Since it seems to be the most reliably relaxing spot to spend an off day these days, I was back at the ballpark on the Fourth to see Mets/Phils.
The announced temperature was 86 degrees when the first pitch was thrown. It rose into the low 90’s as the afternoon went on. A blazing, unobstructed sun and a high level of humidity made it uncomfortable for many. I actually felt pretty good because I activated my heat resistance plan before walking into Citi Field. I chugged as much water as my body would hold during the 90 minutes prior to the game’s start and then nursed cold beers at about half the rate I’d consume them when the weather isn’t hot.
I sat up in the right field porch with Jackie from the Bronx and her family. Tickets were $30 a pop. Mets starter Chris Young was lights out until he hit the same seventh inning wall that plagued his outing ten days ago against the Yanks.
Young’s return from major shoulder surgery has been a pleasant surprise although his effectiveness seems to go away after six innings. Met manager Terry Collins likely knows this but continues to keep Young out there a few batters too many. On Wednesday, Young took a 2-nil lead into the seventh. He had thrown just 67 pitches through six. I would have pulled Young as soon as Juan Pierre singled to start the seventh. I told my seatmates that the first sign of trouble in the seventh was all I needed to make a change. But Collins allowed Young to remain in the game and the lanky right-hander proceeded to give up back-to-back homers to Utley and Ruiz.
It turns out the Met bullpen got shellacked in the eighth and ninth, so who knows what would have happened if Young was yanked after the Pierre single. At the time, the long balls off Young felt like daggers. Cliff Lee got his first win of the season (spanning 14 starts) for the Phils and looked like the dominant Cliff Lee of yesteryear. Philly is nine games under break even and will need a big second half to get back into it. It’ll help to get Ryan Howard back in a few weeks along with Doc Halladay. Don’t be shocked if the Phils get red hot in August and September and make a run.
Attendance for the holiday matinee was 28,687. The crowd the night before was 42,516. Why the difference? Tuesday night had a fireworks display after the game. It’s funny how that works. The Tuesday night crowd was the largest in Citi Field history. The televised pictures of the upper deck corners revealed a completely packed house just prior to the fireworks display.
-Times sportswriters Ken Belson and Jere Longman have been merciless in their mockery of US track and field’s handling of the third place dead heat between US sprinters Jeneba Tarmoh and Allyson Felix but I don’t get the fuss. Lacking formal protocol to settle a tie when a spot on the Olympic team is at stake, USATF was forced to find a solution. What they came up with was fair. Unless one of the two parties objected, there would be a run-off. This country’s governing body for track and field acted swiftly and decisively and produced a remedy to a problem it had never been faced with. Both Belson and Longman had lots of fun taking shots at USATF but neither advanced a better idea. In the end, Tarmoh conceded the final 100 meter roster spot to Felix. There was sour grapes bubbling beneath the surface as Tarmoh accepted and then rejected the run-off. She certainly must have felt emboldened in her bitterness by Belson and Longman’s rip-jobs on the USATF. Personally, I find it difficult to understand how current technology allows for the conclusion that two moving objects cross a finish line at precisely the same time. But once that declaration is made, it seems to me that ties of this type should be broken by additional competition. Had Tarmoh been defeated in the run-off, she would have at least gone down fighting. Her problem is not with the USATF. It’s with her inability to accept the odd circumstances associated with technology’s determination that her torso crossed the line at exactly the moment Felix’s did in the final.