardinal players happily circling the Bases, I looked over at David Wright. Stone faced, his arms folded, staring helplessly at the scoreboard. What could he do? One man trapped on an island of lost souls, with no help in sight.
I don't know what, exactly, spurred on the unannounced Klondike Bar giveaway after the game. I would hope, for his sake, that they remembered to send one into the Mets locker room for David Wright. If the Mets fans deserved this as a pick-me-up after watching this game, I would think David Wright deserves one as well.
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