{"id":2329,"date":"2012-10-02T08:45:26","date_gmt":"2012-10-02T12:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/?p=2329"},"modified":"2012-10-01T20:57:19","modified_gmt":"2012-10-02T00:57:19","slug":"missing-the-mets-from-afar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/2012\/10\/02\/missing-the-mets-from-afar\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing the Mets From Afar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I knew I wasn&#8217;t missing a pennant race two weeks ago when I took off for Europe, but I also knew I&#8217;d miss the Mets anyway. \u00a0Whether the season is good or bad, it&#8217;s still Mets baseball and it flies by way too fast. Sacrificing nearly 20 games to travel, no matter how awesome that travel is, is a bummer. \u00a0Watching baseball again after that type of layoff feels like Spring Training, but it&#8217;s going to be yanked away from me before I even get back into it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s interesting coming back to just three meaningless games against the Marlins before being Mets-less until Spring Training. \u00a0 I felt myself mentally wrapping up the season before I left, despite the Mets still having a bunch of games to play. \u00a0Now I flip on the Mets games at seven as usual, hungry for some baseball and although it feels great, I know it&#8217;s just a tease. \u00a0I&#8217;ll get three likely forgettable Mets games and then a month of playoff baseball not featuring the Mets and that&#8217;s barely enough baseball to sustain me through the long winter.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not just the impending offseason that hurts; I missed some memorable Mets games while I was gone. \u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/w\/wrighda03.shtml?utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_campaign=Linker\" target=\"_blank\">David  Wright<\/a><\/strong> became the Mets franchise leader in hits, and while it was all but inevitable going into the second half of the season, it&#8217;d have been nice to see the games as they happened. \u00a0The other big one is obviously <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/d\/dicker.01.shtml?utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_campaign=Linker\" target=\"_blank\">R.A.  Dickey<\/a><\/strong>&#8216;s 20th win. \u00a0Pitcher wins don&#8217;t mean much in the evaluation department, but seeing your pitchers accumulating them is never a bad thing. There&#8217;s history and emotion tied to the stat that even when you know it&#8217;s not hugely important it still tugs at the emotions to see Dickey be the first Met to 20 wins in over 20 years. \u00a0At\u00a0least, it would&#8217;ve been if I wasn&#8217;t in Prague for it. \u00a0I peeked at Twitter before I went to bed that night, which was just after the game NY time, and was disappointed I didn&#8217;t get to share in all the excitement and celebration of it. \u00a0Living and breathing the Cy Young race with Dickey and watching the other candidates is fun too, and I mostly missed it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m going to savor and enjoy these last games like a well-cooked steak knowing that it&#8217;ll be my last good meal until March. \u00a0One more R.A.  Dickey start to make his case for the Cy Young. \u00a0 18, barring extras, glorious Mets innings filled with David  Wright, <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/d\/davisik02.shtml?utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_campaign=Linker\" target=\"_blank\">Ike  Davis<\/a><\/strong> and all the rest of them. \u00a0The\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/f\/familje01.shtml?utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_campaign=Linker\" target=\"_blank\">Jeurys  Familia<\/a><\/strong> debut start last night. \u00a0All some fun stuff to watch and I&#8217;m not going to miss a minute of it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I knew I wasn&#8217;t missing a pennant race two weeks ago when I took off for Europe, but I also knew I&#8217;d miss the Mets anyway. \u00a0Whether the season is good or bad, it&#8217;s still Mets baseball and it flies by way too fast. Sacrificing nearly 20 games to travel, no matter how awesome that &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/2012\/10\/02\/missing-the-mets-from-afar\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Missing the Mets From Afar&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1248,19,3],"tags":[2964,1875,2791,2156,2792],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2329"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2329"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2331,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2329\/revisions\/2331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}