We are having a brutal heat wave in NYC. It’s not merely hot, it’s humid. Walking outside is like walking through a steam bath and I hate steam baths. I’m more the sauna kind.
The war in Ukraine drags on.
Things get crazier and crazier. (More about that latter in due course.)
But there is one bright spot, at least in my neck of the woods: my M*ts are doing well.
I’m so superstitious that I scarcely wish to write about it. I may jinx the team, so I won’t even write their full name. I won’t even link to them. Too risky.
Baseball and my family go back a long time. I don’t have the energy to write about that now. Let these pictures speak a few thousand words.
I completely fell out of the baseball loop during the Covid Crazytime. Something, I don’t know exactly what, prevented me from getting back in at the beginning of this season. Maybe it was learning that the Angel Jacob deGrom1 was injured. I just couldn’t take the goddamn heartache anymore. Even the acquisition of the Animal Max Scherzer, possibly my favorite pitcher ever, wasn’t enough.
The Noah Syndergaard business soured me further. I liked the kid. I picked him for a star when he was pitching for the M*ts’ Las Vegas Triple A team. I looked over the roster and I said to myself, “If he can pitch, he’s a star. He’s got ‘it’.”
I don’t blame a player for maximizing his options: any athletic career is short, and a crapshoot as well. One bad pitch, one blown arm… it’s over. But the offer he got from the other team wasn’t much better than what the Mets were offering (what’s $3M after taxes?) and … for the Angels? The West Coast Mets? It didn’t make sense, unless he thought he could side hustle into show biz. (I think that might have been the reason, an if so, he’s really naive, because I doubt anyone in show biz is interested in one of the Angels. The business is that superficial.)
According to all reliable sources, he never came back to the M*ts with a counter. The team that stood by him after Tommy John surgery. He just scooted.
OK, kiddo, you bail on us in such a graceless fashion, I bail on you. Forever. I have my limits. And it didn’t work out on the coast anyway, and now you’re back in a 2nd rate version of NYC. I wish you a long, happy, and healthy life. But I also hope that when you pitch against the Mets, we shell you for ten runs in the first inning. I’m working my witch magic on that RIGHT NOW.
It soured me even further. These guys really don’t care about us, why should I care about them?
I do.
Anyway, I don’t know what happened—maybe it was deGrom’s comeback?—but I got back into it. I may even get cable.
But most of all, every day I pray for the health of Saints Jacob and Max.
I divide athletes and dancers into Angels and Animals. To be described later.