Three Nights In Washington

After a disappointingly wretched, exhaustingly painful, division lead-shrinking, total-tone-of-the-last-two-weeks-of-the-season-changing home sweep at the hands of the Philadelphia Phillies over the weekend, the Mets headed to Washington Monday night, attempting to re-group and place a metaphorical gauze pad on their deep, blood-gushing NL East /2007 season metaphorical wound. Having moved to DC two weeks ago, I said I'd be at all three games, and if Matt Buccelli is one thing, folks, he is a man of his word.

The Mets were bleeding and the gauze was nowhere in sight this past weekend

I took the Mets at their word, too, figuring that following another stomach-churning series against the Phillies, the Amazins might be inspired to respond as they did following their next-to-most-recent stomach-churning series against the Phils, and once again fight to quickly regain their lost divisional breathing room. "I think we'll turn the page and play well in Washington," said Willie Randolph. "Hopefully, it will mirror what happened last time," added David Wright.

Last time, of course, the Mets followed a four game sweep in Philadelphia by going down to Turner Field and owning the Braves for three days. The division lead, down to two after the sweep, climbed to four over the weekend. Then the sweep in Atlanta, such a dramatic departure from past Septembers, propelled the Mets to a 10-2 stretch that saw the NL East lead jump back to 7. Did I have the same confidence on Sunday night that the Mets would rebound as I did on Thursday, August 30, after the first Philly sweep? I won't lie, no. Was I hopeful? We were going to be playing Washington, as opposed to Atlanta, at RFK Stadium (5-1 record in '07 going into the series) as opposed to the Ted. I felt good that I might watch the Metsies turn it around again, in person this time.

It all looked good entering the fourth inning on Monday night. The Mets had jumped out to a four-run lead on home runs by Beltran and Green, and Brain Lawrence had tossed three scoreless frames so far. Until I jinxed it all. Seriously, it was my fault.

"Hey, Lawrence is on tonight," I said to the two guys sitting next to me in the first row of the left field RFK upper deck, one of whom happened to be a Mets fan. He actually hadn't given up a hit to that point. "If he can give us five scoreless, we'll be okay tonight."

He got one out in third, but after that wouldn't retire another batter.

Lawrence departed after letting the Nats tie the score, and Aaron Sele worked his way out of the fourth without further damage, but the true damage was done. Beginning in the fifth inning, most of the Met pitching the rest of the night mirrored the tail end of Lawrence's, and while most of the Mets throw harder than 82 miles-an-hour, they didn't end up faring much better. 12-4 Nats. Phillies blow an 11-0 lead but win 13-11, division lead at 2 1/2.

"We were just as bad tonight as yesterday," observed Paul Lo Duca.

"Will you say something?" he was asked.

"Yup," said Lo Duca. "Someone has to say something."

And so Lo Duca helped orchestrate a players-only meeting on Tuesday night, where he and anyone else who had something to say could say it without easy, breezy Willie Randolph or anyone else hearing. It didn't help. Well, it did a little bit. But in the end John Maine was just too terrible on Tuesday night for the Mets to escape another loss, this one dropping the division lead to 1 1/2 after the Phillies won in 14. The Mets mounted a 2-out rally in the ninth, closing the gap to 9-8 against Chad Cordero, but in the end 8 runs against Maine were enough to see the Mets blow leads of 4-0, 5-1, and 7-3, and lose the game by that aforementioned 9-8 tally. Rough. I was more afraid of the Phils after Tuesday night than I was for myself after I thought I saw disgraced Sen. Larry Craig in the RFK men's room. No joke, I had to do a double take before I knew I was in the clear.

I was scared, briefly

I sat in section 302 on Tuesday night, in the lower deck toward the right field corner and once again next to another Mets fan but this time across the aisle from several boisterous Nationals fans, who like most Nationals fans don't care about the Nats so much as finally having an baseball-related excuse to get drunk and bag on other teams when the Nats are winning.

I took notes on the game; my intention was to turn those notes (logged in my journal) into sort of a pseudo in-game blogger post, but between work and the Mets this week, I've had no spare time to go to the internet cafe. "In-game blogger" kind of loses its luster when it's typed up 2 days after the fact.

At any rate, I took those two losses hard. Mainly, I didn't want to post to the old blogski because I feared I'd sound too much like a teenage girl cutting her wrists for attention and then writing in her live journal about it. I was that depressed. As I walked out of the ballpark on Tuesday night, talking about how horrible life was with another fellow Mets fan, (we were out in full force this week - that at least was a source of uplift Monday and Tuesday) a man on the street had Louie going on his X Plod Sony boom box, soulfully playing along to "What a Wonderful World" on his trumpet. The scene was just too perfect, all of us battered and beaten Mets fans, walking in the end-of-summer DC night with our heads bowed almost as low as our spirits, Louie Armstrong singing about how great life is. Life certainly feels like a movie sometimes, and for good reason.

The guy outside RFK wasn't Louie, but that didn't inhibit his ability to play an evocative, tear-jerking tune on his trumpet

Funny story - remember that guy, from that picture, of the Mets fan shouting at John Rocker during the '99 playoffs, from the infamous Sports Illustrated article about Mr. Rocker? He's the one I was talking to. No joke. He said it himself, and why would he lie? Brendan Hook, now a cop in Fairfax, Virginia. It was the no. 2 photo of the year in 1999 for Sports Illustrated. At any rate, I felt much better getting off the Metro on Tuesday night after venting with Brendan Hook and a few other co-sympathizers.

I can't find the picture of Brendan Hook, but I swear it exists. At any rate, he was shouting "f*ck you!" back at this guy

By Wednesday night the worst was over. I knew this night was going to be different when we didn't jump ahead by four runs in the first inning. We took a 8-3 lead into the ninth, and while Billy gave up a run - co-produced by a D Wright throwing error - the inning was rather uneventful and the gauze pad was finally applied. The only serious danger of the night was the fifth inning, when Mike Pelfrey - who had an otherwise gutsy start, displaying a previously-lacked ability on the part of the Met pitching staff to retire Nook Logan, and getting some big strikeouts to get out of trouble when he needed to - was pulled with runners at the corner and nobody out, the Mets up by two, Jorge Sosa coming in, you still have faith in Sosa but pretty much the exact situation that's been screwing us lately...and Sosa induced a K and an inning-ending double play to end the threat. See how easy that was? 3 more insurance runs and we were on our way to that much-needed victory.

It's 4-3 Marlins in Florida right now. The Mets were up 3-0, but that situation that's been screwing us lately screwed us again and the Marlins scored 4 times in the fifth. That situation that's been screwing us lately screwed the Nationals (and, by association, us, yet again) in Washington; the Phils scored 4 times in the seventh to tie that game at 6.

But you know, it's hard to have a pennant race when one team plays flawlessly all year. The Phillies phought it out last year too, missing the wild card by just a couple of games, but we were just too good (in the regular season, at least...). True, the much better pennant race is when both teams win 95+ games and duke it out without the sloppiness and the losing streaks and the errors, but in most pennant races, you get this kind of up and down, unpredictable, heart-pounding, losing streak leads to winning streak leads to losing streak for the other team kind of September action. It sucks, yes. And I'm pissed off, sure, because the Mets should have this division wrapped up, and are flirting with a collapse of epic (and historic) proportions. And I really wish Willie "I'm very passionate in the clubhouse, I swear" Randolph would throw something in view of a television camera, and prove that he's got some balls that aren't hidden by his phony passive-aggressiveness.

The Mets are defending Willie's laid-back style; let's hope his quiet confidence will mean success in October - if we can make it back there, of course

But in 2007, what you see is clearly what you get. Playoffs? Playoffs? Let's focus on September first. Maybe we'll screw this whole thing up and miss out on October, maybe we'll still manage to hang on and sneak in. If we make it, maybe we'll lose in the Division Series, maybe we'll be strengthened and emboldened by this September adversity. You just don't know. And the end of this season could either suck or be exalting. No one really knows.

And that's the frustrating part. Made much more frustrating with every throwing error, every blown lead. But in the end, however sloppy, this is pennant race baseball, and there's nothing to do now but embrace it. These are your 2007 Mets, love 'em or leave 'em - and now that we are where we are there's nothing to do but curse the manner in which we got here and hope for the best. What more can I say?

Ya gotta believe.

(Photos courtesy utahmountainbiking.com, cnews.canoe.ca, americaslibrary.gov, thesportstruth.com, images.usatoday.com)