Here We Go Again?

I am Jack's creeping sense of dread. I see myself in every loss by the Mets and every win by the Phillies in the final 17 games. I frustrate and infuriate Jack.

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It's not that the Mets lost 2 games this weekend, and it's not that the Phillies won three games, it's how both of those things happened.

Blown leads for the Mets, late comebacks for the Phils. Ad nauseam, ad nauseam, ad nauseam. I don't care to recap it all here; either you saw it or you can read about it some place else.

In terms of positives, the Mets are still up 2 in the loss column on the Phils, and on Monday we start a 4-game series with the lowly, but nonethelss thugged out, Washington Nationals. It's an opportunity to beat up on a bottom feeder. To use the parlance of another post, it would be very "ain't 2007" of us to go down there and take care of business. Hopefully Elijah Dukes won't kill anybody.

The other positive I hate to mention but I've got to. Right now, the Mets have a better record than the Wild Card co-leaders, the Phillies and the Brewers. The Wild Card is very much in play for both the Mets and the Phillies.

I really do hate the idea of us not winning the division after all we've been through, and in my bones I feel that we will pull this thing out, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't take some comfort knowing it's not necessarily a win or go home situation.

(Side note: a Mets-Phillies NLCS would be awesome.)

The greatest positive is that David Wright is back. The offense blew plenty of opportunities this wekeend, but if the 4 big guys are producing, that will serve us well in the next two weeks.

But back to the titular question. Is it "Here we go again?" I can't say; no one can. The Mets can only answer it on the field, and that's where they'll be tonight.

They need to stop the bleeding. Pedro's going, which is no relief, but at least he's up against a bad team.

148 games down, 14 to go. Let's get after it.

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It's Sunday evening as I write this, and in some sense it feels strange writing about baseball on a day like this.

I've worked in finance since graduating from college a little over three years now. Fortunately I don't work at Lehman or Merrill, nor do I know anybody at either firm (at least that I can think of), but I read just now that some 25,000 people work at Lehman and another 60,000 at Merrill.

Some will keep their jobs, but not a majority I can't imagine. A lot of people who worked hard all their lives just had it blow up in their face, and that's a terrible thing.

Just another unwelcome reminder that these really are transformative times we're living through now.

- A.F.O.M.G.