I love the Mets.I'm sure that fact is easy to forget from your perspective as you read my constant razzes, piling on, and flat out pissery. (If Snoop Manuel can make up crackpot theories as to why Oliver Perez is wild, then I can make up new meanings for existing words, so deal with it.) So it's something I need to make it clear and reiterate sometimes. Everyone has their cross to bear ... loving the Mets is mine.
Yet I'm not one of those people that think winter is cold and lonely and that I need to inject caffeine straight into my veins to get through the 3-4 months without real live baseball. Winter is fun. This might have been more fun than others. I saw the Jets get to the AFC Championship game. I saw USA Hockey get to overtime of the gold medal game, and I'm about to go on the wild ride that is the Rangers make a big push for ninth place. Woo hoo.
And I also saw the Nets win six games ... one of them against the Celtics after they traded for Nate Robinson.
(After that I saw a chipmunk on downers with a broken leg drop 40 points on Robinson.)
Winter? Suits me just fine. A winter without the Mets? Probably did a little good for my sanity.
And yet I knew ... I knew that I was growing wistful for the Mets when I was watching the Winter Olympics, and I couldn't watch John Shuster cost the American curlers three wins on last rock without thinking of Aaron Heilman. And when all the alpine skiers started looking like Jose Offerman angrily wielding a baseball bat at a minor league pitcher, I knew I was starting to miss the game.
But when I was yelling at Carlos Baerga last night for missing an easy tag on Joe Girardi during the airing of a game that happened 14 years ago ... a game the Mets won, I knew I needed a ballgame, quickly.Thankfully, we'll get one today.
And it's fitting that in the first game against a live opponent (don't give me intersquad ... we talkin' bout practice, man) it's Nelson Figueroa that will get the start. Not only is it nice to see Nelson get a chance to make the team after being tossed around the organization like a Jeremy Reed throw from first, it provides a certain symmetry from tossing in those long shadows that only meaningless October baseball can provide to pitching in the splashy sun that only spring training in Florida can muster up. It's Figueroa who provides the bridge between the despair of last season and the promise of 2010. And if you've reached the end of that bridge without jumping, then welcome to the season. If you haven't reached the end of the bridge, you've got about a month to get there.
But whether you're ready, or you're not, there's one thing we can all agree on:
How the hell did Baerga miss that tag? It's Joe Girardi for crissakes! A damn catcher!!! When are we going to be out from Baerga's contract so we can go sign Luis Castillo?
