New York Mets Baseball is On the Air!

[captainsblog]

I thought I wouldn't care for it. The short season, the stupid expanded playoff field, the league being infested with icky American League Designated Cheaters and extra-inning men on second (What?!?). But the July 24th Mets Opening Day was on ESPN when I got home yesterday, and even without the sounds of our own announcers, I was hooked as I watched Edwin Diaz put it in the books for the Mets' obligatory season opening victory. I re-upped with the radio app so I could listen to Howie and Rando for the rest of this short season, and am listening even now as Edwin Diaz returned to form and gave up a last-out home run to send the game to extra innings and make Jeff McNeil the first Extra Inning Runner On Second in team history. 

The funniest moment of the game was when a Brave homered into the right field corner to give them a 1-0 lead. In the absence of live fans, the team has put up cardboard cutouts, including of two players' pups in that same corner, and Jeff McNeil's dog (on our right in the darker shirt) took the homer right on the schnozz:



The normal retaliation would be to throw at an opposing player, but these two would likely just chase the ball.

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I'd been out earlier today with our own dog.  Pepper has seemed to be in a little need of activity, with morning walkies being a little shortened by heat or rainstorm lately. Our Sunday group has been avoiding the dog park due to COVIDiocy, but I decided to take her there by myself this morning: she doesn’t get to run off leash in other parks, and I figured I could do a good enough job of social distancing by myself.

Which I did. As for everyone else? Fucking clueless.



That mask, hanging from the corner of the fence next to the COVID instructions sign, was the only other one I saw in the entire place in almost an hour. Plenty of people were traveling the path in groups of three, four and more, and guys and gals were just walking up to each other socializing, as we used to do.

I didn’t get a sense of any overt antimasker resistance. It was more a sense of complete obliviousness. All the conversation I overheard concerned their dogs, their jobs, nothing about what almost certainly will infect one or two of the hundred people I saw in there and hopefully kill none of them. I’d be willing to bet that every single one of them cares about their companions, have them fully vaccinated, and would rush to an emergency vet on a Saturday night if anything went wrong with them- but they won't take a simple precaution for themselves. These are not stupid people, but the stupid sometimes overwhelms.

Pepper, of course, was equally oblivious, but she’s a dog.



Our own area is still doing pretty well with keeping infection levels down, but people can't rest on laurels. Not even our beloved Dr. Fauci, who was caught by a friend of mine without his mask on:



Fortunately, there was an explanation:  I asked, "Where's his mask?" He replied, "he's standing on it. That mask actually came with the doll."

Now THAT's marketing:)

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Back to baseball: Buffalo is finally getting major league baseball! Yay!

And we can't go! Fauuuuuuuuuuuci!

Toronto's MLB team was denied permission to play its 30-game home schedule in its Canadian dome. It then sought out sharing arrangements in Pittsburgh and Baltimore that local officials also kiboshed. So, they're stuck here in our beautiful downtown stadium, with no fans, or chances for autographs, or far as I know any telecasts of the games that we can watch.

Buffalo's a four-time loser- denied membership in the fledgling American League in 1903 so Boston could get the team that became the Red Sox; moved into a Rockpile of a football yard to join a third major league in 1961 that folded before even playing a game (every other "Continental League" charter city eventually got an MLB  team except us); denied the NL franchise in 1969 that went to Montreal; and even our beautiful expandable retro downtown yard turned down in 1994 in favor of that hotbed ::koff:: of baseball in Miami.  So, of course, we'll take whatever love we can get.

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A few other updates:

- We went back and finished Steel Magnolias, which improved in its second half once the lesser male characters got out of the way.

- All traces of the nearby Chuckie Cheese have been obliterated from the plaza, less than a month into their departure.

- My blood donation tat is finally gone, two weeks after acquiring it.  Still no results on the COVID immunity test, though.

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Mets lost. So much for a happy recap.

Comments

[sturgeonslawyer]

Lex clavitoris designatum delenda est.

[angledge]

I wasn't enthusiastic about the compromise season either buuuuut.... I still watched both Friday & yesterday's games, & I'll probably be watching at 12:35 MDT today too. Go Rox!