Because Cleansing Is Necessary

Maybe all of the Mets problems can be traced back to this:


Yup, there's Mookie in a St. Louis Cardinals wool hat to support his son Preston in a World Series that the Mets were one base hit against Adam Wainwright away from being a participant in.

Do I blame Mookie for supporting a blood relative? No. Archie Manning played for the Saints for forty-five years and he still rooted for his son to beat his former team, right? Of course, Archie wasn't decked out in Colts gear but hey, it was cold in St. Louis that night. I blame Carlos Beltran more for letting that first pitch fastball get by him against Wainwright in Game 7 which ended the at-bat well before that curveball ... but I digress.

You had to be around for the rivalry against the Cardinals in the 80's to really feel the sink in your heart at the sight of Mookie wearing Cardinals colors. Think how you young'ins would feel seeing Mike Piazza wearing a tomahawk on his hat, or Pedro Martinez wearing a Phill ... oh, right.

So Mookie Wilson in a Mets uniform again, even as a minor league coach, is the best karma this organization has seen in just about three years. Whether that karma is trumped by Oliver Perez remaining in a Mets uniform remains to be seen.

Tinker Toys

It's obvious as the nose on Snoop Manuel's face that as long as Fernando Nieve keeps pitching like this, he has to stay in the rotation. Isn't it?

Isn't it???

Well, maybe not. After all, Daniel Murphy has had nine hits in his last seven games before being benched against a righty on Wednesday night so Nick Evans could get into the lineup, and that 6-4-Tatis can stay there. Maybe Murphy came to Snoop asking for a breather. Maybe his last game being an 0-fer showed Snoop that Murphy needed a day of rest. But by that logic, everyone except Luis Castillo and Jeremy Reed needed to be benched after Jo-El Pineiro's two hitter.

My point is this: It's June ... late June. Everyone's on the DL. This whole Snoop notion of getting everybody at-bats has to be thrown out the window. There's no better chance to get players at-bats who need them to stay sharp. Gary Sheffield's knee is barking now? Guess what ... time for Ryan Church (3-for-4 with a long double to left which would have been out at Shea) to play every day and be in the middle of the order and not force-feed Sheffield back into the lineup. There isn't going to be a better opportunity to get Murphy in a groove and find out if he can do this every day than from now until the All-Star break. And if Nick Evans is going to go gangbusters as he did all over Brad Thompson on Monday, then let's put the kid in left field and find out if he can play and keep Fernando Tatis nailed to the bench if he's going to keep hitting into double plays.

It seems so obvious when it comes to using a hot pitcher like Nieve, why isn't it that obvious when it comes to hitters? The best players left have to play, and the lineup tinkering should be shelved.

There ... now that that's off my chest, hey, the Mets won 11-0! Awesome.

To reiterate, it was on the strength of another great outing from Fernando Nieve. And you thought I wasted a post on somebody who wasn't going to make the major league roster ... HA!

Well, I expected Nieve to be a disaster, so what the hell do I know? I'm just a dumb blogger, and I'm sorry. And if Nieve does this ten more times, I will apologize ten more times.

"I was thinking too much when I was with the Astros. The first time it was when (Roger) Clemens signed. Now, I just think about doing my job." -Fernando Nieve

So it's Clemens' fault. Figures. Screw you, Roger.

No similar salutation for Adam Wainwright, who admitted after this video that he still loves us Met fans. Well that's nice, but don't patronize me. The one thing that would have made 11-0 even better would have been if it was off Wainwright.

Great Mysteries Of Life

So my brother calls me after the top of the seventh inning to inquire as to whether Carlos Beltran's at-bats were sponsored by Gorilla Glue.

If they are, my guess is that nobody would know ... since the advertisement would be placed on the very spot on the shoulder of the jersey where Carlos keeps his bat against pitchers like J.C. Romero.

So when Carlos was up with two outs in the ninth inning and the tying run two bases away, the stage was set for Beltran to make Brad Lidge look like Adam Wainwright, or to give him a Scott Podsednik flashback.

The very fact that he swung the bat is a moral victory. The fact that he made good contact turned out to be the great tease as Eric Bruntlett ... the same Eric Bruntlett that made a mess of himself last week at Shea Stadium, saved the day with a brilliant stab up the middle and drove a stake through our hearts as the Phillies hung on to prevent a sweep, 5-4.

Four out of six wins against Philadelphia is nothing to sneeze at. But it still doesn't explain why Adam Eaton makes the Mets sit and stay on command. It's become one of life's great mysteries along with such classics as "Why are we here?" " Is there life in outer space?" "Where do we go when we die?" And "If someone with a split personality threatens to commit suicide, is it a hostage situation?"

Or: "Is this game going to continue the long line of games where the Mets have an opportunity to step on a team's throats, with a seemingly hittable pitcher on the mound (except for us, apparently) only to wither and die (remember Tyler Clippard?)"

Or maybe: Why would Willie Randolph put Luis Castillo back in the two hole when Ryan Church has been working out just fine lately?" I mean, I'm all for Luis Castillo. But when it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

(You can weigh in on that in my completely tongue in cheek poll.)

Or even this: "Why I don't just turn the sound down on my television while a Met game is on ESPN?" Joe Morgan, who does like what ... one, two games a week, doesn't have time to research why Mike Pelfrey wears a mouthpiece? And they're on ESPN in New York again tomorrow? What exactly have I done to my television to deserve this retribution from it?

(The game's on SNY as well, right? Or is my channel guide just playing with my head?)

That one's too hard for me. I'll stick to easy ones like: "Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?"

The Manifesto

"It hurts doesn't it? Your hopes dashed, your dreams down the toilet. And your fate is sitting right besides you." -John Malkovich in Rounders

Well team, you did it.

For a franchise that gave us the Terry Pendelton home run, the Mike Scioscia home run, the Worst Team Money Could Buy, Bobby Valentine's fake mustache, a bases loaded walk to end a playoff series, the 2000 Subway Series, eighteen Brian Jordan grand slams, countless losses to Atlanta, trading a number one prospect who would one day lead the American League in strikeouts for a guy who ran off the field with an arm injury never to be seen at Shea Stadium again, a game seven loss to an 83 victory St. Louis Cardinal team that had no business getting as far as they did, you...the 2007 New York Mets...have done the impossible.

You topped 'em all.

You blew a seven game lead with seventeen games to play.

Amazin'.

But it goes much deeper than that.

You had the two bottom teams in the division over the last two weeks...and nothing but the last two teams in the division.

You had a two and a half game lead with seven games left. Oh, that's seven home games left.

You went 1-6 during a group of games that you really should have won at least four of just by rolling out of bed.

You allowed a team that pulled a bush league stunt by announcing publicly that tickets to a one game playoff would go on sale at 11AM, then starting the sale an hour early yet only telling their own fan base, steal the division from you.

You wiped the 1964 Phillies off the map, and brought their franchise back to even when it comes to these things.

You allowed a man who once punched his wife with a closed fist on a Boston street throw his glove in the air and feel feelings that I should have been feeling tonight.

You proved right a man who made a stupid statement at the beginning of the season when he said "finally, we have the best team on paper." I said then that Jimmy Rollins was wrong, and I still say he's wrong. The Philadelphia Phillies did not have the best team on paper. The New York Mets, however, did.

But guess what the Philadelphia Phillies are: They're the best team in the National League East. And that's what counts.

And guess what you New York Mets are, for having the best team on paper: you're a bunch of underachievers who have become the joke of baseball...except there's no punch line besides the ones being written by Leno and Letterman. There's just a punch to my gut.

And you pulled all of this off during the same season that the Yankees came back from about 48 games behind the wild card to make the playoffs for the hundredth straight season, ensuring that Mets fans are going to be ridiculed for the rest of their natural lives.

Oh, and by the way, you have let them off the hook for choking away a 3-0 ALCS lead in 2004.

Anybody who wants to tell me that the 2004 ALCS is still a worse choke than the 2007 Mets were, I'm cutting you off at word one. The Yankees lost four straight games to a World Champion Boston Red Sox team. The Mets, meanwhile, lost six games out of seven to a bunch of B-list stunt doubles who had nothing to play for.

Let me repeat that because it's vaguely important: Nothing to play for.

And now, you're just like them. Because you have nothing to play for.

But I bet the champagne tastes sweeter, right Willie?

But here's what Willie said that bugged me even more...he said it after today's final nail, when he was asked if he had anything to say about the fans:

"Real Met fans know we played our hearts out."

Gee, that's sounds a lot like "Real Met fans aren't going to criticize this team...they're going to say aw shucks and we'll get 'em next season and stuff like that."

Yeah, Mr. Randolph, I want to ask you a follow up question if I may: Who are you to tell me what a real Met fan is or does? I'm sorry, have you been here playing, managing, or watching this team for thirty years? No, you haven't. You've been here for four years. Three as a manager, one as a player. And you're going to tell me what a real Met fan does? Or does your years as a Yankee give you the entitlement to tell me who I am?

Here's the problem, and it's something I absolutely despise when I hear it from a player or a manager: They like to say "You've never put on a uniform...you don't know what it's like to be me." And everybody who's ever said that has been right.

But guess what, that works both ways, Willie. You see, you, and everybody who plays for you have never...ever...been in my shoes. And I think you all need to be reminded of that. You don't blindly invest your time, money, and faith in a group of men who don't know you from Adam, but you know way too much about them. And you support them. You support them with your money...with your time...and with your allegiance. You support them because you hope that one day they'll give you that feeling of exhilaration that makes you feel like you're actually one of them.

You hope that. You hope for the best. And you expect the worst. But beyond your wildest dreams you never expect that the worst is going to include a future hall of fame pitcher giving up seven runs in a third of an inning, and hit an opposing pitcher for the first time in his career, and then tells me that he's merely "disappointed", in what surely will be his last outing before he embarks on his farewell tour back in Atlanta, where he will get a standing ovation just for what he did on Sunday.

And guess what else you don't get to experience: at the end of the season, you get to talk to the media for a day, and then you go home for three months. You go to your nice homes, with your wonderful families, and shelter yourselves from everything until spring training.

Meanwhile, we're stuck here. We're stuck to carry the brunt of what you failed to accomplish. We get to hear it from Yankee fans who ring our phones, taunt us for hours on end, and in turn affect our wonderful families who, with word and deed, live and die with us as we live and die with you.

Mostly die.

And speaking of die, here's what else we get to deal with:

Wallace Mathews, at this very moment, is doing a jig while writing his latest Met-bashing column...this one he doesn't even have to work at.

John Kruk has probably poisoned himself alcoholically with all the toasts he's drunk to tonight.

Mike Francesa and Chris Russo? They're probably lathering each other in Crisco, giggling like school girls in anticipation of the piling on they're going to do tomorrow.

You, the 2007 New York Mets, have proved them all right. The Mount Rushmore of baseball stupidity? You've raised their IQ about 100 points in one fell swoop.

Congratulations. It must have taken a lot of work to do all that you did. More work than, oh I don't know, winning one or two more games down the stretch like you were supposed to do.

Good thing it's just a game, right boys?

You must think I'm a little bit harsh. Well, you have it coming. Being a Met fan sometimes is like learning how to ride a bicycle...teetering back and forth trying to find your balance between being a supporter, and being a smart ass. You won the division title last season while blowing the field away. With that, you won the benefit of the doubt. You lost Game seven to the Cardinals, but they did go on to win the World Series. So you got a pass.

You didn't look the same in 2007 as you did in 2006. But you had the division lead over two improved teams in Atlanta and Philadelphia...and we all knew that you wouldn't run away with it in '07 like '06. So you got a pass.

Your bullpen blew lead...after lead...after lead. You lost four straight heartbreaking games to the Phillies in Philadelphia. But you went and got that seven game lead. So you got the benefit of the doubt.

When you lost the lead, and you lost the playoffs, you have lost the benefit of the doubt.

You lost the benefit of the doubt when you all tried to steal third base with two outs. You lost the benefit of the doubt when you couldn't hold a three run lead in the bottom of the ninth...or a five run lead in the top of the fourth. You lost the benefit of the doubt when you forgot that there was a force play at third base with runners on second and third. You lost the benefit of the doubt when you stopped running out grounders, and started socializing with every middle infielder every time you got to second base...which wasn't very often down the stretch.

You know what I've lost? Hope. After Yadier Molina, after Adam Wainright? After that happened? I hoped that spring training would start the next day. Things were still going rather well. You actually went farther than the Yankees, you had something to build on, and 2007 was the season for "the next step."

Little did I know that "the next step" would be right off a cliff. Because do you know what you've made me hope for now? You've made me hope that when spring training starts in 2008, I hope you guys don't show up. I hope you take a sabbatical. I hope that there's a Mets-free 2008. I hope Tradition Field stays locked up. Because to see you guys swing bats and run pitching drills and dig out curveballs from the dirt is only going to drive me to drink all over again...just as you did tonight.

What's the point? What's the point in going through all of this again if you're just going to find new ways to crush our spirit? So you can have that inevitable spring training brawl with the Marlins to get your revenge? Oooh, I can't wait! That'll make me feel better.

I know that's not possible. I know you'll be back. Well, at least some of you will be back. And against what I think is my better judgement, I know I'll be back. I know that hoping for a sabbatical is unrealistic. But did it turn out to be any less realistic than hoping that you'd make the playoffs this season?

So go. Enjoy your offseason. But lord help you if I see a picture of any of you in the act of actually enjoying your offseason. Lord help you if I see you in any stupid photo layouts for fashion magazines, or eating fancy steak dinners with your agents. The only thing I want to see you eating is the humble pie that you've forced all of us to eat as local and national media will continue to ridicule the Met fans you leave behind...who's only crime was throwing their allegiance behind you...while we have to sit back and take every last drop of it because there's nothing we can say on these blogs to defend you.

Hey, after the humble pie, you can have some chicken if you subscribe to that "you are what you eat" theory.

Just make sure it's boneless.

I Want A New Drug

Folks, I'm not making this up:

Do you have a really bad memory, or past heartache, that you would prefer to forget?

Researchers at Harvard and McGill University (in Montreal) are working on an amnesia drug that blocks or deletes bad memories. The technique seems to allow psychiatrists to disrupt the biochemical pathways that allow a memory to be recalled.

In a new study, published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, the drug propranolol is used along with therapy to "dampen" memories of trauma victims. They treated 19 accident or rape victims for ten days, during which the patients were asked to describe their memories of the traumatic event that had happened 10 years earlier. Some patients were given the drug, which is also used to treat amnesia, while others were given a placebo.

A week later, they found that patients given the drug showed fewer signs of stress when recalling their trauma.

Great! Give me one family size bottle full of that...I have a list of things that I would prefer to forget. Let's start with Tuesday night.

Yeah, let's start with the game that featured the first five hit game in the career of Kaz Matsui. Yes, that Kaz Matsui...who let loose with this gem after the game:

"It's all about New York," Matsui said of playing the Mets and Yankees, who the Rockies swept in a three-game series last month. "New York is center stage and the place everyone is aware of and watches."

Now he gets it. Great. Too bad he didn't figure that minor detail out when he actually played in a uniform that read "New York" across his chest. Thanks for figuring that out as soon as you got to Colorado so you get get five hits against the team from New York.

But really, shame on me for not seeing this coming...or seeing this coming and intentionally blocking it out of my mind. Is there a drug that will repress visions of former Mets haunting us with five-hit games in the future? When are the Montreal geniuses going to come up with that, eh? And if these guys are so smart, how come they couldn't come up with a drug that encouraged people to attend Expos games?

And maybe I did see the Jason Vargas disaster coming. And I was hoping against hope that I wouldn't come home, flip on the television, and have Vargas being lifted from the game the first thing I saw on my television screen. I mean, I didn't come home that much past the 8PM start time. But that's exactly what I saw. It was like paying $50 for a Mike Tyson fight on pay per view and getting up for a snack and missing the entire fight. I come home, wondering how Jason Vargas is doing, and I missed his entire outing! It's like Vargas was Michael Spinks...or Glass Joe!

This game was a lemon...and I want my money back. I want my money back so I can buy some of those drugs that will help me forget this game.

Maybe yesterday too.

And the first half of June.

And Adam Wainwright.

And the Kazmir trade.

And 1993.

And Don Aase.

You know, I'm going to need a second bottle of those pills...

Run Baby Run

Oh look, there's the ball! Oh look, there's no fielder. Oh look, I can keep running!

Wasn't that trip around the bags kind of like the last scene in the Bad News Bears where the pitcher just holds on to the ball and the runner keeps going around the bases? It was like that, but faster. And cooler.

And from there, it was all downhill for the Athletics for the final nail in their sweep. Legend will have it that if you squinted really hard this weekend, you could see Tug McGraw slap his glove to his thigh instead of John Maine, Wayne Garrett hitting home runs instead of Jose Valentin, and Willie Mays pleading with the home plate umpire.

Uh, no, that was Paul Lo Duca threatening to kill the home plate umpire. Speaking of which...

Perspective: The Mets, with this sweep, have improved to 6-13 over the last 19 games. In that stretch, they've gained a game on the Atlanta Braves. Of course, they've lost five and a half to the Phillies, and the Mets' series with the Cardinals (where if you squint, you can see Adam Wainwright...oh never mind) is merely the appetizer to a huge four game series coming up in Philadelphia over the weekend. It's important to continue to fatten up on the banged up birds, because the Phillies will be facing the truly and horribly putrid Cincinnati Reds.

The good news: The Phillies are currently scouring their minor league system to find a starter for the Friday afternoon game. The bad news: That starter, likely to be brought up from AA, will most likely throw a two-hitter against the Mets.