OK, I'm officially too old for spring training.

Even though it was the first chance to see the boys in blue and orange and black and white, I got to the set late and managed to pay fitful attention at best. Couldn't even work myself into a frenzy over Steve Phillips, though I tried. (To follow up on my blog brother's outrage, it seems only fair that every team should get a certain number of dissolved relationships that come with restraining orders once the other party is out of baseball. Steve Phillips isn't permitted near the Mets for 10 years. Bobby Bonilla gets 15 years of forced separation — or as long as we're paying him, which will unfortunately be longer than that. And snipers will follow Vince Coleman around for the rest of his life, with orders to go for the head shot if he so much as mentions us.)

I walked away with exactly three impressions:

1. Lastings Milledge has extraordinarily fast hands, as he demonstrated on that double down the line. And the ball just does something different coming off his bat. My goodness, keep the kid!

2. The young shortstop we had in there from minor-league camp (I think it was Jose Coronado, but don't quote me on that) made a couple of superb plays and got a hit off at least Quadruple-A pitching. Worth watching.

3. The much-heralded Fernando Martinez may be lying about his age. He looks more 15 than 17. And in the at-bat I saw, he got gunned down on three straight pitches. Even phenoms need a little work in the before-shaving years.

Meanwhile, I was struck by the swirl of bad omens. Carlos Delgado didn't join the demolition of Us by Us because he has elbow tendinitis. He's felt it for weeks. That ragged sound is me trying to breathe again. Paul Lo Duca sat things out because of arthritis. Pedro is now demolishing the hopeful conspiracy theories by admitting that, yeah, he might not be ready for Opening Day. Even what appeared to be hopeful white puffy clouds against nice blue skies turned out to have dark linings: Juan Padilla, he of the spectacles and very decent 2005, quit Puerto Rico after the game to concentrate on his Metsian work. But he stood down because his arm doesn't feel 100%. Fantastic. (Puerto Rico then helped themselves to another of our pitchers.)

Still, consider the case of poor Jason Scobie. Last year Scobie quietly had a good season at AAA but never got a call-up and never seemed to be even an afterthought in discussions of the team's future. So today against the Dodgers (a split-squad affair in which our marquee player was Victor Diaz) Scobie faced seven batters. He walked three, gave up four hits including a home run, and walked off the mound (or more likely trudged, possibly even crawled) having given up eight runs in zero innings pitched. Zero!

Bet he's suddenly hoping the whole not-paying-attention thing has extended into 2006.

Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were Steely Dan. Still are, I suppose, but they broke up as a going concern in 1981. Then Donald Fagen went out and recorded The Nightfly a year later, creating what would become one of my two favorite albums ever.

Friday night, Stephanie and I went to see Donald Fagen at Westbury, fulfilling one of those mutual dreams you don't realize you both have because neither of you thinks somebody like that would actually bother to come play before people like you (or at a place like this). I went with a touch of trepidation, not because I thought we'd be disappointed in one of our musical idols, but because it meant I'd be missing most of the debut of Tom McCarthy as the new co-voice of the Mets.

On the night when we finally got to see live and in person the half of Steely Dan whose music has captivated me for half a lifetime, I was presented with indisputable evidence that our own Becker & Fagen — hell, our own Lennon & McCartney — would be no more.

Those days are gone forever…

Over a long time ago…

Howie Rose and Gary Cohen will keep on making music, just not as part of the same revered act. They're in different bands now. Maybe somehow they'll reunite for a project or two as Walter and Donald have. Until then, it's Howie and Tom, with Gary's tour schedule TBA on SNY.

I managed to catch a touch of Tom: some pregame chat over dark and ice-scarred Nassau County side roads, a few pitches while waiting for the curtain to come up (a cherished Westbury tradition). I'm not going to say one word for public consumption regarding what I thought because it wouldn't be fair to McCarthy. It was a small sample of the first exhibition before the first season of a new job taking over for a legend at the top of his game.

How would you like to be judged on that?

I will say this, though: It was strange hearing an unfamiliar voice exchange Mets pleasantries with a member of the extended family and realize he's moving in to stay for the summer…and, Wilpon willing, many summers beyond. There was a time when it was strange listening to Gary Cohen take Gary Thorne's place, just as it was odd taking in Gary Thorne from the same speakers that used to offer Steve Lamar. Your announcers are like any other offseason acquisitions — they're all new players in a whole new ballgame. Tom McCarthy can be the greatest thing since sliced Scully and he will take some getting used to.

But I can't wait to get used to him. The more McCarthy I hear, the more the Mets there will be. The rest is up to him.

Seeing an artist like Fagen, just as with listening to the radio craftsmen with whom we've been blessed over time, reminds you why you love what you love. Steely Dan was famous (or infamous) for not wanting to transfer their music from the studio to the masses, so you're not prepared — even though you've paid top dollar for the privilege — to actually witness the voice of the group working in your midst. It's the music, not the personality, that's meant so much to me, particularly since college, thus it never occurred to me what it would be like to absorb it and him in person. The Nightfly, in particular, has always been my nocturnal go-to. Who pictures keeping company in the middle of the night with a thousand other people?

But you're part of a crowd and out come seven musicians and two backup vocalists. Then out comes Donald Fagen. Just like that, he's right in front of you singing great new numbers from a promising CD alongside the songs you've adored for decades. He's bringing “I.G.Y.” and “New Frontier” and “Green Flower Street” and “The Goodbye Look” to life. In front of all these people, he's doing your song, “The Nightfly,” and you mouth the words silently so as to retain part ownership of the track that you claimed way back when, but only silently so as not to get in his way.

Sweet music…

The skylight…

The Nightfly is for 2, 3, 4 in the morning in Fontana Hall, flipping the cassette over and over again or, if the clouds are in alignment, coming up the Gulf Coast from The Wave 102-1/2 FM in Sarasota. It's not something you imagined the Donald Fagen, reticent celebrity and all, playing for you and singing to you from ten rows away. But it's happening and you are experiencing it, and it's not a forced analogy to tell you that it's every bit as sweet as those bottoms of the first when my Long Island Rail Road car would rumble homebound out of the East River tunnel and a voice I loved would tell me that Rusch surrendered a one-out double to Vidro but got out of it, and now Benny Agbayani will lead off for the Mets with Bell on deck and Fonzie to follow. I had been prompt enough to grab a window seat so I could hear it all clearly as the sun began to fall over my left shoulder, behind the Manhattan skyline.

Ball one to Benny. Tonight the night is mine.

The things we hear. The things that stay with us.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that somebody in the audience did eventually yell PLAY 'FREEBIRD'!, to which Donald Fagen replied, “You sing 'Whipping Post' and I'll play 'Freebird'.”

Howie Rose himself couldn't have been quicker on the draw.

Gotham Baseball, which you’ll recognize from the incessant Tuesday plugs I give here for my weekly column there, is seeking a hand or six in building what is already a budding and fairly substantial baseball media organization. If you or somebody you know might be interested, check out what’s below and please get in touch. Thanks.

Gotham Baseball magazine and GothamBaseball.com, the only media outlets that relentlessly cover the Mets, Yankees, their minor leagues, local independent minors and college baseball, are seeking interns for the 2006 baseball season.

Now, the opportunity to learn first-hand about the exciting world of sportswriting from industry veterans is here. If you want to learn about magazine design, media performance or distribution, now here’s your chance.

Gotham needs about a half-dozen people to help with expanded coverage of local college baseball and independent and affiliated minor league coverage. GB seeks individuals who wish to learn photojournalism, Web design, and media planning as well.

The ideal applicant already writes constantly, maybe on his or her own Web site — but wants to learn from professionals. All interns should be 18 years of age or older and have a valid driver’s license. A sense of humor is required, also.

There are thousands of internships out there, but at Gotham Baseball, nobody will be sending you out for coffee and sandwiches. GB will teach you the skills that you need to succeed, and actually give you the opportunity to prove yourself with real hands-on experience.

Qualified applicants will get the chance to hone their writing style (including broadcast, print and online), learn how to conduct interviews, as well as getting Web design experience, photo gallery design and magazine layout tutorials.

If you love baseball and relish the opportunity to start your media career off the right way, no other internship will teach you more, give you more experience or most importantly, be more fun.

Apply today, time is limited. Interested individuals should send a cover letter, resume and clippings (if applicable) to info@gothambaseball.com. Applications must be received by April 1.

Hey! We beat the Cardinals today!

No, it didn't matter worth a hill of beans, except for the fact that while it was snowing, sleeting, spitting freezing rain and otherwise offering a thorough overview of vile weather up New York City way, down in Florida guys in Mets uniforms were beating guys in Cardinals uniforms. Numbers were being put up. Notes taken. Impressions gathered.

And Day 1 of the spring-training season brought the first of many “Oh yeah, that's what that feels like” moments to come: As the score zoomed from a happy Mets 9, Cardinals 0 to a less-happy Mets 9, Cardinals 4 and then to an even-less-happy Mets 9, Cardinals 7, I had that thought you only have in spring training.

I hope nobody important gave up those runs.

This feeling has a near-twin we'll meet later this month, namely I hope that just means this is his dead-arm period. But in the regular season things are not so cavalier. The closest thing in the regular season is I hope that means we finally get of Useless Pitcher X, but that one's cold comfort when it accompanies an L on the ledger. (And last year Omar let Useless Pitcher X, in his various disguises, rack up a heckuva lot of roster time.)

Anyway, final score Mets 12, Cardinals 7. Steve Trachsel, this year assuming an importance he probably never had before, walked the planet and gave up a three-run dinger in a bad inning and a no-credit remainder. (He had the flu; he gets a mulligan.) Someone named Juan Perez gave up a three-run shot to Albert Pujols — everything was unearned, but that's just silly. Rule Five dreamer Mitch Wylie worked two hitless innings. Xavier Nady went 4-for-4 with 6 RBIs; Victor Diaz, perhaps soon to be known as Victor Diaz Who Has Options Remaining, went 1-for-5. (And with that little bit of math, we know what the story in every New York paper will be tomorrow.)

Isn't it nice to talk about these things, instead of the phrenology of those first couple of gameless weeks? Never mind how Xavier Nady looked, let's talk about how Xavier Nady hit a grand slam off enemy pitching.

And it gets better: Tomorrow night's game is on WFAN.

Why, it's enough to make you imagine a world with actual games. Games that count. That are shown on TV. That are played in New York. And there are leaves on the trees. And light after 5:30 pm. And warm breezes. And tinny-sounding radios on the beach. And ice cream on a stick.

You know, life as it's supposed to be lived.

So much for appreciative cries of BOOOOOOOOne making Shea a deceptively supportive place this season.

Bret Boone, non and future Met, hung 'em up this morning. Word is it was quite the emotional ordeal. For him anyway.

No offense to a guy who just realized that his 14-year Major League career is over, but I'm sadder to realize the Mets will be without Juan Padilla and his bag of tricks for the duration of Puerto Rico's participation in the WBC. Padilla will return in a couple of weeks. Boone was never really here. Sure, he put on a Mets uniform, fielded a ball in it and then said goodbye to it, but what's that? That's Bret Boone playing a Met, not playing for the Mets. That's County Stadium and Camden Yards dressing up as the home of the Cleveland Indians in two Major League movies. It's like he rented out the Mets for a fantasy camp of pathos.

Veterans sign and don't make the team every year. Fine and honorable. Spring training is the time for the Terry Puhls and Mariano Duncans to give it their all one more — possibly one last — time. But what's with the guys who get this far and decide the last thing they want to do as Major Leaguers is stiff the Mets? The Boone, as I'm told he was known when he was hitting home runs for other clubs, didn't even bother to show for the intrasquad game yesterday. Perhaps he was playing catch out in the swamps with Todd Van Poppel and Kevin Stocker, two others from recent springs who never made it over the business end of the Tradition Field wall.

Yeah, they're people and they're entitled to make people decisions, but how could any of us possibly understand this kind of decision? In our minds, a baseball player strives all his life to one purpose: wear a Mets uniform in Major League competition. Only 771 such men have earned that highest privilege. And Bret Boone would rather abandon that opportunity and shed that uniform than attempt to reach the pinnacle of his profession?

Shame on the Boone.

While he debuted as a Red and excelled as a Mariner, Bret Boone was, almost imperceptibly in memory, a member of the dreaded 1999 Atlanta Braves. With all the unsavory characters on that squad, I don't hold it against him, especially given that after his single year of ineffectual contribution to their institutional torture of the Mets, he signed with San Diego and declared, “now I can go back to hating the Braves.”

If he had shown that kind of pulse during his mysterious “analyst” stint with Fox during the 2003 ALCS, he might now be finding a home behind a mic. I never heard somebody say so little for so long as Bret Boone did across those seven something-to-talk-about games. The lingering image of him, however, did say a thousand words: his brother Aaron mobbed at the plate after homering to win the pennant (for which team, I don't recall) then a cut to the booth where Bret stared stunned at the field. Bret Boone never won a World Series. Now he never will.

Regards to Van Poppel.

Baseball fans bundled up against the cold are sometimes the worst people to ask to write about baseball. Sure, we need it the most, but we can't see past the breath in front of our face to get to why this thing we call Spring Training — with its repetitive profiles in the papers, its unsatisfying satellite standups on the TV news, its lack of substance, its endless tease to Opening Day — is perhaps the greatest thing there is.

The best person to ask to write about it? Let's try somebody who just got back from it. My buddy Dan, whose companionship can make a muggy evening in September seem springlike, has just returned from the Promised Land, a full-blown pilgrimage to Port St. Lucie. He took his three kids: his son, his daughter and his inner child.

Here is Dan's report from the scene of the sublime. The whimpers at no longer being there have been edited out for all our sakes.

To start with, it's true: It's all free.

Best moment was definitely within the first 15 minutes. While I was walking with my kids along the side of one field, a coach — the name escapes me for the moment, but it was No. 56 — saw Asher (all of 8 years old) wearing his mitt and Mets gear and barked, “Hey Lefty!” When we stopped, he told Asher if he could catch the ball he was tossing him, he could keep it. It only took Asher three times to make the catch.

I wonder how many day-of-travel flights to West Palm Beach Dan just sold.

History's all over Gotham Baseball today. First, an examination of all the non-Mets New York third basemen David Wright will render irrelevant in no time at all. Then, a little something on Mrs. Effa Manley of Newark, New Jersey and Cooperstown, New York.

The Hall of Fame is making something forever wrong at least a little bit right by inducting 16 deserving men and one deserving woman this summer. Their election was announced today after the Hall was good enough and smart enough to convene an expert committee to figure out which players, executives and owners (like Mrs. Effa Manley, co-proprietor of the Newark Eagles and now the first lady in the Hall) had been overlooked for too long. Murray Chass explained the process in detail in Sunday's Times.

So congratulations to the Hall and congratulations to all those whose memories (each induction will be posthumous) are at last being honored properly. Congratulations as well, even if he didn't gain election, to Buck O'Neil — as good a man in person now, according to Dave Murray, as he appeared to be on camera with Ken Burns a dozen years ago. Nobody alive has done more to keep the flame glowing on behalf of the Negro League legacy, namely that great baseball was being played in shadows of the institutionally racist Major Leagues.

This is a proper tribute to a corps of baseball people whose contributions can never be properly measured, can never be adequately appreciated, can never possibly be put in a context that reasonable people of the 21st century could ever, ever rationally understand.

Induction into the Hall of Fame for those who built and maintained the Negro Leagues when the Negro Leagues were the only option for a significant portion of the baseball-playing population of this country is clearly merited, and it doesn't make a single one of us who reaches that conclusion heroic or enlightened for endorsing the obvious.

The Hall of Fame is a fitting tribute for greats of the game. What I saw on ESPN Classic on Sunday afternoon, on the other hand, was merely creepy. Well-intentioned, to be sure, but creepy.

Didja see it? Somebody had the idea that it would be a lovely homage to Negro League history to re-create a Negro League game, circa 1948…sort of. There was a team calling itself the Birmingham Black Barons (from whence our own Willie Mays, who threw out the first ball, sprung) and a team called the Bristol Barnstormers (Bristol…ESPN…will they ever get over themselves?) and they played in vintage duds in historic Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala.

Harmless enough, I guessed, and did I mention well-intentioned? The announcers (including celebrity Mets fan Chuck D and the always excellent Billy Sample) used the occasion as a history lesson. The managers were two likable old-timers, George “Boomer” Scott and Jim “Bulldog” Bouton. And it was baseball in late February.

Still…

A faux-Negro League team taking on a faux-barnstorming team that appeared to be pretty darn white? It was creepy. Presumably patrons could sit wherever they wanted and use whichever drinking fountains they wished (probably bought bottled water) and ride in any seat in any transportation conveyance, public or private, that they chose. So it was a re-creation of a 1948 game involving black players on one team and white players on another team in Alabama in a way that never could have taken place in 1948 Alabama and in a way I don't think any of us would prefer it take place anywhere anytime. (Oh, unless it's the World Baseball Classic and we need to prove my country or heritage is better than yours.)

I watched for an inning and gave up. It just bothered me. I revere history, but I don't go in for re-enacting the Battle of Antietam. Gimme a book, gimme a documentary, gimme flash cards. What purpose does putting on a black vs. white baseball game serve exactly? Raise awareness of a mostly lost slice of baseball's past? Well, OK, but do you really want to go about it by segregating the teams? I read in a Daily News preview that the Barnstormers would be “mixed-race,” but I didn't observe that to be the case (to be fair, I could've missed it), but who wants to use phrases like that in this day and age? Who wants to think like that? If we're trying to make younger generations aware of the evils of what kept blacks and whites from fully competing together at the highest echelons of organized baseball until 55, 60 years ago, how does, shall we say, whitewashing the reality of it into a Sunday picnic long after the fact do that?

There seemed to be excitement about it, a couple of surviving Negro Leaguers enjoyed the attention that accompanied it and if everybody who was there and everybody who watched on TV got a kick out of it, then I'm just a wet blanket on a cold day. Yet I'm reminded of one of my favorite books ever, Douglas Bukowski's appropriately cynical Baseball Palace of the World: The Last Year of Comiskey Park. His entry from July 12, 1990:

Wednesday afternoon was “Turn Back the Clock Day” for the White Sox and Brewers. The Sox wore “Shoeless” Joe Jackson uniforms and the score was kept manually, all in an effort to recreate a game from 1917, but I don't know. The ushers wore “straw” hats made of Styrofoam, and both teams used their black ballplayers. So much for authenticity.

I'm all for throwback unis and wearing baseball romance on one's sleeve, so I suppose there's a connection to be made between the heritage represented by the Negro Leagues and the ongoing efforts to address the relative paucity of African-American baseball players in 2006. Indeed, one of the Black Barons from Sunday, Jimmy Williams, told the News' Christian Red that he hoped an event like the Birmingham game would lead to firing up more African-American kids to play ball.

This issue gets a touch more notice every year, but I've been hearing, I'm sure, for closing in on two decades that…

• the sport that served as meta-metaphor for the American experience…

• the game that Jackie Robinson rectified and delivered from richly deserved damnation by his mere participation…

• and the national pastime that wasn't truly national until he and Mays and Henry Aaron and Larry Doby and Monte Irvin and Minnie Minoso and too many others were no longer denied access by “gentleman's agreement” to it…

isn't attracting many black kids to its ranks. Certainly not like it used to.

I don't know what to do with that information.

The traditionalist (post-1947 traditionalist, that is) instinct is to call it sad and bemoan it. It is sad and I do bemoan it. I'm a post-1947 traditionalist in that sense. The next tack to take is to endorse the encouragement of athletically talented African-American youth to take up baseball. The Majors have been doing this in an institutional fashion since 1989. I remember writing a brief story in '92 about how Fred Wilpon, Nelson Doubleday and George Steinbrenner were joining forces with the company that was then Major League Baseball's soft drink sponsor to jumpstart the New York leg of a program called RBI, Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities. The Mets and Yankees contributed resources to rebuild a ballfield in Harlem (albeit not the Polo Grounds). It certainly wasn't either team's last charitable and, it could be argued, self-sustaining gesture in this direction. You want to run a baseball team in New York, you best maintain the interest of New York kids.

(And let's not pretend that baseball needs revival only in the inner cities or that those are the only locales where you'll find nonwhite children in the United States. For that matter, African-American children aren't the only children not playing baseball like we did when we were awkward but determined youths doing our best John Stearns impressions.)

There seems to be a steady flow of what could be very loosely termed affirmative action at baseball's grassroots level, and I'm all for any action that is affirmative where baseball is concerned. The go-to line about why baseball needs to do this is it hasn't kept up with professional football and basketball as the aspirational sport among African-American youth. Anything that can be done to close the gap…huzzah! In my judgment, every potential athlete should choose baseball. Every potential sports fan should choose baseball. Every media outlet should cover baseball first, last and just about always.

It can be argued if MLB has done enough or has done what it has done successfully. The fact is the percentage of ballplayers who are African-American continues to shrink. The 2005 National League champions had hitters, pitchers, fielders and runners, but not a single American-born black player on their roster. And I just read, courtesy of John Harper in the News, that Cliff Floyd is the “Mets' only established African-American player” and that Lastings Milledge is a rarity in terms of race among blue-chip baseball prospects.

And I still don't know what to do with that information.

There is no evidence to suggest that the '05 Astros were composed in any manner other than to win as many contests as they could. Until they got to the World Series, the plan worked. The 2006 Mets? I'm assuming the idea is to get as far as Houston did and then win four more games. We've been through the nonsense about Los Mets already and I'm not going through it again. The only kinds of guys I want to see on my team are the best players who are decent people and who are the best players. Their DNA or their grandparents' mailing address or what music they listen to on their Willie Randolph-mandated headphones is of no concern to this fan.

I'd been rooting for the Mets a couple of years, I think, when I read somewhere that the Mets had a quiet quota system for black players. Up until then, I hadn't noticed. So, curious kid with math skills that I was, I counted. There's Cleon. There's Agee. There's Clendenon. There's…uh…I got the idea. I didn't think much about it, though, because Cleon and Agee and Clendenon were no different to me from Seaver and Koosman and Buddy and Tug and Teddy Martinez. They were Mets.

That's been pretty much my rule ever since. You're a Met and you play well and you're not an embarrassment, I think of you as one of me and me, by Walter Mittylike delusion, as one of you. I think most of us look at our team that way.

Are restrictions, formal or casual, being placed on any young athlete who desires to enter baseball? If so, remove them at once.

Are opportunities being provided for the talent pool at large to excel at baseball? If not, create them and present them.

Is everybody from everywhere of every background being given an equal shot at playing baseball? Produce those shots by any means necessary.

That's information I can deal with.

If, as a prevailing trend, Latinos and Asians (and, for lack of a better construction, Euro-Americans) are more likely to go out for baseball than African-Americans after everybody throws their best pitch at the shrinking percentage, well, it doesn't feel right, but I don't know what to do about it. Are we supposed to be upset that members of one group have stepped in to fill a vacuum created by the absence of the members of another group? If African-Americans or any young men from anywhere are given every legitimate opportunity and reasonable enticement to play baseball and choose not to, what then?

All I ask of my team is to get me 25 players of skill and character and determination and all that good stuff that builds champions. Build a champion and let it perform like a champion. That, too, is information I can deal with. I don't really know what do with the rest.

Perhaps you've heard of a book and a club called the 12 Black Aces. It's a project started by Jim “Mudcat” Grant to honor the accomplishments of a dozen — now 13, thanks to Dontrelle Willis — pitchers who have won 20 games at least once in a season. That's one of the qualifications. The other one is that you be black. Well, African-American. The group includes Grant, Doc Gooden, Don Newcombe, Bob Gibson, Vida Blue and Ferguson Jenkins. It doesn't include Cuban-born but dark-skinned (and, thus, discriminated-against when he was coming along) Luis Tiant, who told Street & Smith's Baseball, “I don't even want to see that book. They can go and throw that book in the toilet.”

Well, if the criteria is American, then maybe Tiant should be more understanding. Except, as Street & Smith's Mike Beradino points out, Fergie Jenkins isn't a U.S. citizen. He was born in Canada. That doesn't make him American, unless you want to include North American…which is what a Cuban would be if I've read my maps correctly.

Identity politics can be split so many good-hearted ways that the resulting shavings can get downright ugly. Telling one guy he's a member of an unofficial club because he looks like this even if he isn't from here but the guy who also looks like this and isn't from here surely isn't what Grant was thinking when he came up with what sure must have looked like a nice way to romanticize a little history.

Say, when Doc Gooden was winning 20 in 1985, did you think, “there goes our black ace”? Me neither. If you had to place him right now in a special group besides the 1985 Mets, would you choose Mets' 20-game winners and place him amid Seaver, Koosman, Cone and Viola? Me too.

The ethnic gymnasts of the WBC who twisted Mike Piazza of suburban Philadelphia into Italy's catcher practice the same pointless categorizing. When Mike was a Met, he was a Met. Now he's a beloved ex-Met until he takes a current Met deep as a fleetingly disliked Padre. Whether he's Italian or Italian-American or reconstituted-Southern Californian falls outside my own sphere of relevance.

Cliff Floyd, David Wright, Jose Reyes, Pedro Martinez, Billy Wagner, Carlos Delgado, Carlos Beltran, Tom Glavine…who ya wit'?

When it comes to baseball, I prefer to stick with my own kind.

At 9 o'clock tonight, give yourself a treat and visit the Crane Pool Forum for a live chat with Adam Rubin, Mets beat writer for the News and author of the immediately forthcoming Pedro, Carlos & Omar. He's already answered a few advance questions which make for fascinating Met reading.

And if you think no Mets fan should have to set himself on fire on the front lawn of his or her local cable company, consider signing this petition to get SNY onto Charter Digital Cable. None of us is free to watch every Mets game until all of us are free to watch every Mets game. (Free is just an expression in this case. Cable costs.)

To elaborate on a great metaphor offered by one of our esteemed commentators a few days back, the commercials are finally over and the house lights are going down. It isn't time for the movie, not quite yet, but the previews are about to start. And thank goodness. Yes yes, I know where the receptacles are and am aware trash goes in them. I have silenced my cellphone. I understand that a generation of no-smoking laws weren't repealed this afternoon. Could we please GET ON WITH IT?

Well, no, not quite yet we can't. But come next weekend, we will have actual (though still meaningless) games to discuss. We will have WFAN broadcasts with Howie to dissect. Gary won't be along just yet, but apparently (news via Bloomberg via Metsblog) when he arrives Greg and millions of others will be able to see him, meaning I don't have to worry about my co-blogger setting fire to himself on the lawn of Cablevision headquarters.

In the meantime, because we're antsy, some bits and pieces to tide us over before the previews arrive, which will satisfy us for approximately 30 more seconds before our case of the fidgets returns. (I'm so tired of playing the Dodgers! I'd do anything to see a game without pitchers running in the outfield! I can't sleep until I know if the 25th guy will be Endy Chavez or Tike Redman!)

Think of these as some Milk Duds stuck in the box before we tear into the popcorn in earnest:

In the Daily News, Adam Rubin discusses Jose Reyes, including how hard Reyes worked to teach himself English and how he did his first interview without a translator just five days after his debut. No one knew Rey Ordonez spoke English for years, and we learned when he told us we were all stupid. Reyes's nicely colloquial get-thee-thither to David Wright: “Beat it. Why do you have to be like that, man? Geez.” I love Jose Reyes. (And it being a new year, I'm struck once again by his eerie resemblance, one obvious characteristic aside, to Ziggy from “The Wire.”)

Willie joked that he's giving Brian Bannister an extra look because “I used to own his old man.” Actually Willie hit .188 off Floyd Bannister. Like I told you, Skip ain't one for stats.

Bobby Bonilla came to visit. Isn't this why Boondocks Field or whatever it's called has security guards? Arm them. Give them dogs. Do what needs to be done.

The other day David Wright told John Harper that “you see so many guys get caught up in the work aspect of [baseball], like they're coming to work every day. It's not that tough. Both my parents worked nine to five. The worst day on the baseball field is better than any day off it.” The more I read about David Wright, the less convinced I am he actually had parents. I think he strolled out of the cornfield after Kevin Costner showed his faith by sitting on the bleachers half the night. God bless David Wright.

Then there's Cliff Floyd, who's allergic to dissembling or being dull, in that great Keith Hernandez/Wally Backman tradition. Here he is on starting spring training facing lefties, unredacted since this isn't a family newspaper: “It sucked. But what the hell? It's good to see what those lefties look like. I sucked vs. lefties last year anyway.” God bless Cliff Floyd too. May He keep Cliff healthy, out of rehab assignments in “that hole,” and arrange that any astonishingly expensive earrings he happens to drop be swiftly found.

And that's that. In another week we'll have in-depth analyses of why Henry Owens must make the team and how Jeremi Gonzalez's two-inning stint reminded us of our childhoods and/or particle physics. Hang in there, baby. We're almost home.