[Westheim]

One more detour, and then I'll let it be, because we won't agree.

I was a kid in the 90s. When I came home from kindergarten, I'd watch Wheel of Fortune, which taught me reading and basic algebra, and back then didn't pay out the $$$ won by the contestants in dosh, but in prizes. Each round would have one or more sponsors and a compendium of prizes the contestant could pick from up to the amount of his winnings. Grandfather explained to me why the companies would give out stuff for free on the show, so they could sell more stuff to other people who'd think to themselves, oh I want that shiny toaster for DM 150 as well. Give away a few toasters for free during the week, sell a hundred more in the store. Made perfect sense to me when I was five, and it still does. Why would it be any other way?

I don't know when you were a kid, but even the 1962 Mets announcers were clad in Rheingold jackets. And they had billboards around the perimeter of baseball fields as soon as they found out how to erect one vertically so it wouldn't crush the first outfielder that ran into it in pursuit of a fly ball before that, and probably some graffito advertising Marcus Antonius' freshest fish in the Circus Maximus before that. It makes too much sense not to. Everybody wins.

All that aside, the Mets are a lousy 5-5, and Carrasco and Marte had their heads caved in, one figuratively, and one literally. Oh, and here come the Padres.