Spring Training has officially become a blur. I turned on SNY in the office earlier and saw the Mets losing to the Braves, thought “not again” and kept it on in the background waiting for things to turn until I noticed Kevin Burkhardt conducting the exact same in-game interview as yesterday. “Oh, this is yesterday's meaningless, depressing exhibition,” I concluded. I finally turned it off when I realized the score would not change in any sort of favorable manner.
The Mets won this afternoon's meaningless, less depressing contest. They'll play one more tomorrow and one more after that against the American League (9-18) version of us, the Devil Rays, in the Stupid Dome Saturday before packing up their troubles in an old kit bag and recycling them into the Gulf of Mexico. Oh-and-Oh from there, you know.
Hoorah! Spring Training is always a revelation once it starts and an utter and complete drag by its end. Glad to know one more eternal truism has come home to roost. Baseball is so reassuring that way.
A couple of other things are on track. The Star Struck catalogue arrived the other day with hundreds of dollars worth of apparel that is a single unfettered buying frenzy away from being mine, but I'll probably keep my Visa in my pants for now. Every March the MLB people send me this brochure and every March I'm ready to refurbish my wardrobe with new and better shirts and jackets and caps and whatever they've got my favorite four-letter word stitched onto. You know the rule: You don't not wear blue and orange after Opening Day. I'll succumb to temptation to some limited extent at a later date, though maybe not to the tune of the $107.95 Alternate Color Elevation Premier Jacket (“Dress like your favorite pitching coach!”).
There's also the matter of getting used to the new names I'll be calling out toward the television in the living room once the television in the living room gets fixed (not having our primary boob tube transmit its cathode-ray warmth toward us 12 hours a night is probably why I can't tell one day's St. Lucie debacle from the next). The turnover wasn't so vast this winter that I'll be rooting for a city of strangers, but it's always a bit rough on the tongue acclimating myself to vocally contemplating, complaining about or once in a great while complimenting new Mets.
• If Chan Ho Park sticks, will his de facto theme song stick in my head and pour out of my throat the way it has every time I've seen Park on Baseball Tonight since I first saw Ghost World in 2003? That's a given. I greeted every 2005 Ramon Castro at-bat with an approximation of Mira Sorvino's “Rrrraaaa-MOAN!” from Romy & Michelle. It's funny once, grating soon enough. Stephanie still cringes at 1991's loop of “Carreon! You Will Always Remember!” — and she's from Kansas.
• How long will it take Damion Easley to definitively drop the unflattering middle name I applied to him on June 5, 2004 when he wrecked a reasonably lovely Saturday afternoon in the mezzanine by launching a three-run bomb off Mike Same Unflattering Middle Name Dating Back To When He Was A Particularly Unlikable Skank Stanton? If I could find it within me to be pro-Michael Tucker, pro-Guillermo Mota and, for that matter, pro-Mike Stanton for mutually beneficial stretches, I suppose I'll accept Damion Easley into the family with little prompting. Besides, Sunday night will remind me that the middle name in question is sole eternal property of Yadier Fucking Molina.
• I'm pretty sure I've seen Scott Schoeneweis referred to as Shoney. That's a modern-day, lazy-ass baseball nickname if ever I've heard one. I'll bet his mom called him Shoney.
• David Newhan and Aaron Sele…get your own first names. You're Other David and Other Aaron until further notice. Got a gripe? Take it to Other Jose.
• Ben Johnson? Doesn't strike me as a Beh-NEE! Get recalled and we'll talk.
• Joe Smith is probably Smitty, though I prefer Pseudonym.
• Jon Adkins…I still say getting rid of him is an option.
• Ambiorix Burgos, should he make the team, is Amby already. I shorten long names and lengthen short ones. Endy Chavez became Endomorphin Machine from Prince's overlooked 1995 Gold album early in '06. It came out without a second thought the other day. (And in the mind's ear, Jay Payton still fires JPEGs to second in hopes of nailing Quilvio Veras.)
• I imagine I'll be spending a lot of time yelling at those who call Moises Alou “Moses,” which right now is Mike Francesa. I'm veering toward Moishe, which would put him in honorary kosher company with the Mets' all-time franchise record of three Jewish players at once. Worst-case scenario: Fifteenth inning, Shawn! (who brings out the Wallace & Gromit in me) on third, Other David on second, emergency pinch-runner Shoney on first…and Moishe strikes out to end the game. Next day's headline in the News or perhaps the Forward: MOI VEY. Not very likely, I grant you, since shorn Green would have to actually get to third base in the first place.
Besides, Julio Franco has dibs on Moses among the Met-huselah set. Sudden thought for a bumpersticker: The 2007 Mets: We Go For Older Men
Best news is we get to call the season here. The runup has been unbearably long, even if it started later than usual (October 19, to be precise). So glad baseball isn't politics. I mean literally. The 2008 presidential campaign started before Spring Training and the same one will be in progress after next year's World Series. Not a single nominating vote will be cast until January. Talk about extended Spring Training.
In baseball, unlike politics, your dark horses have a track record of making legitimate runs once or twice a decade. The '69 Mets…the '82 and '91 Braves…the '03 Marlins…the '06 Tigers…the can't-possibly-happen happens. A while back I read a quote attributed to somebody in the Jim Gilmore '08 campaign. Counting the person who was quoted, the person who reported the quote, me who read the quote and Jim Gilmore, that's four of us who know there's a Jim Gilmore '08 campaign.
No offense to the former governor of Virginia, but a lifetime of watching politics as my other favorite spectator sport clues me in that a 2007 Devil Rays-Rockies Fall Classic is more likely than a 2009 Jim Gilmore inaugural ball. How overheated is the political process? Tom Vilsack and Evan Bayh have already entered and dropped out of the 2008 race. At least Colorado and Tampa Bay will show up and play the full 162. Except maybe in the last season of the ABA, sports teams generally don't bow out of contention because they can't raise enough money.
When I was studying journalism in college, a famous syndicated columnist came and spoke to us. An election cycle (a much shorter one) was underway and the writer was writing off the candidates of the moment as a collective of clowns. I raised my hand and asked whether this wasn't self-fulfilling prophecy masquerading as political coverage — you've decided that those seeking the highest office in the land are not to be taken seriously therefore you don't take them seriously. The columnist paused, said that was interesting and went back to mocking them.
Baseball coverage is conducted in a not completely dissimilar manner. Experts ride the Conventional Wisdom train all winter. The obvious is pounded into granite and those who have not revealed themselves as contenders ahead of time are easily dismissed. Yet the games will be played without these experts' input. The teams and the players will prove themselves and no agenda of any substance is set by anybody but them and their record. In politics these days, it's hard to imagine anybody not deemed a favorite in the preseason breaking out of the proverbial pack. In baseball, all it takes is pitching, hitting and fielding to turn the polls upside down.
Enough bloviating, enough prognosticating. Let the 2007 campaign begin in earnest.

Braves 8, Mets 3.
I know it's March.
I know our 10-20-1 record has all the permanence and hold on memory as a sand castle surrounded by already-wet beach.
If there's a cup for the Grapefruit League championship, I know it's never displayed.
I know Jon Adkins is ticketed for New Orleans or another club. (I'm gonna go out on a limb and say he didn't enhance his trade value today.)
But cripes. Jeebus. Fuckola.
Braves 8, Mets 3 isn't going to make me happy in October or in March or if I'm playing Strat-o-Matic in January with a bunch of cards from the 1970s someone found in a shoebox at a yard sale. 10-20-1 isn't going to make me holler, “Save some of that for the regular season!” 10-20-1 and daily ass kickings up and down the east coast of Florida makes you start thinking about stuff.
What kind of stuff? This kind of stuff:
* It makes you start thinking that jeez, that bullpen sure looks patched together.
* It makes you start thinking that Moises Alou plays the outfield like a blindfolded man.
* It makes you start thinking that Jose Valentin sure had a crappy second half and Damion Easley's never had a good half and Anderson Hernandez's never had much of anything except one good catch.
* It makes you start thinking that Shawn Green looks like a backup first baseman, only he's the right fielder and part of the starting lineup.
* It makes you start thinking that Julio Franco looks like a coach, only he's the backup first baseman.
* It makes you start thinking that a team that pulled Darren Oliver out of a hat in 2006 might be pushing it expecting Chan Ho Park and Aaron Sele to grow big ears in 2007.
* It makes you start thinking that Tom Glavine and Orlando Hernandez are awfully old.
* It makes you start thinking that Mike Pelfrey is awfully young.
* It makes you start thinking that Joe Smith is a nice story this year, but Henry Owens was a nice story last year.
At 20-10-1 or 16-14-1 or even 13-17-1 you don't think about this stuff. You think about veterans who know how to prepare and youngsters who have said and done all the right things and will build on that, and from there you think about green grass and hot dogs and summer nights and then from there you think (with all the required propitiation to the baseball gods) about the possibility of fall nights and bunting and packed houses and all the marbles. But you don't think that at 10-20-1. At 10-20-1 every glass is half-empty (or two-thirds empty, in the case of this particular glass of cloudy, acidic suck), every rookie is raw and every vet is over the hill and every box score is filled with bad portents.
Even at 13-17-1, you just want it to be April and Opening Day, even if it will be the Cardinals with the banners and the rings and the red and the Mex and the guarantee that even if we win, we'll all be mildly pissed off about it.
10-20-1 is different. At 10-20-1, you don't want it to be April and finally Opening Day. You need it to be April and Opening Day.

Keep plenty of Pepto-Bismol on hand for the opening series of the year. You'll want the dark pink kind to combat that queasy feeling you'll get from seeing too much red.
On Sunday night, according to Paul Lukas' Uni Watch, the Cardinals will swaddle themselves in commemorative patches and gold trim to honor their 2006 World Championship. On Tuesday night, they'll be handing out rings to everybody who enters Busch Stadium — everybody but the Mets. And the night after, each of their fans gets a replica World Champions banner that measures three feet by five feet.
FEET!
That's a big ol' keepsake they're giving away to everybody. You could fit a lot of treasured but tiny 8″X6″ TD Waterhouse 2000 National League Champions flags on that kind of square footage. That's on top of the mounted rings that go to all fans and the replica World Series celebration locker room cap for kids. Except that this stuff says Cardinals, it's a pretty awesome haul.
If my team showered me in such treasures, maybe I'd smile a lot and behave like a Best Fan In Baseball, too. If we'd won, you know the most we'd be getting would be a ceremonial wipe of the seat from a commemorative usher, redeemable only with the exchange of the first two George Washington photographs out of your wallet.
But if we'd won, we wouldn't care, because we'd have won.
Sigh.
Anyway, the Cardinals are doing it up right, which is their prerogative, but one component of their Salute To Themselves is a bit much:
The team will also honor its 1967 and 1982 World Championship teams in recognition of their 40th and 25th anniversaries, respectively, with such standouts as Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Whitey Herzog, Keith Hernandez and Bruce Sutter scheduled to attend.
Which of those Cards is not like the other? Right. There's a Cardinal in there who became a Met on June 15, 1983 and we're not giving him back. I know it's just for an evening, for festivities' sake, for milestone purposes (and who wallows in a good milestone anniversary more than me?). I know we're not swapping him out retroactively for Neil Allen and Rick Ownbey. I know The Baseball Encyclopedia doesn't come with disappearing ink for everything he accomplished once his paychecks weren't signed in Bud.
But no sir, I don't like it. I don't like that Keith would forgive the Cardinals when a measly quarter-century has yet to pass. I don't like the way Keith yammers on a little too fondly about his Cardinal days during Mets telecasts. I'm a little worn by his yammering on about his Met days during Mets telecasts, actually, because I could use a touch more yammer about these Met days during Mets telecasts, no matter what kind of hammer Atlee Hammaker dropped on him for strike three when the world was young, but that's another story.
Keith the Cardinal was outstanding. Keith the Met remains iconic.
Keith the Cardinal won a World Series. Keith the Met won the World Series.
Keith was a Most Valuable Cardinal. Keith was The Indispensable Met.
Keith was their star. Keith was our Captain.
If Keith were entering the Hall of Fame (if only petitioning made it so), then which cap do you think he'd be wearing? Which cap do you think he should be wearing?
Keith is Ours as few have been even if we keep issuing 17 to every Dae-Sung and Lima that comes down the pike (pending massively wonderful revelations to the contrary, David Newhan ain't worthy either). The Redbirds renounced their Keith rights when Ratzog discarded him not eight months beyond that '82 championship they're suddenly intent on marking. St. Louis turned on Mex. Mex turned on New York and we were totally plugged into Mex. For all his Keithfoolery on the air, it doesn't take much to close one's eyes and picture in his prime the Second-Greatest Met of the First Forty Years — fielding, hitting, leading…always leading. Leading us in '84 and '85 and '86 as he targeted the gray at Shea and replaced it with sunny bursts of blue and orange. Those colors, like Keith, were Just For Mets.
Keith Hernandez invited back by the Cardinals? On one of his myriad days off from the booth, I wouldn't blink because I understand the concept of completism and squaring circles and players honoring their pasts because they are the fans' pasts, too (Ozzie Guillen would scoff at such sentimentality, but when doesn't Ozzie Guillen scoff?). That he's throwing out the first ball for our Home Opener makes me feel somewhat less queasy, but trotting out Keith Hernandez as their own on the night they raise their flag in our face after having secured it at the expense of us…pass the Pepto.

Counting on things, particularly Mets things, is a fan's folly. Does anybody project lingering suspensions and sudden reinjuries and slow recoveries gumming up the works? And if nobody can, why do we pretend that they can't?
The bullpen is supposed to be this team's strength…right? It was so good last year, it will be so good this year…right? I'll give you last year, for it is indeed mine to give. This year I'd love to give you my word that it will be just as good. But my word is only as good as my hope.
I hope it's all good. But the veritable two-right-armed monster that amounted to Duamo Santa won't be here in any segment until at least May 27, the 51st game of the season. By then, Guillermo Mota will have served his suspension, but I don't expect he'll be back right away. I don't expect anything anymore. I expected Duaner Sanchez would be settling back into the eighth inning right about now and he isn't. Instead he's heading for more surgery, the shoulder from the cab accident worse than we'd dreamed.
So there's no Sanchez. No Mota, on whom we weren't counting right away but who appears remorseful enough for those of us who may have made a mistake or two in our lives to get off our high horse about (if that is indeed a sentence). No Juan Padilla — whose return to late 2005 pleasant surprise form from an '06 spent getting to know Tommy John was probably a pipe dream — either. That's a helluva half of a bullpen's workload that isn't available to us.
The big four, led by Shaky and Gloomy and backed up by Lefty and New Lefty, will have to carry that weight with no proven relief commodities behind them. Their support group is comprised of Chan Ho Park, Aaron Sele and Joe Smith.
Despite my logical instincts to see how it all goes, gulp.
I can't believe I don't have a Commandment for this, but one shouldn't overreact to the composition of the bullpen as it shapes up before Opening Day, for it almost invariably takes many twists and turns in the ensuing weeks. One only has to peek back two springs to a Met relief corps that included Felix Heredia, Mike Matthews, Mike DeJean, Dae-Sung Koo, Manny Aybar, Roberto Hernandez and Battlin' Braden Looper to understand the Yikes! of March are not necessarily an enduring phenomenon.
Was the April 2005 bullpen horrendous? Pretty much, but not for the reasons we foresaw. DeJean and Hernandez switched places mighty fast. Felix, Manny and the other Mike were here-and-goners (I hear they went into the auto parts business). Mister Koo…well, before I cheer us all down, the point is April blowers often bring May throwers. Thus, getting worked up over the impending presence of Park and Sele and Smith probably isn't wise.
But still.
There seems to be a school of thought that Chan Ho Park can succeed as a set-up man because it would be really great if he would. Watched him look very sharp against the Dodgers last night. And hang one of the droopiest curveballs I've ever seen to Matt Kemp. Thinking Park will succeed in a role for which he is by experience and desire unsuited is awfully wishful. On the other hand, Heilman will at least have company in his dungeon of resentment.
Aaron Sele? I assume he's been hot stuff against somebody in his career, but the only times I've paid any attention to him, he's been dreadful, either miserably (6-11, 4.50 ERA in 162 IP versus the Skanks) or happily (0-1, 9.64 ERA in 4.2 IP versus us). With Burgos exposing his unreadiness and Sosa exposing his Sosaness and Adkins having only one option left (namely getting rid of Adkins), Sele has stepped front and center to be a poster boy for the employment opportunities engendered by seven-man bullpens.
Joe Smith? The whole world's in love with this kid. I'd like to be, too. Sidearmers make me nervous, though, which I admit isn't much of an analysis. The good news is the ones who prove themselves remain effective for a long time. The bad news is Smith hasn't proven anything. But with three different set-up men who did prove themselves at various extended junctures during the past two seasons all nowhere near the sound of Guy Conti's phone, the Mets bullpen has indeed morphed into a proving ground. You feel less vexed by that sort of thing coming off 91 losses and just hoping to be pretty good than you do succeeding a division title and craving more.
Smith may prove himself a great find. Park may pick up where he left off in the World Baseball Classic and prove himself an electrifying reliever. Sele may be the first fringe starter to make the Mets and prove himself an invaluable long man since way the hell back in 2006 when Darren Oliver did exactly that. May, however, is an iffy proposition when you start April against the Cardinals, the Braves and the Phillies. It would be far more comforting to have one-third or more of Sanchez, Mota and Padilla. But we don't.
And that's why you never count on anything.

So, barring an expansion of the dog-and-cat trade awaiting out-of-options Jon Adkins, the roster appears set. And Moises Alou, David Newhan, Damion Easley, Chan Ho Park, Aaron Sele, Joe Smith and Scott Schoeneweis are ready to join the exalted ranks of The Holy Books.
Last season Philip Humber was the final addition to the orange and blue, bringing the all-time Mets count to a close-but-no-cigar 799. Barring something startling, Alou should claim the 800th spot, hopefully in the top of the first a week from tonight. (Because then the Mets would have baserunners and possibly an early lead, y'see?) THB Occupants 801 through 806 should follow within the first week's patchwork schedule. (I know the off-days are there for rain, but if the weather's nice Monday April 2 is going to be agony, and Thursday April 5 will be worse.) Humber's pal Mike Pelfrey (THB #792) will start the year in New Orleans or in extended spring training, a brief furlough that should end when the fifth-starter slot comes around for the first time right before Tax Day.
So, some early-season storylines already.
* The Shawn Green Watch? It's already on. Lastings Milledge will keep Pelfrey's roster spot warm and get some starts. If Lastings hits and acts like he has in St. Lucie, and Green stays cold, how long can right field really stay Green's? If Lastings is sent to New Orleans, can he keep his head?
* Is Pelfrey ready? Lots of guys have found April's rather different than March.
* Can Chan Ho succeed in the Darren Oliver role? Can he accept that? What's Aaron Sele's role on the team? Can they and Aaron Heilman get a discount on t-shirts that say PELFREY WENT TO THE ROTATION AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY BULLPEN SPOT?
* Who'll wind up playing second? Is there anything left in Jose Valentin's tank? Has there ever been anything in Damion Easley's tank? Anderson Hernandez's got the glove — can he make things interesting by hitting in New Orleans the way he never has on U.S. soil?
* When will I learn to spell Schoeneweis without cribbing? (I had Mientkiewicz down by May, but I was younger then.)
* Will Joe Smith step up as the third legitimate Brooklyn Cyclone to play a real role on the Mets roster? For the trivia-minded, Mike Jacobs and Brian Bannister are the others so far. Danny Garcia and Joe Hietpas didn't do enough to merit discussion as Mets, Matt Watson was moved down to Brooklyn to pack a postseason roster (shameful Yankee move, that), and rehab cameos like those of Tsuyoshi Shinjo, Mike Stanton and Cliff Floyd don't count. Certainly nobody's ever made the leap quite so quickly as Smith seems poised to do.
A month from now some of these questions will be answered. They'll have gone from storylines to stories, just like the story of 2007 will have started to emerge, pieced together from Ws and Ls on the now-blank schedule. Can't wait.