The Dodgefather, Part III

You know, I kept talking about the Hex of The Hot Team coming back to bite the Mets this week in Los Angeles as if it were a joke, but the way these games played out this week, It's hard to not think there's something to it, like some higher order is at work that's willing the Dodgers to win all these games. It's not just the Mets that have fallen victim to this, it seems to be every team that the Dodgers have played. The Rays had been on a pretty good run themselves, and they came to LA last weekend and got swept out of the building. And for a majority of last night's game, I thought I was wrong. The Mets jumped out to a lead, Dillon Gee and the Bullpen were keeping the Dodgers at bay for the most part. But in the end, this game turned out just like the two games that preceded it, like it was the almost unwatchable 3rd part to a trilogy that was good enough after the first two versions. And when Andre Ethier's pinch hit Home Run tied the game in the 9th inning, I could only think that somewhere, Al Pacino was screaming "Every time I think I'm out...THEY PULL ME BACK IN!!!"

I suppose there was good reason for optimism after Marlon Byrd hit a 3-run Home Run and the Mets were up 4-0 with Dillon Gee cruising along. Gee has been in a great groove of late, but if Matt Harvey isn't immune to The Hot Team, then nobody is. The fact is, the Mets could have been ahead 10-0 and it probably would have been hard for me to feel comfortable about this game. I heard some talk about the injuries that have struck the Mets over the past few weeks coming back to bite them, but I don't know if David Wright and Bobby Parnell could have stopped the Dodgers from roaring back in any of these games.

It's unfortunate for Gee, who didn't so much run out of steam as much as he just ran into the Dodgers, because you knew they had a rally in them to make the game close, and after watching the Mets fail to tack on runs on offense in every game this week, I can't imagine it's the bats not hitting (particularly after they knocked Arizona around last weekend), but the bullpen of The Hot Team just getting every key out they needed to get. And so, when the Dodgers ultimately tied the game in the 9th and things moved into Extra Innings, I gave up. I shut the game off, knowing that it was only going to be a matter of time before the Dodgers found a way to do it to the Mets once again (the fact that it was closing in on 1:30am didn't help either). And, sure enough, when I woke up this morning, I saw the ESPN notice on my phone that the Dodgers had indeed won in the 12th, with Yasiel Puig hopping around the bases as a central figure to the winning rally.

So, nothing to be done for the Mets. Even if they sucked us in and gave us hope for a little while last night (and every night, really), they really had no logical chance to stop the Dodgers, not with the voodoo hex working its nauseating magic, turning the Mets to Jell-O at every avenue, making them look silly and ultimately sweeping them right out of town. So, just lick your wounds and move south to San Diego, and hope that maybe they can get over those Petco Park problems they always seem to have and get this road trip back on track.