Well, in helping my friend Wes complete his quest, we decided to take a quick jaunt down to Nationals Park to help him cross another one off of his list. He’s down to 5 with 2 easy ones and a tough scatter of 3 more. Since the Nationals were playing the Mets, it seemed like a win-win to catch a game there this weekend. Well, not really for me.

The Mets hit a new low, with John Lannan seeming to own them, facing the minimum through 7. In fact, he enticed the Mets into 5 double plays (a franchise record), 4 of them in a row in the 1st 4 innings. He pitched a complete game only giving up an unearned run in the 8th and faced only 3 over the minimum. But in the category of there’s always something new, there were a couple of very interesting events. First of all, the game time was 2 hours even. I’ll have to look back, but I can’t remember being to a game that was less than 2 hours, so this may have been the quickest game I have ever seen.

The other interesting was a 3-unassisted, 9-3-6 double play. With Luis Castillo on 1st, Emil Brown hit a ball to right field that Elijah Dukes trapped. Castillo turned back towards 1st and Brown passed him and was called out. Castillo touched 1st and then headed to 2nd. Dukes, from the seat of his pants through to Nick Johnson at 1st who threw to Cristiam Guzman who tagged out Castillo.

It was a tough loss and even a friendly concession stand worker got into the game. As I was wearing my David Wright jersey, there was no doubting where my loyalties were. With the score at 7-0 on my last visit to the stand she said (with a smile) that they were “giving us a sheelacking”. All was in fun and after all, she was right.

The trip was fun albeit a bit of a whirlwind. A 5+ hour drive to Washington, a 2 hour game almost as long to get from the game back to the hotel and then another 5+ hour drive back home.

The loss left the Mets 1-4 on a roadtrip that had them playing the Pirates and the Nationals. Not a good lead-in to a stretch that will have the Mets playing the Phillies, Yankees, Tampa Bay and St. Louis. Was this the low point of the season or the point of no return. Only time will tell.