We shan't be drawing any conclusions from the fact that the Mets have opened their season with three victories over the Washington Nationals, because the Nationals stink and what the heck are you supposed to learn from three games anyway? We shall, however, say one thing for certain: Buck Showalter knows how to give face.
On Saturday night, Nats pitcher Joan Adon lost his grip on a breaking ball that ended up rather harmlessly plunking Starling Marte in the leg. That's when the consummate professionals who were running the SNY broadcast decided to throw a camera on Showalter, zoom in as close as possible, and let it roll.
There's some backstory here, which is that Marte was the fifth Met to be hit by a pitch in the series. Any time five players on one team get plunked in a three games, it is almost certainly a sign that two teams are locked in an escalating war of bean balls. That wasn't the case here, though, as it appears the only reason five Mets got smoked by errant pitches over the course of three games is that the damn Nationals can't throw the ball straight. That is perhaps an even more annoying reason than usual red-assness to get plunked, so you can understand Showalter blowing a gasket after Francisco Lindor caught a fastball to the face in the second game of the series.
Showalter's mood seems to have undergone quite a shift between Game 2 and Game 3, and so we must appreciate not just the expressive power of his "Can you fucking believe this?" face, but also his ability to let things go. There's no sense in letting yourself get spitting mad over something you can't control, whether it be your cat puking on the rug for the third time in one day, or an ill-equipped major-league pitching staff slinging incompetent fastballs all over the place. So the next time you find yourself confronted by such frustrations, don't yell and scream. Be like Buck.
