“The Curse of the Parakeet”
By What’s it like to be a Mets fan? At the moment, it’s fantastic — the best young rotation in the league even absent two studs in Matz and Wheeler, a lineup that can feature eight players who can actually hit, and even guarded optimism that Wright is on the mend — so it stands to reason that announcers Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez are spent time playing amateur ornithologists and embarking on SNY-sponsored parakeet watches:
KEITH: There it is, it’s on the backstop!
GARY: Where do you belong, little parakeet?
KEITH: He’s a long way from home.
GARY: If you’ve just come home work and are missing a yellow parakeet, we know where it is.
KEITH: It’s on the backstop!
(PARAKEET flies away after a foul ball) KEITH: Where’s the parakeet? GARY: It’s gone now.
KEITH: There it is! It’s over to the right. Tell Dave to hell with what’s on the field, show the damn parakeet.
During the following game — in which newly acquired outfielder Cespedes could be seen sporting a bright yellow batting sleeve and matching necklace — the Coors Light Cold Hard Facts came to you courtesy of:
As soon as the graphic appeared on screen, Gary and Keith were off again, noting the number of critical tweets and emails they’d received about their alleged misidentification of the “Rally Parakeet,” which was to the eyes of some viewers clearly a “Rally Canary.” Keith insisted that he’d kept parakeets as a child and that it was a parakeet, while Gary did what play-by-play announcers are wont to do and held up his hands as if to say, “I’m just telling you what people are saying, Keith.”
Because the Mets won again in thrilling fashion, however, the issue could not go unaddressed, so when the team went down 1-0 in the top of the first inning of the next game, Gary said it might be time to break out the “Rally Canary” early and the director — the aforementioned “Dave” — immediately cut to a series of shots of people around Citi Field wearing or in possession of bright yellow paraphernalia and Keith couldn’t take it anymore:
He said in English, of course, and suggested that if people continue to refer to it as a “Rally Canary” it would lose whatever magical properties it possessed. The Mets eventually tied the game, but Parnell gave up two runs in the top of the tenth.
Down 2-1 in the bottom of the tenth, Lagares doubled and moved to third on a wild pitch. When Granderson drove him in with a sacrifice fly, Gary opined “maybe there’s something to this ‘Rally Canary'” and Keith audibly sighed when Cepedes struck out swinging and Uribe grounded out to third.
The post-game wrap-up is not included in MLB.tv, so I don’t know what was said, but if it didn’t consist of Keith repeatedly saying “I told you so” I’d be very disappointed.
If this team doesn’t make the postseason, we’re going to be talking about “The Curse of the Parakeet” for many sad years, I fear.