Thrashing in Dream Land

It only took a couple of beers, and we were gone. Gone not to that pleasurably surreal universe of Mr. Buzz Jones, but rather to that unsettling realm of baseball reminiscence, that warped and pipe-dream world of great teams and players of years gone by.

Two friends from Cincinatti chatted quietly of Bernie Carbo and Johnny Bench and the Big Red Machine. Another brought up the Dodgers and that infield of Garvey, Lopes, Russell and Cey that seemed to play together forever as the boys in Freeway Blue rolled through the late '70s. For my part, I just rambled back to first grade and those Amazing Mets of 1969--Al Weiss, Tommy Agee, Cleon Jones ("You remember what happened to Cleon?" --the back seat of that car, those drugs, that woman.)

After a while, though, the conversation, just like that pleasant buzz that inevitably turns into cotton mouth, couldn't help but come back to the present day.

"Hey, how about those Braves?" someone on the other side of the blurred paneled room offered. Twelve in a row? Eleven? Whoever followed the Braves anyway? Wasn't Joe Torre managing them? It was true.

The same guy who had travelled with my Mets into the way-below-1500 doldrums of the NL East, like Dante into the depths of the Inferno, was actually managing a division-leading ball club. He must have endured purgatory some time during the offseason. I thought to myself.

My two friends from Cincinatti stiffly rose from their chairs. The stress of going from the euphoric '70s back to 1982, when the Reds were struggling at the bottom of the NL West with a dismal 3-10 mark, was simply too much. They muttered something about a Music I paper that was due in three weeks and headed back to their room to talk about hiking in the wilds surrounding Toledo.

The discussion moved effortlessly to the Mets. For the first time since I've been here, someone else broached the subject for me. I leisurely went to the fridge for another cold one, kicking over an ashtray and a half-full bottle of Bud. I was trying to stay cool but my buzz was getting the better of me.

"They've beaten Carlton twice." I said almost mechanically as I regained some composure and managed the trip back from the fridge with only minor difficulty. "Their offense is hot--Kingman and Foster are choking on opposite days--and they're getting some solid pitching from a staff of all-star has-beens--Randy Jones, Pat Zachry, Craig Swan."

I was thinking that they might be able to hang on to third place if John Stearns (their catcher) doesn't get hurt, if the pitching holds up, and if someone nukes the Pirates to make sure they are really dead, but somehow I blurted out. "They'll probably take the Series in six." In the course of my overzealous proclamation. I managed to dump the ashtray again. I was thrashing, but how long were the Mets going to be three games over 500 anyway. Later my bed was spinning when I finally found it.

In the morning, cotton mouth had replaced Buzz Jones, and I dimly remembered some parts of the last night's conversation. Picking up the New York Times, I mechanically found the sports page. The Mets had dropped a heart breaker to the Expos in the bottom of the ninth, 5-4. Something pulled desperately in my stomach, and I headed for an extended prayer session with the great porcelain god.