A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again

When the Mets almost, but didn’t quite, blow a big lead to barely defeat the Phillies 10-9 in a 1990 regular season showdown, the professional radio broadcaster Bob Murphy infamously exclaimed, “The Mets win! They win the damn thing 10-9.”

Well, yesterday the Mets had a 10-3 lead going into the bottom of the ninth. It became a 10-9 game before Devin Williams finally struck out old chum Dominic Smith to win it for the Mets. Friend of the Newsletter Keith Raad knew exactly what to say.

“The Mets win the damn thing 10-9!”

And I was there at Truist Park.

Until the end of the seventh inning.

I’m writing this somewhere in Virginia. I am on an airplane that hasn’t moved for hours. There is torrential rain at LaGuardia airport, so the plane I had to catch at 6:20 pm eastern didn’t lift off until 8:30, and then had to stop in Richmond, Virginia at 10pm. It is 1:05 am as I write this.

Was it worth leaving my apartment at three in the morning to make a scheduled 12:30 pm contest that didn’t start due to rain until 2:15 only to leave early and miss all of what made the game zany and special? That’s a good question. I would say yes. I learned that Atlanta and their fans are nothing to fear. If anything they are to be pitied. Their between inning entertainment is rather pedestrian. One contestant was unironically named Cletus. And we’re supposed to be scared of these guys?

It’s also a pretty stadium, when it isn’t raining.

Besides, plenty of Atlanta fans left early too, I’ll have you know.

This is as coherent as I am going to get right now. This game deserves a full recap and I might get to that after I get some beauty sleep. Oh and there’s another game later tonight. I look forward to watching it from my couch.