I'm typing this on my BlackBerry while waiting for my LA flight. I have first class on this trip, which on an Embraer is indistiguishable from coach on a large jet, and I only paid 15,000 miles! Hey, it didn't cost me personally anything, so why not?
Needless to say, I will be dispensing with any exhaustive recaps on this weekend's games. The Mets won the day half of a day/night doubleheader on Saturday against the Reds behind a largely ineffective Johan Santana, who labored through six shaky innings. The Mets clubbed around Reds starter Matt Belisle and pretty much anybody else they brought in to win by a final of 12-6.
The night game wasn't as kind to the New Yorkers. The formerly hittable Bronson Arroyo, perhaps better known as the front man of The Bronson Arroyo Band, stymied the Mets with a nasty drop-down slider, and Mike Pelfrey, though better than usual, still wasn't good enough. Billy Wagner had his worst outing of the year, yielding three unearned runs in the 9th following an error by David Wright. The final was 7-1.
On Sunday, both teams broke out the newly-traditional pink bats (and less-traditional pink sweatbands) in honor of Mother's Day and breast cancer awareness. Pink or not, the ones the Mets got had plenty of life in them, as Carlos Beltran and Ryan Church went deep off Reds rookie Johnny Cueto. The Reds climbed back to make it 6-3 at one point before the Mets tacked on two insurance runs for the 8-3 final.
The notable part of this game involved the Reds batting out of order in the 9th inning. How does this happen in 2008? Reds skipper Dusty Baker double-switched a few too many times, confusing himself and his players, though not Willie Randolph or the umpires. I missed this whole debacle because I had to go to my rec league soccer game (more on that particular debacle later), but evidently, David Ross was supposed to be in the 9 hole and Corey Patterson was supposed to be hitting 8th. Ross led off the inning with Patterson on deck, and lined out. Patterson then came up, and as soon as he took a pitch, Willie came out of the dugout and pointed out the error, making Patterson out. Since Ross was batting out of order to start the inning, he had to bat again in his actual spot, and he singled. Ryan Freel and Joey Votto then finished the inning and the game with two groundouts. That inning more or less cemented the idea in Reds fans minds that their team is not merely dreadful, but a pathetic joke as well. The "Fire Dusty" web sites should be chewing up a lot of bandwidth this week.
Now on to rec league soccer. I checked the league web site several times on Sunday to make sure the game wasn't canceled for Cinco De Mayo, or winded out, or some other such nonsense, and as far as I could tell, it was still on. My wife and I showed up early, at about 3 pm for a 3:30 game. I looked around, but didn't see anybody familiar. We took a seat in our folding chairs along a random sideline until the team captain showed up. 3:15 passed by, then 3:20, then 3:25, still nobody. We saw the opponents arrive and start setting on the opposite sideline from where we were, so that looked encouraging. Finally, the ref asked me if I' m the captain, I say, "Uh, no." Now it's 3:30, and ABSOLUTELY NOBODY ELSE from my team is there. The ref asks, "Are you in the Army? Because you're an Army of one!" Since the ref's kid is on the other team, he decided that we would have a scrimmage. Oh great, six-on-six, on a full regulation soccer field, for 90 minutes. My life was flashing before my eyes. I'm hard-pressed to finish an 11-on-11 game with ample substitutions.
It wasn't that bad, since nobody tried very hard, and they were all pretty cool. I even scored a goal and got to play goalie for a while. Still, NOT ONE of my so-called teammates bothers to show up? What the hell is that? I mean, if they all decided to forfeit, why didn't they tell the league organizer, so she could update the web site, or tell me, or at least tell the other team so they could choose to show up or not. Bastards. Well, I'll be on a plane while next Sunday's game is going on, so they can drag their asses up and down the pitch without my help.