Astros 3
Mets 1
by NeilT
Astros beat the Mets tonight. I felt bad about that, I’m a big Mets fan. I especially loved Leonard Dykstra, particularly his great songs:
Suzanne takes you down
to a place by the river
where she feeds you tea and oranges
that came all the way from China
I’ve always wondered if that song wasn’t the foundation of our current trade imbalance. I won’t hardly eat an orange, if it don’t come from China.
So much has happened since I last wrote a recap, I hardly know where to begin. The manager was fired because it was discovered the Astros were infected with the zombie virus, and Mills didn’t know how to manage the walking dead. There was a new interim manager hired, but I can’t write about him because I don’t know his name. I’ve been reading the new Dave Robicheaux novel, which made me think of Mr. Happy, and since he’s the only person that reads recaps I wanted to ask if he’d read it. I’m not in last place in the fantasy league anymore because I’ve actually been paying attention.
I could write about my deep and abiding love of the Mets, and how they are the mirrors of our souls.
But none of those. Last night I came home and turned on the tv and sat on the back porch with the door open and read Creole Bell and cooked veal chops and asparagus on the grill. I paid some attention to the game, but after the game we watched Red Dawn because I wanted to prepare for the coming UN Invasion.
SCENE ONE — THE INVASION
We was sitting in our dugout, listening to the new manager talk about some Mongoloid shit, when these guys with these funny blue baseball caps parachuted onto the field. We figured it was some training mission that landed in the wrong place so Altuve–he speaks that Spanish shit–Altuve goes out to tell them they’re in the wrong place. This really ugly guy just blows him away. Then he does the same thing to Marwin–maybe it was because they both went out there speaking Spanish? Brett gets to first, but then Francisco go down and I take off. I’m pissing myself, I tell you, but I get past three of them, and we head out to my dad’s place on County Road 5 in my pick-up. Then this Colonel guy shows up, Colonel DeFrancesco, and I ask him, Colonel, how’d you get shot down? “It was five to one,” he says, “I got four.” ASTROWOLVERINES!
SCENE TWO — TAKING TO THE HILLS
Getting out of town we lost two more guys, Pearce and Green. Green just stood there looking and took the bullet, but Snyder, he just walked on over to the truck and climbed in. Man it made me happy. Then Barnes screamed ASTROWOLVERINES! and blasted one of those blue-capped bastards out to deep center field and Snyder came home! Man, it was great! Then I told ’em, we gotta stand and fight because we’re Americans, and this is Lubbock, and those bastard Cuban UN troops can’t take us. So I drank some blood and blasted a double out to left and Barnes scored. Then Altuve died again? How does that shit happen? I thought he died in scene one? I walked one of ’em–Davis, is that a Cuban name, or Russian?–in the second, and gave up a single, but then Davis got thrown out at home, Altuve and Marwin screamed some shit at those MetroCubUNs and took out two with a double play. It was bad, man. I said to Altuve, man, they were people, how did it feel? “It was good,” he said.
SCENES THREE THROUGH SEVEN — STUFF HAPPENS
There’s a bunch of stuff happens for awhile, but us ASTROWOLVERINES are gritty and young and brave and we take the best stuff them MetroCubUNs can dish for the next 5 innings. I went straight through the third, but that Niese guy showed up again and he did the same. Then in the fourth this really badass Russian guy, Wrightagorsky, just blows a bomb to right and takes some of us out. It was ugly. But I got one of the Cubans, Valdespin, out swinging and Torres went down and we got through the inning still one run up. The fifth and sixth were three up three down, but the top of the seventh, Tyler Greene, who’d been kinda a chicken shit most of the game, gets really brave for this one scene and blows out 422 feet to left. It was great, man, we was cheering and shit, Snyder took some out with a double, and then Barnes took a bullet to get Snyder to third. It was all looking good, a man on third with one out, and I tell Martinez, look man, I can’t do this, you gotta do this, and Martinez went in for me and took a bullet. At least he went out swinging. Wesley Wright, who’s like the youngest and littlest guy in the ASTROWOLVERINES!, did all sorts of brave stuff in the seventh. I heard Colonel DeFrancesco talking to Wright at the end of the inning. “Son,” he said to Wright, “all that hate’s going to burn you up.” Wesley just glared: “it keeps me warm.”
SCENE EIGHT — WE TAKE OUT THE RUSSIAN GENERAL
We finally blow the Russian general Niese away in the eighth, and Pearce stole some stuff from them after a walk, but not much else happened. W Wright did some more stuff, but W Lopez finally killed off Wrightagorsky for the last out in the 8th. It was then we knew–we could beat these MetroCubUNs. I looked at the Colonel and asked, so this is the battlefield? He gave me his best steely stare, “it’s a real war, kid. It’s here everyday.”
SCENE NINE — THE PLAQUE
This chick shows up and reads from a plaque:
“In the early days of World War 3, guerillas – mostly children – placed the names of their lost upon this rock. They fought here alone and gave up their lives, so that the Astros should not perish from the earth.”