One Wrongball Kills Whole Doubleheader

Everything was going according to plan. Bases loaded, bottom of the 9th, down by one, David Wright at the plate. Sure, this could have been easier, but Terry Collins saw the long season, and he knew an ordinary victory wouldn't do.

"If the lead doesn't change after the 6th inning it's like watching television on a Wednesday," he told pigeons as he fed them. "You go to bed like a human, but you don't get to say 'Yeah!'" To Collins, the season came down to how often and how loud you could go "Dananananananana!!" He went "Dananana," for Reyes' homer and "Danananananana!" for Hairston's but he still wasn't satisfied, he needed the full blast. When something truly awesome happened he did a wiggling dance and emphasized the "na" that happened when he completed his rotation. Several Mets had whispered to each other about this habit the first few times they saw it ("He reminds me of yesterday," said Bay; "He reminds me of tomorrow," said Ike; "He reminds me of a ladybug, crawling up a window, standing on transparent eternity, crawling into nothingness, vanishing into ever-smaller specks, feeling 7s and 9s at the ends of its feet, pondering Spain in the fall," said Ryota Igarashi) but after a few weeks most of them barely noticed it.

Collins had designed this moment to elicit his dance. If he could do the full "Danananananananananana!!!" with the complete wiggle, surely the Mets would be inspired to many wins. He did the dance at his interview to get the job. He did the dance to remind himself who he truly was. Wright would strike the seamed sphere with the mallet of truth and glory would be the emotion of choice in Queens. Sadly, Jim Tracy, chief communicator between rocks and Rockies, had a counterplan. As the 9th inning trickled forward and more and more Mets occupied the bases, he was Wright on the horizon and knew he was doomed... unless.

He called the bullpen.

"Who of you throws a wrongball?" he asked. One by one the rocky pitchers shook their heads in negation. The line of head shakes reached Matt Lindstrom who shrugged. "I tried it once in college," he said. "Then damnit, get in the game," said Tracy.

Lindstrom, as you may have seen could do little against most Mets. He even struggled for five pitches against Wright, and then we were where we started, where we wanted to be all along. Bases loaded, bottom of the nth degree, two outs, the fate of humanity pretending to enter into the equation.

"Who is Wright?" asked Ike from the on deck circle.

"I'M WR-" bellowed Wright, but then Lindstrom released the wrongball, and like the scout killing the captain in Stratego, the wrongball could only do one thing, but it did it well. The wrongball beat Wright. The "Danananana!!" that had begun to uncoil with Captain Collins was stifled and he coughed up a hairball.

"All is lost," he sighed.

"But TC-thousand," said Umptar the Umpire, "there's still a whole 'nother game!"

"I said, all is lost!" cried Collins, and Umptar didn't push the matter, because he could see that Collins was feeling surly. A stifled "Danananananana!!!" will do that every time. For the second game of the doubleheader, Collins stayed in the clubhouse. He drank whiskey, smoked cigars and played backgammon. Capuano simply pitched until he didn't feel like it anymore, and then he placed the ball on the mound and announced that whoever grabbed the ball first had dibs. It was only a baseball game because it counted in the standings. It only happened because so many people saw it.

Wright sipped the precious juice of a young coconut. "Dang, what was that pitch?"

Jason Bay, 2011 Scouting Report

Advice followed Jason Bay like a swarm of butterflies that first seems benevolent, well-meaning, an auger of good things, but soon revealed themselves to be a constant presence, a perpetual nuisance, a thing that remained there with him, even when he watched TV, which he did (the Adam West Batman series). He was a man advised.

"Elbows forward, hands back!" said Howard Johnson.
"Eyes to the skies, rhubarb pies!" offered Ike Davis.
"Usually," said Angel Pagan, "I think of the ball as a snack, and I ask myself, do I want this snack? Yes? Not now? Perhaps something more savory?"
"GNARRR!" cried David Wright. It was actually really good advice, but he was so in the zone, he couldn't put it into words. (He had just come out of Wright Time.)

He went to the doctor and the doctor said, son, you gotta stop getting all that advice, and Jay Bay said what do you think I should do, and the doctor stood there cold and remote, on an other planet within himself, because all possible responses he could think of were themselves advice, and he believed he had found the uncurable malady. He was thrilled in a sort of cognescenti glee way, but Bay was all the more morose. He got really into making soup, and said stuff like, "Hmmm... there are three clouds and... oh! a fourth one. Do you guys think that big mass counts as a cloud, or only if you can see a distinct one against the mass?"

But the question remained: what happened last year? Sure there were injuries, but they were 99% half mental anyway, and that's not to diminish the physical trauma and recovery, but there's this whole mental component that goes with it where sometimes you feel like a bird, and sometimes you feel like the sidewalk, but you can't locate yourself as the one who walks down the street. It's like when you have a certain amount of certain coffee and all of a sudden it's like: boom. which way is this elevator going?

There was a simple reason for it all. It has to do with Bay's approach as a hitter and how that changed in New York. I'm not a professional scout, but I'm pretty sure I have this one figured. Before Bay came to New York, he had a very specific hitting ritual. He would tap his ankle, then toe on his left foot with the bat, then the same on the right, then walk up to the batter's box, take a good look at the pitcher while holding his bat out at an angle, then
all of a sudden he wouldn't even see the game anymore, he would be getting a tour from an old butler of a huge manor, and it felt like those dreams where you have found a secret special place and it's going to mean so much about life going forward and you feel the tingle and the warmth, and each and every time he came to the plate he learned something new about the manor. A candlestick gifted by a very important Scandanavian, a model train track that bent in golden ratio-derived segments, a door that no one has opened in one hundred and forty years down the hall...
and

invariably, the dream would be interrupted by either the crack of his own bat, or the crowd expressing disappointment, except not quite the crowd, that is, the crowd, at least some of them with proper rooting interests, attention, or the willingness to fake these things, would express disappointment, but that is not what Bay would hear precisely. He would hear a smaller group, one that wouldn't fill half the stadium, not even one level, or even one section. The crowd he imagined contained few people, and they weren't exactly in a stadium, it was an outdoor environment, but without the colossal man-made structure, and even standing there where one doesn't expect such large crowds, it was a meager one by these undefined standards, and in fact crowd is not at all the right word, for when Jason Bay struck out, he invariably imagined a chubby boy standing in a field with no one around him, wearing a striped shirt and staring straight ahead with reeds of wheat and fall leaves falling, leaving their home, their mother tree for the reabsorption and the boy is seeing that but he is also knowing, even when he is not actively knowing that the world he lives in makes his moments here in the field, one arm extended outward at 3'oclock in every dimension, purposeful, but for a purpose unknown, and for a moment the breeze stops and the boy, nowhere near any kind of game, says "Aw dang! He struck out!"

Except last year, that wasn't really happening. Not the way it's supposed to anyway. The manor was just a beach house with seven rooms, and it was nice of course but there really was no comparison to the manor, and the kid wasn't in the field anymore. He was waiting on line to buy a scepter of brussels sprouts, and the various characters on the line changed, but the kid was always third. Instead of the sudden realization, tinged with innocence, he spoke, "aw, he struck out," quietly wide-eyed to no one in particular, innocuous enough to not really be noticed by most of the people around him, except for the baggers who snicker snacked.

Advice plagues Jason Bay like a color he was trying to avoid seeing, but as he stepped up to the plate one brassy sun day at Spring Training, the game faded from his experience of that moment, and he was hiking on a trail. They (they?) reached a clearing.

"Give me the binoculars."
"Okay," said Jason, passing them while looking straight out into the pleasant abyss.
"I see it!"
"Where Sidd? Show me!"
Sidd showed him. At first a finch flew in front of the binoculars, making Jason momentarily believe a bird the size of an elephant was descending on them, but then he saw it. The manor, high up on a ledge. Distant, but visible. Jason Bay smiled.

"How's Bay looking?" a lizard-like reporter asked a scout made of shadows and stone.

"He's almost back," said the scout. "Crack of the bat sounds real good."

Sandy Alderson: A character profile of the Mets new GM

"Is it short for Sandace or Sandrew?" The Wilpons were never much for casual conversation, but with a new G.M. out-cooling them at every turn, it was time to put on some charm. The Wilpons were men of business. They told you what they thought. They took people at their word, even when other people's words seemed to suggest otherwise. Small talk was like a pile of dust when they were in their element, but now Wilpon's Wind Tower had been replaced by Alderson's Aqueous Solution, and as Fred and Jeff Wilpon and Sandy Alderson stood on a balcony on floor 100 of the Mets Apartment Building, only Sandy felt the breeze.


Oliver Perez exited the elevator with confidence. First impressions were a specialty of his. He had long run out of impressions with the Wilpons or wombulous Omar, but with Sandy, all was fresh and new. They were new people in a new moment, each aware of a different set of air particles and wave types, but they shared the brotherhood of the present, the this, the thisthat.

"Wolf nature, that's what I've been thinking about for you. Have you considered walking west until you meet a wolf, knowing its nature in which knobby knees mean nature could one day open its jaws and then snappity-whap?"
Oliver Perez had been planning on explaining how he can start. The Mets need starters, and he's the guy for the job. In fact, one time he started game 7 of a League Championship Series. He spent the whole day eating Newman's Championchip cookies to prepare.
"Mr. Alderson, have you realized that I have the arm of champions?" It wasn't what he meant to say at all, but what's done was done.
"Yeah, but not enough wolf power. You're all mink, need more wolf. Wolf and reptile. Bask in the sun. Slither through your windup like a scaly thing zipping along the rocks. That way you won't give up so many walks. And sorry to keep harping on wolf power, but you need hitters to fear you."


"Next?" Jim Thompson had been making sandwiches all day. Boy was he tired. The customer rush had slowed to stream, then a trickle, then they arrived only slightly more frequently than comets with names that people know. In came a man who looked the guy who played the neighbor's father in that movie, but this guy embraced the silver fox thing more than that guy. He approached the counter in a small number of large steps.
"Avocado," said the man. "sliced in delicate cuts where rivulets of dressing may form, unless the avo is rendered formless by the weight of sunchokes, sliced truthfully, bamboo shoots, shot from a gun, raw garlic, so raw as to be on fire, but even if all this and more distorts the shape of the avocado, make those little cuts in there anyway so that I'll know something about it that only you and I know, and though we two, we few drawn onward to new era, may be the only ones ever to interact with the sandwich, the secret will live in my belly, yes it will live, and grow into a secret tree, and there will be invisible branches sprouting from me, holding invisible leaves that rain in the fall. People will crunch them silently. On wheat. Everything on it.

Isn't it Cool That the Mets Won the World Series?

David Wright walked up to the pitcher's mound.

"I'm Wright! What Wright? David Wright! Wright to meet you!"

Mariano Rivera watched him with the cold death of an assassin who has killed so well and so often for so long that he now does it with the fluidity of eating pasta. Linguini. Pleasantly oily. Goodnight.

"Lettuce be victorious," murmured Chip Hale, gnawing a forgotten sandwich, speaking to Jose Reyes who danced like a well programmed robot off third base. On second base, Angel Pagan was of two mindsets. One marveled at the moment. Game 7, world series, 9th inning. What a life. What a world. The other planned dinner. Tarragon. Rice. Seaweed. Dino Kale. Trust me, he said to himself. On first, Jason Bay was singing the "da na na na na nuh- HEY!" song. He was audible to everyone.

As David Wright jogged back to the batter's box, he reflected on all that happened to lead to this moment. Seven games back, with seventeen left to play, Jason Bay awoke one morning to find he was perfectly healthy and could resume baseball activities. Furthermore, upon whacking the seamed sphere with the stick, the sphere frequently flew over the barrier 400 feet away, allowing for free passage about the lily pads.

That same morning, Johan Santana awoke with both vim and vigor, and that was before finding out that all charges against him had been dropped. This made K-Rod hopeful, but, sorry dude, no.

Oliver Perez awoke in the middle of a really intense trip. He looked into his mirror, and said "Am I there?" He wasn't sure, but he did see Razor Shines where his bedside table usually sits.

"I dosed you pretty hard. Hope that's cool," said Razor.

"Give me the ball," said Perez.

For the next 17 games, the Mets won baseball games as if their opponents were children, and they were giant marsupials, some of whom could traverse entire basepaths in a single galumph. One game was won, because right at the moment that Chase Utley was to whack a Jon Niese slider most decisively, he was attacked by sparrows. He swung his bat wildly at the birds, missing them, and also the baseball, and so the game ended, and the Phillie Phanatic was so despondent that he wrote a letter to an ex, trying to impress her with the depth of his existential phleh.

Another game was won because, at a crucial moment in the 7th inning, Jeff Wilpon bought the Marlins, fired all of their employees, including the baseball players, so they had to forfeit the game. Wilpon then sold the Marlins, because he felt they were a shaky investment.

Most peculiar of all was that time when disciplined at-bats, well-executed pitches, enough hits for some of them to be timely, and some prudent managerial decisions resulted in a win against a somewhat less talented team. The game created enough of a stir to be covered as a non-local interest piece in Russian newspapers and Quantum EntangleMet.

The result of these things and more, was that the Metropolitans finished first in their division, with the Philistines as Wild Card.

In the first round, things were looking desparate against Los Gigantes. Razor Shines took Tim Lincecum out for dinner. The next day, Tim's changeup didn't change, but Oliver Perez was able to make the ball invisible. No one was sure how literally that was happening.

The second round meant the Phillies and boy were they mad. Mr. Met had somehow smuggled a young antelope into the Phillies locker room. The antelope itself wasn't dangerous, but the Phillies knew if they even got close to it, its mom would find them and destroy them. That whole episode really threw them off their game. Johan Santana was able to win the first game throwing nothing but change-ups. The Phillies swung early every time, including once when Jayson Werth struck out before the pitch had even been thrown.

"Is that even possible?" Werth asked Umptar the Umpire.

"Stop making excuses," said Umptar, basically peeing on the field (this is a metaphor).

In another game, every batter got a hit every time. It wasn't clear how innings were changing with no outs, but somehow they were. The umpires, managers, official scorer and Krang held a meeting, and decided that to reduce the silliness of the game, the teams would alternate at bats, and whichever team got a hit followed by getting the other team out would be victorious. Ike got the hit, then through an extrapolation of the hidden ball trick, became the pitcher, and struck out Ryan Howard on his patented pie ball. "I throw the ball exactly if I were throwing a pie," he said into any number of microphones after the game. "It usually works."

In the World Series, the Mets opponent would have been the Texas Rangers, however they were disqualified from the tournament due to a series of unfortunate events. Texas seceded from the nation, was promptly invaded by Mexico, reneged on their secession, which the U.S. accepted, but considered the entire state to have immigrated back into the country illegally, and detained Texas indefinitely. As an upshot of all that, the Texas baseball franchise, despite arguing that it is an institution separate from the state, was forced to withdraw from the World Series. They were replaced by a rather unpleasant beast, the New York Yankees.

As David Wright tapped his bat against his shoe, he remembered how the Yankees had bribed many of the Met players into sensory deprivation tanks, then taken advantage of their depleted roster, winning 3 of the first four games, losing only to Oliver Perez, whose pitches still may have been actually invisible, and who also hit a home run off C.C.C.C.

Awakened from their stupor, and brimming with inner peace, the Mets were most victorious in games 5 and 6. To Jason Bay, the ball appeared to be moving extremely slowly, as if the entire scene were underwater. "It's beautiful down here," he said to Jorge Posada, as he launched an Andy Pettite slurve into several other boroughs.

Then came game 7, and all of a sudden it was like everything was really serious, and things you said, and probably didn't even remember saying, they all came back to me like it was a big deal, and that time when I thought you were going to make coffee for both of us, and you were like I didn't know you wanted any, and I was like, well I'm here, right? so... and you were like yeah, but you knew I was making some and didn't say anything, and then in the park there was a man who talked to me for like twenty minutes about these different flying objects he had brought with him, and how he could throw them across the entire park on a good day, and at night as we walked by bars that were lit by candles due to the blackout and everyone seemed so happy to not have electricity, and

After eight innings, Santana had to come out. He had thrown so many pitches. He felt shipwrecked. Extremely shipwrecked. He had given up 2 runs on a clutch groundout from Jeter, followed by a boring, at-least-they're-paying-me homerun by Teixeira. Later, A-Rod stole home, but was booed for a really awkward high-5 with the batboy.

The Mets had not scored. Yankee pitcher Joba Chamberlain had used his starter's mentality to pitch eight shutout innings, with the help of sneaky offspeed stuff, and four homerun saving catches by Curtis Granderson. David Wright had watched him do it. Each time he used his gloved hand to leverage himself off the top of the wall and caught the ball bare-handed.

In the ninth, ageless Mo struck out Luis Castillo, despite some fabulous fake bunting. He got Josh Thole to hit a shockingly fast line drive that deflected off of Cano's glove, right to Jeter, who for no obvious reason, had positioned himself in shallow right-centerfield.

Jose Reyes came up to bat and strike one was already there waiting for him. He got ready to hit, but strike two had already let itself in. Then Rivera, toe absentmindedly on the mound, dropped the ball, and it rolled lazily away. Reyes swung at nothing, striking himself out, and then scampered to first really fast (but not faster than a speeding bullet, because that's completely unrealistic). Rivera hit Pagan with the next pitch, and Jason Bay laid down a Perfect Bunt for a single.

David Wright, his mental season recap completed, stepped into the batter's box and watched a cutter go by for strike one. Tension rose like steam off of the crowd, clouding glasses, including those of Umptar the Umpire, who called a second strike on a pitch that was like this far off the plate.

Jerry Manuel trotted out of the dugout, a freshly opened young coconut in his hand. He handed it to Wright, who gulped it hungrily.

"Who's Wright?" he whispered to David. Wright looked back vacantly. "Who's Wright?" Manuel repeated, but it was like David couldn't hear. The words seemed unfamiliar.

"Ok, meeting time over, let's get back to the... y'know... umm... sporting contest," said Umptar, who secretly didn't know the word for baseball.

Manuel retreated, shaking his head. Things looked hopeless. Wright gave a couple of practice swings then stepped back into the box.

"What did you say to him?" asked Razor Shines.

"I asked him who's Wright," said Manuel. David heard. Mariono Rivera went into his windup.

"I'm Wright!!!"

Whack.

The crowd, as if they had only just discovered the use of their own voices after untold years of harrowed silence, let loose a cry that cowed wild dogs in distant lands. The ball traveled deep into the centerfield and Granderson was lining it up. Yes, he thought, I will have this one too. He placed his mitt on the wall above the 400 sign, and lifted himself upward, beginning to extend his bare hand...

when the ball dropped just short of the warning track. Reyes scored to make it 2-1, Pagan scored to tie the game, Bay, swift as a weasel, rounded third. Brett Gardner's throw came in ahead of Bay. It bounced and rolled, but it was still going to get there first. Posada prepared himself for a Big Moment, a Big Big Moment, a Big Big B- the ball rolled through his legs! Bay scored standing up! The Mets win the World Series! The Mets win the World Series!

"Is that really how it happened Grandpa David Wright?" asked the innocent little ones.

"Oh," he sighed, "that's about Wright."

THANK YOU FOR READING BEAUTIFUL HUMANS! THAT'S ALL FOR THIS SEASON, BUT STAY TUNED FOR OFFSEASON MADNESS AND A TIME THAT WILL SURELY BE FULL OF MAGIC... 2011!

Exclusive Interview with Jose Reyes

Recently, Jose Reyes was interviewed by Baseball Moonthly's longest tenured reporter, Walter Elbow. Here is the unedited transcript, made available to Mets Fan Fiction. The interview, edited down to tight nuggets of wisdom, will appear in the BM's next issue.

Jose Reyes: The seagulls, they are so important, but you sit there, examining your recording device, not noticing them.

Walter Elbow: Okay, I think we're rolling. Check, check.

JR: They are made of the same stuff as we, yet they fly. I am trapped within the basepaths, but these birds that prey on life, who knock on the door of eternity, and while they wait for the answer, swallow fish raw.

WE: Wait, sorry, now I'm not sure. I don't see any reading on the thing, but it could still... hang on.

JR: The waves as well, they are solitary, unendingly lapping. Lapping each other in a race. They are the lap dogs of the moon. They lap at us, because to them, we are fuppy.

WE: Hank? Can you come over here? I am having uncertainties about my recording device.

JR: Against the overwhelming sky hang imperturable clouds. Docile. Silent. Until! Until! Rain! Thunder! Lightning! They offer no guarantees. They could turn into a bunny, or just fade into nothing. I knew someone like that once.

WE: See, all the correct buttons are pressed, but the desired result has not necessarily occured.

Hank: Have you considered these buttons?

WE: Yeah. Not sure what to think about those.

JR: And then there's us. Three homo sapien sapiens. Triple homo illuminatis. Walking, peaceful, beachside, absorbing it all, like the universal sponge, ignoring it all like the blind rhinoceros. rhino   ceros. I think about that word sometimes. It wants to be broken down, but I don't know why.

WE: Sorry Jose, we might have to do this another time.

JR: We already are. It's already the future. We are already talking about my offseason regimen in a cafe full of self-stuffing meaning, full of forms swallowing each other because they are each other's favorite alligator. The answers to the questions you will ask me are: blue, we are already in negotiations, buck 65, I already have and I'll show it to you once it's edited, Serge King, Pablo Picasso, Bill McKibben and of course, Razor Shines, mangoes, she's doing fine, thank you.

WE: Sacks on College and Derby okay?

JR: I'm already on my way.

Lion, Phoenix, Tree

"Robots!" Jeff Wilpon's wife, Nasturtium Wilpon, thought he was speaking in his sleep, as he often does (just the other night, he sat up suddenly and announced "Here's my statue. I thought it was real fuckin original until I realized it looks exactly like those things on Easter Island. What is UP with those. Fuckhorse.")

This time, Jeff was fast awake.  It was his latest scheme to improve the offense. Nasturtium asked how that would work in practice to which Wilpon yelled "Crag norbit!" and looked despondently out the window for the balance of the afternoon. Nasturtium resumed her calligraphy, wondering which of her lovers she would send it to. She spoke about these lovers openly (just this morning, she joined her husband on the balcony, saying "the quality of the light, it reminds me so delicately of another morning when I woke up in the arms of Evo Morales."), yet Jeff Wilpon was entirely unaware of them. In fact, the specific actions of his wife had fallen off his radar years ago.


Howard Johnson picked a nasturtium and cheerfully gobbled it up, as he walked alongside Ruben Tejada and Ike Davis.

"Hitting's like this," he said, picking another one and examining it.

"Like what coach?" asked Ruben, pulling a spin move on a pigeon.

"Orange, peppery, surprising, edible," mused Johnson.

"Guys," asked Ike, "do you think I could overthrow the military industr- I mean, do you think that's a normal pigeon?"

As omniscient narrator, I'll field that question. No it wasn't. It looked like this.

"What are you?" gasped Tejada.

"I'm like hitting!" it screeched. "ORANGE! SURPRISING! PEPPERY! EDIBLE! You made me Howard Johnson! You made me!"

"You really did it this time HoJo," said Lenny the local hotdog vendor. "You guys hungry or what?"

"You bet!" said Ike. "Got any coconuts?"

"What do I look like, a banyan tree? Of course I got coconuts!" The four of them consumed the cocos, both water and meat, while sitting on the street in silence. It was a nice day to do that. It was a nice day to. It was a nice. It was.   .





"I didn't used to be in this type of music, but it is rapidly becoming my favorite variety," said Hisnori Takahashi.

"Toldja," said Toby Stoner.