Karma

I love it when these karmic shifts occur: when someone due for an unpleasant outcome finally meets it. And nothing makes me happier when the mighty Yankees are toppled.

Earlier in the season, we might not have been prepared to use the phrase "mighty Yankees." After all, the club was in a seemingly unprecedented state of disrepair, as their pitching was struggling and their offense was nearly as bad.

The Mets took two out of three against the Spanks earlier this season, when legends such as Darrell Rasner and Tyler Clippard showed up as starters. One might summon up the image of Mighty Mets, with Carloses Beltran and Delgado resembling actual baseball players.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. The Mets have been middling at best in June, with an exceptionally dismal stretch of four straight series losses. Perhaps you might recall a recent Yankee winning streak, of nine straight games. The Mets were 1-8 during that span.

Yet the Mets deserve to be relevant within New York. The media (of which I am certainly not a part!) decides to print papers either about the Yankees winning or struggling. You might not find out anything about the Mets, especially not with all the manufactured drama in the Bronx.

Suffice it to say that their time, at least for now, is up. The Mets rebounded tonight, as you might have heard, with a brilliantly-pitched 2-0 win over the Yankees and their $28 million dollar Rocket Man.

The Yankees were certainly out of their element during that winning streak: after all, the team is still poorly constructed and is perhaps the least cost-effective entity in existence (with the obvious exception of the federal government). Carl Pavano is pulling down a cool $10 M and Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon, both of whom abstained from tonight's contest, are earning eight-figure salaries.

Regard now, this team, sans any sort of budgetary restrictions, which placed former Met superstar Miguel Cairo at first base and Melky Cabrera in center field. Josh Phelps DHed. Pardon me if I take a second to indulge myself in a quick chuckle at the Yankees' abject failure to put a halfway decent team on the field.

Okay. You might say that I shouldn't be so joyful. After all, the win was anything but resounding, as the Mets averted chaos in the eighth inning with Pedro Feliciano and Joe Smith on the hill. Don't tell me you weren't on the edge of vomiting when you saw Aaron Heilman and Scott Schoeneweis up in the pen during that eighth. I'm not sure Willie could have scared us any more without flying in Braden Looper or Dae-Sung Koo (he has a 2.51 ERA for Hanwha in 14+ innings in the Korean League so far this year; I checked).

But the Mets managed to sneak by, thanks to outstanding performances tonight by Jose Reyes at the dish and on the basepaths, Oliver Perez on the mound, and Carloses Beltran and Gomez in the field. Gomez, too, was probably the second or third best Met at the plate, recording two bunt hits and blinding us with his speed.

I would give a game ball to Carlos Delgado at the dish, but I think a game steaming pile of dog excrement would be more suited for his 0-for-4, 4 K performance. The humorous thing in all of that is that he probably couldn't have managed to do any worse at the plate. Like, if I went up and faced Roger Clemens, I would probably do no worse than that.

Yet indicative of an incredibly successful ballclub is the ability to win in spite of various upsetting occurrences. The bulk of the lineup, as has been the case with so many of these recent contests, was ice cold. Oliver Perez's wildness was a little frightening.

However, the Mets persevered and won an impressive game. Maybe the case is that the team just needed an intense atmosphere to win, although I might contest that there is no reason to develop a playoff air in the middle of June. We shouldn't be unhappy with tonight's outcome, though.

Maybe 2-9 in the last eleven shouldn't make the Mets superior to the Yankees, though a sweep is thankfully not in the cards. The Mets thereby successfully averted total crisis, backing many of us off the ledge and inducing an overwhelming sense of calm across the fan base.

Call it karma.

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