Patience.org

Losing 10 out of your last 17 games (and 6 of the last 7, all at home) isn’t going to put you in a good place no matter how good your lead is.

For you British folks, the Mets failure to win the National League East (and thus get into the playoffs, which eventually could lead to the World Series, where they could play the winner of the American League) it’s a bit like Fulham being 8 points clear with 3 games to go (we can dream) and fluffing the title. It’s that bad. Well sort of, it’s hard to compare.

Anyway, anyone for hockey?

Say it ain’t so. Our New York Mets are now only 1 game behind the Phillies and in grave danger of snatching defeat from the jaw of victory having led the National League East since mid-May.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about….it’s too complicated to explain right now. But we’ll know where we stand by Friday, I’d imagine. Suffice to say, the playoffs without the Mets will be painful to bear in our house.

As Keith Hernandez said tonight, in these situations, “you put your boots on and go out and play”. Boots at the ready.

After a few sessions a driving ranges in Erie PA, Maine, and most recently in Shawnee, PA, the lad expressed a preference for another ball-meets-swinging-thing sport; golf. His hand-eye coordination is great and he takes to all games where there’s a ball to be hit. So we booked him into Chelsea Piers’ junior golf program for one hour each Saturday, which started yesterday.

They let the kids have at it in terms of hitting the balls fo the first half hour or so (after cautioning them abut walking forward and falling off the top deck on to the one below, naturally) and gave them gentle coaching. Given it’s one of those Japanese systems where the next ball pops out of the ground as soon as you’ve hit one, he couldn’t beleive his luck in not having to reach down and place one on the tee each time.

Consequently he started hitting them as if he was in a baseball batting cage, with the club starting from behind his head (not easy to do but he managed it), before the coach stopped by and suggest some changes. The parents were strongly urged not to coach, merely to cheer lead, despite my temptation to point out this very basic facet of golf, i.e. it’s not basball. Oh well, I won parenting points from the coaches.

The results were two fold, he hit a lot of balls in one hour, 370 to be exact [Update: that can't be right, that's more than one a second! the next week he hit about 220, which is more like it, but still a helluva lot! The machine the first week must not have been set to zero.]:

Plus he ended up being able to finish his swing like this (he’s hitting balls towards New Jersey on the other side of the Hudson):

I think that’s one of my favorite pictures I’ve taken of him among the many thousands, despite its low quality due to it being with my phone. He’s a quick learner.

The boy came to my relatively new office the other day for the first time. It came time to go home and we started to walk when I realized it was getting a bit tight, time-wise for us to walk home. We saw a couple in a pedicab – New York’s equivalent of a rickshaw that have been around for a few years and are currently the subject of a licensing row. Anyway, we spotted one by the lights outside the Empire State Building at 34th & 5th and we jumped in.

The guy was Russian, having been in the country for about 9 months after living in San Francisco – not so good for cycling, too many hills and all that. Anyway he spotted the accent and us 2.5 Europeans were off through the streets at rush hour.

It was $15 plus tip to get home, about double a cab ride from the same spot, but more fun and a ride home he won’t forget for a long time.