The Week After

(Note: Cheddar Ben muses about who to root for in the World Series immediately following this post from Sip.)

Sorry Cheddar, can't say I've been watching.

Yesterday I decided to get really drunk at my favorite sports bar and watch football, so that I could intentionally fall asleep around 8 p.m. and not subject myself to the World Series.

That is what it has become. I'll be attending the theater with my grandma on Tuesday night, Synagogue on Wednesday night and perhaps a night of disco dancing in Chelsea on Thursday, before I watch this World Series.

It just doesn't feel right.

The glimpse of a World Series right now, sans our New Mets, is just killing me. It really is.

I am not mad at Carlos Beltran for not swinging or Aaron Heilman for hanging a changeup, or Willie for not bunting.

Everything that happened last Thursday night was just a product of baseball. The result of reactions and missed release points and snap judgments.

But the Mets didn't do anything wrong.

Carlos Beltran could not have tried harder. He got fooled on an 0-2 pitch like he has in the past and he will future.

Like with everything else, it just sucks more that it happened now.

I was just not ready for the Mets lose.

Every day for 7 months I alotted a strong portion of my time to the Mets. That is the major difference between baseball and any other sport.

There is simply no time off.

That is why I truly respect baseball fans. To truly commit to a team is to commit the majority of your time.

To be a diehard Giants fan takes 3 hours of your week.

To be a diehard Knicks fan takes maybe 8 hours.

But to watch games 7 days a week, 3 hours a day. That is a true commitment. A commitment that most other sports fans are unable or unready to commit.

That is what makes it so tough for me.

For 7 months nothing ever really went wrong. We were never told that we couldn't watch a winner and there was no team that really stood in our way from winning.

Before Game 6 I received numerous messages of good luck. We were scared then.

But not so much in Game 7. I think I got two messages.

Once we got over the hill that was Game 6, we kind of just saw it as inevitable.

When Endy made the catch, maybe the greatest catch in postseason history, it just had to be. This team could not lose.

They could not lose since April, they certainly could not lose now.

But they did. They lost in the most shocking way. A fat catcher with very little power driving the ball out of the park.

But even then, they couldn't lose. They were the Mets and they would find a way. And then they set us up that way.

They got the bases loaded with the guy you wanted up there.

They had to win.

But they didn't.

For an entire year they won Game 7. They had the nobody bat make the big hit. They had the reliever that got into jams and closed it out. They had the big hitter who got the walk-off hit.

Just not on Thursday night.

Up until about 11:30 on Thursday night, right before strike 3 to Beltran, there wasn't a Mets fan in the world that didn't think we'd be playing on Saturday night.

For almost 200 days we thought we could and in one split second it was all taken away from us.

Which is why it all hurts so much.

I love baseball. I really do. To not watch the World Series is really bothering me. I respect the game and the postseason and I want to see who wins.

But to put on FOX, and to see STL on the top of the screen, I just can't subject myself to that. At least not yet.

The bright spot is that the day the World Series ends and the 2007 season officially begins, and as Mets fans we should feel just like we felt most of the 2006 season.

We are headed in the right direction. We have most of the pieces in place.

I am not ready to start talking about free agents or possible trades. Let's wait a week till this season is done.

I hope the weekend did all of you some good, provided the necessary physical and spiritual cleansing that you needed.

We'll be back.

Vaya con dios.

Sip

PS While there wasn't the time to incorporate it in this piece, I wanted to express my gratitude to all of you who sent us those nice compliments the other day. It realy meant a lot for me, AFOMG and Cheddar, it really did.

We do this because we love the team and we love the community that shares our interest. It means a lot that you guys are on board with us.

We're going to keep rockin and rollin on in to '07.