This is the last weekend without a Mets game for a long, long time.
Ahh. It's February with a big winter storm on the way, but somehow it just got a lot warmer.

So Jimmy Rollins says the Phillies are the team to beat in the National League East. As he should. He’s on the Phillies. He should exude confidence in February. If Fred Wilpon took grief three years ago for setting “meaningful games in September” as a goal (a reasonable one, I thought, coming off a most dreadful 95-loss campaign), then we should applaud Rollins for aiming high on behalf of a team that looked good late and probably improved over the winter.

Then we should boo his loudmouth ass every time he shows his face, starting with the Home Opener (or boo his loudmouth face every time he shows his ass — your choice). You talk like that in the earshot of Mets and Mets fans, expect feedback, hopefully the kind that comes bundled with a Reyes hit, a Reyes steal, a Lo Duca shot through the middle, a Beltran blast and so forth.

That’s for April 9. Don’t worry too much about what Jimmy Rollins says now. We don’t know if he’s delusional or on the money yet. Until we do, keep in mind that players named Jimmy have been known to offer some unorthodox utterances. Even Mets named Jimmy.

Jimmy Piersall, for example. He’s best remembered in his 1963 Met incarnation for circling the bases backwards when he whacked his hundredth career homer — not third-to-first backwards, but back-to-the-bases backwards. Whatever it was, it was enough to get him released almost immediately. As Ol’ Case put it, there was only room enough for one clown on his Mets, and it wasn’t gonna be Jimmy Piersall.

More than a decade after Piersall was hung out and several years after he hung ’em up, Jimmy resurfaced as a goodwill ambassador of sorts for the Texas Rangers. To understand what sorts, it’s instructive to read one of the flat-out funniest baseball books that’s ever been written, Seasons In Hell by Mike Shropshire, a Fort Worth beat writer like they don’t make anymore who covered a franchise that its hard to believe ever made it at all.

Shropshire’s Rangers are the Whitey Herzog/Billy Martin 1973-75 model, or as it says on the cover, “The Worst Baseball Team in History.” Technically they were only godawful his first year on the beat, but it’s best not to get caught up in numbers here because mere American League West standings don’t do those Texans justice. I first read Seasons upon its publication in 1996 and laughed hysterically. Then I loaned it to I don’t remember who and never got it back. I found it rereleased last year, scooped it up and recently began reading and laughing all over again. I was on a train the other day when I read something involving Piersall that made me chortle hard enough to drown out a dozen cell phone conversations.

The author describes an offseason event at old Arlington Stadium to welcome a new sponsor, Schlitz, to the Ranger family. The party was up to local standards, Shropshire writes, the refreshments “the same as what you’d find in the bedroom of the average Texan — a washtub full of ice and beer cans and a bowl of potato chips.” On hand were several advertising executives attached to Schlitz. With no real baseball to discuss, Shropshire tried to make small talk with one of the account guys, noting that it struck him odd that in all those Schlitz ads that ran in the ’70s there were nothing but men keeping company with other men.

They’re all filmed on big sailboats and you see a bunch of guys rigging the sails and diving off the deck and drinking Schlitz and having a great time and all, but you never see any women on the boat…and you don’t see any women after the boat is parked on the beach and the guys are having a clambake and they’re singing and throwing Frisbees and still drinking all that Schlitz. So I was watching some of those commercials on a football game and got to wondering if maybe Schlitz is going after the gay market with these TV commercials.

Shropshire swears he was just trying to make a little friendly chat, maybe inject a bit of levity “into what was shaping up as a colorless gathering…it never occurred to me to notice that, like the Schlitz sailboat, there weren’t any women at the press party.” But this was Texas in 1974 and the account executive wasn’t too pleased at what he inferred from the writer’s remarks. Things grew tense.

Into the breach stepped a late-arriving Piersall, Ranger ambassador of goodwill. Shropshire was relieved to have a distraction. The account exec did a 180 and greeted Jimmy like a long-lost relative.

“Jimmy! Have a Schlitz!”

What he wasn’t aware of was Piersall was strictly on the wagon, so much so that when the inspiration for Fear Strikes Out responded, “I don’t drink that goddamn goat piss,” it was nothing personal.

Seeing as how “the poor ad guy didn’t know that,” it’s no wonder “his mouth fell open.” It certainly took the wind out of the sails of the immediate anger the Schlitz representative felt toward the baseball writer, and for that, Shropshire was extremely grateful.

I felt like rushing over to Jimmy Piersall and giving him a warm embrace, then decided against that, lest I wind up on a Schlitz commercial.

There are two topics with which I try not to overly concern myself in the course of a baseball season: many damn things written about the Mets by what we’ll call the non-fan media and every damn thing I hear about the Yankees whether I want to or not.

But it is Spring Training, the time of the season when we’re more at the mercy of those factors than at any other point on the baseball calendar. Once there are Mets games and such, we’ll have those to revolve around. Right now, it’s hard to ignore the noise and occasional stupidity that spring can bring.

Sunday was one of those days. Sunday is always one of those days. It’s the Sunday papers, my deepest-rooted source for trusted baseball perspective (well them and Metstradamus). The Sunday papers in February validate our imaginations. The Mets suddenly no longer exist only online or in the past. There’s stuff going on in Florida. There must be. Somebody’s paying somebody to cover it in a way we logistically can’t.

Sadly, some writers are just e-mailing it in. Take Mark Herrmann of Newsday, a columnist without a Sunshine State dateline on Sunday but obviously with space to fill. He had a half-baked idea for a piece that he stuck in the oven for maybe a quarter of the necessary baking time before grabbing his mitts and pulling it out. It wasn’t even warm on arrival.

It was one of those columns in which the writer’s initial concept comes up against facts that don’t support it, so he kind of bobs and weaves through his inconsistencies until he’s got 800 words in the bank. At least that’s what it reads like (which is all that matters in the end).

Herrmann’s topic was something about the Mets having a chance for a big followup year to 2006, specifically an opportunity to take a big step in New York. They’ve come so far. But they’re not the Yankees. But they are good. Or not good enough. And they’ve done the right things. But not enough of them. Except they didn’t do dumb things either. Something like that. Plus an inane and cheap shot at Moises Alou’s uncles. See for yourself.

When I read it Sunday, I was instinctively offended by the stale anti-Met conventional wisdom Herrmann was selling and the strange evidence with which he was supporting it. For example, the Mets don’t own New York because various Yankees apparently got heartier rounds of applause at the winter baseball writers’ dinner. I have no idea who all goes to the baseball writers’ dinner, an event that requires a pretty penny for admission. Not to resort to the hoary chestnut that the Mets are the team of the people and the Yankees appeal to the swells, but let’s assume that the baseball writers dinner demographic has a pinstriped tilt. For this particular function, more Yankees fans bought tickets than Mets fans.

We concede the black-tie vote and pledge to start saving now for next January.

More mystifying was Herrmann’s claim that when Carlos Beltran went down on called strike three last October 19, if we’re honest, we’ll admit we “said it was hard to imagine Derek Jeter letting that happen.”

We didn’t. Honest.

Technically, I can only rightly speak for myself, but I sure as hell didn’t. I’d bet whatever stray Mets Money I have floating around the house that not a single Mets fan of any value did. I’ll go out on a limb and add that any Yankees fans looking in, whether they were being the atypical good New Yorkers for a week, relishing our demise or simply licking their Tiger-inflicted wounds, didn’t either.

Who the hell thinks like that? This isn’t a gratuitous bash of Captain Fantastic and his mythic ability to hit five-run homers with the bases empty. Jeter does what Jeter does, but when you or I or anybody is watching the Mets play the Cardinals, nobody’s staring at his wrist and wondering What Would Jeter Do?

Except Mark Herrmann, apparently. Herrmann insists the Mets still have to use the Yankees as a “measuring stick” even though the Mets went further in last year’s playoffs and are defending division champions and have returned reasonably intact the cast that brought them to this level.

After years of not altogether unreasonable media-harping that every Met person needs to stop worrying about the Yankees…after achieving practical parity in the marketplace and putting a more recently successful product on the field…here was a credentialed baseball writer of significant New York tenure instructing Fred Wilpon and all us orange-and-blue schnooks that we still haven’t made it anywhere because we haven’t, by his measuring stick, made it here.

His proof? Beltran didn’t dive into the stands and tag Jeremy Giambi when he faced Adam Wainwright; somebody clapped loudly for Joe Torre in a tux; and we signed Jesus Alou’s nephew.

Like I said, my Met antennae were up and detecting an attack. So that — along with the generally dim quality of the logic — pissed me off. But given an extra day to dwell on it, I don’t feel that way anymore.

I’m pissed off because it’s an insult to be compared to the Yankees. An insult to the Mets. An insult to good taste.

Alex Rodriguez reported to Spring Training and turned his first media session into Mean Girls II. Except Lindsay Lohan comes off as more dignified in the tabloids.

Derek and I don’t have sleepovers anymore!

Derek and I don’t eat together like we used to!

Derek and I don’t talk anymore!

For the first time since he came to the big leagues, I actually felt bad for Derek Jeter. He’s gotta work with this guy? A guy who can’t just say, “we’re professionals and everything else stays in the clubhouse.” Or, better yet, “I gotta work the count more with two strikes.” Sooner or later the BS questions about who’s sleeping on whose couch will fade if you do your job. I have no idea who’s sleeping on David Wright’s couch and I’m cool with that.

Alex Rodriguez has Derek Jeter abandonment issues? I don’t want to know about any of this stuff, yet it leaks through all the Met barriers I erect. Why is this still happening? Don’t give me the Bronx Zoo theory. 1977 was a long time ago. This isn’t the Bronx Zoo anymore. That was at least novel for its time and those were relatively admirable characters who fed off each other and won. Now A-Rod’s worrying about who’s the straw that stirs the Cosmo? Geez.

If this is the byproduct of winning all those Mark Herrmann Popularity & Prestige Awards, then I don’t want it. I’ll take our very good chances for the coming year, our share of back pages for winning games, our network, our rising stadium, our falling stadium, our 3.5 million gate, our Alou, our Beltran, our team, our Spring Training that proceeds on a quiet baseball path. For decorum’s sake, certain Yankees and columnists might be wise to look to St. Lucie for their measuring stick.

Good story in the Daily News today about David Wright and HoJo, but what struck me wasn't the friendship between the two, though that was nice to hear about. It was the weave of Mets history: “HoJo took an instant liking to the 19-year-old Wright, even before Wright's agent and ex-Met Keith Miller — also a close friend of HoJo's — checked in on their budding relationship.” There you have it: a future Met and two ex-Mets bound together in one sentence. The only way you could pack more into that one would be if HoJo had text-messaged Wright while young David was raking the leaves at Wayne Garrett's house. (And elsewhere in the Daily News, I read that Rick Peterson's kid pitches for a college half an hour a way. His pitching coach? David West.)
(By the way, lots of ex-Mets in this fantastic Dugout.)
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Went out carousing with pals last night and, after drinking enough beer to drown a fair-sized ox, my inherent cheapness came to the fore and I decided that the fiscally responsible thing to do was take the subway home, even though it was the wrong side of 3 a.m. (Not that there's really a right side if your reference point is 3 a.m.) Next thing I know I look up and through the subway-car windows I see buildings and trees and the night sky.
Waitaminute, the A/C line doesn't run outside between West 4th and High Street … uh-oh.
We pull into a station and what to my blearily horrified eyes should appear but this sign: 88TH STREET-BOYD AVENUE.
88th Street? Boyd Avenue? Where the hell is that, the moon? (No offense to any readers who live around there. I'm sure it's quite nice. Point is it's not exactly where I live.)
As I stagger out into a mind-bogglingly cold night (wow, maybe this is the moon), time for a chaser of bad luck (and yes, I know luck is the residue of design): Merrily pulling in across the elevated tracks, hopelessly out of reach, is the Manhattan-bound A train that's the only thing that can get me back to where I belong. Fantastic. There'll be another one of those in 20 minutes or so — assuming everything's running normally in the middle of the night on a holiday.
I wish it were warm, I kept thinking as I huddled miserably by the token booth, willing myself to stay awake and not miss the sound of the next A train arriving above me. Not I wish I'd taken a cab, or I wish I weren't a complete moron or I wish I were home in bed where 37-year-old fathers should be, but I wish it were warm. 4 a.m. in Queens near the terminus of the A line will get you down to basics.
What on earth does this have to do with the Mets? Well, you see, the next thing I knew there was a bright light and a lot of noise and David Wright arrived in a helicopter to save me. Ha ha. No, it's that when I woke up this morning and this whole misadventure swam back into memory, the first thing I thought was rather odd: If the subway system were the baseball season, 88th Street/Boyd Avenue would be February 19th.
Or, to recall last night's prayer, I wish it were warm.

I'd been hoping this would be the year I fell back in love with spring training, but so far it's not happening.
Spring training's a tease, and a tease that takes way too long to deliver nothing. Sure, that first day of pitchers and catchers is like a beacon from springtime. But it's a beacon from a very far-off springtime, one that chiefly reminds you of how far there is to go until anything matters. At this point of spring training everything is the same: Pitchers run fielding drills, coaches say how great everybody looks, GMs spin the off-season, managers spin the upcoming season, and none of it means anything. In a couple of weeks we'll emerge from this period of Utter Meaninglessness and come to the fork in the spring-training road where Boredom meets Despair. Boredom means a happy spring training, all of which are alike. Despair means an unhappy spring training, each of which is vile in its own way, whether it's Tommy John surgeries, outfielders hitting first basemen on Photo Day or ex-Yankees threatening restaurant workers. Either way, it'll be a slog to the finish line, which is really just the start.
Did I mention spring training takes way too long? As presently constructed, it's a relic of the era in which players spent the winter driving trucks or baling hay or selling suits. Today pitchers need to build up their arm strength, but your journeyman-est of journeymen utility infielders spent most of the offseason in the weight room. If I woke up to find myself running the baseball world, I'd have every team do a mid-February winter caravan to keep us all from hurling ourselves out office windows into the darkness of 5 pm, then open camps on March 1. Sounds like heresy now, but really it would be kinder.
Whew. One bit of news has penetrated my Fortress of Grumpitude so far: The Mets aren't appointing a captain. To which I say, Thank God.
Captaincies for baseball teams sound cool, but at least in the Mets' hands, they haven't been particularly good tidings for either the captain or the team. The high point was our first captain: Keith Hernandez, back in 1987. An unassailable choice: Keith was the quarterback of the infield, the smartest hitter on the team and the soul of the clubhouse (life after midnight and all), not to mention my favorite Met. Or maybe it's just that my memories are rendered rose-colored by his cooler-than-cool 1988 baseball card. That's a signature shot of Mex: Glove out at Wrigley, staring death at some hapless Cub hitter, the C on his clavicle just adding to his aura of badassness.
After that, though, things went south. Gary Carter was named co-captain, a move both unnecessary (co-captains?) and stinking of clubhouse politics. A Web search claims Mookie Wilson got a co-captaincy in 1989, which I don't recall but sure sounds like the kind of thing the Mets would have done back then. No offense to Mookie, but that's captaincy as a gold watch: Mookie would barely crack the Mendoza line for us in '89 and get exiled to Canada.
The C came back as adornment for John Franco in 2001, and again, this is one of those “no offense, but…” situations. Franco bled orange and blue, and he certainly had plenty of influence in the clubhouse and the organization, but something felt wrong about that C from the start. This was both captaincy as gold watch and an unwitting acknowledgment that something was going wrong for the Mets: veterans whispering in the ear of ownership, sedition against Bobby Valentine. And besides: a closer as captain? And one whose high-wire act drove Met fans insane?
So I agree with Willie — particularly when I read that if there were a Met captain, it'd be Tom Glavine. Really? I've come to feel warmly toward Glavine as The Eventual Met instead of The Manchurian Brave, but there's still something about him that's mildly off-putting, whether it's his diplomatically sneaky excuse-making or his strangely bloodless, aloof presence on the mound. Maybe, as Willie's comments suggest, that's unfair to him and he does a lot of good in the clubhouse away from reporters' notebooks and TV cameras. Even so, can a captain be a pitcher? Isn't a captain someone you see out there barking to his teammates about defensive positioning, or looming in the batting order?
My pick for captain, if we had to have one, would be Paul Lo Duca, who brought a very Mex-like presence and boiling-over intensity to the infield. (Heck, he's already got the nickname Captain Red-Ass.) Then again, your captain probably isn't somebody in a walk year of a contract.
Captain? Ain't happenin'. Let's call the whole thing off.

Gleemonex makes it feel like it’s 72 degrees in your head…all the time.
—Advertising slogan for the orange pill purported to chase your depression away in Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy

Spring Training’s a placebo. There’s no active ingredient in it that should have any tangible effect on your well-being. Yet it does the trick every time. I’ve been taking Spring Training for a couple of days now and I feel much better about things, no matter how non-existent its impact will be on the baseball season to come.

We’re six weeks from Opening Night. When that Sunday comes, we will have forgotten just about everything that’s grabbed our attention this weekend. It’s ephemera, shooting by in the breeze like a Candlestick hot dog wrapper. As weighty news goes, the dribs and drabs emanating out of Port St. Lucie make for thin gruel. But after a winter on the starvation diet, gruel is mighty tasty.

Please sir, I want some more.

If a theme has been detected from these first essentially substance-free days of reportage (reporting on the reporting of throwers and crouchers), it is withs and withouts.

Newspapers with baseball. Which are much better than newspapers without baseball. Saturday papers usually carry as much content as one of those diner placemats with cocktail recipes (vodka gimlet anyone?), but yesterday they were freaking Scripture. Sure you could look it up online, ya cheapskates, but how could you resist the chance to lay down 50 cents and, in return, get a back page of the Daily News in which the lead development of the morning was Willie Randolph wearing his World Series ring to work? If that doesn’t say spring to you, nothing will. Ditto for the pages inside the News and Newsday and the Times yesterday. Mets news. Yankees news. Wire news. I got a particular kick out of John Harper’s lament that the Yankees are turning on each other in print as in the days when Willie was winning that ring. Gee John, if Mussina weren’t barking at Pavano, wouldn’t you write that the Yankees sure are boring? And who asks them what’s on their minds anyway?

Managers with rings. So Randolph wore his ’77 bling on Friday. The wrong NY doesn’t faze me. Maybe a year ago, surely two years ago. Now he’s just motivating. Willie, it was noted, has six rings in his jewelry box. I assume every returning Met who checked in Friday looked at it and thought, “They give out rings? Well, if I’d known that, I would have tried harder!” Casey Stengel had nine World Series rings (assuming John McGraw authorized rings for the world champion Giants in ’21 and ’22). I don’t know if he showed any of them to Gus Bell or Felix Mantilla. If he did, it didn’t take.

Shirts without numbers. Very subtle Uni Watch-type stuff, but this year’s unattractive spring training jersey, presumably something MLB mandates so they can sell more schmatas, has no number on the front, just the script Mets. Save for Turning Back The Clock and such, I do believe the wearing of these will mark the first time since 1964 that the Mets will take the field in any kind of competition numberless to the camera. Are they trying to tell us that every player is essentially interchangeable? Is this the laundry-rooting argument getting its best test in generations? Or did somebody just forget to iron the 47 onto Glavine’s top?

Glavine without filter. Give our longest tenured Met credit for this: he’s honest. His whole spiel Friday that he wants his 300th this season and then he’s likely retiring didn’t contain a word devoted to “and of course I want to help the team go all the way.” He’s in it for Tom Glavine. Fine. I long ago understood that pitchers, what with their own private W and L collections, are extreme individuals in a team sport. And the more wins Glavine gets as a Met, the more wins the Mets get. But maybe just a little lip service to the cause?

Park with confidence. Chan Ho isn’t buying any of our rationalizations that he’s catastrophic pitching insurance. He says he’s the third starter. I’m so crazed by the cold and the lack of proof to the contrary that I’m willing to believe him. It’s still February.

Aaron without space. Did I see something about Heilman not having a parking spot? How’s that for a metaphor for the rotation and his forever circling its lot? Except for giving up the most damaging opposition home run since Brian Jordan, Aaron’s a fine reliever. It’s not like they converted him to a valet.

Wagner with alibi. He now says he wasn’t right last year. Strange ethic, the pitcher’s code. You can never admit you’re off while you’re off but after the fact, after you’ve been not quite what you were cracked up to be (Billy was usually plenty), it’s OK to come clean. Of course he wanted to arrive in ’06 and live up to his money and his billing, but as with the L-word in 2005, he might have helped the big picture come into slightly sharper focus had he taken a couple of weeks and healed that nasty finger of his. It wasn’t like he’d be loved any less than he was when he was flailing through certain ninth innings along the way.

Williams with brace. Dave Williams had neck pain. They discovered at mini-camp that it was a bulging disk (so that’s what mini-camp is good for). He had surgery. Now he’s walking around in an uncomfortable neck contraption, a forgotten face not even on the periphery of the rotation crowd. But if he hadn’t been found out —and if the rest of his teammates got neck pain watching his pitches fly out of Tradition Field — then we wouldn’t congratulate him on his stoicism. We’d just think he sucked. If the staff comes together, he remains forgotten. But if it’s a work in progress when he recuperates by mid-year, he could very well be another Dave Williams, the guy who came out of nowhere last summer to twirl a couple of high-quality starts. It helps to get healthy.

Schoeneweis with an e. Three e’s, actually. It’s the second one that surprised me when I tried to type it the other day. He joins McIlvaine, for whom I often forget the small i, and the enemy Schuerholz, whose first u eludes me, in my first circle of Met Spell.

Jose with David. The kids showed up ahead of their positional cohort. Nothing wrong with that.

Clubhouse without Lastings. It was noted the other day by the Journal News‘ John Delcos on his LoHud Mets blog that Lastings Milledge did not report early, early by definition being before you’re supposed to be there (unless you’re Tom Coughlin). Delcos called it “just an observation,” which is what blogs are chock full of. He also observed that Wright was already mowing the grass and smoothing the dirt and doing all those swell David things, implying by juxtaposition in the same entry that Lastings Milledge is not up to snuff if he’s not following in The David’s footsteps. I’m not sure what the actions of one player have to do with those of another even if one is considered beatific and the other suspected of god knows what. As more than one of Delcos’ readers have already responded, just an observation.

Reporters with blogs. What was novel in 2006 seems to have become required writing in 2007. The Post, the Times, the Record and WFAN’s Eddie Coleman have joined their beat brethren as bloggers. They all figure to be as newsy as one can be in Spring Training and generally break stuff quicker than traditional newspapers (even their online editions) will allow. More work for them, more stuff for us; the Met consumer benefits. That said, I’m not sure I needed to read yesterday that Mark Hale was hoping to find a place to watch Cornell play basketball against Penn, just as I’m not sure you need to read many of my non-Mets tangents. The devil resides in the details, but it occurs to me if I were being paid to wander the fields of St. Lucie, I wouldn’t be thinking or blogging anything but what I see there, not when I’d have tens of thousands of potential readers back in New York who are sick to death of college basketball and everything else that’s been wasting our valuable sports time since October. Baseball, gentlemen. Welcome to our side of the street.

Florida without warmth. I hear it’s unseasonably chilly at camp. But as long as there are Mets ensconced there for the next six weeks, then it feels like it’s 72 degrees in my head…all the time.