The Early Shift: Mouse TV

Hello. While on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, who is not named Derek Jr., but who will henceforth be referred to as Derek Jr. You can read all of the entries here.

May 18
The summer after my wife and I moved in together, we had a mouse in our apartment. We set traps everywhere we could think to put them, but no matter what kind of traps or bait I used, the mouse wanted nothing to do with them. After a couple days, I got desperate. I wanted to figure out exactly where the mouse was getting in so that I could close up the gap to keep it out. Failing that, I wanted to figure out where it was going so that I could set traps in the right places. So I propped up an iPad against the arm of the couch with its camera pointed at the kitchen, called it on FaceTime from my laptop, and brought the laptop into the bedroom and closed the door. Then I sat quietly, stared at my kitchen from the other room, and waited for the mouse to show up. Even as I was setting everything up, I recognized it as an act of madness. But it worked.

I didn’t glean much that first day. If I recall correctly, the mouse did eventually show up, but it turned out that the iPad didn’t have a good angle on its movements. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from or where it was going, only that it crossed the kitchen a time or two. Convinced that the concept was sound and the execution could be improved upon, I tried it again the next day. My wife was off work, so I explained that I needed her to hole up in the bedroom with me. She recognized it as an act of madness too, but she found it hilarious. She dubbed it Mouse TV, and she understandably shrieked when the mouse finally showed up. We watched and stifled our laughter as it nosed around the kitchen. It took a couple more days of Mouse TV to figure out where the mouse was coming from, plug the hole, and make sure that the mouse wasn’t coming back. My wife was tickled the whole time. Whereas I felt embarrassed and vaguely unclean about having a rodent in my home, she’d tell the story of Mouse TV to anyone who could listen. It has, somehow, become a fond memory.

I bring all of this up because my wife and I have a new screen to stare at all the time. A baby monitor is a dangerous thing for a new parent. Every time you hear your baby make a sound (or every time you think you hear you baby make a sound), you can check the video screen looking for trouble. Then you ask yourself whether you should run in and solve all the baby’s problems. At the beginning, the answer is always yes. We’re still learning to use it responsibly, to let it reduce our anxiety rather than give our anxiety a whole new field to frolic in. In the beginning, my wife and I were terrified of SIDS. A dozen times night, we’d pull up the video and zoom all the way in on Derek Jr.’s chest until we were sure she was breathing. We still do that, but we’re probably down to three or four checks now.

Tonight, though, the monitor is just fun. Well, not at first. First we play the pacifier game. Sometimes, Derek Jr. can’t get down to sleep without a pacifier. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that, except that the pacifier will eventually fall out while she’s asleep. If she’s not sleeping deeply, then the loss of the pacifier will wake her up, and she won’t get back to sleep — not anytime soon, anyway. She’ll just keep hunting for the pacifier with her mouth, and eventually she’ll get frustrated and start crying and trying to break out of the swaddle, and she’ll wake up all the way and we’ll have to start putting her down to sleep all over again. In order to avoid that, we need to be on call for a while, ready to run back in and replace the pacifier should we see on the monitor that it has fallen out. (I feel confident that anybody who writes parenting books would recoil in horror at this practice. Sorry. We’re doing the best we can.)

Eventually, Derek Jr. will get into a deep enough sleep that losing the pacifier won’t wake her up. It still could, though. It all depends on what happens when it lands on the sheet. It has an irregular shape, so it bounces unpredictably. If it lands in such a way that it bounces back into her face, it’ll wake her up. If it bounces away from her, then you’re in the clear. Sometimes the pacifier ends up wedged under her face, and it doesn’t bother her at the moment, but it’s just a matter of time. It’s all a bit dicey, so we avoid putting her down with a pacifier if we can help it. Last night, my wife put her to sleep without a pacifier, but she spit up after a few minutes, which woke her up, and the only way to keep her asleep in the crib was to give her the pacifier, which started the whole delicate dance. Tonight is another pacifier night, so we’re on alert.

I put the Mets-Nationals game on the television, and my wife finishes up her dinner while I watch the monitor. Every time the pacifier falls out, I leap up, flit into Derek Jr.’s room, and replace it. After half an hour or so, Derek Jr. falls asleep and stays asleep. But my wife and I are hooked on the monitor. We’re no longer watching it out of concern. We’re just watching our baby do all the hilarious baby things she does when she’s transitioning from a light sleep to a deep sleep.

When she’s all wrapped up in her cream-colored swaddle – and not yet in the shallow-breathing deep sleep phase that looks on the monitor so terrifyingly indistinguishable from the stillness of death – her whole bundled body seems to rise and fall with each breath. She fills up the screen a little more, then a little less, making the space around her contract, then expand; sometimes it feels like the whole screen is breathing. The pacifier bounces up and down when she sucks on it, and sometimes she sounds exactly like Maggie Simpson. Expressions flit across her face. It’ll seem like she’s smiling for a second. Sometimes she’ll frown, and her whole face will wrinkle up around the pacifier. Maybe she twitches one of her tightly wrapped arms, or kicks her legs up a little bit, sending the tassel of loose fabric below her feet into a light shimmy. She’ll fall into a slightly deeper sleep, and the pacifier will just start to dangle out of her mouth, then, all of a sudden, she’ll slurp it back in. It’s all so adorable, and after spending so long analyzing her in minute detail, the absurdity of the exercise begins to overtake us.

Once my wife finishes eating, we find ourselves huddled together on the couch, leaning together until our heads touch just above the four-inch tall monitor, cackling at each little adjustment, each little microfrown, each time the pacifier dangles, dangles, dangles, then shoop!, pops back into her mouth. Suddenly, my wife realizes that we’ve been here before. “It’s Mouse TV!” she exclaims.

Eventually, my wife gets ready for bed. I stay put on the couch with the monitor. Derek Jr. is asleep and it’s still relatively early. I should go to bed too, but I figure I’ll watch the end of the game. It has been pretty ugly so far. The Nats have made three errors, and had Daylen Lile not faceplanted spectacularly rounding third base back in the third inning, they would have had the lead the whole time. But it’s close and it’s entertaining, so as long as Derek Jr. is sleeping, I’m happy to keep watching, and I’ll get to sleep whenever I get to sleep.

At 9 p.m., Derek Jr. is stirring again. Stirring, in this sense, is one of those words we never used to use before we had a baby. It feels archaic; the only time you ever hear it is in “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” But now we say it all the time. We never used to use adjectives like “fussy” or “gassy.” We rarely talked about “soothing” and never about “rooting,” and we definitely didn’t use the phrase “giant dump” quite so often. Anyway, right now, ‘tis the top of the seventh, and all through the house, one creature is stirring on Mouse TV. From the way she’s moving, it looks like she’ll be up any minute, which would be perfect timing. I’ll feed her, rock her, and have her down to bed by 10. I’ll be able to go to sleep at my normal bedtime. What a coup that would be.

Naturally, it doesn’t come to pass. Our little mouse doesn’t stir enough to wake herself up. She settles back into a deeper sleep, then stirs again, then settles, then stirs, then settles. She just stays in this interstitial phase for much, much longer than usual. I don’t mind. She’s still getting sleep. The game is close enough, and there’s plenty going on. Bo Bichette homers in the top of the seventh to put the Mets ahead 5-3, but the Nationals cut the lead back down to one in the bottom of the inning, loading the bases with a double and two walks, and driving in the run with a sac fly. Every couple minutes, I’m sure that Derek Jr. is about to wake up, and I get ready to hop off the couch and scoop her up from the crib. Then she settles right back down.

The game follows the same pattern. Things get exciting, then they settle back down, then they get exciting again. In the bottom of the eighth, the Nats tie it up with a James Wood single and a Curtis Mead double. Then Orlando Ribalta, a genuine bright spot in the dismal Nationals bullpen, settles things back down in the top of the ninth. He came into the game with a 2.25 ERA and a 1.85 FIP, and he shows why, inducing three straight groundouts and giving his offense the chance to walk it off. Once again, the Nationals offense stirs. Luke Weaver allows a leadoff single and a hit-by-pitch, putting the winning run on second base with one out, then he settles down and retires the side.

The game lasts more than four hours, and it gets increasingly drunk. Bichette leads off the 10th inning by driving a deep fly ball into the right field corner. Wood tracks it all the way into foul territory, spins off the side wall, and gets the ball back into the infield, but the zombie runner has tagged up and advanced to third. The Nationals intentionally walk Juan Soto. All the Mets need to do is put the ball in play without grounding into a double play, and they’ll have the lead. Naturally, Mark Vientos hits a sharp grounder directly at the second baseman. He and Soto are out by a combined 60 feet, and the game stays tied at five.

Needing only one run to win it in the bottom of the 10th, the Nationals bunt the zombie runner over to third. The Mets nearly lose the game right there. The bunt goes to the pitcher, so Vientos, the first baseman, retreats back to the bag, unaware that he’s now standing just three feet in front of second baseman Marcus Semien, who is already covering the bag. Somehow, Semien catches the throw despite being completely screened by the larger Vientos. The Mets intentionally walk Wood, then convene a very long, very populous mound meeting to decide how to handle Mead.

Whatever they say seems to destabilize Huascar Brazobán. The right-hander completely loses the zone, walking Mead to load the bases for Nasim Nuñez. It’s a great spot for Nuñez, whose elite speed makes him difficult to double up. As long as he doesn’t hit it right at somebody, he’ll win the game. First, though, he needs to take a couple pitches, because Brazobán looks so lost that he might just save the Nationals the trouble and send the winning run in himself with a walk or a wild pitch. Of course, Nuñez does none of that. He hits the first pitch right at Vientos, who goes home for the force out. CJ Abrams strikes out swinging, and the Nationals, who had a runner on second with no outs, then a runner on third with one out, then runners on first and third with one out, then the bases loaded with one out, end up with nothing at all.

The game gets weirder. In the 11th inning, the Mets’ zombie runner scores on back-to-back sacrifice flies, while the Nationals’ scores on back-to-back grounders. We’ve gone from 5-5 to 6-6, and the game goes on. In the 12th inning, after more than an hour of teetering, the game finally topples into madness. The Mets decide to play for one run in the top of the inning. Instead, they end up with 10. After sacrificing the zombie runner to third base, they string together two singles and an intentional walk. They’re now up, 7-6, and Vidal Bruján, who came into the game as a pinch-runner earlier, is up with the bases loaded. He has made four plate appearances this year. He is not prepared to hit in this situation. So even though the infield is in and the bases are loaded, he squares to bunt for a hit. He pops it up. It should be the disastrous, rally-murdering mistake that shifts the momentum and propels the Nationals to victory in the bottom of the 12th. Instead, the ball drops just in front of a diving Paxton Schultz, and everybody’s safe.

Schultz allows two more singles. It all happened so fast. One minute, the Nationals had just tied the game back up and had all the momentum. Now they’re down by five runs, and after all those hours and all those ups and downs, they’re throwing in the towel. They bring third baseman Jorbit Vivas in to pitch, and he does about as well as Schultz did. Vivas gives up four more hits and five more runs before the inning mercifully comes to an end. The game is over, right? The score is 16-6. It has to be over. Except the Mets bring in Craig Kimbrel. It’s as if they’re begging the baseball gods to send this game to a 13th inning. I log onto Bluesky for a minute because I suspect Mets fans are about to unleash some hilariously savage burns. They do not disappoint:

Kimbrel immediately gives up an RBI single, and I start to think that maybe this game will never end, and Derek Jr. will never wake up, and this will just be my life now, flicking my eyes between the Mets and Nationals fumbling through eternity on the television and my daughter hovering between sleep and wakefulness on the monitor as the night gets darker and darker. But I’m wrong. Somehow, against all odds, the 10-run lead to which the Mets have staked Kimbrel is enough. He gives up one more double before closing the door. The Mets have won 16-7. It’s almost 11 o’clock, and amazingly, although she’s looked a dozen different times like she was on the verge of waking up, Derek Jr. is still sleeping. The moment I stand up from the couch, she awakes.

At 11:45, Derek Junior has been fed and changed (and then changed again, and then once more after that) and is dozing peacefully in my arms, her little belly heaving up and down with each breath as I keep her upright for a while before putting her to bed. A Slack message from Matt Martell buzzes through. “JT Finn might do the thing tonight,” he says. “One inning away.” I’m slightly alarmed. I must be further out of the loop than I thought, I think. I’ve never even heard of JT Finn.

Luckily, I have heard of J.T. Ginn, the un-autocorrected pitcher who actually exists and is, as Matt said, one inning from no-hitting the Angels. I turn the volume on my phone way down and pull up the game just in time to see the A’s plate their first run. It’s 1-0, and the path is now clear. If Ginn can make it through the ninth, he’s in line for the win and the no-hitter. But here at FanGraphs, when we jinx a player, we do it all the way. Ginn doesn’t just immediately lose the no-hitter. He loses it all.

Adam Frazier leads off the bottom of the ninth with a line drive single over the shortstop, ruining the no-hitter, and Zach Neto launches a walk off homer to dead center. It takes just six pitches for Ginn to go from the verge of history to the losing pitcher.

It’s just after midnight, and Derek Jr.’s little stomach is still rising and falling adorably. She wakes up when I swaddle her, so I scoop her up and dance around the room until she’s dozing again, then I lay her gently in the crib and go to bed myself.