Ownership Has Its Privileges

If Chris Carpenter was a Monopoly square, the Wilpons would have another revenue stream on rent alone, because after hitting him hard twice in the playoffs and once more tonight, the Mets can now say they officially own him. If the Mets could have owned a couple of more Cardinals like Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina...then they not only would have had a monopoly to build houses and hotels on Carpenter place and collect some real money to go out and sign an ace pitcher in a few years...but they might have also won the NLCS last season.

I was never any good at Monopoly, and obviously neither are the Mets. But they are very good at baseball, and it showed tonight as the Mets beat the Cards 6-1 on Opening Night...and while it will never quite put to rest what happened last season, it does put to rest their horrendous spring training record which nobody remembers anymore.

Carlos Delgado got the Mets going against Carpenter with a two run double in the third inning. For that alone, shouldn't we all send his wife some flowers for having her baby early enough so that Carlos could play on opening night? From there, the spigots were opened. After those two in the third, the Mets scored three more in the third on the strength of a Paul Lo Duca single (we should send Willie Randolph some flowers while we're at it for keeping Lo Duca in the two hole) which drove in Jose Valentin and Shawn Green. Speaking of horrendous spring trainings that nobody will remember anymore, Green had two hits and scored a run. Two hits a night should be enough to fill the moat and keep the angry mobs (and Lastings Milledge) at bay temporarily.

And boy (sarcasm alert) our starting pitching is atrocious, isn't it? It's amazing that Glavine only gave up one run over six innings while using a walker (which...I think...caused him to balk a couple of times). Nine more to go for the aged one.

Most impressive could have been the Mets defense playing as if it was the Steel Curtain of old. Think how bad the sixth inning could have been if the 40-year-old Moises Alou didn't get on his proverbial horse and rob Adam Kennedy with a sliding catch? Or if Carlos Beltran didn't deliver a strike to home plate to nail David Eckstein trying to score from second? (Why does Carlos Beltran have better control from 250 feet away than Alay Soler ever did from 60 and a half feet?)

Or how about the eighth inning, where Jose Valentin (I promise Jose, I'm not going to mistake you for John Valentin anymore!) dove to start a sweet double play off Scott Rolen with the bases loaded to basically ice the game? I would say that we should salute the Mets by waving terrible towels, but that didn't work so well during Game 7. But forget Game 7...because this is Game 1 all over again. Game one of our 2007 marathon that has started off on the right foot...with the good guys in first place.