Poetry in Wasted Motion

It started out as a clash of styles. Joe Blanton likes chicken wings (or used to like them, as it looks like he’s dropped a few). Miguel Batista is a poet. This made Tuesday’s Mets/Phillies matchup into your classic Emily Dickinson vs. Larry the Cable Guy battle. But in the first two innings, this was the only poetry Batista was writing:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I gave up four runs
Umm, what rhymes with blue? 

And once again, for the second night in a row after some bad pitching and some shoddy Mets defense, you’d be forgiven if you thought that maybe this wouldn’t be their night. Espeicially when you consider that even though Batista held down the fort after that (he has experience with forts as he fought in the Civil War … that’s an age joke), every Mets rally in the next few innings would fall just short. So perhaps Monday’s wild finish would have been magic enough for one series. I still say it was, because I’m not sure you could call what happened in the seventh inning on Tuesday “magic”. Sure, you had another two out rally by the likes of Andres Torres, Kirk Nieuwenhuis, and David Wright whose base hits brought the Mets to within a run at 4-3. But then the Phillies decided to become the PhiLOLies and botch up a rundown which never should have happened in the first place because Wright had wandered too far off the base. Thankfully Pete Orr was around to save the day … for the Mets … and throw the ball into left field to allow Nieuwenhuis to score the tying run from third. Never had an ugly play been so … poetic.

(Of course Philadelphia’s first clue that this game was about to go horribly wrong was when they brought in Chad Qualls … because that never works.)

The ugliness set the tone for the rest of the game: Lucas Duda gave the Mets the lead with a base hit (off a lefty, no less!) David Wright makes a sweet diving stop in the bottom of the frame to rob Hunter Pence of a hit, and the Mets score a couple of runs to win this one 7-4 and send the Phillies further in the abyss. This game was definitely less poetry and more cable guy hijinks. But as long as the Mets win those type of games (and the Phillies lose them so we can laugh at them), I’m cool with it. As long as the Mets … (c’mon, you know this is coming) … get ‘er done.

(I feel dirty. But that’s some poetry right there.)