I had it all right about there being a Curse on the Yankees. I just didn't understand which one it was.

There hadn't been some magic in that broken bat they found. Rather, the true magic reasserted itself  a few weeks later, when George W. Bush stole the 2000 Presidential election. That "victory" did result in one Mission Accomplished for Met fans, for it permitted eight years of peace and prosperity in one significant aspect: no Yankee championships for any of those eight ensuing Octobers.

Further research has sealed the deal even further back than that. In the now-51 baseball seasons falling within the (as of tomorrow) 50 years of my lifetime, the New York Yankees have won exactly zero World Championships with Republicans occupying the White House. None. Nada. Geshphincto.  The frequency of their comings and goings relative to such a Curse are frightening. Those first two years, '59 and '60? One marked only the second time that decade when the Yankees didn't represent the AL in the Series (Nellie, Luis and the Hoyt took-took the Go-Go White Sox to the Series that year), the other featured the infamous Bill Mazeroski walk-off which, for all intents and purposes, got Casey Stengel fired just in time to get hired across the river.

Yankee wins in '61 and '62?  JFK, all the way!  Their return to the Series after Nixonian exile was a 4-0 sweeping by the Reds, while still under the soon-to-be-defeated Gerald Ford. Once Carter came to power, two more world championships followed. Reagan and Bush Daddy followed, as did the worst decade in Bronx history. Clinton accompanied three championships in his last five years in office. And now Obama has ushered in the potential for seven more years of bad luck to follow this season's.

What is a Democratic Yankee hater to do?  Easy. Move to Canada. Let the Republicans take the whole damn thing over forever, seeing how they want nothing to do with any effort at progress or even compromise by the other party. Let Palin and Hannity and the lot of them have their way. A small price to pay for keeping the Evil Empire out of the Canyon of Heroes, if you ask me.

Canada would be an easy transition, eh? I already speak the language, mostly. I have a working knowledge of the currency and the taste for Tim Hortons donuts. Hockey is my far favorite off-season sport. They already have public health care and a progressive tax system. It's all good, except I'd miss my Mets. I'd want to take them with me.

This, too, is workable. Now that New York has gone all ga-ga over the Bombers again, rendering our boys so locally irrelevant, I don't see why the Wilpons, or a buyer of their choosing, would have a problem with moving the team. It's not like they'd have to take down a ton of team memorabilia at their current home.

Ideally, I'd see them moving the short drive up the QEW and settling in at a new open-air stadium. Ah, but there's that pesky bird problem in Toronto, which would probably resist another franchise being located there. Hmmm. What other major northeast city is currently without a major-league team?

Sacre bleu!

Face it. Montreal got a raw deal from the majors, over and over again as an expansion team on the outskirts of the league. The '81 and '94 strikes disrupted what would have otherwise been the building of a winning legacy to rival that of Les Habitants. The ownership groups were evil and manipulative, making it appear, almost a decade later, that the fans and city government wouldn't welcome a franchise back with open arms. Montreal remains the only city in 100 years to lose its only MLB franchise and not get another one in return, and it's by far the largest city in the USA or Canada to lack such a status symbol. Still, they're proud. Independent. French, for crysake. They wouldn't want just any franchise. They'd want ours.

The Wilpons would love it. The Jackie Robinson Rotunda could be moved north, brick by brick, to the city where their biggest baseball hero got his start in the Dodger system. Fans would love having Omar Minaya back in town. And rather than the language difference being a "barrier" to good public relations, I think it's fair to say that fans would get along with this ownership group far better if neither could understand what the other was trying to say.

It's a done deal, if you ask me. The only sticking point might be the name. Do we bring north a moniker that, to a Montrealer, refers mainly to a subway system, or do we reincarnate the identity of the proud franchise, all but ignored in the US capital where it now operates, with the name that symbolized the hope of Expo '67 and, oh, at least five or six seasons of pretty good baseball?

Even better, we can do both:




Les ex-Mets sont là.

If the Yankees' current lead holds up and the Curse of El Bat Beano gets broken, I will forever blame Yahoo Sports for using this graphic early in the game:



Suppose I'd better see if Matsui cleared those bases again, huh.

::grimaces::

May as well replace that Pedro pic with Gwen Verdon.

It took all of a couple of innings of Game One, and two broken heart valves from the ends of Two and Three, to realize where my affections would have to lie (other than fallow) during the current contest. I dislike the Phillies, and rather despise their legions of smug fans who unfortunately discovered the back door out of the north end of New Jersey, but it's a passing thing.  An ex-girlfriend who merits a Break Up Song but certainly not a divorce.

We've come this way with such whores before. The Cubs at first, then a decade of Piracy, followed by a brief Cub-back and then years of wanting to throw ordnance at Cardinals. The Braves then took the mantle, but even they have faded from hatred beyond one or two (Larrrrrrrr-eeeeeeeeeee!) who would incite violence no matter how old and decrepit they are. So now, after a brief re-stacking of the Cards against us, it's the Phuckers. Still, they're interchangeable with fifteen other current NL parts.

Besides, we share some occasional history with those guys. Mostly at sucking over the past 45 years, with occasional lapses into success for each of us, rarely coinciding within the same decade. And we've shared some guys who I can still like despite their coming or going to Shibe or the Vet or even, now, the Bank. From Richie Ashburn to Pedro (bad move putting an ex-Met in at such a crucial time the other night, huh), with the likes of Tug McGraw and Lenny Dykstra in between, these are former teammates we can both love without getting into a hissy over having lost one of them to the other team. Doc and Daryl and David? Stolen from us like hubcaps on a car stranded on the Cross Bronx.

Ah, but there's the other choice here. The ones you were born to hate. Always have, always will. No matter how high they rise or how hard they fall. Whether they're playing in a historic ballpark, a faux-finished multiplex of a ballpark, a pretentious new ballpark, or even YOUR ballpark.

I don't like them in any park
I hated them with Horace Clarke,
Their Treshes and their Pepitones,
With blow-dried XX chromosomes.

I did not like their Mattingly,
Or Dave, their mighty "Mister May."
I hated Guidry rather silly,
And never really loved our Willie.

I would not, could not, even feign
A tear for Thurman Munson's plane,
And said, when Lidle's hit the sea,
"You guys should fly commercially."

I loathe the sons, both Hank and Hal,
But George still riles me most of all.
Both he and Jackson catch my ire:
The Boss convicted, Reg a liar.

I hate their sports-talk-calling honks,
I hate their palace in the Bronx
I hate their grays away from home,
Those swastikas atop each dome.

And now they're leading once again,
The billionaires against mere men,
But I'll still Curse- and place my bets
Against them, saying, "Let's Go Mets!"

As Met fans get over their hangovers from last night's celebrations of one of their few anniversaries of right, they're now facing about 90 miles of wrong road. What to do, given the dilemma of the Scylla-delphia Phillies coming to face the Evil Empire in their new multi-billion dollar Charybdis?

Sorry, but I can't think much about how to work that one out, beyond the analysis that Jim Bouton once gave to his own team's post-season chances:

I’m beginning to thing we might have a shot at the divisional title. Of course, we’d need a little help. Maybe a small air crash involving the Minnesota and Oakland clubs. Nothing serious. Just a few broken arms and legs.

Rather, I want to focus on an even deeper kind of wrong, the kind that even our injury-ridden and stupidity-run ballclub could have helped to avoid with their one voting voice among the Lords of Baseball. It's the kind of wrong that shouldn't even be inflicted on Yankee and Phillie players, or their fans. Which I can't believe I just said.

It's that the 2009 World Series isn't even beginning until the day after the anniversary of the 7th game of the 1986 World Series.

When compared to our first anniversary of triumph, the 1986 contest was itself no slacker in the Taking Too Damn Long Department. Although they only added two games to the League Championship Series rounds between the '69 and '86 events, the sight of Cleon's game-ender still came 11 days earlier in October than Jesse's leap of joy did. That year had at least one memorable rainout, and the Series itself went the full seven, but cmon. We were DONE days before Halloween. Now we're not even beginning until the first of the neighborhood pumpkins begin to get smashed.

Yes, there's another round in there now. Add another six to the mix if you must. Still. Those rounds were over on Columbus Day, and yet the Final Four didn't even begin the process of getting down to the now-Terrible Two until three nights later. Even worse, that game was the NLCS, featuring one of the teams which had gone the longest in the division round. The Little Lord Fauntleroys of the Bronx got to sit on their designer mattresses and suck on their silver spoons for five freakin days before facing the Angels. 

When our current dilemma of doom was finally set, in the dark hours of Sunday night? Wow, that was hard. Let's take two MORE days off!

That, at least, I know the reason for. It's baseball's fear of the big bully who comes around the playground on Sunday afternoons and Monday nights. Gotta work that schedule so we have a travel day up against Monday Night Football.

Funny thing, though. Remember that rainout I mentioned from '86? It moved Game Seven smack dab up against MNF. A Giants game at Jimmy Hoffa Stadium, no less. Baseball kicked their shoulder-padded asses that night. Good product will always beat fancy packaging. Still, pigskins will fly before baseball will ever do it again except under duress.

If only there was another way.... if only....  ::cue dreamy music and dry ice::

----

Fans must speak! Take back the week!

Sorry. I'm descended from an ancient tribe of protesting hippies. Still, there's a perfectly simple and elegant way to make this all better, to magically shorten the season without changing its length, and to permit the first week of October to be the end of division series races rather than their bare beginning.

It's called the "doubleheader." Perhaps you've heard of it.

Well into baseball's second century, everyone had heard of it. Some teams played an occasional tripleheader if scheduling required it. Twinbills became associated with holidays and other events- some, like Banner Day, tailored especially to them.  They were special occasions to be savored, not accidents of the weather to be cursed at.  Best of all, the only adjective occasionally associated with them was "twilight"- never that bastard child of the Moon and the Moneybag called "day/night."

Bring them back. One a month. Seven months gives you seven days that will make you less weak watching baseball in the snow in November. If you prefer, make five of them holidays from May to September (Mom, Memorial, Dad, Fourth, Labor) and throw in the other two for teams' own creativity and traditions.

Oh, and hey- radical concept here! If you're so afraid of losing three or four of your precious 81 home gates? Charge more for them. For more than 20 years, our AAA team has held a philharmonic orchestra concert the night of (or closest to) July 4th, and there's always a significant extra admission charge. It's also almost always a complete sellout. If you build it up, they will come.  Banner Day and Oldtimers Day alone would be gold-level events with Met fans being turned away from the full house, no matter what those idiot Dodger fans in the front office think about our history.

Just think. We'd know by now which of the two Great Satans had actually won this damn thing, and it would still be a little over three months before pitchers and catchers report.

It only took me a hair under nine years to realize it, but the Times recap of last night's well-past-my-bedtime ALCS game finally clicked it into place for me:

As Game 2 of the American League Championship Series stretched past midnight, past the ninth inning and into a steady rain in the Bronx early Sunday, Anthony Flynn, a Yankees video coordinator, sprinkled some October history on Jerry Hairston Jr.

Flynn dropped a magical name on Hairston: Luis Sojo, the utility infielder on the Yankees’ last title team, in 2000. Sojo’s single scored the winning run for the Yankees in that World Series, and Flynn was saying Hairston could be like him.

Never mind whether he was or not. Forget about how lame an analogy (much less a job of copy-editing) there might be between these decade-bracketing events. No, there's much more important stuff at work here:

The Evil Empire hasn't won a World Series since beating the Mets. With their gloves, their bat, and their thorough lack of balls.

You laugh. You think it preposterous. About as relevant to current on-field events as dumping a piano in a lake, or burying a uniform in concrete.

Consider the evidence, though, from the years following that tainted triumph.

2001: Lost to a lowly Arizona team that didn't even exist four seasons before.

2002: Lost in the first round to these same, other than the name, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, California, LP, despite having home-field advantage.

2003: Another ragtag band of expansionists, this one reeking of Fish, beats them four times out of six, two out of three under their own hallowed fake facade.

2004: The Curse officially changes hands as the Red Sox refuse to listen when Jimmy Dugan yells "There's no coming back from 3-0 in baseball!" Once again, the final out comes in the Bronx.

From there, it got even uglier, the Bummers not getting out of the first round three years straight and not even getting into the first round in 2008.

Did the curse die with the demise of Riveravenuefront Stadium, that 33-year old house of horrors across the street? Or will the Angels take care of business on these next three nights and leave the bleacher creatures with a final game on their own new field with nothing left to do, once again, but to curse?

Somewhere, I suspect, Mike Piazza is smiling, and hoping.

----

Two other unrelated quick points: I did not blog on October 16 about October 16 because there was absolutely nothing I could add to what Greg said. And the icon is tribute to a fellow blogger, who was in SoCal the week I was in New York back in August, taping a Jeopardy! appearance that aired this past Monday night. You can read my recap of it, or, duh, maybe take a look at what Emma herself  had to say about it. Either way, pre-order her book, even if you don't phrase the order in the form of a question.

Does anything tell you about the direction this team seems determined to go in than this posting from The Land of Official:

By Alden Gonzalez / MLB.com

10/05/09 10:21 AM ET

Mets general manager Omar Minaya has reached out to two former long-standing GMs who lost their jobs last week, the New York Post reported on Monday.

Minaya contacted Kevin Towers and J.P. Ricciardi over the weekend to not only express support, but also to "lay the groundwork to speak to both soon about possible jobs in the Mets' organization," The Post said in a report late Sunday.

Towers, who served 14 years with the Padres, and Ricciardi, the Blue Jays' GM for eight seasons, are known to be good talent evaluators, something the Mets could use after a 70-92 season despite the second-highest team payroll in the Major Leagues.

Both come in with long track records, and they would be working under Minaya, who has been the subject of criticism despite being about to start a three-year contract extension.

Minaya worked with Towers when he traded reliever Heath Bell to San Diego for Jon Adkins and Ben Johnson in 2006.

So many places to go in just these five short paragraphs. There's Omar making a painfully obvious attempt to keep his friends close and his enemies closer. There's the refreshing, almost shocking, admission that the guy doesn't know what he's doing when it comes to player evaluation; listening to his list of bad choices is like listening to Tony LaRussa trying to recite the alphabet: um, CastilloPutzGreenCastilloGreenGreenGreenGreen.  What better ending, though, than to twist the Heath Bell knife into him, and the fans, one more time? Maybe we can reacquire him for Wright and Reyes if they'll just throw in Kris Benson or something!

I enjoyed the final moments of the season. I held in for Pagan's last hit and Fig's final out; hell, if complete game shutouts become this commonplace, maybe we won't need any uninjured relievers next year.  But if this is the start of how things are going to go, I don't think those "see you in 2010" signs are going to be present at that much better of an end.

Also, unlike most of the exaggerations in the original author's piece, most of these statements are true.

3A. ESSAY: IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?

I am a dynamic figure, often seen dropping crucial pop-ups and injuring myself falling into dugouts. On more than one occasion, I have yielded a walk-off game-winner of a grand slam, restoring the faith and hope of my opponents' fans. I have been known to rip off my shirt and threaten to fight low-level prospects, making them tougher and more resilient. I refuse to engineer trades not producing the return of more Latino players for our roster. Occasionally, I tread water for three months in a row.

I woo fans with my sensuous disregard of team history and godlike playing of "Sweet Caroline," I can throw in from the outfield over the head of the cutoff man AND backing-up pitcher with unflagging speed, and I make fans conduct the Seventh Inning Stretch in the middle of the fourth merely out of a need to get up and stop looking at the carnage. I am an expert in mid-20th-century Brooklyn ballparks, a veteran in love with an overpriced multi-year contract, and wanted by numerous pitchers' agents for failure to provide support.

Using only an accountant and a large pile of money formerly invested with Bernie Madoff, I once single-handedly provided one of the most hated players in our history with an income stream that will last through the first third of this century. I once forced a group of still-admiring fans to remove homemade symbols of affection from the front of their seats because they interfered with an advertising ribbon. When I'm bored, I think up new trinkets to adorn with logos of failing banks to sell to the public at over-inflated prices. I study defensive sports medicine. During games, I sometimes offer fans an "academy" in bilingual education free of charge.

I own a world class ballpark, one of the 30 most coveted franchises in sports, and yet do not have a single employee capable of bringing either of them to their full potential. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of "inaugural season" wear. For the past three months, I have not perspired. I formerly received fan mail. Wearing nothing but an oversized batting helmet, I returned from serious injury and appeared in a traveling summer musical revival of the original "Star Wars" film. This summer, I traveled most of the United States on a barnstorming tour to demonstrate the innocence and amusement of Little League baseball. I have never had a no-hitter in my entire history. My deft financial moves have earned me fame among players' agents. Phillies fans adore me.

I can hurl baseballs with deadly accuracy, but doing so causes bone chips that need to be removed in the early stages of my new contract. I once lost my All Star first baseman, shortstop and centerfielder in the same season and still had time to lose my Cy Young-contending starter before the end of August. I know the exact location of every emergency room in the tri-state area and have appeared regularly in Ripley's Believe it or Not. The laws of probabilty do not apply to me. I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills, at the moment, are all paid. On off-days, to let off steam, I hurl team Hall-of-Fame memorabilia from a 40th story window and film it smashing to the ground. Almost 25 years ago, I discovered a formula for building a winning franchise but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary meals and sold them at premium prices in the vicinity of an attraction known as the "Shake Shack."  I formerly bred prizewinning tomatoes. I have blown leads to the best of teams and the worst of teams, at home and on the road, and once failed to qualify for the playoffs despite being seven games in the lead with seventeen to play. I have re-enacted Shakespearean tragedy, I have experienced virtually every form of surgery, and I have played in the World Baseball Classic.

But I have never had my cryogenically frozen and severed head beaten with a monkey wrench.

he inspirations for today's not-so-happy recap can be found here, and to a lesser extent, here.

At least.

It's not on account of a surplus of other choices, in television or in life. Yes, the NFL has begun, but I've yet to sit through a single one of their games, either. And the new season of Dexter is about the only thing on the idiot box which has any current appeal, but that just started two nights ago.

I might have found some solace in schadenfreude, given how many of our prior weeks' games were against rotten Fish and broken Tomahawk, but no, not even that. Beating one of them only helped the other, or some other Other Than Us wild-card contender. I was reminded of the old "three wishes" joke where the genie offers his new master anything he desires, with the proviso that he will also provide the same wish, in twice the quantity, to his master's worst enemy. Eventually, after the two big mansions and the doubling of doubloons arrive on his worst enemy's porch, the new master figures out the perfect third wish:

Beat me half to death.

It never occurred to me until now that Fred Wilpon was that new master.  Clearly, he never specified which half, though, because otherwise we wouldn't be suffering through these final outings with the likes of Misch and Sullivan and Guy I Don't Even Know The Name Of Because I Haven't Been Watching.

As seasons go in the extended-metaphor sense, 2009 hasn't been a bad one for us on the receiving end of the broadcasts. I have my first-ever grandnephew, the first Y chromosome in 50 years and three generations of my family to slip through (in my case, literally). Our daughter had an amazing summer experience at a state art program and got her first taste of college a year before she will actually head off for it. Through an offshoot of her (brief) interest in Facebook that began during that summer program, I've connected on a more daily and extended basis with many of you readers and writers, and reconnected with many old friends, one of whom I'll be seeing this coming Friday night.

And then, most likely Sunday afternoon, and not only because My Other Team doesn't get its chance to Squish the Fish until 4:15, I will sit down for the final go of this season that never was. Not cheering and confident as in '06, or chattering teeth as in the two previous to this one, but somehow expecting to be happy. Knowing we have a much nicer home now, even if it does still need plenty of work in the history department. Knowing that many of you will be joining Gary, Keith and Ron for a happier ending than the onfield events would justify. Perhaps most of all, though, knowing that it all, finally, is over.

Until next year.

There's a fairly spirited discussion in the comments over at FAFIF. (You know how that works, right?, you hit the comment button and get to add your response to the subject of the post. Some sites even require logins and captchas and extra work to get them posted, while schnooks like me welcome all Comers. Even Wayne, if he's still alive. Ah, but I digress.) The issue is whether there's any point in wasting your minutes or money or Metrocard on a season that was already frozen in futility when I visited a month ago tonight. 

Defenders of the Faith (and, likely, sharers of the Fear) took the high ground, and reminded the opposition what being a fan means. Loving the name on the front no matter how overmatched or undertalented the names on the backs turn out to be. Meeting your fellow fans, their kiddies and wives, and trying somehow to have the time of your night, if not your life. For fuck sake, rooting AGAINST an enemy that is still in the hunt, just as they were more than happy to help dispatch your team in seasons gone by. Taking a picture or two, or filing away a scorecard, or remembering one unique moment from your night or day with your team. Maybe even seeing the first no-hitter in team history; given our karma, it's just as likely to happen when nobody is there to care.

Almost all of us on the blogging beat, though old and getting older, are still too young to remember the four years of National League Least that descended upon your city and our state from 1958 to 1961. NL baseball was taken away and our fathers and politicians fought to get it back. Now, almost half a century later and exactly 50 years since a member of the self-proclaimed Fools Club chose to compete against the mighty NFL by placing an Original Eight AFL franchise in not-so-mighty Buffalo, New York, the equally passionate (and even more frustrated) fans of that franchise live in near-daily fear of losing what we still have. Despite constant sellouts in the face of near-constant mediocrity, it's a virtually foregone conclusion that we will lose our team when our nonagenarian owner assumes room temperature.   At least we know that could never happen again in New York City, right?

::waits for the rousing acclamation, preferably in the comments::

----

If you want to compare tonight's Willets Point Meaninglessness to something far less real, consider the action at this very moment on ESPN2.

The Durham Bulls, champions of the International League, are facing off against the Pacific Coast League-winning Memphis Redbirds, in a one-game winner-take-all contest to determine the best team in minor league baseball for all of 2009.

In Oklahoma City, no less. With the champions' rosters likely picked clean of their finest players once MLB rosters expanded.

I tuned in just now. As Lindsey Nelson said many a time, "come on by if you're near the ballpark, because great seats are still available."

Yet the game looks tight (4-3 top six), the players are playing hard, most likely getting their first-ever and maybe only-ever national television exposure, and from what I read about last night in Queens, the umpires are calling a far more consistent strike zone.

It's baseball. It's what and who we are.  Put a treasured name on the front and some hallowed ground at least nearby and it gets even better.

It's enough to make you want to comment.

And there used to be a ballteam
Where the field was warm and green
And the people played their crazy game
With a joy I'd never seen.
In the air was such a wonder
From the hot dogs and the beer
Yes, there used a ballteam, right here.

At this very Saturday moment, a  shadow of that former team is now acting out its imitation of a major league franchise on the network game of the week, on the road against the Phillies. What must have seemed a marquee matchup when the schedule got put together, oh so many months ago, now carries on before me as more of a Marquis-de-Sade matchup than anything else. There's Jamie Moyer, who used to pitch with DeSade on the Rochester Red Wings in the early 1790s. And look! Chan Ho Park's next in line to get his licks in against us, barely two years after being signed to the Mets and unable to add even the one or two wins then that would make this so less painful to watch now.

And there used to be rock candy
And a great big Fourth of July
With fireworks exploding
All across the summer sky
And the people watched in wonder
How they'd laugh and how they'd cheer
And there used to be a ballteam, right here.

I haven't even been able to decide on a reasonable goal for the remainder of this season.  Finish ahead of the Nationals? Our magic number for THAT accomplishment is about 12, and it'll only wind up biting us back in the ass in a few years when their higher, and better-paid, draft picks all start coming through for them. Finish above .500? Not happenin', given the past week of woes; frankly I'd settle for falling above the 73-89 Met-doza line of mediocrity we seemed to hit more than any mark in team history.

Winning record at home?  Now THAT's ours for the uck-fupping, seeing how we're 36-36 as of this moment, but with the remaining nine games being merely cups of coffee for the likes of Tobi Stoner, I have every necessary bit of doubt attendant to this quest.

Above all, now that we're done with nationally broadcast games from here on out, I'd like simply to enjoy as many moments of early fall evenings, stories from Ralph, reports of fan gatherings (which, sadly, I shall not be at, the way various local chips have fallen of late) and hopes for far better karma in the decade to come. Because it sucks ending the year with the end of the Sinatra song being so appropriate:

Now the children try to find it
And they can't believe their eyes
`Cause the old team just isn't playing
And the new team hardly tries
And the sky has got so cloudy
When it used to be so clear
And the summer went so quickly this year.

Yes, there used to be a ballteam, right here.


Edited Or, hey, maybe still IS.

Checking the standings today after the nice win, just to see if, solely for shits and giggles, the Mets could at least return to the polar opposite of the position they sat in, oh so painfully, two years ago:

Get to within seven of the final wild-card berth with 17 to play.

Then I looked.


I'm assuming that counts today's W. If so, the Mets would need to reel off another eight wins to get to 70-75 by the 15th of September. Yes, THAT September 15th- when the Mets will be returning to Hell and some of my favorite people will be returning to the vicinity of Hell's Kitchen for the final time this season.

I made tentative noise about attending. Now I will commit. Squish the Fish three out of three on our own field, and I will be there. I will read, speak, wait tables or maybe just drink heavily.

(I may show up anyway, but for Gawd's sake don't tell THEM that.)

----

Odd additional observations:

Did you ever notice that SNY doesn't even try to close-caption Kiner?

Greg's piece about the Signs of the Times was truly sad- though more for what it said about the Old Grey Lady than it said about us.

Did you know that Yankee broadcaster Michael Kay is Danny Aiello's nephew? I found that after looking up stuff about an incredibly sweet film starring Danny and Jane Curtin, titled Brooklyn Lobster, which we just finished watching after I took a total flyer on it seeing it on a library shelf.

It was also nice to spend my car time this weekend listening to Michael's team, but through the words of the FAN, not the HONKS. Toronto's FAN, that is. Hearing the Jays take them down a peg, just this once, never hurts.

----

A few extra pics from the Act-shoo-wool film camera I brought with me to 40th Anniversary Night:

( Read more... )

You'll understand, I'm sure, if I'm having trouble focusing on the games at hand in this suddenly sad September. Heck, I was already told not to even mention a certain team beginning with M on a fairly popular blog.  So I've sought out other diversions, including the Facebook-based version of Scrabble which several friends of mine, old and young, have gotten me into for purposes of inflating their ratings.

Why, just the other night I was staring at the top corner of a board, wondering whether I could bridge a couple of previous plays with a bunch of my letters:



(Yes, apparently DA counts, but ZEN doesn't. Sounds like the Commies won the Cold War after all.)

With the highest of hopes for our team's future, I first thought of playing a rarely acceptable proper name; these days, player names from our team have apparently all been redesignated as common nouns:



It gave me a respectable 29 points, but as with others we know all too well these days, I was way behind and in need of all the help I could get. Fortunately, I saw the highlights (such as they were) from last night's contest in the thin air, and on seeing my recovering hero's choice of headgear, I knew what tiles to put down:





It only produced two extra points, but it just gave me good feeling to know that maybe, possibly, the Schwartz will be with us for this coming month.

Since we're resembling the pre-'69 franchise in every other respect these days, it's a damn site better than the Schmelz being with us.

It's somewhat depressing to realize that I've been essentially the same writer for more than 30 years. I mask it in the daytime with heretofores and quid pro quos and other legal nonsense, but I'm still pulling the same shit in places like this that I did in high school in the mid '70s. Apt comparisons, literary lilts, and a never-ending parade of parodies. Even worse, I remember virtually every one of them, or at least they're buried in the Genny Creme-filled amber that's coated over billions of my brain cells, just waiting for some odd occurrence to release them.

This one, for instance. It must've been our senior year, and our friend Ted had a hand in it, because two events had converged: Jimmy Carter got elected president and talked about trying to normalize relations with Fidel Castro; and Barry Manilow released the song "Copacabana." In some dark corner of Ms. Gader's AP English classroom, that led to this:

His name was Castro, he went to Cuba
With a Columbia degree he promised us his loyalty
And so we helped him to dump Batista
But someone else got in his way and it turns out his name was Che

Out on the villa floor, their plots of coup did score
And they embraced the godless Commies and did so much more

In Havana, Havana Cuba
That place kinda next to Aruba
In Havana, Havana Cuba
Spying and slaughter were always in order
In Havana..... he came to power

(There was a second verse, too, but those tend to fade to obscurity much quicker. Ask the butcher or the baker or the people on the street and they'll tell you.)

What could bring THAT back to me on a too-early Sunday morning?, I hear you cry. Not the Kennedy funeral, although that accounts for the icon. No, it was the logical extension of the scathingly brilliant idea I had the other night about getting the Wilpons to put the team up for sale. Within moments of that post, perhaps inspired by seeing our weekend schedule against the Cubs, I got to thinking, who's still got a boatload of money and isn't afraid to spend it for the sake of winning?

I got to thinking it, but it was a Yankee scribe who may have been the first to publish it: Lisa, the pinstriped half of Subway Squawkers, who I became introduced to through a common series of comments over at MG (on women's clothing, of all things). Right before that happy coincidence, Lisa had broken ranks and published a Metcentric piece over at Faster Times and made the Cuban connection that we need:

Sell the Mets to Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

First there's the why:

Erin Arvedlund, author of “Too Good to Be True,” a new book on Bernie Madoff, told Jon Friedman of Marketwatch that Wilpon will need to sell the franchise within the next year due to him losing as much as $700 million thanks to Madoff’s Ponzi scheme:

    “You can quote me,” Arvedlund said of a possible sale of the Mets. “It’s a matter of when. It could be as soon as next year.”

Lisa next takes us to the who:

Cuban, who revitalized the Dallas Mavericks  since purchasing the basketball team in 2000, would be a natural for New York. And then some.

Ever since George Steinbrenner faded from public view, the city has not had an owner as a front-and-center fan of his own baseball team. Hank Steinbrenner tried to replace his father for about five minutes, but for whatever reason, he’s been muzzled.

Fred Wilpon is a fan, alright. He’s been an unabashed follower of…the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Even better, though, is the what-if:

So what do the Mets have to make fans choose to root for them over the Yankees these days? Tons of injuries, lousy play and being on the losing side of an unassisted triple play aren’t exactly going to put fannies in the seats at Citi Field.

But Cuban would be a difference-maker. Having an active, exciting owner willing to win would put the team back on the map.

Let us not forget (she certainly didn't, and I'm not gonna plagiarize the WHOLE article) that Cuban was in the market to buy the Cubs. There was noise about the other Lords not liking him, but hell, if it takes a Chapter 11 and a forced sale to do it, I'm admitted in both the Southern and Eastern districts and would work a lot cheaper than those white-shoe Manhattan shops.

Do it now. The longer this black hole remains open, the more likely it is that Mark can steal the whole thing- or, worse, some unabashed Phillie fan will wind up being able to bid for and win.

We've gotten to a point where I barely bother to check who's got the weekend games, and yet I do still check. It would seem that the Fox-suckers have yet to achieve "flexible scheduling" with their MLB package as NBC's marquee matchups have done with the NFL.  That can be the only explanation for the Mets having retained their roughly every-third week spot on the Saturday national broadcast schedule through and including this afternoon, despite the fact (and let's face it- it is, now, a fact) that they have no chance of rebounding from the depths of their current status and didn't, either, when the Phils, Braves or Giants faced them on national television on three of the previous eight Saturdays.  Nor will they have any such chance when Fox Features again focus on us, for the last apparent time, in Philly's Phriendly Confines on the Saturday after 9/11.

At least today's victorious opponent (a redundant phrase if there ever was one nowadays) is sucking, generally, as much as we are in the current year, and for far longer historically.  The Lovable Losers were supposed to be It this year, and yet they've faded into their own familiar Friendly Confines of irrelevancy almost as quickly as we did, with far less of an excuse. If there's one thing that makes our previous 40 years of Mostly Useless seem tolerable, it's watching Cub fans suffering, now, through 101 Depressions since the last time they hoisted a real and full championship flag.

It'd have been nicer, though, if we could have gotten the agony over, for both of these teams, before my wife got home for dinner tonight.

Dennis? Greg? The rest of you kickin'it old-schoolers who were, understandably, not at the 40th anniversary festivities the other night?  Pop quiz.

Which family was the first to be introduced by Howie Rose at last weekend's 40th anniversary soiree?

<input ... >Relatives of Jackie Robinson    <input ... >Relatives of William Shea    <input ... >Relatives of Joan Payson    <input ... >Relatives of Casey Stengel    <input ... >None of the above <input ... > Public Opinion Survey

I know, the formatting is gorked and the code doesn't work. Humor me like I know what I'm doing, okay?

The answer would come as a surprise to anyone who remembers the deepest, darkest days near the midpoint of the circles of Met Hell between Ya Gotta Believe and Ya Gotta Buckner: Ms. Lorinda deRoulet was first on the field, along with her own daughter, to mark the bond of original owner Joan Payson's family to the coming, and eventual coming-of-age, of the Mets from 1962 to 1969.

To those of us who remember, though, this was a questionable choice, at best. When Joan Payson died at the end of the 1975 season, at the relatively young age of 72, Lorinda DeRoulet became the team's de facto owner. Yet she never had the heart or the smarts to do anything good with that ownership. It was on her watch that the Mets offloaded Rusty Staub for Mickey Lolich; that Lenny Randle came to third base, mainly on the coattails of having punched out his Texas manager; and that on one un-fine day in 1977, neither Tom Seaver nor Dave Kingman could still find a place in perhaps the weakest Met lineup since before the 1969 season.

I listened carefully the other night to see what reaction the one-time owner would get; I vowed not to boo, but would have understood if others saw this woman's introduction as an inappropriate first choice. The result? No more, or less, than a smattering of polite applause. In hindsight, though, it would have been difficult to muster up too much booing for a reluctant heiress who fell into ownership of a team 34 years ago, when the current ownership, who bought the team from her 30 years ago for $21.1 million, has done far more, far more recently, to earn such disapprobation from the upper reaches of their World Class Home.

----

Maybe, now five nights removed from the nostalgia, "Weekend at Bernie Madoff's" should have been the header for this piece, because I really think we fans may have underestimated the ill effect of that whole debacle on this ownership's ability to field a competitive team. Was it only three years ago this month that, faced with the loss of our set-up man to the wild drivings of a Miami cabbie, Omar made major changes just to react to that one injury? Now, one financial collapse later, we not only stood pat at the trade deadline, but we actively waived one of the few bright-spot returns we've had to our roster for, basically, nothing- not for later, much less now.

It's not just that we've given up on this season. I am feeling virtually no forward-looking mojo for how things will be when all these wounded warriors come back. The only thing I expect to increase in the coming season is the price of the cheapest tickets; everything else, from the fences to the stated expectations, will be cut back, probably dramatically.

I can't blame Jerry, and maybe surprisingly, I won't blame Omar. The bucks have stopped, and they stop in the owners' suite. If I'm not the first to say it, let me join the chorus:

Mr. Wilpon, tear down this ownership group.

----

Keep the stadium if you want. Get your investment back and then some. But sell the franchise- the N and the Y and the hearts and souls that go with them- to someone, or some ones, who have the means and the desire to build on the creaky bones of this team, just one year removed from perhaps the finest three-year stretch in team history without at least a league championship to show for it. Do it now, before our young stars stop being young and our long-term commitments aren't long anymore.  Before they become Yankees and Red Sox and Phillies and really tear our hearts out.

You gave us hope when the DeRoulets had abandoned it. Now's the time to give it back to us, before the current depths of depression exceed even those of the Craig Swan and Joel Youngblood years.

I had a snarky post all planned before I even got back into New York yesterday. "Weekend at Bernie Madoff's" was the title, and it would have chronicled my mixed feelings about the management finally coming around, too little-ly and too lately, to acknowledge the best parts of our past.

You may see that header someday, but not this time. There was just too much amazement on hand for me to not drink the very expensive Kool Aid (in my case, a melted Luigi's cherry italian ice) and exude nothing but love here. For our past, for how everybody except a few thousand Phillie fans made the best of a 40-year-old present, and for a future which can only get better and will do so in a new and beautiful home that, last night, ALREADY got infinitely better.

----

Incoming on the 7, I wondered about the loyalties of at least one nearby straphanger- a Phillie T-shirt under a Met jersey?  Then I got a little closer....



Heh. It was not the first time I would hear the words "phuck" and "Phillies" in the same sentence.

I shouldn't have been impressed by the sight of the park from the window of the train- hell, the place was almost finished last time I went to Shea- but it still got to me. I craned and strained to get that first out-the-window shot of the place:



It was getting close to 6:30 by this time, and t-shirts might've been running low, but I had unfinished business first.  (I still do: Metsgrrl's Citifield Guide posting was the Bible of my voyage. I'd bookmarked the link in the phone browser and she was spot-on about SO many things, from finding things to understanding rituals to, yes, making sure BEFORE I left that I had enough- or, um, didn't have enough- of a return fare on my Metrocard.)



Here I needed a little more help, since Caryn had only narrowed it to the "D" and "E" areas, but the first of many pleasant, helpful Met employees pointed me straight to it. Two more stops, 60 feet 6 inches away and then 180 diagnonal feet from home behind the plate (nitpick: the plaque for the pitcher's plate has you facing second in order to read it- that's just dumb), and I was ready to go in.

----



That was one of the first shots I got from Section 137. I picked it randomly on Stubhub, knowing only it would be a little closer to the action than the Promenade and not for much more money by the end of last month, but wow. For this night, at least, I could not have done better. Covered seats, although the rain never came; almost a full view of the Diamondvision board; and, in a moment, amazing access to the biggest present the team could have given me- and I'm wearing the Mets 69 t-shirt as I write and that's not it.

----

Howie started the festivities within seconds of my sitting. Most of the shots you'll see (I'll link to the full album on Facebook eventually) were from the big videoboard, but I can tell my grandchildren I was there with them. Of the living, they only announced regrets from Art Shamsky, J.C. Martin (who probably ran outside the baseline at an airport security checkpoint) and the still-unretired #31 of that era, Jack DiLauro. (Unannounced was the absence of Ken Boswell, which I don't quite understand.)

By far the first of the biggest acknowledgements was for Yogi. Why is he the only glory-era Met that can always make me cry?

But we got more. Ralph was already on the field, as were any numbers of widows and orphans of early Met greats. Ron Swoboda got a nice hand, even doing a faux dive to the outfield as Howie recounted his Game Four save a few hundred yards and a million years away. Still, as the roll call ended, the memories got even stronger:





We're talkin' Buddy, Cleon and The Two. Three, actually; after all the introductions, the three icons of that Met pitching era- Seaver, Koosman and the finally-returned Nolan Ryan- each threw a first pitch to the catchers on hand (Grote, Yogi and the Duff).

Yet it still got better. They brought the alumni out to the outfield for a group picture and much adoration. In a spot in the outfield about ask-for-a-match distance from the front row of section 137. That produced this:



As they played the recording of The Miracle Mets singing "You Gotta Have Heart" from their Ed Sullivan appearance, the whole assemblage was feet, not yards, away from me.  The '69 mowed into the field, the original Jarvis take-the-field music (it's called "Let's Go Mets" and I've heard it even has lyrics which I don't know) playing as they departed, the adoration of the fans for these 22 men and, unseen in that picture, the just-as-adoring waves back from them.

Only the "You Stay Classy, Philadelphia" antics of the Phanatics in the crowd threatened to ruin it. Some of the pre-loaded drunks in red (many of them in a group, adorned in tees showing the Phanatic chasing Mr. Met with the caption "Two Years Running") started up a Let's Go Phil-lies chant during the introduction of the '69 Mets. They were well and truly shouted down, and it made for far more strained relations for the rest of the night.

Yes, there was a game. No, it didn't matter, but Nitpick #2, and the only one related to the Here and Now, is this: Tim Redding had a one-hitter through five, and a lead. Why the fuck did you pull him out? The minute I saw Pat Misch on the mound, I knew our 1-0 lead wouldn't last, and the coterie of Phillie fans I'd hoped to avoid had themselves a very pleasant sixth, so it was time for me to leave.  Not the ballpark, though; the present day.

They'd announced during the fourth or fifth that the '69 championship trophy (the only one ever awarded with a Seattle Pilots flag on it, bitches) would be displayed in the Bullpen Zone or whatever it's called. Once the major fight broke out in Section 132 and my wallet was well but happily drained, I headed over there.



Not sure if that's one of the "new additions" or if it's been there all along, but it was damn good to see.

As was this:



The line for Your Championship Trophy Here wasn't bad, and frankly if the Mets had still been in it (in either the micro or macro sense), I would've felt guilty giving in to such self-indulgence during game play. Fortunately, no such problem stood in my way.

The inanimate Mr. Met (I never saw the real one) had already told me "Thanks for coming!" All agitas aside, I was glad I did. The overnight FAN guy bitched about the 5,000 unsold seats and how short Seaver's speech was (um, the game was already 20 minutes late in starting and Tom gave an extended interview to your station about four hours before that), but all I could do was exude. The food was 1000 percent improved over Shea, and that was just Nathan's boneless chicken wings (yes, they do have bleu cheese, but it's in the fridge, so ask); the service was 10,000 percent improved, from the security/"ushers" to the vendors to everyone being willing to take your picture with your camera. Even with close to 40,000 in the house, even the specialty food in Shake Shack territory looked to be accessible with not much of a wait. Somewhere in the early innings, I lost my ticket, between photo runs and attempted calls home and whatnot. Nobody asked, nobody bitched. I was family. Dysfunctional to be sure, but I'm used to that.

Now Mr. Bloomberg, on the other hand, has some 'splainin to do. No express sevens on a game night? Not that I minded the local color on the way in, but it's been a long week and I really didn't need to stop every 10 blocks when there's just one Metro North an hour to start me on my way home. Also, if you could get the pr0n movie theaters out of Times Square, what is stopping you from eminent-domaining Chop Shop Alley away from the right field side of the ballpark? That would make a damn nice spot for a Dinosaur Barbecue (which a guy on the train had a takeout bag from- I've got to stop in Rochester tonight and get some).

Ah, home. I do miss it, but I needed to get this all said before I go. As with so many places and people on my rounds of the past week, I will be back.

Last week's hero turns into this week's villain- "Far above the Flushing Meadow, there's an awful smell, 40,000 sons of bitches heckle Bob Parnell."

Tuesday night's schadenfreude about beating up on the Braves got turned right back in to Wednesday night's pain repaid in spades, or tomahawks, or whatever they're imitating.  We in Buffalo are used to this: the highlight of the Bills' season, after acquiring Drew Bledsoe from the hated Pats, was him beating his former teammates 31-0 on the opening of the season at the Ralph. The schedule set up the rematch in Foxboro as the finale of the season, and the Hoodie plotted perfect retribution in beating the Bills by that same 31-0 score to end the season, and the Bills' hopes of ever seeing a division title again.

That leaves the Day After Tomorrow, for me to see in person. Which Mets will show up- the good Tuesday night ones or the bad Wednesday night ones?

For that matter, why would any of the heroes of 1969, who a week ago were in virtually the same spot we were at the same spot in their division race, want to be honored on a field not their own by a team definitely not their descendants?

I can hear the Regrets Only coming in now:

Dear Mr. Wilpon- I will be out in the parking lot, looking for Tommie Agee's home run marker and the spots of his catches. Sincerely, Cleon.

To the Mets- If Robin Ventura's not going to be there for me to beat up again, I think I'll spend my day selling steaks. Yours (or rather, never was yours), Nolan Ryan.

To my adoring fans: I know I am an integral part of your Series memories, but I have to spend Saturday night washing my hair. Kisses, Bobby Pfiel.

I think, though, it would take this one to make the point:

To the owners and management of the team formerly known as World Champions:

I know I was part of your closing ceremonies last year. I know I was going to be highlighted at the new place's biggest and best ceremony of this year. But in memory of my fallen teammates and to preserve the heritage of those who remain, I cannot and will not accept honor on a field, or in a building, that has been the home of such dishonor for the past four-plus months.

Your players have potential, but they lose it the second they realize it. You've been afflicted by injuries, but you react to them by playing the same stupid games of Bison Pinball and Waiver Wire Roulette. Nick Evans doesn't know what bed he's sleeping in. You're ruining their tomorrows as well as our todays.

Yet the off-field crap is worse. It took you FOUR MONTHS into the season to put our accomplishments in sight of the viewing audience? You won't acknowledge our pitches or catches or triumph to a fraction of the degree that you celebrate a team that LEFT? Your executives threaten to beat up your prospects and humiliate your media? Mr. Wilpon, I KNEW M. Donald Grant. M. Donald Grant was no friend of mine. But you, sir, are not even an M. Donald Grant.

Our triumph was not the end of our winning heritage. You acknowledged as much, at the last possible minute before releasing the wrecking balls on our ballpark, by sending me and Mike Piazza to the outfield to throw and catch the last pitch. Yet you remain steadfast in refusing to retire Mike's number, ensuring that onfield heroes of the Mets remain outnumbered by ex-Dodger players by a score of 3-1 (counting Casey, who played for the Bums before there even WERE uniform numbers). Who the fuck are you afraid of offending- Jack DiLauro?

Have a nice time out there with the 20 true fans you've somehow managed not to alienate. I'll be at Two Boots Tavern starting to get wasted before Greg, Caryn and Dana get rolling on Tuesday night.

Regretfully yours, as in full of regret,
G.T. Seaver

I know it won't happen, but I'd like to think he'll be thinking it.

----

He and I may be the only ones who ARE there. If I'll even be- like the '48 Braves, I've actually been Praying For Rain the past few days, and from the report of a FEMA-employee friend of mine, I may be getting the Bill for just that, as a certain hurricane heads up the shore just as she returns from Galveston to New York.

Certainly, nobody I know has confirmed. Greg will be at a bar mitzvah on Saturday, while I somehow feel closer to being the guest of honor at a bris. Caryn will be rockin', my favorite WFAN pole dancer is still out of town, and I'm not in touch enough with the rest of the faithful to know their plans.

If it gets ugly, I may wind up in Brooklyn, of all places, for a show at the Castle in Hell, where the son of My Really Oldest Friend Ever will be playing. Maybe the Wilpons can sue over use of that name, since it certainly fits the one they built in Queens.

I have to admit, I was a bit put off by all the crazy talk I read, in many respected quarters over the latter part of the weekend, about the Mets just giving up on their remaining chances for the season- chances which clearly took yet another unintended turn for the worse on a mean inside pitch on Saturday afternoon, but which will, just as clearly, head from worse to worst if the Mets shut down their best remaining everyday player for the remaining month and a half of play.  I resisted. Resistance was not futile. Not yet, anyway.

Those feelings continued on Sunday, even though they were reinforced blindly and deafly as well as dumbly; Time Warner's not even bothering to show the PIX games here anymore, the two lease-access channels being devoted during gametime to the local minor league game and a cubic zirconium infomercial. Yet there was the final at the bottom of the Bison broadcast.  We'd taken two of the first three from a leading wild card contender, and Santana lost the only one, I ruminated. A .750 series and then some serious division rivalry before I show up. We're still IN this!

Or not.

There's nothing like a homegrown blowout to rain on your fantasy parade, and now, my friends, even I have abandoned ship and turned the page, met-aphorically at least, on our 2009 chances. (I may as well take down the calendar in a literal sense, since Met management had the presence of out-of-their-mind to feature Endy Chavez, Marlon Anderson and Billy Wagner on the last three months likely to matter on Your 2009 Baseball Calendar.)

I will continue to hope and pray for our future. I will be in attendance, and in reverence, for the appearances on Saturday of our 1969 heroes on the field, and any others which might now be decorating the walls of Dodger Stadium East, thus paying homage to our past. But the only "present" in my current plans is the one I intend to bring to my eight-plus-month-pregnant niece in Connecticut sometime Wednesday or Thursday.

Bluto died of a cocaine overdose. It's time to get over it.

I can't and won't say it will happen. Yet there is still some karma inherent in seeing my team, on this night, the first at home following a long and depressing road trip, at almost exactly the same spot they were at this point 40 years ago tonight:

The third place Mets left Houston on August 13, 1969 trailing the division leading Cubs by 9 1/2 games. The Mets had just dropped three games to the Astros and it seemed that their hopes of catching the division  leaders were slim and none, but the Mets were heading back to Shea Stadium to face their favorite patsy, the San Diego Padres.

Key to their catchup hopes that year was a series against the Giants- the same Giants who bequeathed us their logos Buck Williams years ago, and who we vanquished on two separate occasions in my presence Luis Castillo years back. Key, also, was the leading team commencing a major meltdown, as the Phillies seem to have been doing over the past weeks, if not for our seeming benefit.

Hail to thee, emergency starter, hail, all hail Parnell! Hail, as well, to the doctors and pharmacists who may yet manage to produce a healthy and well-rested roster for the final month-plus of the season.

Could my CitiDebut actually mean something next weekend? Could we at least get within seven of the Phillies with well over 17 to play?

I hear Steve Martin saying "naaaaaaah." Yet I hear Gil and Tom and lots of other ghosts who aren't nearly as sure about it.

Bring it, bitches.