by Sam’s-A-Fan
Elsinore, Denmark
Author’s Note: Procrastinating like the Prince of Denmark, the author failed to confer with the technical geniuses at Meet the Matts to try and get the video bits up on the site properly. As such, unless the aforementioned technical genii swoop to the authors rescue on their own, the clips will exist only as links to YouTube video, but the author urges you to check them out too, as he thinks you will enjoy them. Probably more than today’s post. -SAF
To C, or not to C: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
To C, or not to C: that is the question???
Yes, that is the question, and the time has finally come to answer it. Since the 2008 season came to a very woeful end, and from the time the Meet the Matts faithful were shocked out of their hard earned depression when it became clear that Omar Minaya would make no attempt to sign Orlando Hudson or any other infielder who we in MtM land deemed an acceptable option at second base, the question has been will Luis “little c” Castillo ever earn back upper case status.
With the Met’s season legitimately over for two or three months now, and with what passes for prospects down on the farm still a few days from joining the big club, we can debate health care, which face it, ain’t no reform gonna help the Mets’ $100M hospital ward; or we can debate whether Luis C/castillo has earned his Capital C back.
All season long Mets fans, and MtMers especially have suffered the slings and arrows of the Yankee Joes of the world, and weren’t none of it noble. We’ve seen a fortune paid for outrageous arms like that of Oliver Perez who in a sea of trouble can’t hit water falling out of a boat. We’ve watched the tragedy that is the Mets’ front office, and that too made our minds suffer, and even while we opposed them, we just could not end them.
Luis C/castillo is batting .315 for the year which ranks him 7th overall in the NL and 15th overall in the majors.
To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream:
Yes there’s nothing more most of us would wish for then to put an end to this nightmare of a season, to just be able to sleep it off, and dream that next year will be better. But so far we’ve been told that next year will bring the return of Omar and Jerry and with it the heart-ache and the thousand unnatural shocks of life at Citifield.
Luis C/castillo has a fielding percentage of .982 which is 16th overall in MLB and 9th overall in the NL.
Ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the laws delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
It is true then that the Mets’ season is dead and the only dreams that may come are those of Spring training 2010 when there’s optimism aplenty for one and all, but hark, it may also be a spring training wherein we have to grit our teeth and listen to Yankee Joe rub a 27th championship in our face, or smile politely while our friend the Phanatic reminds us “World bleepin’ Champions, World bleepin’ Champions two years in a row!” Those are the kinds of whips and scorns of time that makes calamity of so long an off-season and the kind of pain that has been sending Mets fans like you and me to psychiatrists for the last 47 years.
Louis C/castillo is 10th overall in the NL in on-base percentage and 14th overall in the whole of baseball. He is in the top 100 in all of baseball in OPS, coming in just 97 places behind overall number 1 Albert Pujols, and he is only 381 places behind Pujols for home runs with his gaudy one for the year (Let’s face it, any year Luis C/castillo hits a single dinger is a good year for him offensively.) Luis has 207 put outs for the year with only 9 errors (hmm, do you think if he used two hands for that pop up and we had beaten the Yankees the season would have come out differently?) which makes him 6th and 9th in the NL and MLB respectively for put outs, and he is in the top ten and top five in MLB and NL respectively in zone factor, whatever that is, and the top 11 and the top 7 again in MLB and NL respectively in range factor, whatever that is. LC/c has walked 59 times and struck out only 38.
But that dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lost the name of action.
As stated above, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, um, I mean Omar and Jerry will travel back from the sadly discovered country where 2009 died and be with us again in 2010, because Jeff Wilpon will not throw off the cowardice which informs the family’s philosophy of “Bear those ills we have than fly to others we know not of.” And our enterprise of great pith and moment will not be, not unless a man of action, a Fortinbras, will swoop in and come to our rescue by buying the team and putting to rest Jeff’s father’s ghost, by which I mean the Brooklyn Dodgers.
In the meantime we still have to sit through Act V of this season, and for now, even though the play was a flop, I’m giving Louis Castillo back his C!
and just in case you’re not a true Met fan, and you don’t have the Fortinbras to sit through the double tragedy of the 2009 Mets versus the 2009 Cubs, I leave you with two more bits of magic from the pen of that genius known as Willie Shakespeare.
