(No) Love in This Club

Bottom nine, after Endy's miraculous game-tying homer, Delgado and Castillo have drawn walks to put two on with two out, and the Maine Event comes in to pinch run for Delgado. Wearing the jacket and everything. Pitchers are so cute. Anyways, jogging out to second base, he goes to high-five Delgado, and Carlos just big-times him. Awfully. Won't even look at him. Completely leaves him hanging.

Maine eventually taps him on the arm as he goes by, to save face, but ugh. It certainly seems that, great comeback win Wednesday or not, there isn't a lot of love in this club at the moment.

[In this club!]

Maybe I'm wrong, and we're just seeing Beltran's moodiness and Delgado's sour grapes rub off on all the other Metsies. We'll hear more about that tomorrow. Certainly, the team celebrated in the bottom of the 11th like there were some good vibes floating around. I think I even saw Jerry Manual twitch, which can't be a bad sign.

But look, every winning ballteam needs to have love in this club. Love in This Club is a crucial element to a successful playoff run. It just is. (The old timers call it "chemistry," but we know what it is. It's Love in This Club.

It's players looking into each others' eyes, and knowing they can trust one another. They know what their teammates are thinking. They know what's on their manager's mind. They know what's required of them.

Sing it, Ursh.

I'm what you want, I'm what you need
He got you trapped, I'll set you free
Sexually, mentally, physically, emotionally
I'll be like your medicine, you'll take every dose of me

The "He" trapping them, in this example, is probably Joel Sherman. The "sexually" thing refers to this little ritual that Guillermo Mota started when he was on the squad and Brian Schneider has continued since he joined. Don't worry about it.

Um ...

[In this club!]


Now, there are at least five teams out there with less Love in This Club than the Mets, and if nothing else today, we can be grateful we're not in their positions.

1) San Diego

Talk about your all-time backfires. They weren't supposed to be a blockbuster, or anything, but they were supposed to compete atop a fairly even NL West with their bomb-ass pitching.

As of this morning, they're 20-34, somewhere behind the Giants, who I have $250 bucks on to win fewer than 71 games. They have one guy hitting above .280. All of a sudden, Greg Maddux and Trevor Hoffman are again like Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis at the end of "Beetlejuice." And their ace, Jake Peavy, just dodged a major injury scare. As bad as things are at Shea right now, imagine if you had to worry about Johan missing starts with a sore shoulder. You'd be flipping your shit, and rightly so.

MAJOR IMPEDIMENT TO LOVE IN THIS CLUB: Chris Young getting his nose broke on a comebacker. In very few circumstances is that much blood a turn-on.

2) Colorado

Back-to-back! Back-to-back! Wait, what's that? Your best two players are hurt? Your pitching staff has turned back into the 2003 version? Mark Redman, one of their new starters, has a 7.81 ERA in seven games; he makes Nelson Figueroa look like Chief Bender. Of course, in five starts, Jorge De La Rosa has produced a 9.00 ERA ... which I guess makes Jorge Sosa look like Christy Matthewson? I don't even know.

The point is, Colorado has gone from the Series to, once again, behind my lovable losing Giants. There's no love in this club except Christlove, and that and four bucks will get your a cup of Starbucks Coffee.

MAJOR IMPEDIMENT TO LOVE IN THIS CLUB: Puritanical morals.

3) Detroit

Ugly. The Pistons are in the Eastern Conference finals, the Wings are going to finish off the Penguins in the Stanley Cup finals any day now, and the Tigers can't even keep their bloated heads within sniffing distance of .500. They've had some key injuries (Granderson early, Sheff now) and their pitching has completely fallen apart (Verlander, Rogers, Robertson all with ERAs above .500). This is disappointment on a completely different level. Imagine if the 2006 Mets had sucked from the get-go, and you'll start to see why everyone is so peeved.

As a result, it's getting mighty testy in town. Manager Jim Leyland is sniping at his players in public, who are then offering anonymous quotes to the media behind his back, which just pisses the guy off even more. Not a great situation.

MAJOR IMPEDIMENT TO LOVE IN THIS CLUB: Carlos Guillen's awful hemorrhoids. Oh, snap. Check, please.

4) Seattle

Uglier. General Manager Bill Bavasi took the stage this week to defend his manager, John McLaren, and throw his players under the bus. Classy dude. Here he were:

This is not a field managerial issue,” he said. “John is doing a good job. Our performance is not related to his work. It’s purely related to player performance and underperformance and underachievement. Nobody had the nerve to pick us less than second place in our division. We were picked anything from first to second to wild-card. You name it. The expectations were a heck of a lot higher than this, based on any analysts’ evaluation of out players’ individual track records and their age. Their ages are such that they’re not all young guys that they’re inexperienced. But they’re not too old to believe that they would backslide. So, I think those expectations are realistic. They were and they are.

USS Mariner was not pleased:

Lots of people had “the nerve” to tell you that you did a horrible job building this roster, Bill. Lots of people pointed out that this team wasn’t a contender. Lots of people told you that you that you had a roster setup for failure, with collapse potential everywhere. You just don’t listen to those people, because they’re nerds with computers who don’t understand baseball. Or something. ...

This is ridiculous. Build a good baseball team, and you won’t have to talk about all this psycho babble crap that you guys invent to try to justify your horrible decisions. Learn more about baseball than a blogger who lives 2,500 miles from Safeco Field and covers the team as a freaking hobby. I shouldn’t know more about how to build a baseball team than you, but I do, and that’s why you and your entire staff deserve to be fired.

[In this club!]

MAJOR IMPEDIMENT TO LOVE IN THIS CLUB: "Girl, why we can't talk any more without fighting?"

5) The Bronx

Joe Girardi is about to find out how long his honeymoon phase lasts. Now, I don't think he's the only guy responsible for how crappy the Yankees are playing. All I'm saying is that if you had prior concerns about his ability to handle and develop young pitching, well, the following lines don't look so hot:

Ian Kennedy -- 37.2 IP, 7.41 ERA
Phil Hughes: -- 22 IP, 9.00 ERA
Ross Ohlendorf -- 29.2 IP, 6.37 ERA

Now, Darrell Rasner looks pretty good, and Mariano Rivera's ERA is somehow lower than Billy Wagner's. Unreal.

MAJOR IMPEDIMENT TO LOVE IN THIS CLUB: The herp.