The End of Ike

Ike Davis took a long drag of his Cuban cigar.

"How about the Superman ending?" he pondered, as he looked out over the tree-dappled roofscape of Brooklyn Heights, bridges and dinosaurs in the distance. "How does he go again?"

"It would have to be something with kryptonite," said Sandy Alderson, working on a cigar himself, which emitted a narrow swerve of smoke from between Alderson's index and middle, leering over an excellently fancy boardroom chair. They were in his office on the 100th floor of the Mets building.

"On my first day here, I stayed on the 42nd floor. Everyone did. It was Jackie Robinson day, so we were all wearing the best number. Davis considered his 29th floor apartment. Who would occupy it after him? Would he be remembered by the apartment? By the number itself?

"Your kryptonite," Alderson continued, "if I may be direct in a way that I might imagine will benefit you in the future, is that some part of you believes always that there is an interesting object hanging over your right shoulder and a lit back and up. You know not to look, but still, you think it could be there."

"I think Spiderman dies a bunch of times," said Ike. "Makes sense, he's all instinct and quick reflexes. Soft on the inside. Spiders aren't like cats though. Only one life. Unless all their babies are clones of each other like with wasps, so then they kind of have hundreds of lives, but they all happen simultaneously. Are spider babies all clones of each other?"

"You were once our savior, Ike," said Alderson. "Before my time. You were the symbol that it was going to be alright."

"And now?"

"Now you're an important chapter in our history. This team is better for you, Ike. By the way, I think I know who to pick for your superhero ending."

The two of them chatted in their enormous chairs, which from behind looked like dark and angular silhouettes, nearly blocking out their entire bodies. They stayed until they had stubbed out their Cubans, taken from the 71st percentile in quality from Sandy's collection.

That night, the Mets gathered at Zombie Hut on Smith st. They cavorted over brewskis into the night. When it came time for Ike Davis to enjoy his ritualized superhero ending, Terry Collins handed him a cardboard replica of a television. Ike put it over his head, so that it appeared that he was on television.

Then he gave a long and surprisingly well-researched lecture on the military industrial complex, and how, more and more, it is becoming the everything industrial complex. The business of business is sucking us dry, Ike declared, and it's our business as Mets to put an end to it.

When at last he was finished, Ike, focused as a demon, went through an epic high-five line. He reached the door just as Pops, the doorman of the Mets building was stepping in. He looked Ike up and down.

"Be thee Met, or be thee not?" Pops asked.

"I am Met," said Ike Davis, as he pulled on his coat, a nondescript but pleasing shade of brown.

Then, as he crossed the threshold to the door:

"I am not."