If The 3 Year Anniversary Of Bartolo Colon's Home Run Vs. The Padres Doesn't Wake Up The Mets Bats In San Diego Tonight, Nothing Will

It’s no secret that I’m a big juju guy. Physical talent, mental preparation, and all that other nonsense are important for teams and players. But the X-Factor in the sports world is juju. Karma. Mojo. Or whatever other kind of word you want to use. That is especially the case in baseball where selling off a player to pay for a play or kicking out some asshole that brought his goat to the bar can curse your franchise for around a century. Aura and mystique were a true part of the old Yankee Stadium until Curt Schilling turned them into stripper punchlines and Jobu’s magic in Major League was the most accurate part of a movie that for my money is the best baseball, and perhaps sports, movie of all-time.

Which is why I sincerely believe if the location of the greatest home run in baseball history cannot wake up the Mets bats in the exact place where it happened exactly three years earlier, you might as well just pack up shop and prepare for the 2020 season.

The Baseball Gods took a break from buttfucking the Mets on that fateful night to touch Bartolo Colon’s bat and if the Mets can’t use whatever remaining fairy dust is still in the air to help Brandon Nimmo get to the right side of the Mendoza Line, get Robinson Cano his 2500th hit, or make Todd Frazier look like anything outside of a replacement player, they are truly fucked. Because any highlight that allowed the internet to unanimously celebrate together while also giving birth to this glorious call should be good for at least a crooked number in a game if not an inning on its anniversary day.

Even Padres fans are okay with Bartolo’s first and only career home run coming against their team.

I guess White Sox fans may have a gripe since they traded Tatis for Shields. But they are members of the unholy alliance known as the Sons of Uribe, so ultimately they should have been okay with the Colon home run anyway.

All these years later, I still cannot get over how great that moment was. The no-doubt-about-it contact, Gary Cohen cumming himself on live TV and the Mets somehow being ready to empty the dugout once Big Sexy completed his home run trot. Even the stats after the home run were as incredible as anything ever written about immortals like Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, or Tony Gwynn.

Sidenote, I bought this card the millisecond it went on sale and wouldn’t sell it even if Beckett had it listed for more than that Honus Wagner card.

Some things are bigger than baseball and the Bartolo Colon home run card is one. Hell, if we are being honest, that card may be more important to me than some of the living things in my house (anybody that listens to Podfathers can guess which one I’m referring to). So on a day where Bartolo Colon’s home run is being celebrated throughout the world, the Mets better be able to crack 5 runs for the first time in almost 10 days or else I will be loading Panic City into my phone’s GPS.

I’m sure we will dive deep into Big Bart’s home run on the next We Gotta Believe. But until then, here is today’s episode:

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