…your declarations no longer make us laugh. You're to be taken seriously, because you've backed up everything you said.

OK, Pat Burrell. Dumb people may have referred to you as “once terrifying, now vaguely pathetic,” but that was a while ago. Those people have been chastened, and never want to see you at the plate against [...]

This week's sign of the apocalypse: The Mets have to win a game.

If the Mets don't win this afternoon, they will have been swept by their closest pursuers. They will still be in first, they will lead the Phillies by two games and they will enter September no worse than ahead of the pack. But [...]

“I see great things in baseball. It's our game — the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us.”

Walt Whitman may have said that (more likely he didn't), but then he never saw tonight's game. Because that was one of the purest forms of excruciation I've ever spent nearly three [...]

Perceptions are tough to shake. For example, last month in San Diego it was noted that Jose Reyes and David Wright had paired to become the Mets' all-time leaders in starting together at short and third with 395 such games in the lineup since 2004. My first thought was “somebody keeps track of that?” My [...]

Gosh, didn't see that coming.

To borrow an observation from last week's Mad Men, watching Guillermo Mota set down the Phillies 1-2-3 in the ninth was like watching a dog play the piano. It was very impressive. And you knew he was highly unlikely to do it again.

Mets aren't hitting anymore, are they? For a while [...]

How does Armando Benitez continue to stay employed as a relief pitcher?

It may not matter in the long term as in the race at hand. It may not even matter in the short term for tonight. But how does a manager, in this case Fredi Gonzalez, use Armando Benitez in any kind of competitive baseball [...]

It should be hard. I like that it's hard.

—Matt Kelley to Toby Ziegler, “Twenty Hours in America,” The West Wing

The brand spankin' new vibe around the Mets after months of stick-in-the-muddiness is because their lead quietly ballooned to seven satisfying games over the weekend, the race is over and won. I've seen columns that have [...]

Well, that could have gone better.

J. D. Durbin looked like D.T. Young, Jayson Werth looked like Ty Cobb, Lastings Milledge looked like Ryan Thompson, Jose Reyes looked like a distracted 13-year-old in the infield, Carlos Delgado looked like his post-knee-tweak self, and Brian Lawrence and Chase Utley looked like their usual selves. Which all added [...]