Back up a truck.

—Giants manager Leo Durocher's player personnel report to owner Horace Stoneham, 1948

The Mets need a heart transplant, a new set of guts and a severe makeover. There are two trades that will never happen, probably couldn't happen, maybe shouldn't happen, but let's say they did.

1) The Mets send David Wright, Jose Reyes, [...]

Citi Field is beginning to grow on me. The Mets are beginning to feel like fungus.

Spent a lovely afternoon in Section 509, my favorite section to date. First spot I've sat where at least 95% of the field was available to me. Crisp but not uncomfortable weather for Weather Education Day. My buddy Rich made [...]

On a lot of nights, the New York Mets are a pretty unstoppable baseball team from about 7:20 until about 7:45.

Unfortunately, the nights drag on, and so do the Mets. The orange-and-blue hare begins to coast. To hop only now and again. Then it goes to sleep somewhere, and you feel yourself go rigid at [...]

We were not shown the time machine that would make it possible for us to adjust our career choices in order to earn what it will take to afford a seat at the Excelsior Club conference table.

—The author, after visiting the Citi Field Preview Center, September 27, 2007

First class is what's wrong, honey. It used [...]

Some Atlantic League general manager will eventually decide to unite Daniel Murphy and Elijah Dukes in the same outfield because crowds have always been attracted to trainwrecks. May the Good Lord have mercy on that craven GM's soul.

Manny Acta sat Dukes yesterday. Jerry Manuel started Murphy. Dukes' team won. Hmm…

Murph seems the polar opposite of [...]

We don't wait for a panel of judges to score baseball games by holding up signs indicating what they thought of the precision and beauty of the respective entrants' execution. This ain't Blades of Glory (though it would be infinitely more entertaining if it were). So never mind that the Mets lacked a little crispness [...]

6 pm: Go over Nationals lineup. Feel pangs of pity. Decide to pitch to contact to minimize their embarrassment, maximize chance that I can pitch every second or third day to ensure we win games more often than every fifth day. Besides, no point making that Dukes kid mad.

6:31 pm: Sheffield and Tatis in the [...]

There is doubt. There is no benefit. You lost the benefit of the doubt when you blew a large first-place lead one September and a large enough first-place lead the next September while neither time leaving yourselves any slack to salvage a Wild Card. If you couldn't generate your own slack, we don't need to [...]