Before the proliferation of the cellular phone, there is no way I would have been able to witness the conversation like the one this morning on the Amtrak train to the NLDS workout day at Citizens Bank Park. There, separated by three inches of reclining cushion and plastic, a woman chit-chatted for the entire trip about whether or not she would be able to take a jar of jelly on a plane.
(Pause)
Yeah, I know. Can you believe that? Jelly? On a plane? There she was (loudly) wasting good lean muscle mass and the wireless infrastructure to mull over the mystery of jelly on a plane.
Don’t they put that warning on the side of the Welch’s bottle?
But that wasn’t the worst of it. After chewing on the notion that TSA agents just might toss her to the ground and ransack through her carryon bag because she dared to sneak a glass jar of mashed up fruit and sugar on an aeroplane, she pushed her chair back all the way so she was perfectly arranged on my lap and continued on with the yak fest.
Sheesh, is this what Alexander Graham Bell had in mind when he yelled into the next room for his boy Watson? That question is debatable, but we must thank Steve Jobs for coming up with the iPod for just this type of issue—you know, a chatty lady with no regard for personal space.
Anyway, as mentioned earlier, Tuesday is the first day of all the NLDS hoopla here in Philadelphia. We’ll do it all again on Friday in Denver, though by then the series will have taken shape and we can neatly package into one type of compartment or another. In fact, the last two years we hit the road after two games in Philadelphia looking at a sweep. Last year we even conjured plans of escaping Milwaukee for Chicago if the Phillies had been able to take care of the Brewers in three games.
But alas…
Oh, but as we get ready to dive into playoff baseball for the third straight October here, they are already laying the groundwork for a winter of intrigue in Queens. Yes, that’s where the Mets have begun circling the wagons after a horrid 2009 season in which only the Washington Nationals’ ineptitude kept them out of the basement in the NL East. So in order to right the ship—as they say—Mets’ GM Omar Minaya reached out to his recently fired GM brethren, Kevin Towers and J.P. Riccardi. The hope, according to a story by Joel Sherman, was to iron out a deal to get both men in on some of the Mets’ action for 2010.
And no, the story did not indicate that Minaya was interviewing his successors.
Still, why the Mets’ arch-nemesis Phillies were preparing for Game 1 of the NLDS and contemplating a Game 1 and/or Game 2 starter, the Mets were firing coaches talking about hiring fired GMs and throwing around the big-time names they want to acquire this winter. You know, big free-agent names like they did last winter with J.J. Putz and Francisco Rodriguez. Those guys were supposed to rescue the Mets’ horrid bullpen that cost them the division in ’08, only it didn’t quite work out as planned. Putz was out for the year by the first week of June, and though Rodriguez saved 35 games (in 42 tries) that turned out to be exactly half of the Mets’ total wins.
So while the Phillies look to defend their title, the Mets just might be placing the kiss of death on the cheeks of John Lackey, Matt Holliday and Roy Halladay. Sure, the money is good, but ballplayers already have plenty of money and it lasts only so long.
Maybe players ought to be thinking about glory… it lasts longer.