It hasn't been a banner couple of years in Flushing where roster management is concerned, but the Mets moved with rather un-Metsian determination and dispatch tonight, sending Ramon Castro to the Chicago White Sox for 25-year-old pitcher Lance Broadway even as Omir Santos was still raising his fists toward the klieg lights.

Of course, Santos helped […]

It was one of my wife's more modest goals, but also apparently one of the harder-to-reach ones: See Johan Santana pitch.

Emily and her dad have had a seven- or 15-game plan for a couple of years, and their run of starting-pitcher luck has been spotty to say the least: Last year they got a surfeit […]

About a month ago (or so it seems), the Mets headed off for the West Coast, not knowing that what lay ahead was the baseball equivalent of the Donner Pass. Delgado. Reyes. Putz. K-Rod. Cora. Sheffield. Church. Beltran. All either went on the DL, missed games or had their contributions hindered by injuries. (And now […]

Seeing how that worked out, before tomorrow's game I will pen an anguished attack on the rest of the starting nine.

I'm not the least bit ashamed to say my two-day vacation from the Mets was necessary and thoroughly pleasant.

Tuesday night's debacle also marked the end of a long run of late nights spent working at the computer; on Wednesday morning I dragged myself out of bed and swore that five minutes after Joshua was in […]

Suddenly this is what amounts to progress around here: The Mets' loss was merely aggravating instead of disgusting.

Oh, it didn't look good when Daniel Murphy, cast as a hapless plaything of the cruel baseball gods, mishandled the first ball put in play since Jeremy Reed mishandled last night's final ball put in play. And, logically […]

Going into the weekend, I was pretty happy about our being the ESPN Sunday night game. Thursday and Friday night I worked and gave what attention I could spare to Howie and Wayne on the radio. On Saturday night Emily threw me a 40th birthday celebration at B61, which was enormous fun but meant Johan […]

After you get used to the season having really arrived and settled down to stay a while, baseball can be like a good dog — at your side and ready to match whatever level of devotion you're giving that night. Want to focus with laser-beam intensity on each and every pitch? Baseball's up for that. […]

As predicted, the Mets returned to Earth. Heck, they practically burned up on re-entry, came down miles from the rendezvous point, panicked and managed to blow the hatch and flood the capsule while waiting for rescue. I'm pressed to think what was the least fun: the errors, the parade of unlucky or bad relievers or […]