Pelfrey

Everyone loves coming of age stories, perhaps because in actual life there is not really any such thing-- all the rites of passage that we pass leave us no more prepared or less confused than we had been on the other side of them; all our Conformations, Bar Mitzvahs, and Graduations merely so many moldy rabbits feet hanging from our key chains, as we realize that what is called Maturity is merely a greater proximity to death (not the illuminating, consummately desirable virtue that our elders had commanded us to cultivate) and begin to change Wonder for Fear.

Anyway, baseball hangs out somewhere on the fringes of ‘actual life’ and so we were not prevented from seeing a nice coming of age story out of Mike Pelfrey last night. Pelfrey had been terrible in all of his previous starts, and I was frankly for sending him back to the minors and seeing if Humber or Park or Sosa or somebody could do a better job. But, after being terrible again in the first inning, Pelfrey got it together and was good for another five and a third, leading one to believe that, particularly if he is able to use last night’s start as a source of lessons and confidence, Pelfrey might be a good guy to have around. The encouraging thing was that he seemed to be mainly getting outs with groundballs, which is what is supposed to happen when he has his stuff-- previous outings had featured fly balls and strike outs.

On the other hand, Willie Randolph’s line-up tinkering is making me nervous, since it seems to indicate that the skipper is deeply concerned with how things are going—and I’m assuming that Randolph is slightly better informed than I am. As has come up before, I am not a proponent of Wright batting second, partially because I am not convinced that Wright has the best make-up for a number two hitter, but also because I feel that spots other than the two-hole make less than optimal use of Lo Duca’s talents. At this point, of course, things are still up in the air, since Lo Duca and Wright both had decent nights at the plate, and the Mets lost anyway. Well, at least they aren’t as screwed as the Yankees (now that’s not something that Mets fans get to say all that often), whose young pitcher’s first successful outing was cut short with a hamstring injury that could have him out for weeks.

After consulting the Canadian Quarter of Pitching Perdictivity, I am sorry to inform you that Perez is going to have a rough outing to-day.

BASKETBALL NOTE: There was a weird moment in last night’s game between Dallas and Golden State, where both teams realized that they had no chance at all of winning the series: Dallas, because they haven’t been playing terrifically and are facing elimination for the rest of the way, and the Warriors because they are the Golden State Warriors trying to eliminate the Dallas freaking Mavericks.