Suspended Animation

RaymondFelton

I like the day off between Opening Day and Game 2. When spring training starts, it's non-stop. Every day it's a new workout, a new story, a new pulled muscle. But once Opening Day is come and gone, we're on our way, and more often than not at 1-0. And you get that day to bask in the glory of Opening Day. It's the upbeat before the 161 games of death metal beats that baseball provides. For a Met fan, it's like being in suspended animation … the roller coaster right before it goes down … a bubble that only bursts when Game 2 starts.

Most years, it's like that. This season, the bubble burst with news on Shaun Marcum:

Marcum was shut down after he reported pain in his neck during the warmups for a simulated game Tuesday evening in Port St. Lucie. The team said he will be reassessed on Wednesday. 

Look, Opening Day usually works out for the Mets. It's the other 161 games that are always the challenge. But we always had that off day after Game 1 to enjoy being 1-0. Not so much this season, with this news that Marcum isn't going to start on Sunday and we might have to endure a start by Aaron Laffey, albeit against the Marlins. Shaun Marcum looks like he is going to be the 2013 version of the Yeti. Oh, people will claim that they've seen him, but nobody is really sure that he actually exists. He got scratched from a game that was made up. Who is to say that Shaun Marcum isn't made up? A figment of our imagination?

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