Countdown to Nothing

There are worse things than realizing your baseball team is bad. For instance, there's realizing you long ago stopped noticing your baseball team is bad. The Mets played the Marlins, and the Mets lost, with just a few bright flickers amid the gloom. There was Josh Thole, getting his first big-league RBI and continuing to show a good eye and a compact stroke. There was a nifty play at the plate, with Jeff Francoeur's throw from right bouncing up and over Thole's glove, past Elmer Dessens, off the back wall, into the hand Dessens shot desperately skyward, and from there being relayed hastily back to Thole to tag out a rather startled Dan Uggla. Just your routine 9-2-Wall-1-2 putout. And there was Carlos Beltran, back from exile at long last. With the season thoroughly lost, I was startled by how emotional I was to see Beltran back on the field. Emily and Joshua and I had seen him on Sunday, wearing Cyclones red and white, and he looked awful, striking out three ti...