Cheddar Ben Reloaded

What's he doing?

He's beginning to believe.

They said it would never happen, they being the Y2K haters who pop up from time to time on the underground message boards to spew smack and talk nonsense. They said it was a pipe dream, a pie-in-the-sky fantasy. No chance. Game over.

They said he was out of the biz, that he was washed up. That injuries and time had caught up with his game. That he had just taken too much punishment, too many hits, that there was too much Ryan Freel in him (R.I.P.) Nice job, thanks for playing, enjoy the gold watch.

They said this blogger would never dance again.

Clearly, they were wrong.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Y2K devotees and doubters alike, the circle is once more complete. He went eight rounds with inflammatory bowel disease, scoring a controversial TKO in the ninth round; a rematch has been called for, but for the time being, he's back on the Internets for his and your writing pleasure.

I mean, let's face it -- the Oracle told all of you that you would fall in love, and that man would be The One. So you see, he's back ... because you love me. You hear me?

It's Cheddar Ben Reloaded.

And it feels fantastic, let me tell you. There's been so much missed in the past month, so much happening to the New York teams that's only been addressed in my own head. The entire Mets outfield died protecting Zion, for God's sake -- that was pretty damn disturbing.

Even more so for me, if you can imagine that. You've got to look at it this way -- time works very strangely when you're in the hospital. First of all, you're not on your own schedule -- you're on their schedule. Your existence is a function of the people that come into your room and stick you with a needle or give you pills to take or fuck with your catheter or bring you some glue to sniff.

Not that last one. Much.

Moreover, when you're in the exact same spot on the 14th floor of a white-walled prison for, say, 10 straight days, things start to drag a little bit. Time in between set events -- meals, doctors' pop-ins, visits -- start to stretch out into neverending rainbows of blank minutes. Sure, you've got your reading materials and your television and your imagination (note: not necessarily a good thing), but the payoff from these things isn't the same as it is on the outside.

You're not reading -- you're burning time. You might watch a movie on TNT, but you're burning time. Every event, even stuff you'd be doing even if you weren't connected to a six-foot IV pole by a tube running into your superior vena cava, becomes a function of how many seconds it can consume. The evil definition of pasttime, if you will.

But hold on. Here we have an exception.

There could have been no knowing that the hospital cable system in Western New York would carry, there on Channel 27, a beacon of hope. There could have been no knowing SNY, the television home of the New York Mets, had spun its web right up to the U.S.-Canadian border, carefully coating each house and building with its silky touch. There could have been no knowing that each night or afternoon, the Mets would be beamed right to me via the wonders of technology.

Still, there it was.

I can't stress how much having a Mets game to watch each night or afternoon kept me going. It was stupid how much I looked forward to these things, planning my entire time-wasting schedule around having to be awake and engaged and available from 7 to 10 p.m. or what have you. "O.K., I'll read from 9:30 to 11, and then call these people, and then get my brother in here in the afternoon, and then take a nap, and then kick everyone out at 6:45." Stuff like that. This was how I kept myself going.

Plus, when you're chilling in a bathrobe and you've both intentionally and unavoidably NOTHING else to do, you really watch the game. I mean, you concentrate like you're taking a test on it later. None of this floating around, up to the fridge to get a drink, folding your laundry, stepping out to sniff some glue shit. None of, bless his heart, A.F.O.M.G.'s "Friday night games are tough" talk.

You are damn sure focused on the situation at hand. You listen to every word Keith and Gary and Ron have to say, and you immediately mull it over. You analyze every tactical decision on the spot. This tends to result in a rather ample frequency of yelling at the screen, but hey, that goes with the territory.

And you care. My God, do you care. "If Newhan can just get this bunt down, I might get out of here a day earlier." My God, are you invested in the game. Not fully delusional, mind you, but just enough that you might forget about your surroundings for a couple of hours, or until the unqualified and vaguely familiar night nurse comes to stick you with your third Heparin shot of the day.

Let there be no question, then. Not only does "Absent From the Y2K Scene For a Month" not equate to "Is Out of It," but indeed the opposite. Like a fox who's just chewed off his own foot to get out of a bear trap, I'm (ironically) hungrier than ever, and ready to start hitting these Yanks hard and praising these Mets to the stars.

It's what I want to do. It's what you want me to do. It's what Dozer would have wanted.

Fuck the machines. The war isn't over, but the ranks have just been reinforced. Big time.

Let's go.