Dispatches from Shea: Titus, fetch a shutout hither
Posted on June 20th, 2007 – 10:31 AMBy Michael Rand
Titus, a sometimes RandBall commenter, emailed yesterday with a guest post for the RandBall sabbatical and also mentioned he was heading to Shea for Santana vs. Mets. We asked for a guest dispatch, and he delivered not only with the text you are about to read, but with that photo of Mr. Met and another chap making some sort of wave and/or salute to their political affiliation. If Titus brings back shutouts wherever he goes, the Twins might have to put him on the payroll. His words:
One of the fun features of Shea stadium is the overwhelming feeling that you are watching baseball with a lot of people around you. This feeling is not mitigated by good seats; you are always aware of the many thousands of people who are closer to the field than you, or much further behind. It is the opposite of an “intimate” feel. Which maybe explains why Mets fans feel the need, early in a disappointing game, to boo their pitcher (Jorge Sosa, who does not deserve even one boo) off the field when he’s pulled — they just don’t feel close to him. What I felt was bewildered.
Not quite as much, though, as the teenaged Met fan sitting next to me. He was full of questions, unanswerable questions, asked aloud to all who could hear:
“Why can’t he [Cirillo] run that [a bobbled, but ultimately
successful, groundout] out?”
“Why is he [Mets reliever Aaron Sele] throwing a curveball on a 1-1 count?”
“Why wasn’t that [a Mauer foul tip] a strikeout?”
Okay. The first two seemed intelligent. But come on kid, pay
attention. Less txt, more watch a wonderful shutout.
Alas, few fans cared to stay past the middle of the sixth. Mr. Met himself, sensing skittishness in the crowds, made an appearance in the section in a desperate bid to save morale. But the best even he could muster were a few waves at the crowd before he had to sit down and cry behind his frozen rictus face. That said, his valiant efforts did help to stave off a stampede, and instead many hundreds and thousands of Met fans orderly filed out before the game ended.
I feel for my Met-loving neighbors, and I mean no ill will to them, but it was an affecting sight, to look over the right field wall and see them all walking onto the 7 train platform outside, and then to look back to the field, and feel, in the middle of an emptying row of seats, that I was getting to watch my Twins all by myself.
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