Springtime, Baseball and the Mets.
Base10 watched the Mets game last night and was naturally disappointed by the Mets loss to the worst team in baseball. Baseball is fun, especially around this time of the year when anything is possible. It's not like July when your team is in a slide and all you have to look forward to is next year or pray for the slim possibility of a miraculous comeback. Of course by that time Base10 will have become occupied with other things. August is the month of pre-season football and research for the fantasy league. Unless the Mets are in contention, interest quickly fades.

Base10 wasn't always a sports fan. As a child he never liked sports, didn't know much about baseball and certainly didn't play. Except, of course, for a couple of abortive attempts at Little League. Little League was surely created as an experiment in social Darwinism and is one in which the feminine qualities of Base10's throwing arm could not survive.

(Not to worry, Base10 doesn't harbor a grudge against those who called him names as a child. In fact, since Base10 joined the Police Department and got to carry a big firearm, he does not fret over these things at all. But perhaps this is a topic best reserved for Base10's therapist...)

But anyway, springtime is about baseball, and as painful as it can sometimes be, Base10 is a Mets fan. Now I actually took off last Monday to watch their home opener. It was a pretty good game and the Mets won decisively against their arch enemies, the Atlanta Braves. Now they won 10-6, but of course in the spirit of recently departed closer Armando Benitez, they loaded the bases and put the tying run at the plate in the ninth inning. Although this does make for exciting baseball, it also symbolizes the worst aspects of the Mets. It also caused great consternation to the owner of the tavern where Base10 watched the game because prospective extra innings would have wiped out any profit in the all-you-can-eat-and-drink special he was running that afternoon.

In any event, they won the game and played a pretty good series against Atlanta. But then they were swept by Pittsburgh, the most humiliating game being the first of the series where Tom Glavine pitches an absolute gem and leaves the game with a 6-0 lead. Thanks to complete collapse of middle relief, the Mets lose this one 7-6. Never has Base10 seen their bullpen fail in such spectacular fashion. Not one, but every single pitcher stank. You expect at least one of them to have the "stuff," but no, not that night. It almost makes you think they were all smoking pot together in the parking lot before the game! (That last line wouldn't be funny if a similar incident didn't happen last season).

But anyway, in spite of the setbacks and notwithstanding last night's loss to the AAA Expos, the Mets aren't playing half bad. Their bats are alive, and we're getting some entertaining games. And to make things even better, the Yankees aren't doing very well.

Keep in mind that for a Mets fan, the Yankee's perfomance is often the consolation prize. If the Mets win, we're happy, if they lose we are sad. But if the Yankees also lose, we feel happy again. Base10 gives his best regards to our baseball cousins across town. As the year wears on, the All-Star nature of their team will surely come out and make the Yanks a post-season contender. But there is a degree of guilty pleasure seeing them struggle early on--like I said, it's spring and anything is possible.

Base10 does not hate the Yankees. It took a long time to figure out it is not the Yankees that are worthy of scorn. Instead, it is the Yankee fans that I hate. Picture a fair weather fan and he's wearing a Yankees cap. Base10 has met several persons calling themselves Yankee fans when they didn't even watch a game before October. And these fans have no grasp of history, expecting championship after championship as if it is a foregone conclusion. Such fans scoff at the fans of the Mets saying "How could you still be fan if they lose all the time?" This means that Yankee fans have erased the entire decade of the eighties from their memories. In that glorious time, the Mets ruled NY baseball and the Yanks were in the sewer. By Yankee fan logic, they should have switched sides then. The existential meaning of being a fan is following your team through thick and thin. In addition, George Steinbrenner's tactics are slowly destroying the sport. This is also a story for another time--maybe when July unfolds.

Base10 looks out his office window and surveys his kingdom. There is warm sunshine and baseball is in the air. It is the time of year when one's creativity is consumed not by work, but by thinking of ways to avoid going in to work. What is it about baseball? Let's not relentlessly intellectualize the sport like George Will. In fact, Base10 thinks football is by far the better sport by almost every metric. But there is something about baseball in the spring. There is just some visceral pleasure in a sunny day and the sound the bat makes when it strikes the ball for a base hit. For a time, however brief, one is young again. Play Ball!

RETRACTION: Montreal is not the worst team in baseball, merely the worst team in the National League. Base10 apologizes for flying off the handle.
- posted by Base10 @ 4:00 PM