Noah Syndergaard – Evenings with the Unbored

Did We Make It? …Are We Back?

Did we? Make it, I mean? Yes I think so. We made it. Short days of gray concrete-sky Winter have come and (hopefully) gone, and it seems Spring is here. Baseball is the physical marker that helps me recognize when Spring has crept around the corner; the real-life metaphor for the changing of the seasons. That old baseball GM BART-something said it really well. Something about baseball breaking your heart.

bart simpson animated gif

I haven’t written on this thing for a long time. Baseball broke my heart a few too many times last year and I sort of couldn’t muster enough creative interest in the game once the Metsies slid downward into the spinning wind-tunnel that seemed to toss them around in May. June? June was death. Literal, unadulterated jump-out-the-window death. I don’t remember any games from June last year but I do remember a sort of lumpy black fog suspended overhead, does that help?

But now we have a Brodie. I don’t think I knew what a Brodie was before last October, nor do I think I could explain what a Brodie would do for the Mets after finding out what a Brodie was. But now I am very excited to have a Brodie. We are the only team in baseball that has a Brodie, I believe. How many more times can I say Brodie?

What a Brodie has been mostly good for, it turns out, is changing the conversation. Sort of Don Draper-ish. Metsies in the Sandy era always seemed a tad out of touch or out of step with whatever was going on around baseball. It always seemed sort of murky and foggy as to where they were going or what they were doing. Now with a Brodie in our pocket, things seem sunny and golden-graham-y.

We are back, and looking pretty goddamn good.

Time to Bust out a Bun, bro.

IMG_20180410_175931

Campus

How am I supposed to pretend… I never want to see you again….

Random lyric for Opening Day 2018, but it is not relevant in this case because I don’t need to pretend that I hate baseball. Searching for an “it’s back, baby” gif and I see Fat Bastard “I want my babyback ribs” and a bunch of “i’m back baby” gifs which also aren’t relevant! Whatevs.

Mets won! I followed the game through a series of drip-drip water torture tweets while lounging on my Venice hotel bed, although in this case (and any case when the team is winning a game) I’ll open my mouth under that drip-drip water torture and wait all day. Syndergaard struck out 10 Cards. I didn’t see him with my eyes but that seems good, no?

This opening day was like a throwback, against the St. Louis Cardinals, like a 1985 Opening Day kind of throwback. That game was on YouTube for awhile in 2015 and I used to watch snippets of it while waking up in the morning. There’s something about the bright blue of the Mets unis on a cold early April (or this case late March) day that feels singular – and when you see their breath? Even better!

Anyways, Mickey Callaway seemed to have a successful first game, and he’s getting a lot of good press about batting the pitcher 8th, which is weird because Terry used to do that all the time but now Mickey does it and he’s a genius? But why complain, cause they won!

Sortie Exit

The airplane feels like a collective breath being held. With ears always muffled and feet nowhere to go. Sortie and exit next to each other on the sign, so I assume they both mean the same thing.

I wonder how athletes deal with plane rides so much. I am drained and achey. I guess it becomes a part of their routine. It’s the wonder of the human body I think, it can do anything if it’s in a routine. I’m just imagining Noah Syndergaard, even in first class, with his legs needing to stretch and his back a little stiff.

They probably get to walk around a lot more on their flights. This is purely me speculating this but I feel like they literally have a whole plane to themselves right? And there are only 25 players on a roster so does that mean there a lot of empty seats on the plane? I mean there’s the coaching staff and the training staff but that’s what, like another 8 guys? There’s probably a lot of empty seats. I would imagine that to be a little eerie. Weird vibe to feel right before playing a baseball game.

…

There is something about the process of traveling, with it’s repetition of tasks, that every travel experience seems to blend into a large blurry mush after one has finished travelling. We have just sprawled out in our Venice hotel room after an ungodly 14 hours (yes, typing that out makes me pause) of travel. Two planes, a boat, some speed-walking through a beautifully-lit Charles De Gaulle Airport at 7 in the morning (more on this later), more speed-walking through a Venice airport and finally some just plain standing around while our room was being finished, we have begun our honeymoon.

There is a rush of metal and plastic and advertisement posters that lay out one after another, and signs with letters and numbers in seemingly random colors, and handrails and charging stations, and clunking noises made by suitcase wheels, and clear glass walls and clear glass elevators, and silver metallic bathrooms that have just been sprayed with bleach. This is the rush of things moving by you when you are traveling, the blurry mush.

I said I’d talk about the light in the Charles De Gaulle airport, and this is what I mean:

That’s a poor example but you can see what I’m getting at, maybe? The whole thing is glass and spirals out in all directions, up and down and side to side. And there aren’t any buildings around the airport, obstructing light. So the 7am cloudless sunlight poured into this place, coming through the glass and getting more intense even, reflecting off walls, casting long intensely black shadows and creating an incredible atmosphere that I will forever remember as the “Charles De Gaulle Airport Light”. We ran through the place for our connecting flight so it wasn’t fully appreciated. Although I just wrote this about it so I guess it got it’s due.

Opening day is tomorrow.* Yay!

*Written March 28th