“You're a winner! Teddy knows!”
—One of the three clichés spouted by the Executive Teddy Bear my mother gave my father on his 50th birthday
82 Wins!
Eleven wins better than 2004!
First winning record since 2001!
We are over five-freaking-hundred once and for all!
And one win from clinching at least a third-place tie in the only division in baseball where nobody will have a losing record!
If there's a bigger story in New York baseball this morning, I'm not aware of it.
Oh all right, there's another team playing another series of some consequence, but I don't see the Yankees and Red Sox as more important than the Mets and the Rockies. I don't. I'm not kidding. That's not meant to be snide or ironic or snironic (or, in deference to our new network, SNYronic).
All year long, thanks in great part to my encampment in the 'sphere, I have been so focused on the Mets and so oblivious to everything else that whenever I hear a TV or radio voice start to tell me that the Yankees are playing a big game, I reflexively say, “Who gives a shit? Nobody cares!” It's almost a mantra. So Friday afternoon, when there was a live broadcast from Fenway Park to hype the game that was to take place there Friday night, I said the same thing. And I meant it.
It took me a moment to realize, oh yeah, somebody probably does care.
But not me. Not more than secondarily. My primary concern? The Mets. Always the Mets. Game 1, Game 100, Game 160. Doesn't matter.
In Game 160, our team — the only one we've got — had the cool, clear eyes of a seeker of wisdom and truth, yet there was that upturned chin and that grin of impetuous youth. Oh, I believe in them. They've succeeded in baseball in 2005.
The Mets are a winner. Everybody should know.
NOTE TO OUR LOYAL READERS, THE BEST BLOG READERS IN ALL OF BASEBALL: Faith and Fear in Flushing will see you through that first difficult week of Mets Withdrawal with our Year-End Spectacular, running Monday, October 3 through Friday, October 7. After the briefest of hiatuses (hiatii?), we will return to this space on a recurring basis throughout the offseason in attempt to make the winter go away as fast as possible.
Looking forward to the offseason posts, especially the daily updates on Looper 's rehab and the contract negotiations to re-sign Gerald WIlliams.
Don't stay away too long…please
A comment about Looper……how could he have been hurt ALL season and management not know? This lack of communication bothers me. If I knew he was not right, how could they not know?
What's trully amazing is that here we're sending out Loophole to blow saves with a bum arm, while riding the pines being used barely in mopup roles is Aaron Heilman, wasting away. Bad enough Heilman wasn't use more, but to send out a bum armed pitcher. And where the heck was the media? How was this kept a secret? The Bushies oughta hire our mgmt cos they held this secret thru the whole season. And now LoopHole wants to be paid for being a “good guy” and pitching the season in pain? I got news for ya, no one should get paid on what they did in the past. You get paid from here going forward. LoopHole, sayonara.
Think a Looper replacement or a healthy-from-June-on Loooper might have made up for what has become the handful-of-games difference between a mildly pleasing 82-84 win season and a Wild Card-winning 88 or 90 victories? That realization kept me awake as the sun rose over L.I. this morning.
Ah, if it wasn't him, it woulda been something else. We had no first baseman and too many second basemen, et al. But Looper denying his injury looks even worse in retrospect.
Yankees Suck.