Mets Sparkle

Mets vs. Yankees still feels a little weird to me, even after all these inter-league decades, but that’s probably because I’m always trying to figure out which team I’m rooting for. Never mind that now, though. Last night’s 5–1 Mets win was a pippin, a shining little late-summer entertainment to be noted on the fly, since the two homeys will face off again at Citi Field this afternoon. Last night’s starters, the Yanks’ old Masahiro Tanaka and the Mets’ young Steve Matz, were briskly predictable in the early stages—Tanaka economical and the kid a little wild and perhaps a little anxious—but both worked so quickly that our speculation fell instead upon the Mets’ Yoenis Céspedes, the hottest midsummer batter anywhere, who has fallen into a cryogenic slump, hitless in his last thirteen at-bats. How can this happen? one always wonders. How can it not? Anytime hitting begins to look easy for a batter, an almost inexorable carelessness or carefreeness creeps into his swing, and the magic leaks away.