Batavia Times.... and Avoiding Financial Crimes

First week of Unofficial Fall is in the books. The four days of work were about as stressful as expected, although each day did bring good things. Tuesday, I settled three cases before lunchtime; Wednesday and Thursday, I had productive morning consultations; and Friday's clusterfudge of work ended with,.... well, I'll get to that.

In the evenings in the middle, though, there was baseball. Tuesday's was only on the radio for me, and it was a simply horrid drama of epic bad proportions. I’m not going to say that was the worst loss in Mets history- so many of those to choose from- but I can say with no reservation that it was the most Mets loss in Mets history.

Stay with me here. Top nine,  we had a two run lead and our best reliever, arguably our only reliable reliever, was ready to pitch the bottom of the ninth. Then a Washington infielder made an absolutely stupid, totally Mets-like play, and before you know it, we had a six run lead. Therefore, there was no need to waste the arm strength of the one good reliever.

So our manager called in Curly. That didn’t work. Next, Larry. The lead was down to making it a save situation. So now you got to go to Moe, as in Mo' Extra Base Hits. Two bad pitches from Edwin Diaz, a double and a walkoff slam by a .230 catcher, and the Mets had made history. Neither team in their combined 100-plus years of history had blown or come back against a lead that big that late. And just to complete the cosmic circle, Syracuse, our AAA affiliate, had to win a one game playoff to get into the postseason, and basically did the same damn thing at the end of their game.  

With the increasing likelihood there will not be playoff baseball in Queens, and definitely none involving Syracuse, Rochester or Buffalo, we still found the crack of the bat, appropriately enough, in Bat-avia. Even better, they made it an extra Bark in the Park night with free admission for all pups.  Our friend Scott was bringing Sadie (and his two-legged son) from the east, so we headed out to join them at the halfway point. Pepper and I got there first, and we waited outside the Free Parking:



I'd made my first stop inside Dwyer, or indeed at any game at this lowest minor league level, for their last game of the 2018 season, and told some of the history of the league, team and stadium after that game.  This was my first accompanied by both two and four-legged friends, though. Pepper quickly gravitated toward Dewey, the Muckdog mascot-



- as did Sadie when she got her turn-



Batavia was hosting the first and their only home game of the best-of-three opening round involving Red Sox low prospects from Lowell, Massachusetts.  The Muckdogs got out to an early 1-0 lead and held on to win 4-1. Alas, they would lose the final two on the road, the first of them in Mets-evoking fashion. One, twelve Muckdogs in a row struck out, breaking an all time professional ball record held by none other than our own legendary Tom Seaver (it still holds as the MLB record); and two, despite all those Ks, Batavia was still tied going to the bottom of the ninth when they lost to Lowell on a walkoff home run. Lowell also won the rubber game and will now face Brooklyn, made up of Mets prospects, in the NY-Penn finals.

But that was still to come and far, far away.  In Batavia that night, there was beauty-



-there was pageantry in the moment of the 'Dogs final victory-



And, most importantly from Pepper's POV, there was food:



Me: Is it cannibalism to feed a hot dog to a dog?
Her: Shut up and pass the damn bun!

That one was all hers. She then tried to share my knockoff of a garbage plate-




- but all she got of that were a few bits of burger. (She may have also gotten a few bites of skeeter, since she began scratching pretty feverishly two mornings later; she had a scheduled vet visit anyway, and she showed no sign of tiny livestock or of any visible bites, so the guess is allergies and she's on Benadryl).

Beers were four bucks.  Kids were cute.  I came within a row of my first-ever foul ball. These are my people, these are my friends.

----

Then there are the friends I hadn't even met yet, which is the weird way my Friday night and Saturday at the office went.

Friday was a totally shitty workday from pillar to post, and from the sound of it Eleanor didn’t have any better of one, either. I stopped at the store to say hello to her and get a medication for the dog, and ran into an old workout friend of in the Wegmans parking lot. That was fun, but then it got strange.

Next, I went to take a check to deposit at an ATM, and there, sitting in the machine, was the previous (and nowhere in sight) customer’s card, and the receipt for his withdrawal, conveniently showing the $17,000 balance in his checking account. Here’s where he got lucky. First, he got me, who not only is too honest to fool around with financial crimes but also perfectly well understands this particular failing of leaving cards behind. Second, he had a distinctive enough name and a landline number that I could google. The number turned out not to be his, but I got his daughter-in-law, I know where he lives, and I met him at a Starbucks yesterday morning to return it to him safe and sound.

After that and a workout, I headed to the office, where more financial fun awaited.

Sometime last year, I appeared in a foreclosure case for a client we will call Mr. X. Mrs. X was also named on the mortgage and in the case, but she died last year. I got Mr. X a loan modification. For my trouble, I began getting all of the bank's notices sent to me rather than to him. Those seem to have stopped since the loan mod- but the bank apparently was kind enough to sell their names to sucker lists.

Guess who just got an offer of a $2,000 credit card? Mrs. X. Who is currently dead. They even included two sample plastic cards to entice her to reach up out of the grave for her money. They come in two styles: pink for dead girls and blue for dead boys.  Maybe I should mail them to the Mets' owners, but they'd only use the money to sign another horrible reliever or twelve:P