A Mets Fan’s Guide To The Windy City

The Mets are in Chicago today, up two games to none over the Cubs in the NLCS.

I’ve been to Chicago a few times. They have a nice art museum there, not like the Met of course, it would be like a small section of the Met, but it’s nice. Lots of old brick buildings and even an “El” train … just the one though, it’s quaint. The food is ok but the pizza is crap. Jon Stewart put it best, it’s like tomato soup in a bread bowl … you can’t fold it, which is crap.

They put onions on hot dogs — raw onions so you get bad breath — which is helpful as it reinforces a safe personal space between you and the seemingly endless number of drunk guys going on about Da Bears. My dad showed me how you can run onions through a potato slicer and simmer them with equal parts ketchup and mustard to more or less make exactly the delicious onions street vendors slather on hot dogs in New York… Raw onions are crap … like the Cubs outfield. Cespedes can throw further than Fowler underhanded,  and Schwarber looks like Conforto after a month long “super size me” diet.

And as for this idea that uber-geek Joe Maddon is some sort of baseball Merlin, well, wouldn’t you know it, turns out Terry Collins isn’t as big a handicap as previously thought. See, all the reality-bending mind-boggling permutations that Terry Collins has driven Mets fans bonkers with over the past few years are in fact a perfect match for playoff baseball … who would have thunk it? So even Maddon is no longer really an advantage vs. this new totally out of control hamster-wheel-off-its-hinges Terry Collins.

One thing you do have to watch out for in Chicago is a thing called “the loop.” At first I imagined maybe it was a roller coaster or some sort of giant particle accelerator built under the city, but it’s not, it’s just a bunch of toll-ways where you get hopelessly bogged down and you have to keep throwing handfuls of quarters into baskets to pay for the privilege of not going anywhere any time soon. I thought traffic jams in N.Y. were bad, jeez … Chicago traffic is so bad it’s like a black hole, time and space are warped in a sort of temporal vortex, a loop if you will. Speaking of, the Cubs have been producing lots of loops of their own trying to hit Harvey and Syndergaard. Perhaps they were thinking they were up against the pre-trade deadline Mets, maybe they didn’t get the memo …

Now if you insist on visiting Chicago, and some of you may, you have to be especially careful about the otherworldly convenience stores on the outskirts of the traffic loop. These are places where dazed and weary travelers converge to partake in being ripped off on horrible roller machine cheddarwurst and tar-sands coffee. You have to be careful not to lose your cool and you have to stay alert — see all the other customers have just been through the traffic vortex as well and they are equally cranky, and probably armed. So I placed two greasy wieners in a cardboard bowl with some raw onions and catsup … no buns (I’m gluten free – wheat makes me narcoleptic) … Anyway, I needed a fork and a knife to eat the franken-horrors and when I explained this to the store worker he said they didn’t have plastic knives. I’d finally had enough, I lost it.

“How can you not have plastic knives?” I yelled … “What kind of convenience store doesn’t have plastic knives? I mean what are you thinking, I can save on my utensil budget by not having knives? What are you supposed to cut food with?”

“I’m sorry sir,” He replied. “Maybe if you treated me like a human being I would be more understanding of your wheat problem.”

Yes folks that was actually his response – you see these loopy “outskirters” have warped social skills as a result of their location on the fringes of traffic nightmare …

“Like a human? How am I not treating you like a human? I’m using words right? I’m not grunting like a gorilla, obviously I’m treating you like a human? What kind of thing is that to say? I just want a plastic knife for crying out loud!”  (That was my actual response).

He just kept apologizing and walked away. I ended up eating the hot dogs with two forks in the parking lot like some kind of Neanderthal … that’s Chicago for you, crappola with raw onions.

Anyway that’s about the extent of what you have to watch out for in Chicago … oh yeah and the weather is crap too, they get bone rattling wind off dreary giant lake and there really isn’t anything interesting once you get beyond the city limits … In fact, just outside of Chicago is where you realize that Chicago is in the Midwest and is similar to places like Milwaukee only without the awesome custom of serving up free beer when they get your order wrong in restaurants (which they almost always do).

So you have to feel good about the Mets in this contest against the Cubs, especially as the Mets just got through Kershaw and Greinke and now Lester and Arrieta … Have you seen the back end of the Cubs rotation? It’s like some sort of globulous nondescript lake Michigan flotsam … something you might poke at with a stick … Ew.

And give me a break with the Wrigley Field nonsense, Chicago fans interfere with their own team’s play! The Mets not only have home field advantage, they have the only home venue where in the event things get ugly and you somehow escape the ring of rabid fans as an opposing player, you still have the toxic Flushing peatland to get through … there really is no escape. I mean just looking at Lester the other night on the mound in Queens, he looked like he’d just been accidentally outed from the witness protection program (Arrieta looked like a young Gorton’s fisherman who’d just run his trawler into a Murphburg). In Chicago it’s simple — make it through the traffic without flipping out when you realize that your children are older than you and you’re pretty much in the clear.

The Cubs aren’t going to beat the Mets in the NLCS, not after dropping the first two in N.Y., it’s just not going to happen. They’d have to take four of five from this Mets rotation … good luck with that Chicago. The odds of one or more Mets pitchers throwing a gem are simply too great. Particularly since they seem to be throwing one gem after another. Also, I don’t see any indication that their curse has been lifted and I should know, I’m Greek, my dad used to work in a restaurant, and I’ve eaten goat — my Grandpa even owned a few live ones back in the old country, just like Daniel Murphy owns Arrieta and Lester. Yeah I think I’ll be watching the pitching-heavy NY Mets pound the stuffing out of the Cubs in game three tomorrow night over a nice salad with some goat cheese — I’d say that should totally seal the deal.