O ME OF LITTLE FAITH

I have a confession to make. Bless me, Mets fans, for I have sinned. I turned off the game last night right after the immortal Javier Valentin hit that bases-clearing double to put the Reds up 8-6. "Shit!" I said, to my cat and two dogs (the wife is visiting family, and she doesn't typically watch with me anyway). "There goes the streak. Nice going, Schoeneweis and Heilman!" And then, I clicked the red "X" in the corner of the Firefox window and disgustedly went to bed.

Yeah, I know, Crash Davis said that a player on a streak must respect the streak, and that goes for fans as well. I should have stayed up the extra half-hour to watch the rousing 9th inning comeback. I see that David Wright hit a two-run bomb to tie it, and Carlos Delgado put us in the lead with a double, and scored on Fernando Tatis' double. All of this came off the normally reliable Reds closer, Francisco Cordero, who had his worst outing of the season. Dammit! I wish I had seen that.

I had only been absentmindedly checking in on the game periodically from the beginning. I was listening to an audio book that I bought so that I could participate in an online book club. Every so often, I'd minimize iTunes and see what the score was. It started out well, with Delgado hitting a two-run homer in the 4th to give the Mets a 2-0 lead. The next time I checked, it was 5-2 Reds. Wow, back-to-back homers, a double and a triple off Johan. The Reds can definitely hit. No wonder they got rid of Josh Hamilton for some pitching. The Mets quickly made it 5-4, and then 6-5, and I thought, "Ok, the bullpen has been stifling of late, looking good." I finished the book about then and headed up to the Man Cave to watch the rest of the game.

By the time the "Buffering..." stopped, the Reds had two men on and Aaron Heilman was doing his trademark nibbling. He walked Dan Ross to load the bases, and Manuel brought in Scottie Schoeneweis to face the switch-hitting Valentin. Scottie had Valentin looking pretty foolish early in the at-bat, but then he laid in a spinning slider that Valentin crushed to right-center. Reds announcer George Grande went into that weird high-pitched thing he does when he gets excited as everybody scored, and I sat there steaming. I momentarily debated with myself on hanging on to watch a potential comeback, but with the time approaching 9:30 pm, I didn't think I could make it, and it probably wasn't forthcoming anyway.

So, I'll do two three "Meet the Mets" and ten "Ya Gotta Believes" as penance (or is it pennants?). The Mets win puts us in a flat-footed tie, whatever that means, with the Philadelphia Wife Beaters (as I have taken to calling them) at 52-44. Man, we were two games under .500 when this thing started. John Maine takes on Bronson Arroyo and his mad licks tonight to try for 11 in a row. It's Friday, and I'm staying up all night if necessary. Unless it's 15-0 or something, of course. I'm not a masochist. Or I least I won't confess to being one here.