If you haven't already, by all means get yourself a copy of the Nov. 27 New Yorker, and read the Roger Angell season recap.
I've loved Roger Angell as long as I've loved baseball — I remember reading The Summer Game as fast as a young boy could read a pretty thick book and realizing to my happy amazement that there were other collections, too. I devoured accounts of seasons that had come and gone years before I was born, learning the names I'd soon know by heart (Mays, Robinson, Koufax, Yaz) and soaking in the ceaseless, easy beauty of baseball expertly chronicled, interrupted by sudden spikes of joy and troughs of depression. He made it real, made me wish I'd been there, made me grateful that he had been there to tell me what happened.
But reading Angell on the subway today, I realized something new: just how much we owe him. Not just as writers or as baseball fans — I knew that already — but as bloggers.
Yes, Angell talks to players and managers and umpires and officials; he goes into the locker room and the press box. But he also watches from the stands or in front of the TV. He's a professional and a partisan. And it's this double vision — being simultaneously a smart, reasonably neutral observer of the on-field and front-office goings-on and a hopelessly lovelorn fan — that each and every baseball blogger tries to emulate. Bill Simmons gets and deserves a lot of the credit for teaching a generation of sports bloggers to cheer at not being in the pressbox, but it was Angell who paved the road the Sports Guy walked down.
And more simply, a lot of his piece concerns the 2006 Mets. And when the last pargraph ended, to my amazement and embarrassment I started to cry. Not a-bit-dusty-in-here eye-rubbing, not a momentary sniffle, but a shocked dissolve, like a little kid.
Read it. It'll happen to you too.

Blessed be the player who keeps you rooting for your team when your team gives you little on which to root. Not that you're going to switch to another team or perceptibly scale back your allegiance if you're any kind of a good fan or a good person, but if you can't reasonably expect wins, it's nice to expect something.
From 1994 to 1996, Rico Brogna was something. Maybe not something else, but he was definitely a Met among Mets, certainly by my not altogether stringent standards.
Anybody can fall in love with Tom Seaver when it's 1969 or Doc Gooden when it's 1984. I did both. They were the key men on clubs that were getting great. Easy choices. But when your team is on an extended downswing, why do you choose whom you choose? What made Rico Brogna one of my all-time favorite Mets almost immediately?
Gosh, what didn't? When I recall the Met tenure of Rico Brogna, a gentle breeze brushes my right cheek. It's so…clean. Refreshing. Rico Brogna was the right man at the exact right moment, a scouting party of one sent ahead from a not-too-distant future to those of us wallowing in a despairing present. He arrived to tell me everything was going to be all right again, eventually. Don't worry, he said, the Mets aren't going to be the way they've been for too long forever — soon enough you will take pride in all those jackets and caps and t-shirts you bought, soon enough you will tell people “I am a Met fan” and not wait for the inevitable cringe.
Rico Brogna was a prophet without honor in his own time. He didn't last long enough to more than nibble on the fruits of progress. His three Met seasons each ended with losing Met records. Prosperity was just around the corner, but Rico never made it down the block.
I hate when that happens.
Rico Brogna came to the Mets in a transaction so quiet that it could have been consummated at Joe Robbie Stadium. At the end of Spring Training 1994, the Mets gave up on a former first-round draft pick, Alan Zinter, sending him to the Tigers for Brogna, a minor leaguer. I had forgotten Zinter was even in the system. I completely missed the trade. So when Rico was called up on June 20, replacing the groin-strained David Segui, I thought, “Who?” His first game was two days later at Fulton County Stadium. He went 0-for-3 against Greg Maddux. His first Met hit, a single off the Pirates' Paul Wagner, was recorded June 26 at Shea.
Two days after that, Dwight Gooden was suspended for violating his aftercare program. Doc tested positive again. Doc was back on cocaine. Doc was through as a Met. The last link to 1986 — the one that had survived firecrackers and bleach and earplugs and rampant surliness and 27-decision losing streaks and rookie hazing rituals gone awry and media boycotts and paranoid managers and miscast general managers and 103 losses and more than one allegation of sexual misconduct — had been severed. Through the misery of the early '90s, as the Mets got worse as baseball players and human beings, at least there was Doc, my favorite player for a decade. Now there wasn't.
On the night Dwight Gooden was suspended, Rico Brogna went 2-for-4 against the Cardinals. He was batting .333. He had nothing to do with any of what had come before him. He was utterly detached from the disasters of 1992 and 1993. He was clean. And it looked like he could hit.
I had a new favorite player.
It was a small sample, but the remainder of 1994, which only lasted until August 11, cemented my bond with Rico Brogna. If he wasn't a classic drop-whatever-you're-doing slugger, I still tried not to miss any of his at-bats. I loved the line drives. I loved the nifty glovework at first. I loved that he was a nice and polite young man. There was something about him that wasn't bitter or anonymous, that didn't point fingers. The best players the '94 Mets had to offer before him were guys who emitted personal flaws out their tailpipes. John Franco rarely hid his displeasure when plays weren't made behind him. Jeff Kent wanted to be anywhere but New York. Jose Vizcaino, a decent enough shortstop, had the personality of a turnip. We were finally getting that big season from Bret Saberhagen, but Bret Saberhagen was one snide comment away from another Clorox attack. Bobby Bonilla was still the life of the party. Everybody else was Doug Linton.
Rico wasn't any of this. He was Rico, or RI-CO! RI-CO! RI-CO! He was the first thing worth chanting at Shea in years. Even an impending strike couldn't dim the sense of possibility around Rico Brogna. On a Monday night in late July, the Mets played in St. Louis. The game was televised by that monstrosity known as The Baseball Network. Rico went 5-for-5. Swaths of the Midwest, if not the world, were now finding out who this Brogna kid was. He ended the night hitting .377, the shortened season hitting .351. The strike would be hell, but I would not shunt baseball aside as so many others swore they would irrevocably, no way, no how. I had Rico Brogna to look forward to.
Baseball came back. So did Rico. The next May, I got his autograph and shook his hand at a meet 'n greet in the Mets clubhouse store in Manhattan. He struck me as young, small, fit and, most importantly, so nice and polite. I knew I made the right choice stopping by. Rico's average didn't soar in '95, but there was power: 22 homers, 76 ribbies. I knew I made the right choice picking him as my favorite. The Mets were stronger, too, particularly in the second half when they reeled off 34 wins in 52 games to end the season. Rico was the best player on a team that was about to come of age. He was getting help. Isringhausen and Pulsipher were up. So was Alfonzo. And Everett. Hundley was beginning to show what the fuss was about. There was a future, just like Rico said. He was at its forefront. It was only going to get better in '96.
Actually, it didn't. The Mets stumbled. Rico hurt. They both regressed. Mets finished 71-91. Rico finished on June 19. He'd been plagued by a chronically bad back and now he was diagnosed with a torn labrum in his right shoulder. Managed only seven homers, though one of them was of the walkoff variety, winning a game against the Cubs that included the last brawl the Mets ever fought. When our dignity was at stake, I knew he wouldn't let us down.
I bring Rico Brogna and my fanly affection for him to your attention today, Thanksgiving Day 2006, for a particular reason. It was ten years ago, just before Thanksgiving Day 1996, that the Mets traded my favorite Met to the Phillies for two no-account relief pitchers. I was puzzled, I was livid, I was saddened. The Mets were terrible in 1996, absolutely horrifyingly depressing. Their plan to improve? Trade my main man for Toby Borland and Ricardo Jordan.
Oh the humanity.
Rico would recover from injury and forge a representative career for himself as a Phillie. He drove in 104 runs in 1998 and 102 in 1999. Except when he was in a position to beat us (which he did, 1-0, on a solo homer off Mlicki late in the '97 season), I always rooted for him. Even as a Phillie, as distasteful as that was. Even as a Brave, as dismaying as that was. When Rico went deep off Kevin Appier in our Home Opener in 2001, I stood and cheered. He wasn't in a position to beat us, but even if he had been, I probably would have put a hand or two together on his behalf.
I would recover, too. The Mets made a good trade a few weeks after that horrendous one, acquiring John Olerud from Toronto for Robert Person. Olerud was one of those who made the Mets in 1997 what I'd been waiting since 1990 for them to become again: good. I never let how much I loved Rico Brogna get in the way of how much I would love John Olerud. He was one of the most special Mets ever.
Which doesn't excuse the trade of Rico Brogna. Franchises shouldn't be allowed to trade your favorite player, but they do. No need to go down the litany of Mets who should have stayed Mets but didn't. When the litany starts with Tom Seaver, you really don't need any more examples. No matter how mature you get, they hurt every time.
The Rico Brogna for Toby Borland and Ricardo Jordan trade hurt immediately. I wasn't thinking about his 36 Met homers, his 126 Met runs batted in or his .291 Met average. I was thinking about what it was like to fall into the player who keeps you rooting for your team when your team gives you little on which to root.
Some people would never get that. Right after Rico Brogna was traded, I had to deal with one of them.
I hadn't had 24 hours to digest the Brogna bulletin when I found myself a reluctant pilgrim, in a car heading north to Westchester for Thanksgiving. Stephanie and I were in the backseat. My father was driving, his girlfriend of then almost five years was next to him. It was her family — daughters, sons-in-law, grandchildren, cousins — with whom we'd be sharing the day.
I liked her. I liked her fine. I was glad my dad found somebody when he did, not long after my mother died. It was a good thing all around. But that didn't mean I had all that much to say to her. Groping for news of any kind, I mentioned that I was kind of bumming because the Mets had just traded my favorite player, Rico Brogna.
She could have said, “I'm sorry to hear that” or “that's too bad” or even “that's life”. I wasn't expecting a dissection of who would be setting up Franco in '97 or how much time Huskey could anticipate at first. I was just trying to fill the uncomfortable silences.
I sure as hell wasn't expecting this:
“Well, I don't want to be mean, but if they're not very good, maybe they were right to trade him, you know?”
No, I didn't know. And neither do you, I wanted to say. Rico Brogna has a tricky back but he's not the reason the Mets went 71-91 this year. He didn't even play after June. He was hurt. Maybe the Mets would have been better had he been healthy. Maybe a team in a constant state of rebuilding shouldn't be casting off one of its pillars so recklessly.
AND FUTHERMORE, what the fuck do you know about my team other than it's my team? That should be all you need to know. I get enough reminders at work, one month after the fucking Yankees won the fucking World Series, that my team isn't very good. I know I'm practically all alone as a Mets fan in New York and now my favorite Met has been traded to fucking Philadelphia and all you can say is it wasn't such a bad idea?
That's what I wanted to say. I didn't say much. Not in response to Rico, not through the car ride to Westchester, not at the drafty house with the onslaught of people to whom I wasn't really related. Dissing Rico Brogna was merely the first straw. It was just one thing on top of another (the group Macarena may have been the last straw) that made Thanksgiving 1996, hands down, the most pain-in-the-ass Thanksgiving I ever endured. And that's sayin' somethin' if you're last name is Prince.
Not to be overdramatic, but Stephanie and I found ourselves in essentially a two-against-dozens situation all day and night, with our only natural ally, my father, making like Switzerland and sitting it out. We may as well have spent Thanksgiving in an isolation booth.
OK, that is overdramatic, but not by much. Let's just say we didn't fit in and wanted no more part of this particular blended family. Nobody was mean. They just weren't who we wanted to be with and nobody seemed particularly interested in whether we were there or not. They were courteous enough to have us for my fathers' sake, but once it became impossible for me to spark a conversation with my dad, what was the point?
So we decided not to be a part of it all any longer. Thanksgiving ten years ago was the last of those mythic Thanksgivings that we took part in. My sister and her husband had already begun fleeing annually for the West Coast every mid-November. My father has remained enmeshed with his other family. Stephanie and I are on our own.
From the first time a teacher told me to trace my hand and pretend it was a turkey, I tried to buy into family-laden Thanksgiving as a great event. Everybody always said so many nice things about it. Yet time and again, these occasions were embarrassing or abrasive or tongue-bitingly non-confrontational and always endless. Amid company in which I am not at ease (which is most people) I am a clench. It is my nature to tighten up when I am not relaxed, no matter how Yogiesque that sounds. I'm self-aware enough of my antisocial tendencies to try and compensate with bursts of warmth and outgoingness, but I am to warmth and outgoingness what Rey Ordoñez was to batting cleanup.
I value nice and polite. If that's what you want, Rico Brogna or I am your man. You want warm and outgoing? Call Domino's.
1996 was the culmination of a lifetime of bad Thanksgivings. In the years that followed what we'll call for our purposes here the Rico Brogna debacle, we mostly hid from Thanksgiving. It is only recently that we have dared to embrace it on our own terms at our own table with our own Oven Stuffer. We have succeeded. So this, you see, is not an unhappy Thanksgiving story. We simply ignored the turkey-family industrial complex and made Thanksgiving our own. Just us and the cats.
The result is a holiday I used to dread and curse — to the point of cackling demonically when high winds interfered with the Macy's floats — is now one I genuinely look forward to every fourth Thursday in November because it's cozy and it's comfy and I can go on about Rico Brogna all I like if the mood strikes. (Just for variety's sake, my wife and I occasionally do chat about other things, though she does love her some Mets.)
On any given Thursday, we like everybody in our family fine. On this given Thursday…oy. There are 364 other days in the year, 365 sometimes, to commune with our loved ones. I didn't need this particular Thursday shoved down my throat like a third serving of Stove Top Stuffing just because it's supposed to be. Thanksgiving togetherness is very touching when we pop in the DVD of Pieces of April or the King of the Hill where everybody gets stuck in the airport. It's overrated in real life. At least ours.
Hence, nowadays we see my sister and her husband and my father and his girlfriend not because we have to but because we want to. And we do want to…just not on Thanksgiving. It's not like we held a family meeting to do away with the tradition to which we were all unwillingly tethered. We just stopped conferring on the particulars and there were no evident hard feelings. Funny how that works.
Meanwhile, that ornery Thanksgiving of a decade ago may have also led, in its way, to an unquestionably positive year-round development. It may have made this blog possible. You see, I think that dreadful Thursday was when I decided I'm going to live to do what I want to do at least when nobody's paying me to do something I don't want to do. I used to grit my teeth for family get-togethers. That Thanksgiving helped me realize nobody was benefiting from this behavior, not me, not the family.
Where does the blog come in? I guess I also made a semiconscious decision that in general I would seek out those who were passionate for what I was passionate about. I was passionate about the Mets. I began to semiconsciously cultivate the idea of the Mets logo as my coat of arms. Mind you I'm not so delusional to believe that a starting first baseman (not even the beatific Brogna or angelic Olerud) will rush to my aid if harm befalls me. My father or my sister would — as I would for them. I understand family is family. But catastrophes aside, with whom do I want to spend my time, invest my faith, confess my fear? Mets fans. Not exclusively, but mostly. Good Mets fans…good people who are good Mets fans if I could find them.
By Thanksgiving ten years ago, I knew a few well and had, thanks to technology, come to know a few more a little. As the late '90s proceeded and the Mets at last rode an upswing through the National League (no thanks to Ricardo Jordan or Toby Borland), they became more important to me than they ever were, even when I was a kid. I didn't plan it that way. It just kinda happened. Concurrently, I came to rely for good company on the good Mets fans and the good people with whom I shared this surpassing interest. One of them writes this blog with me. Another of them, I'd like to think, is you, whether we know each other beyond these pages or not.
So I guess I'm thankful for that.

The Alou family connection to the Mets has been revived. It goes back a long way.
First, there was the game of September 22, 1963 at Candlestick Park during which the Giants were drubbing the Mets so decisively (13-2 en route to 13-4) that manager Alvin Dark could afford to choreograph history. In the seventh inning, Dark removed Willie Mays from center and inserted Matty Alou in left, replacing Mays with Felipe Alou who had been in right and shifting Jesus Alou from left to right. Everywhere you looked in the Giants' outfield, there were Alous, the first time three brothers played alongside one another out there. After the season, Felipe was traded to the Braves, so it was the only time, too.
Three other notes of trivia from that day so trivial as to be infinitesimal: 1) It was the Mets' first series away from home after the final baseball game ever played at the Polo Grounds, so technically they no longer had a home; 2) It was the road debut of Cleon Jones; 3) It was the last time the famous Dodger Duke Snider would ever face his old nemeses the Giants; a year later, having worn out his welcome with the Mets, he would finish his career as a displaced San Franciscan.
The Alous were a staple of National League ball through the '60s and into the early '70s, but the next time one of them played in games of surpassing importance against the Mets, it would be as an American Leaguer. Jesus Alou was a part-time outfielder on the 1973 A's, thrown into a greater role in that World Series after the club lost centerfielder Bill North to injury late in the year. Alou started five of the seven games versus the Mets, his most notable performance coming in Game Two in Oakland with three hits and two RBI in six at-bats.
That game, won 10-7 in 12 innings by the Mets, is better remembered for three other events: 1) Mike Andrews' two errors, miscues that Charlie Finley tried to parlay into an in-Series roster switch that wouldn't fly with Bowie Kuhn; 2) The piss-poor out call on Bud Harrelson at home plate in the tenth which stood even as Willie Mays pleaded with Augie Donatelli to rule Buddy safe; 3) Willie, one bridge and ten years removed from coming out to allow the all-Alou outfield, perhaps realizing at last that it was time to come out of the Oakland sun once and for all.
In 1975, Jesus Alou would become the first Met World Series opponent to play for them, joining the Mets on April 16 in St. Louis and serving mostly as a righty pinch-hitter. Though he hit .350 in 40 such at-bats (complementing the .400 Ed Kranpeool put up as a lefty off the bench), he showed no power, driving in 11 runs and homering not at all. Alou would be released the following spring. With Matty and Felipe no longer active, 1976 was the first season with no Alous in the Majors since 1957. But Jesus persevered away from the bigs and would hook on with the Astros in '78 and '79 before retiring.
Felipe Alou, of course, became a fixture in the visitors' dugout at Shea from 1992 to 2004 as his Expos regularly tormented the Mets (or so it seemed). One of his key early weapons was reliever Mel Rojas, a nephew of all three Alou brothers. Montreal being Montreal, the team let him go when he got too expensive. He signed unhappily with the Cubs in December 1996 and was traded to the Mets in August 1997. He pitched for his Uncle Jesus' old club most of the 1998 season. The Met uncle-nephew combination that was always a rumored trade away was Doc Gooden and Gary Sheffield. Instead, it turned out to be Jesus Alou and Mel Rojas, albeit 22 years removed from each other.
The less said about Mel Rojas' Met tenure, the better. I think we were all calling out some variation of “UNCLE JESUS!” when he'd trot in from the bullpen, though we may have been pronouncing it differently than Mel did.
And now Moises Alou, son of Felipe, becomes a Met, presumably unseating his and Cousin Mel's onetime Expo teammate Cliff Floyd…whose 2007 destination is not yet known, so let's pretend his departure is not yet official. Alou and Floyd went back-to-back in April, in a manner of speaking. On a Monday night in San Francisco, Willie Randolph ordered Tom Glavine (also still not altogether gone, sort of) to walk Barry Bonds so he could face Moises Alou. Alou made him pay, homering with two on, driving in five in all and leading the Giants to a frustrating — for us — 6-2 win. The next night, Floyd, slumping viciously, broke out for an evening, or at least a swing, taking Jamey Wright on a guided tour of McCovey Cove. The Mets won 4-1.
(The next day was the Brian Bannister/Barry Bonds affair, repeated so endlessly on Snigh that it's easy to forget the Mets and Giants played a three-game series.)
Used to be a 40-year-old outfielder implied a fellow who earned the right to hang around but was probably staying at the fair too long — someone like Willie Mays, who logged 98 games in center as a Met at ages 41 and 42, including that final glaring afternoon in Oakland. But players play longer and stay in better shape today. Moises Alou got into 98 games total in 2006, the year he turned 40, and that was considered not miraculous but a little disappointing. He hit 22 homers and drove in 74 runs. That should be considered encouraging.
If you need something else, there's the day he was born: Sunday, July 3, 1966. The Mets hosted Pittsburgh a twinbill, falling short in the opener 8-7 (after trailing 8-1), recovering in the nightcap 9-8 (after trailing 6-3). One of the Pirates on the field that day at Shea? Moises Alou's uncle Matty. He singled as a pinch-hitter in the first game and went 0-for-3 in the second.

In the twenty seasons they called it home, I never visited Shea Stadium to see the Jets play. It never came up as a possibility or as a desire. I wasn’t a committed Jets fan (a redundancy) until I was 15 and the mechanics of seeing an NFL game in person, even though the Jets didn’t necessarily sell out every week until late in their Queens tenure, struck me as too daunting to even consider. Baseball was something you wanted to go to. Football was something you watched on TV if it wasn’t blacked out.

Watching the Jets from Shea on television was strange, especially once I started going to baseball games there enough to be familiar with its topography. Where did home plate go? What happened to the dugouts? Is that the 410 sign? If Lee Mazzilli can handle centerfield, why can’t Pat Leahy?

Most stadiums used to have baseball teams and football teams. Even historic old ballparks had both. The Lions played in Tiger Stadium forever. The Bears used to kick up dust amid the brown Wrigley ivy. Lyric little bandbox Fenway hosted Patriot games. When Yankee Stadium was still Yankee Stadium, it was also the Giants’ stadium. It wasn’t unusual. The Mets and Jets as co-tenants, albeit with the Mets as seniors treating the Jets like perpetual freshmen, was the way business was taken care of until fairly recently.

Somewhere between the Jets threatening to move to the Meadowlands in the spring of 1977 and the fall of 1983 when they abandoned New York in search of spiffier restrooms, I decided that it was OK they were here…even if they were tearing up our grass. As one who didn’t attend Jets games, there were no practical concerns for me, but New Jersey? For the Jets? That was Giants territory. It was Giants Stadium, for crissake. The Jets were headquartered at Hofstra. What were they going to do? Practice in Hempstead all week and then cross two rivers on a bus to play on Sunday?

Yeah, that’s exactly what they did and still do and will do for at least a little longer before they relocate all operations to the Garden State and begin playing on a new piece of swampland in conjunction with their Big Blue cousins. The setting has never set right by me (the green drapes help only a little), but again, it’s all a matter of television when I bother to be interested, and they do sell out every game over there, so what do I know?

With the floodgates wide open for Shea Met memories since last Monday, it occurred to me that we happen to be right upon the 25th anniversary of the greatest Jet game I ever watched from Flushing. That I saw it on a portable black & white set in Tampa doesn’t diminish the joy I recall at its resolution.

In the first semester of my freshman year at USF I didn’t really know anybody, so the first acquaintance I made was sports. Sports I knew. No baseball in Florida then, but there was football. The Bucs were in their sixth season in 1981, on the verge of an unlikely Central Division title in the NFC. I couldn’t stand the Bucs, though. They were just too damn absurd to take seriously. Since they were all that Tampa Bay had to get excited about — besides the NASL Rowdies, that is — I took an abiding dislike to them the whole time I was in school. (If you heard “hey, hey, hey we’re the Buccaneers!” a dozen times a day on Q-105, you would have, too.)

So I wouldn’t have to follow the Bucs with any kind of commitment stronger than osmosis, I listened to Dolphins games. Miami was nowhere near Tampa, but they’d been the state’s team before anybody knew what a Buccaneer was, hence their games aired in locally on WFLA. I had liked the Dolphins when I was 9 and they were finishing 14-0 while my family was spending Christmas in North Miami Beach (though if I knew they were going to be annually obnoxious about it, I wouldn’t have). I hadn’t given them any thought since they stopped appearing in Super Bowls except to hope the Jets beat them twice a year. One Sunday in mid-November, my first semester, I was listening to the Dolphins’ postgame show after they lost to the Raiders (boy did I have no social life) when it was noted the Jets had won in Foxboro and had moved to within one game of Miami for the division lead. Next week, it would be the Dolphins (7-3-1) and the Jets (6-4-1 after an 0-3 start) in a battle for first. At Shea.

Having grown up in New York in the ’70s loyal as a matter of principle to our home teams (how the bleep could you live here and root for the bleeping Cowboys?), I had had very few football games to which I could look forward, Jets or Giants. This one, on November 22, 1981, automatically became my biggest autumn Sunday to date. I anticipated it all week. I may have been something of a Johnny “Lam” Jones-come-lately to the Jets’ cause, but a battle for first at Shea was a battle for first at Shea. I’d been waiting for one since 1973.

So it wasn’t the Mets. You can’t have everything.

One of my suitemates at my off-campus dorm (four guys, two rooms, connected by a bathroom) was from Fort Myers, about two hours down the coast. He was a Dolphins fan. Although the Mets were my calling card, I had made it clear that I liked the Jets. Well, he said, looks like we’re going to have something to watch on Sunday. Lucky for me he had a TV and even luckier just about all Dolphins games were televised in Tampa.

Well, it was a great game. Richard Todd wasn’t even supposed to play because of cracked ribs, but they outfitted him in a flak jacket. Generally not having Richard Todd wasn’t that much of a hardship, but he was the starter and it was no time to leave our starters on the bench. Todd played magnificently. The Jet defense (in this, the year of the New York Sack Exchange) curbed Miami and gave Todd a chance to lead the Jets to victory. It would be tough. They were down 15-9 and on their own 23 with just over three minutes left.

But he did it. He hit six different receivers along the way. The last pass was to Jerome Barkum for a touchdown. It was 15-15. Then Leahy, never a sure thing kicking into Shea’s Edmund Fitzgerald winds, nailed the extra point. Just like that the Jets were in first place.

The Jets were in first place!

My suitemate whose TV it was had left for work by the time his Dolphins lost. So it was just me and his non-fan roommate watching at the end. At the final gun, I did one of those leaps from a sitting position that one does without thinking. You’re pretty excited there, the other suitemate said. You’ve got to understand, I told him. This is the first time I’ve seen the Jets in first place since 1969, a year I always liked to stick into sentences whenever I could.

He didn’t care. But I did.

Shea Stadium was going wild, too. Sitting and leaping out there that late afternoon/early evening were 50,000-plus of the green and white who considered Shea home every bit as much then as I would for the next quarter-century. No doubt a lot of them were Mets fans as well as Jets fans. No doubt a lot of them were season-ticket holders who packed up with the Jets in 1984 and kept going to see them in the Meadowlands, fall after fall, decade after decade (bus after bus).

But the Jets have never looked right over there, even on TV, even when they were beating the Dolphins 51-45 in 1986, even considering they’ve now spent more years in Jersey than they did in Queens. They looked good at Shea a quarter-of-a-century ago tomorrow. They looked great. So did Shea.

Nothing strange about that.

Congratulations to Ryan Howard, the National League's Most Valuable Player. He joins Joe Girardi, N.L. Manager of the Year, and Brandon Webb, the circuit's Cy Young winner in the 2006 awards pantheon. Great jobs, fellas.
Howard, you beat out Carlos Beltran (fourth in the voting after becoming the first Met to win a Gold Glove and a Silver Slugger and start an All-Star Game in the same year), Jose Reyes (seventh), David Wright (ninth) and Carlos Delgado (twelfth).
Girardi, you topped Willie Randolph, the runner-up skipper.
And Webb, you finished way ahead of Billy Wagner, sixth among pitchers when all the ballots were counted.
You guys rocked. And you were smart. You piled up your qualifications and then beat the rush. I mean you and your Phillies, your Marlins and your Diamondbacks were all home by the evening of October 1, the morning of October 2 at the latest. Our Mets had to keep working for almost three more weeks.
What suckers.
But seriously…
Franchise record for homers (tied).
Franchise record for runs scored (broken).
Silver Slugger.
Gold Glove.
All-Star starter.
Team has best record in sport and wins division by largest margin.
And he finishes FOURTH?
Where's that New York bias we're always hearing about?