My Biggest Shame and My Biggest Fear...

It was the 9th inning at Shea. Pedro did his job. Sanchez did his job. The Mets were playing winning baseball. The guitar strings of "Enter Sandman" blasted out of Shea's loud speakers. My favorite song as a 12 year old was how he were going to close games for the next four years.



Nick The Voice was at Shea... he had chills going through his head. He hadn't seen excitement like that at Shea in years.

AFOMG was furiously exchanging text messages with BOAFOMG as he sat in the den where we've watched 100 games, and sweated out a hundred more tense 9th innings.

Happy Will was sitting in his living room "praying his reverse jinx would hold up."

Even Goat was being Goat, watching the game where he belongs, at the Gym being the smartest meathead maybe ever to walk the face of the earth.

All the big guns were where they belonged to watch the Mets close as big of an April game as we have had in a long time.

At the same time where was Kenny From Camp... at work on MLBTV (Which I can't get thanks to my MAC).

And worse, where was young Sip? After 6 innings on ESPN gamecast, 2 outs and 6 pitches of an Endy Chavez AB in a local Palo Alto Bar, Young was sitting in a train going back to SF, texting Cousin endlessly for reports.

Here we had our big game and I caught all of 2.8946 AB's live. With the game a 4 p.m. PT start, I had 2 hours of work followed by a train ride home.



I needed to make it home to catch Big Fella's last home game of the season, and I hated myself. As Jerry Maguire felt 10 years ago, "I hated my place in the world."

Here we are in the most exciting time in the history of my sports life. Yes, this is the first time since 1986 that my team has been the best in their respective game.



In the Knicks' 60 win seasons, they were never better than the Rockets or the Bulls.

When the Giants started off 10-0 in 1990, so did the 49ers and they were the big guys.

Even if it's early and even if we're only a couple weeks in, the Mets are playing the best of any team in baseballl, and it's a weird feeling. A feeling that I have to deal with, waiting for text messages on the Caltrain back to San Francisco.

It's a rough time. Since leaving NYC the morning after Opening Day, things just don't feel right. Yeah, the west coast is solid, met a lot of good people, but when it all comes down to it, I'm a Mets fan.

Other than being the Sip, that's what I am. To be missing from it all is flat out killing me. To hear the Nick "The Voice's" magical voice yelling from Shea telling me how beautiful it is and how psyched he is to get back on Wednesday makes me proud to have friends like him, but sad to not be there.

Yeah, I dropped $179 bucks on the league pass, but it's just not the same. I flat out miss being around Mets games.

So I'm not saying I'll be back anytime soon. God knows I need a job before that would happen as there ain't much of a future living with Mama Momo.

But there certainly will be plenty of trips back. Cause ya'll are having too much fun without me.

AND MY BIGGEST FEAR...

I got home from the Warriors game and tivoed through the Mets game. I really wanted to see the 9th inning, the fan reaction and Shea.

Everything looked great. Shea was rocking during the regular season for the first time since 2000. But then something saddened me.

Todd Pratt got introduced to a chorus of boos.

Tank Pratt.

I hate the Braves as much as the next, despite calling my father Chipper and AFOMG John Rocker. But Todd Pratt is a Met. He was there with us for a long time and embodied everything that we loved about our Mets. He is why Mets fans are diehard fans and Yankee fans call their backup catcher Jim Oliver.



And yet Shea booed ...

And my fear came about. And was furthered on Baseball Tonight.

These Mets are getting hyped too quickly. They are becoming a trend and are sucking in too many fans that don't belong. I love a packed Shea as much as the next guy, but I'd rather 25,000 family members than 50,000 people that heard that Shea is fun.

You don't give Pratty a standing O, but you can't boo the guy. He has one of the biggest hits for the Mets since Lenny Dykstra in the 1986 NLCS (it's either his series-winner against Arizona or Robin's grand slam single).

You don't boo Tank. You just don't do it.

So anyway, safe to say I'm definitely working from home tommorow. It is unacceptable to miss games.

VCD,

SM