Saturday, April 14, 2012

Mets 5, Phillies 2 - Like a Live Lookin Without Harold Reynolds Thinking Everything's a Homer & Mets 5, Phillies 0 - Hitters Everywhere Breaking Their Pinkies for a "Little Boost"


It is a ballpark for millionaires and penny pinchers.  A playground, a banquet hall, and a cathedral all rolled into one.  A place where dreams soar and playoff tickets are printed in February.  But this year, the residents are troubled.  The steps of their once proud heroes have faltered in the early goings, leading most to wonder if...

Sorry about that.  I had my Ken Burns font on accidentally.  



Welcome to Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia!  We are hear to see the Mets play the Phillies in the early goings of the season, with both teams being in unfamiliar territory.  The Mets have ridden some good early pitching performances, timely hits, and strong bullpen contributions to a 4-2 season record while the Phillies are clearly missing the two big bats in the middle of their lineup, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard, the former suffering from a deteriorating knee and the latter possibly running one of the longest cons ever in order to deflect some attention from the fact that he ruined the Phillies postseason for two years in a row.  Lets go inside!


I really like CPB.  It's got great sight lines, a ton of stuff to do for those who are less baseball-inclined, and entertaining fans.  Why just last night one of the drunk Phillies fans behind me unironically asked his Mets fan friend if the Mets still had Mike Piazza.  Haha, what?  This man has clearly only been watching baseball since October 2008.  


Anyway, my luck has been particularly good at this park of late, having witnessed Met victories in three of the last four NY-PHI tilts I've attended, so I was ready to be hit with a long overdue dose of reality last night, but happily I was mistaken!  Before I could even get in my seat, Miguel Tejada and Daniel Murphy had hit back-to-back doubles off of Cliff Lee to begin the game, and pretty much as soon as I sat down, Jason Bay hit a two-run homer to give the Mets a 3-0 lead!  I know, right?  Jason Bay is still alive!

Anyway, all of this was merely a footnote compared to the battle of folk heroes witnessed in this game between R.A. Dickey, all-around awesome guy, mountain climber, fully committed Star Wars cosplayer, author and knuckleballer extraordinaire and this man, pretty much the closest we're going to get to a real-life Paul Bunyan.  


 What, you don't see him?  Enhance.  


 HI THIS IS JI

Before the Dugout, I was never particularly interested that there were 29 other teams other than the Mets that all had their quirky personalities, head cases, awesome folks, and Turk Wendells.  (He's all three.)  I only really followed other teams when there was a chance there might be a playoff encounter or something, and even then I only really knew their heavy hitters.  The Dugout changed all that, and one of the things that has always astounded me is that by all accounts, Jim Thome's real-life persona is pretty much a carbon copy of the one that the awesome folks behind The Dugout gave him.  He's pretty much the best, and I like to think that after their three encounters (a strikeout, a walk, and a single) the two men clasped hands, drank all the beer, and went to play Star Wars with their kids together.  

Another awesome thing that Thome did was when Freddy Galvis (OF ALL PEOPLE) hit his first major league homer (off of a knuckleballer OF ALL PEOPLE) all the Phillies did that thing in the dugout where they don't acknowledge it but Thome just grabbed up that youngster in a big ole bear hug and probably told him to keep sockin' them dingers.  Jim Thome is awesome.  

"Pssht this Bush League lineup ain't shit after you climbed up almost 20,000 feet of mountain."


 This bell only went off once to my great delight.  

So that was Friday, and all that happened on Saturday was David Wright hit a homer on the first pitch that he saw since he broke his finger against the Nationals earlier this week, Lucas Duda hit an absolute blast after Jason Bay GIDP with the bases loaded and no outs, so in that particular situation a STRIKEOUT would have been preferable with Duda coming up, do the math on that one, and Niese and the bullpen were outstanding again in winning the series.  Tomorrow its Hamels (owned (PWN) by the Mets) against Pelfrey (owned (PWN) by the Phillies) and I'm interested in seeing what happens.  If Pelfrey actually has a decent game in Philadelphia (lol no) I'm going to begin to think that something's up.  But heyyyyy worst case scenario is 6-3 so that would be just fine with me.  

1 comment:

  1. "Jim Thome is awesome."

    can't be stated enough imo

    ReplyDelete