| Issue #31, October 27, 2006 |
A Live Delay
Mets Lose or Maybe They Didn’t Lose and It is Still Going On
By Dan Rattiner
Last Thursday, in the final game to determine who would go to the World Series, the New York Mets, behind on the scoreboard, opened the bottom of the ninth inning by staging a rally. In very short order, they had the bases loaded with one out and the top of the order coming to the plate. A single would drive in two runs, and that would tie it back up. So the crowd at the stadium was screaming and yelling and here in my living room we were screaming and yelling and the TV image was shaking because the stadium was shaking. So here was lead batter, Jose Reyes, and it was all on the line.
Reyes waggled the bat menacingly. And the St. Louis pitcher glared down at him. What would be happening in the next few minutes would determine everything.
At that moment, in the living room at our house in East Hampton were myself, my son, David, and David’s girlfriend Erika. My girlfriend, another Mets fan, was in the city but needed to see this. And I had to let her know. I called her on the cell phone.
“Strike one,” the umpire shouted.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you watching this?”
“I just turned it on.”
“Last guest left?”
“Yeah.”
“Ball one.”
Chris had been hosting a dinner party for twelve girlfriends of hers at the apartment. Men not invited.
“We’re behind 4 to 2,” I told her. “Bases loaded, bottom of the ninth, one out. Count is 1 and 1.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
“It’s 2 and 1. And uh oh, that’s IT! That’s IT!”
I heard people screaming at the stadium over the phone. “Oh, no,” she shouted.
“Oh no, what?”
“It was a foul ball.”
“What foul ball?” Ten seconds later, on our TV, Reyes hit what looked like it would be a single to right, and the crowd leaped to its feet. But it faded foul.
“You’re AHEAD of us,” I said.
“What?”
“We just got the foul ball. Your TV already knows what’s happened.”
“How could that be?” Chris asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe something to do with the cable. David, Chris gets the game ten seconds before we do.”
“Are you Tivo-ing this?” David asked. “Fast forward it.”
“I just did,” I said. I held up the phone in one hand, the remote in the other. “That’s not the problem. Must be the cable.”
“Dad, just hang up the phone.” David said.
“It’s ball three, low and outside,” Chris said. “Full count.”
“It’s ball three,” I said to David.
On our screen, ten seconds later, Reyes took ball three, low and outside.
“Chris,” I said, “don’t TELL us.”
“Okay.”
Now there was a huge roar of the crowd over the telephone, so loud that David could hear it.
“Dad, hang up the phone. Hang up the phone!”
“Tell me about the dinner party,” I said.
“Well, it was really nice. We set up for twelve. But we had fourteen. So we had to add some place settings. A lot of my daughter’s friends came.”
While she was talking, over the phone, there was another huge roar from the crowd and I was dying to interrupt her, but I didn’t. Then, on our screen, there was a huge roar of the crowd as Reyes hit a line drive right over second base and right into the hands of the St. Louis center fielder. Two outs. Now Carlos Beltran, the Mets slugger was striding to the plate.
“Was Natasha there?”
“Yes.”
“We just saw Reyes line out to center. But don’t tell us what happens next.”
David disentangled himself from Erika — the two of them were canoodling on the sofa — and he came at me in the club chair. We began wrestling for my phone.
“Dad, hang up the phone!”
“No,” I grunted.
“Strike one,” the announcer said. “That’s some slider from Wainwright.”
I won the wrestle. David returned to the sofa, empty-handed.
“For a rookie, and that’s what he is, he is just so amazingly cool and composed,” a second announcer said.
“What’s going on?” Chris asked.
“Nothing, nothing,” I said breathlessly. “We have 0 and 1.”
“It’s1 and 1,” Chris said. “And now 1 and 2.”
“What did you do for lunch?” I asked. “Don’t tell me.”
“What I did for lunch?”
Suddenly, over the phone, I heard Chris cry out, almost in pain, and I heard the voices of baseball players on her TV yipping and shouting for joy. And there was no crowd noise whatsoever. And I knew. The Mets would not be going to the World Series. On the screen in our living room, Beltran looked sternly at the pitcher. The pitcher leaned in.
“What?” David said. “It’s not good, is it?”
Ten seconds later, Beltran looked at a pitch come whistling by and he did not swing at it. The mighty Beltran had struck out. And the Mets were dead.
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