IF you are a Giants fan this week, then the way your stomach feels and the way your brain chooses to process information has as much to do with who your baseball team is as who your football team is.
If you are a Yankees fan, then your first reaction when it comes to where the Giants presently sit is to believe in the power of reason and common sense. The Giants are better than Buffalo, you will tell yourself. The Giants are a better road team this year than they are at home. And you know something? Even if something bad happens in Buffalo . . . that’s OK. Someone else will lose. And, hey: there’s always the chance to shock the world in Week 17, right? How cool would that be?
That is how the Yankees/Giants fan looks at the world.
Here is how the Mets/Giants fan looks at the world:
O MY GOD THE SKY IS FALLING THERE ARE DOGS AND CATS LIVING TOGETHER, AND OF COURSE THERE’S NO WAY THE GIANTS ARE GOING TO BEAT BUFFALO AND OF COURSE THE VIKINGS AND THE REDKINS AND THE SAINTS ARE CRUISING BY US IN THE PASSING LANE AND WE CAN’T RUN AND WE CAN’T THROW AND WE CAN’T . . .
Easy, friend, surely you can’t think
. . . EASY, HELL, I WAS THERE IN THE FINAL TWO WEEKS OF THE BASEBALL SEASON – A HELL THAT STARTED WITH BAD LOSSES TO THE WASHINGTON TEAM, BY THE WAY – AND YOU JUST KNOW WHEN THE OIL IS LEAKING AND THE BLOOD IS SPILLING AND THE CHOKING BEGINS AND WE HAVE NO SHOT AT MAKING THE PLAYOFFS, NO SHOT, NONE, NONE, NONE, AND AAAAAUUUUGGGHHHH . . .
Yep, it all depends on how you look at it.
“All we are looking at is that it is one game, we will move on, we’ll learn from it, and we’ll worry about beating the Buffalo Bills now,” Tom Coughlin said yesterday, in the aftermath of the Giants’ 22-10 loss to Washington, and it was the kind of calm, reassuring, avuncular message that, if you also happen to be a Yankees fan, you heard Joe Torre say in his calm, reassuring, avuncular way a thousand times across the past 12 years. A soothing war cry.
Of course, if you also happen to be a Mets fan, that particular quote may sound a little familiar, a little too familiar, and, well, it’s actually very familiar.
“That was just one series, and we’re over it, and now we can focus on what lies ahead of us,” Willie Randolph said on the evening of Sept. 26, which happened to be the night that the Washington Nationals finished off a three-game sweep of the Mets at Shea (after winning two of three in D.C. the week before). “We get to play the Cardinals and the Marlins now and if we take care of our business, this will all seem almost funny.”
The Mets lost to the Cardinals, which wasn’t terribly amusing. They lost two out of three to the Mar-
SURE, SURE, YOU HAVE TO BRING THAT UP, YOU HAVE TO REMIND ME NOW, AS IF I HAVEN’T BEEN HAUNTED BY THAT WEEK FOR TWO $%&*@#@ MONTHS, AS IF I STILL DON’T HAVE NIGHTMARES THAT I’M TOM GLAVINE AND THE MARLINS ARE BEATING THE LIVING $%&*@ OUT OF ME AND . . .
All right, all right, that’s enough out of you, enough! Don’t you see what can happen here? The Giants do. It’s why to a man they seemed calm, confident, practically cheerful yesterday, reporting for work less than 12 hours after tasting the business end of a rigid thumping. They know the opportunity they squandered Sunday night.
“We didn’t take care of business against Washington,” Antonio Pierce said. “Now we have to do that business against Buffalo. It’s simple. We still control our own destiny.”
Sounds like a quote plucked from the Derek Jeter anthology. That’s good.
Of course, it also sounds like a deep album cut from David Wright‘s Greatest Hits, specifically Sept. 27, after the Cardinals whipped the Mets, and Wright said, “We have to seal the deal this weekend. Our destiny is still in our hands.”
Thoughts, Mets fans?
AAAAAUUUUGGGHHHH . . .