It's Midnight and My Team Is Calling

Most summer nights I find it hard to go to sleep without knowing whether my Mets have won or lost. It's especially hard when they're hanging around the pennant race as they are this year. But last night I was exhausted and a little under the weather, and the Mets were playing in Arizona, which meant the game wouldn't even start till 9:40 p.m. I turned off my bedside lamp at 8:30 and fell asleep almost immediately.

***

Woke up in the darkness several hours later and felt instantly lucid, as sometimes happens when I go to sleep very early. Checked out the LED clock on the front of the cable box and saw it was exactly midnight. Wow, I thought, the Mets game is two hours and twenty minutes old. Probably in the late innings.

I tiptoed out of the room so as not to wake Mary-Jo and turned on the TV in the family room. The stat line at the top of the screen told the story: INNING 9 OUTS 2 METS 4 ARIZONA 1. At that exact moment a Diamondbacks batter facing Braden Looper lofted a routine fly ball to Carlos Beltran in centerfield. Final out of the game. I watched the Mets congratulate one another as the announcer gave a quick recap of the scoring: two-run double by Floyd, homers by Reyes and Diaz.

I was back in bed falling asleep with a smile on my face by 12:02.

P.S. Since this event, the Mets have kept winning--now five straight (on the road no less) including back-to-back blowouts in which they scored a total of 32 runs. Sure is fun to have your team get hot in late August after stumbling through June and July--rather than the reverse.