Whew. Wow. Gasp.

Come in off the ledge. Come down from the bridge. We’re not out of the woods, but there’s some sunlight coming down through the trees.

In the box score this looked like a laugher, but we know better. John Maine’s sixth inning was a passion play. Up 4-0 and with Hudson out of […]

…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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]

OK, it was kind of amusing and kind of cool to watch a 44-year-old man with a history of gout beat out a bunt single. (I mean, gout? Seriously? What is David Wells, a Dickens character?) It was less amusing and less cool when this little adventure didn't result in that 44-year-old man laboring on […]

As Saturday's tilt with the Dodgers wound through the early innings, I kept singing a little bit of doggerel I'd adapted for the occasion:

(to the tune of “Green Acres”):

El Duque is the pitcher for me

He's older than a redwood tree

(ba da ba-da-bum)

He don't speak English

(ba da ba-da-bum)

He don't speak Spanish

(ba da ba-da-bum)

He speaks Duque language

El […]

A funny thing has happened since I admitted that I don't particularly like the 2007 Mets — they've started growing on me.

No, the just-concluded three-game set with the Padres wasn't good for the W-L record or the heart. But the Mets beat Trevor Hoffman once, then came leaping out of the coffin twice more. There […]

Sometime in the not-so-distant future Jeff Conine will become the 819th Met, welcomed by me with great enthusiasm. My natural sympathies lie with youth and potential over age and a diminishing track record (Milledge over Green, Gotay over Castillo), but they're put aside when it comes to constructing a bench. There, you want evidence of […]

Dear CW11 executives,

Readers of this blog will attest, I hope, that I'm not a bluenose. My language is frequently terrible, I like my beer, and I'm not overly concerned with a certain level of bad behavior. And without getting political, I'm a firm believer that it's my job to raise my four-year-old son — not […]

Willie Randolph's postgame analysis of whatever we collectively hallucinated in Pittsburgh was harsh. (I had vague hopes of Willie turning over the buffet table, though I knew better — that tradition seems destined to end with Lou Piniella's departure from the managerial ranks.) I can only imagine, though this may be giving a confounding team […]