(Before we proceed into the second circle of Met Hell, a word about a special brand of offseason Hell for baseball fans: evaluating a trade without getting to see the principals play ball. My 30-second take on Mike Cameron for Xavier Nady is that it's impossible to size up offseason trades and signings one by [...]

Welcome to Met Hell, which you'll find owes a certain something to depictions of the real thing. Now, here's the good news: Compared to that real thing, the Hell that holds a lot more than baseball players, Met Hell isn't really that bad a place. Oh sure, as we descend you'll find some malcontents and [...]

At any given moment, the Mets roster is 12-20% occupied by guys I can't stand and guys I don't want. I don't know if I hate them though.

As much fun as some make it, I don't want to hate on the Mets. They're the Mets. I live through them. To hate a Met is to [...]

The old baseball joke about rooting for laundry means that donning the orange and blue (in its various migrating shades, to say nothing of white and black) absolves players of their former misdeeds against us. Hit Piazza in the wrist at Fenway and get in a war of words with him? We love Pedro now. [...]

My radio antenna is at half-mast today. If it results in static, so what? It's not like there's anything to listen to.

Gary Cohen is leaving the WFAN booth. There go 162 reasons to keep living.

That SportsNet New York has tabbed him the television voice of the Mets merely cushions the blow — assuming Cablevision actually [...]

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.

It is the Mets Final Exam. It asks you on Halloween to see through the secret identities of 44 Mets who played their final game for the Mets in one of the 44 different seasons the Mets have played, one player per each Mets season. [...]

The answers are flooding in. They're coming by comment, by e-mail, by posting in other venues. Many of them are correct. The help is helping. But there are a few runners being left stranded in scoring position on called third strikes.

While we await the Tuesday posting of final answers to the Mets Final Exam, I [...]

My teaching license is about to be revoked because I can't construct a test true to its mission.

Each question on the Mets Final Exam is supposed to correspond to one year and one year only in Mets history. HOWEVER, in my desire to offer answers that would be fun and enlightening, I didn't realize that [...]

Geometry was never my strong suit. “Never” is an understatement. My only hope for not failing it in ninth grade and not having to repeat it in tenth was the New York State Regents exam, my Get Out of Jail card. Pass the Regents and pass the class.

I never could've done it without extra help. [...]