Back To Your Regularly Scheduled Programming

Alright everyone, you can stop worrying. I'm back in the U.S., we can all breath sighs of relief, the world is back to normal. You'll have to excuse the lack of updating over the last three weeks, but as I mentioned before leaving, I was busy running around Europe for a while. Over an 18 day stretch that ended with an interesting 24-hour period in which I dragged a 25-pound bag of chocolate through four countries, I saw five countries, 11 cities, some 25 museums, 20 Cathedrals and spent more money in ATM fees than I'd really like to admit.

Naturally, as you can imagine, this trip left me somewhat out of the loop as far as the sports world is concerned though I kept as regular tabs as I could on the major things, namely the Women's World Cup, the NFL lockout resolution (which, if you pay attention to logic, should have been no surprise whatsoever), the Mets and the Carlos Beltran trade. At least those were the events important to me. So in between my attempts to figure out how screwed I would be on the exchange rate if the U.S. debt talks continued to go south, whatever twitter could tell me is whatever I got.

But what I want to talk to you about is a particularly interesting phenomenon that I experienced on Sunday night, July 17, and that was the experience of watching the United States in a national sporting event among fellow citizens in a foreign country. You with me? I speak of course about the positively brutal experience that was watching the U.S. Women come up short in the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup. For a while I had started to believe the Women's World Cup might be a defining aspect of the trip in general. Sitting in the Airport in Boston I saw the U.S. take an early 1-0 lead in its quarterfinal against Brazil and then boarded a plane. Then I landed in Philadelphia, walked off the plane and right up to a sports bar as this thing happened.



Not that I want to tell any sort of tales out of school, and I don't want to give the impression that I'm a soccer expert by any means, but that just may have been the most dramatic moment in a American soccer that I've seen -- and maybe ever -- which is a tough slot to take given Landon Donovan's amazing goal a year ago and the U.S.'s dramatic penalty kick-victory over China in the 1999 Women's World Cup Final. With the eventual win in penalty kicks against Brazil to move on I was in an upbeat mood on my way to Europe (though a disastrous plane experience would change that) and I knew there was a chance I'd have to watch the U.S. potentially win the World Cup while on Germany soil.

I was in Berlin the night of the Final, not in Frankfurt where the game was being played -- and I would have bought tickets if I were -- but I and my cadre of American cohorts numbering a total of four found an American bar in the ground floor of a Belushi's hostel in northeast Berlin off the Rosa-Luxemburg Platz U-Bahn stop to watch the game in hopes we would be among friends, or at least countrymen. For the most part, this went off without a hitch as we were indeed among Americans, many sitting in chairs in front of a big projection screen, and we managed to snag a booth with our own TV. To boot, the beer and food were stunningly cheap for Europe, though hamburgers in Germany have a bizarre, overseasoned meatloaf-like quality to them.

What we saw was, for the most part, a dominant display of chances, goal posts and an awful lot of bad luck for the U.S., but we thought we had finally reached our deliverance when Alex Morgan finally slotted the Americans ahead in the second half. This, understandably, brought up many cheers in the bar, and some camaraderie among the patrons, but what was interesting was that when Japan would equalize, there were more cheers coming from around the bar. Were they Japanese this might have been understandable, but it was actually a group of Brazilians who had gathered to watch Brazil's men's team face off with Paraguay in Copa America. After Wambach's extra time header put the U.S. ahead again there was more cheering, which was responded to by even more cheering from the Brazilians after Japan's dramatic equalizer four minutes from time.

Whether the Brazilians were doing this out of vengeance for the quarterfinal loss or pure schadenfreude I couldn't say, but when Japan stunned the world by taking the championship in penalty kicks, thanks in no small part due to the U.S.'s shocking difficulties from the penalty spot, there was uproar from one side of the bar, and it wasn't ours. It is a sobering feeling. One that is particularly unique when you're in a highly charged group of several nations in a foreign country. With alcohol. I had been looking forward to the moment of watching that game all week in hopes that we would drunkenly be singing the Star Spangled Banner through the streets of Mitte, but it wasn't meant to be. And being in a place that wasn't decidedly friendly to your jingoist sporting aims was an unusual experience.

We got a measure of some revenge when Brazil dropped its own penalty kick showdown to a lesser foe, and considering they didn't even cash in on one spot kick, one American patron casually pointed out that the American Women's team must be better than Brazil's men's team. We cheered obnoxiously to each foul-up, attempting to deliver the same cruelty, rewarding hubris, but for me the same zeal was not there. I don't generally take the same joy in the pain of others -- unless they play in Philadelphia I suppose -- but even then it's not out of joy so much as relief that I won't have to hear about the conquests of a foe.

It was a new sporting experience for me, and while it will stick out prominently, it won't define the trip -- there were dozens of other great, positive experiences. But that might have made the trip just a little bit better.

As for the Mets, some of you may have noticed the last blog post I wrote where I described how the Mets always seem to do well when I'm in Europe. Prior to my trip they were 16-2 all time when I was on the mainland continent. They did not repeat the success this time around, or at least not to the same lengths. The Amazins were 7-6 while I was on European soil, which is not terribly impressive, but still a winning record nonetheless. The far bigger news was the Mets playing for the future (though as of today they've won five straight and are only 6.5 back of the Wild Card) by sending Carlos Beltran to the San Francisco Giants.

Supposedly, Zack Wheeler, the prospect received in the deal, has the potential to be a solid Major League starter, but watching Beltran go is an odd feeling for some of us. His legacy will inextricably be linked with Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS, a game that featured the greatest defensive play in franchise history, but also Beltran striking out looking on an impossible curveball to end the game. To much of the fanbase this has made him look like a whimpy disappointed who couldn't deliver on his seven-year $119 million contract. But lost in that is that during his tenure as a Met he made four All-Star Games (including both his first and last season with the team), won three Gold Gloves, two Silver Sluggers and finished fourth in MVP voting the same year he struck out to end New York's World Series dream. As a Met he hit .280, had a .369 OBP and an .835 OPS.

In short, he was the most underappreciated player in the franchise's history, almost entirely because of one strikeout, which, ironically, happened in his finest year with the team. One day, Mets fans will realize how lucky they had it.

Now that you've all stopped reading, I will leave you with one final note. I like Aussie Rules Football, and in particular, I like a team called Geelong FC, or the Geelong Cats. They are pretty good, having won two of the last four AFL Grand Finals, most recently in 2009 when they beat St. Kilda, 80-68. Last night, or early this morning, more accurately, they played Melbourne, a team not quite as good as them. Geelong won, but that wasn't surprising. What might have been surprising is that they outscored Melbourne by 114 points.

In the first half.



Yeah, you read that right. Most of you, I know, have no real grasp of just how many points that is since you don't watch much Aussie Rules Football, but let's try to hammer out a rough equivalent to the final score which was 233-47. Granted, this was the second-highest halftime margin and fifth-highest total score in the League's history, but that doesn't quite do justice to the dominance. AFL is somewhat more prone to high wild scores than American sports but not quite on this level. So for Geelong to beat Melbourne 233-47, were this American football let's take a guess at what it would be like. My guess is that you'd be looking at something like the Giants beating, oh, let's say the Browns, by a rip-roaring score of 140-10. Or perhaps it would be like the Marlins falling to the Mets 35-1. It's that kind of dominance.

I doubt we'll ever see anything quite like it in American sports, but perhaps we can hope. In the interim, now that I'm back in the States, I'll be watching for it. At least until the next Women's World Cup when I might leave the country again. Fortunately, that one is only in Canada.

Scotty Doesn't Know

As many of you know, and really considering how much I've talked about it as all of you should know, I will be going to Europe tomorrow for my first hop across the pond in five years and my first wild youthful-indiscretion filled backpacking trip, well, ever. As a result, I've basically been playing the movie Eurotrip in my head for the last several days and quoting some of my favorite lines in it like, "You brought a guide book to a party?" and "I saw a gay porno once. I didn't know it until halfway in. The girls never came. The girls never came!" And to think, the only reason I saw the movie when it came out was because it was the only one playing after Starsky and Hutch that we could sneak into.

Oh college.

In any event, this wild whirlwind trip will take me through Rotterdam, Antwerp, the Hague, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Munich, Aachen and Brussels in roughly two and a half weeks, so I'm going to be out of the loop a little bit and sparsely updating here if at all.

But that's not the real concern that is weighing on all of our minds. The real concern, obviously, is "How will Dave's wild Eurotrip impact his favorite baseball team, the New York Mets?" It's a question we've asked ourselves for ages, with great minds often going mad in the process. In fact, it was St. Thomas Aquinas who at one point said, "A Met has free choice to the extent that he is rational," which one has to assume that the Amazins and myself, really, operate independently of one another.

However, a look at some of the evidence argues otherwise. See in my last few entries I noted this impending concern by expressing relief that I won't be in the U.S. to see what I can only assume is likely to be the Mets' inevitable downfall and tumble in the wild card standings. After all, I had mostly mentally checked out before this season began expecting an 82-win season at best (which is about what they're on pace for at the moment), but that doesn't take into account how well they've played over the last month and since the first 18 games in particular, which would indicate an increasing rate of productivity and wins. Essentially, their likely win output over a broader sample size is hampered by their horrendous start, but if we take a derivative of the data set, we'll see that the rate in change in the function when X=July 9 is obviously much higher than it was on April 16.



Did I lose you? I got all calculus-y on you for a second. It's been a few years. Essentially, what I'm saying is the increased rate of change means that if they continue to improve exponentially, they're likely to win more than 82 games. Unless this is a parabolic function. I think. I was a history major, what do you want from me.

I'm getting off track.

Here is the key information you need to know. I was wondering if I stood a chance to miss out on the Mets' season free fall by being in Europe but if the past is any indication that chance seems... not so likely. This will be the third time I have traveled to mainland Europe. My first trip was in April of 2000 when I went to France with Madame Said's French class in 9th grade. The second was in April and May of 2006 when as a junior in college I went to an academic conference in Metz, France and Saarbrucken, Germany to discuss Germany's national identity at the 1936 Berlin Olympics as compared to the 1972 Munich Olympics.

If you're a Mets fan the years 2000 and 2006 should clearly stick out to you as the last two times the Mets went to the NLCS, in the case of 2000 they reached the World Series and in 2006 they should have (and I'm convinced would have won the whole thing if they did). Of course those teams were far better than the one playing now, but here's the real question. How did the Mets do exactly while I was in Europe?

I don't remember the exact dates of my trip in 2000, but I do know that every morning I went to a news stand to get a copy of the International Herald Tribune so I could see the score of the Mets game and every day they seemed to win. In fact, over the nine days I was in Europe, the Mets won nine games.

In 2006, my trip took me to Europe from April 25 to May 4, and if we glance at the Mets' schedule that season we find that they went 7-2 over that span.

So essentially, in the 18 days I've spent on mainland Europe, the New York Mets are a combined 16-2, good for a sparkling .888 winning percentage. I'm about to double those 18 days and I guess we'll see if the Mets can double that impressive mark. I'm assuming they probably won't but all in all a man can dream -- particularly since going 13-2 in the 15 games they'll play while I'm out of the country will seriously thrust them into the middle of the Wild Card, and possibly divisional, race. And that would be something wholly unexpected when the season began.

If it happens, I think it's pretty clear they'll have me to thank.

Enjoy the rest of your July everyone. I'll try my best to check in while I'm prancing around Europe. If I don't, you can be sure I'll write a follow-up to see if my trip actually helped the Mets chase a pennant.