*Note: The Mets did trade Francisco Rodriguez to Milwaukee last night, however the author has taken “artistic liberties” with pretty much every other detail in this story, for entertainment purposes.
Late last night, as the National League was closing out their second consecutive All-Star Game victory in Phoenix, the Mets were working on a trade that nobody would care about. At around 11:30 pm, as Mets fans were going to bed with visions of home-field advantage in the World Series dancing around in their heads, the Mets completed a trade sending beloved closer/designer eyeglass model Francisco Rodriguez to the Milwaukee Brewers.
Rodriguez, who is nicknamed “K-Rod” for reasons that must have been apparent in an alternate timeline and on a completely different coast, was traded for two players to be named later. Although the exact details of the trade were not immediately disclosed, insider sources close to the Mets organization have told me that Rodriguez was traded to Milwaukee for a 12-pack of Miller Lite and advance tickets to Friday’s opening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. When reached for comment, Mets manager Terry Collins declined to speak about the terms of the trade, but did say that “those tickets are really hard to find right now.”
The trade will reportedly free up over $17 million in salary, which, according to Mets GM Sandy Alderson, will be used “for something a little more useful, like Season 4 of The Wire on Blu-Ray, a couple of jet-skis and about $16 million worth of Applebee’s gift cards.”
Over the brief course of his Mets career, Francisco Rodriguez was responsible for closing games for a Mets team that may have been better off with that kid from the movie Rookie of the Year on the mound in the 9th inning of close games. Although there is no direct evidence of this, Rodriguez’s fascinatingly gut-wrenching history of blown saves and his penchant for putting the leadoff hitter on base pretty much every time he entered a game, has caused no fewer than 16 divorces in the New York tri-state area.
One such victim of this odd phenomenon, Greg Santoro from Corona, NY, remembers the night everything fell apart for him.
“The Mets were up by two runs going into the 9th, I forgot who they were playing, but K-Rod came in and gave up the lead without even getting a single out. I threw my Armando Benitez bobblehead at the TV, shattered the screen, woke my daughter up and my wife just decided that she’d had enough with all the screaming every night. I tried to tell her that it was K-Rod’s fault. Now I only have weekend visitation rights. I hate you K-Rod.”
Greg’s case, however tragic, is a rare example of the extreme end of the spectrum of emotions Mets fans experienced in the K-Rod Era. Upon hearing about last night’s trade, most Mets fans were devoid of any noticeable reaction.
Martin Weinstein, from Washington Heights, was one of those fans.
When told about the trade, he stared off into the distance for a good 12 seconds before responding. His eyes were empty and dark. “Eh.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe they’ll have a water burial for him in Flushing Bay, like Osama.” Those were the only words he spoke. When I told him that K-Rod was not dead but traded, he looked down and walked away.
Rodriguez, who was perhaps more famous for getting into a physical altercation with his girlfriend’s father at the end of the last season, than for anything he did on the field, was maybe one of the most cherished players in Mets history. His 23 saves in the first half of this season led the league in the category of Most Saves by a Closer Who Always Emphatically Points to God After Getting a Save Despite Loading the Bases in a One-Run Game. This category, which contains only Francisco Rodriguez, John Rocker and perhaps Kyle Farnsworth at one point in his career, is not recognized by the Elias Sports Bureau.
Last night, as Rodriguez boxed up his belongings at his locker in an empty Citi Field clubhouse, a detached Mr. Met watched from the corner of the room, his giant baseball head resting in his hands. GM Sandy Alderson walked over to the closer and placed one hand on his shoulder, saying something I could not quite make out from the distance, before walking away towards Collins’ office.
When asked how he felt about the abrupt end of the K-Rod Era, Mr. Met did not answer. Apparently, he doesn’t speak. However, he did pull out a t-shirt gun and shoot a complimentary Mets t-shirt at a velocity that, frankly, I wasn’t really comfortable with at the distance I was standing from him. I ducked and the t-shirt hit the wall of the clubhouse, crumpling to the floor silently. Was it a metaphor for the sudden demise of the K-Rod Era? Probably not. But it was poetic all the same.
And somewhere out there in the world, in a place where past Mets closers congregate together in an old-timey Western-style saloon, Billy Wagner and Braden Looper smiled.
Last night, despite the paltry Sunday night crowd of just a shade over 21,000 that showed up to Citi Field for a nationally televised home game, you could barely make out a chant of “Don’t Trade Reyes” that made its way around the park sometime during the 4th inning. It was right after Reyes drove in Ruben Tejada to give the Mets a 5-0 lead, and several innings before Frankie Rodriguez gave up a 9th inning bomb to Diory Hernandez that landed on the runway at LaGuardia.
Trying to accurately assess a Major League baseball team after one game is about as fruitless as trying to predict the future occupation of a toddler. In other words, we’re much better off just waiting for things to naturally develop and take shape before we start throwing around assumptions. In a 162-game season, Opening Day is nothing but a mere drop in the ocean, and so as much as I enjoyed yesterday’s nice, stress-free Opening Day win, I’m not doing any back-flips yet.
