Pinch Me, I'm Dreaming

Mets 18 – Arizona 4

I watched most of the Mets - Diamondbacks game last night although I was falling asleep off and on as the game got further and further out of reach. You need adrenalin to keep you up for those western road games, but even the most nervous of Mets fans had to feel fairly good about that game by the 5th inning. I'd drift off, and every time I'd wake up Mike Jacobs or David Wright was hitting another home run. I have to check the box score, but I think they must have hit 5 0r 6 each.

I've been a Mets fan for a lot of years now, and offensive explosions like the last couple of days have been mighty rare. 32 runs was a good couple of weeks for some of those teams. Just think, last week the lads got shut out by yet another rookie on Thursday and then won a 1-0 nail biter the next night. Was that really last week? Seems like longer ago than that, somehow...

Easy to let yourself get giddy about something like this, but I think most of us Mets fans are trying to keep our expectations reasonable. We've already been on that rollercoaster this season. Still, I had a bad feeling that this series against the Diamondbacks was going to look a lot like those games in Colorado from late July, and now no matter what happens today I give them credit for taking care of business against a team they should have beaten. If they had done that all year, they might have been sitting in first place right now despite all of their flaws. So although I'm not making my plans for the playoffs just yet I appreciate the fact that this team has grown from their struggles this year. Going into this August, I have to admit I feared a repeat of last year's sad dog days collapse, by avoiding that this team has proven to me that they've turned a corner.

Still, I don't want to get carried away with optimism. I don't want to set myself up for disappointment yet again this season. If the Mets don't come crashing back down to earth against the Giants I'll have to find out when Richard Neer is on this weekend on WFAN. He'll find about 20 ways to let us Met fans know that our team still sucks, while being just so nice, so reasonable, and so darned fair about it...

Boo birds, warm up those chords...

To those of you out there who live for the chance to go to Shea and boo the hell out of Kaz Matsui and Victor Zambrano, don't forget that next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday will be your only chance before mid-September to do so. Please don't let the fact that both have accepted demotions (Kaz to the bench, Victor to the pen) with grace and willingness to do what it takes to help the team win. After all, it's your right as a fan to boo.