The 2017 baseball season convinced me that there is a horrible little gremlin who lives in a garbage-laden ditch next to the Grand Central Parkway in Flushing. He luxuriates in the cold winter winds off the bay; he is soothed by the unfettered, ear-splitting scream of turbojet engines; he collects broken hubcaps and rotting banana peels and jagged lids from discarded tin cans. He hates the Mets.
It is to this gremlin that I attribute the impossible succession of major injuries to nearly every “impact” New York Met in 2017. I just know in my bones that this foul little beast has a faded Mets voodoo doll in its filthy lair; and I know that it scrawled the names of all the players it intended to fell this year, and that it delighted in wrecking seasons, jeopardizing careers, and torturing Mets fans.