Your pal Manny Aybar's arrival on the mound (God bless WPIX)

reminded me, again, of the weird feelings when former enemies big

and small join the Forces of Good.

It's easy to forget Pedro was briefly a member of the Forces of

Darkness, drilling Piazza in June 1998 and afterwards pulling out one

of his under-the-mango-tree ruminations about being a

poor boy with class while Mike was a millionaire without it. The brief

contretemps has blotted out memories of the actual game, which is too

bad: Pedro lasted just four innings, giving up 1,254 feet worth of home

runs to John Olerud, Bernard Gilkey, Luis Lopez and Alberto Castillo —

the latter two leaving me bounding around the office in astonished,

giddy delight. Some large man named Vaughn countered with two homers

for the Bosox, perhaps opening eyes that should have stayed shut. Then

Pedro was a head-hunting menace to society; now he's the genial prince

of the clubhouse. (Actually, between baseball's great mi nombre es Pedro ad and his habit of head-hunting Yankees, I forgave him long ago.)   

The elephant in the former-enemies room is, of course,

Tom Glavine. You and I are exactly like several hundred thousand

other Mets fans in remaining lukewarm at best on Glavine after

two seasons. All those years beating the tar out of us carry

a certain psychological weight — particularly that 1-0 strangulation

in Game 3 of the '99 NLCS, which we got to watch side by side

in glum misery. There's his failure to beat the tar out of

clubs in the same way wearing our uniform. There's his status

in the freelance-GM clique of the clubhouse. Geeks like us

still mutter about brother Mike's fantasy-camp tenure in

orange and blue, with the associated blather about great family

atmosphere. No, it is safe to say we have not warmed up to Tom

Glavine. And you get the feeling we're not alone: From the press

coverage this spring, you'd barely know Glavine was on the roster.

[Side note: Chris Woodward probably just made the team. Time for

the McEwings to start scouring the St. Louis real-estate listings.]

When I think of Glavine, I admit to still seeing him as an

impostor. With Atlanta he and Maddux epitomitzed the

strain of Brave arrogance I particularly loathed: disdainfully silent

and distantly supercilious toward competitors and even in their

own clubhouse when they objected to something. (Chipper and Bobby Cox

were and are different, given to shooting off their mouths in a

moustache-twisting way, but I always found that easier to take — at

least they acknowledged we were on the field with them.)

I've tried, but I still feel that way about Glavine. I'm

sure this is unfair. It's not Glavine's fault that we signed him

when he may have begun his natural descent as a pitcher. It's

not Glavine's fault that he's been backed by a

defense that might as well have been put together from the rest of

the Glavine clan. It's not Glavine's fault that he was invited

into the circle of Mets allowed to interfere with decisions better

made upstairs. Regardless, I can't shake the feeling.

Here's the thing, though: If Glavine had had a better defense and

won 15 games a year, would I feel differently? If he'd no-hit the

Rockies last year — as I, for once, firmly believed would

happen — would I feel differently? I think I would. Fandom is a fickle

thing, and mere facts need not apply: If Pedro's 3-8 at the break

and we're last in the league in hitting and defense, something

tells me we'll be grousing about him hitting Piazza back in '98.

I showed Joshua (with the benefit of pen, paper and a Met hat)

that the weird symbol on our cap is in fact two letters on top of each

other. He got it and said he wanted to watch more baseball. Attaboy!

On the other hand, he was nonplussed why a team cool

enough to be named after tigers wouldn't have tigers on their uniforms.

I had no explanation for that.

Hey, what was the first Met game you attended?

[End note: Yeah, Chris Woodward definitely just made the team. Sorry, Super Joe.] 

The 1989 Mets opened the season with exactly one player who didn't play

at some point for the 1988 Mets: Don Aase, who won a spot in the

bullpen after starting spring as agate type.

Don Aase can be recalled for three accomplishments.

1) He displaced Tommie Agee atop the all-time alphabetical roster. If

we don't sign Henry Aaron IV somewhere down the road, we're stuck with

him there.

2) He gave up a positively Pendletonian ninth-inning blast to a Dodger

on August 20 which cost the Mets not just a game but all the momentum

(15-4) they'd built up since acquiring Frank Viola at the trading

deadline, momentum they never recovered. The offending L.A. slugger? A

veteran second baseman named Willie Randolph who hadn't hit one out all

year.

3) My late mother, in her final season of Mets-watching, continually

referred to Don Aase as Ass-Man. She did the same thing for Paul

Assenmacher.

Before 1989 was out, the Mets would go through one of their most

dramatic in-season shakeups in franchise history, dispatching Aguilera,

Dykstra, McDowell, Mazzilli and Mookie to the hinterlands. That's more

than 20% of the '86 Series team disappeared in a 43-day span. In the

context of setting a roster, the regular season was little more than an

extended spring training. Some years are like that.

Yet I'm sure I was interested in spring training in 1989 regardless of

the rather sedate competition for jobs, whereas I'm a little light to

date on being fully engaged in this year's maneuvers.

As I lay awake the other night to mentally pencil in the 25-Man, I was

stunned to realize significant blank spots remain beyond the starting

eight, starting five and closer. I've been so focused on drooling over

millionaire Carlos Beltran and his ward David Wright that I've been

willing to pencil in “Others” for most of those slots.

That won't work for much longer. So now I'm snapping out of it and

paying attention to who's here. There's a real dichotomy, I've finally

grasped, in Camp Willie. There's the old scrubs and the new subs. My

hunch is the newbies will carry the day.

It's good that there are several seemingly fresh and viable options for

fourth and fifth OFs and second utility IF and even backup C, because

more is better. But I have no attachment to the various Woodwards,

Robinsons, Calloways, Castros and whichever non-locks are floating

around, and I haven't seen enough of any of them to adopt one or more

as a cause.

On the other hand, I was disappointed to conclude that Eric Valent was not guaranteed a place on the 2005 Mets.

A team coming off 71 wins shouldn't guarantee anybody a spot. But come

now — Eric Valent didn't manage to pencil himself in to “it's his job

to lose” status? Look at the back of his card:

* Thirteen homers as a part-timer

* Competent outfield and first base credentials

* A lefty

* The cycle in Montreal

* Out of options

* His bizarre appearance with Todd Zeile on Cold Pizza to promote a men's fashion show

All that must deposit some goodwill in the bank.

I was delighted to see Pat Borzi in the Times, one writer

who so far finds his own stories, rediscover Valent the other day. I

was happier when Eric was in the lineup Friday night while Gary and

Howie doted on him. They're the ones, in between bashing Richie Hebner

(who can't ever be bashed enough), who reminded me of the thirteen

dingers in 2004. Has anybody told Willie about those?

As much as I'd like to reserve him a spot, I recall now that Eric

Valent is what happens when spring training works correctly, that a guy

can actually come out of nowhere and become somebody at somebody else's

expense. He seemed to show up in virtually every game I caught last

March. And I always wondered the same thing. Who the hell is Eric Valent?

An ex-Red, an ex-Phillie, but I have to admit he escaped my notice.

Then when Roger Cedeño was mercifully exchanged for Wilson Delgado, a

spot opened up and Art Howe woke up long enough to grant it to E.V. It

was, to damn with faint praise, perhaps the best move he made in his

two years as manager.

Wayne Housie is also what happens when spring training does its thing.

The first Opening Day I ever attended was 1993, the Rockies' inaugural

game. I'd waited almost a quarter of a century for the opportunity to

see our boys take their place on the first-base line and be introduced

one by one. As it's done in numerical order, the first reserve to have

his name called was No. 2, Wayne Housie. You could hear 53,127 fingers

scratching 53,127 heads. Wayne Who's-He? Whoever he was, he didn't make it to July. (And the Mets barely made it to May, but never mind that.)

For every Valent who qualifies out of the gate for meal money and

proves a delightful surprise, there are Housies and Aases who remind us

what a 25th man really is — the guy they take because otherwise they'd

be a guy short. Whoever emerges, the battle for the end of the bench

needs some juice, and soon.

OK, I admit it. I bailed out when it was 10-1. To watch a TiVoed Gilmore Girls. (I should really say “to get good and drunk” or “because something needed welding,” but it would be a lie.)

Leaving aside the fact that it's fricking spring training, my only

defense is that thanks to Cablevision, I couldn't see the game, and

there's not a lot to be learned from hearing what future Binghamton Mets are doing. If I could have seen Blake McGinley, rest assured I would have stayed glued to live TV. At least until it was 14-4.

Still, it did leave me feeling somewhat better about the 112-odd games

that may be lacking visuals this year. Howie Rose and Gary Cohen were

in great form, at one point letting the scrimmage going on downstairs

share time with a lengthy, increasingly agitated review of the shameful

conduct of Richie Hebner, the world's least-happy Met. Hebner

(forever known for working as a gravedigger in the offseason) played

his one miserable campaign for the Mets 26 years ago,

but Howie sounded as outraged about his Robertoesque showing as he

must have been at the time. I'm willing to bet that most other teams'

broadcasters can barely remember briefly employed first basemen from a

quarter-century ago, let alone work themselves into a lather over their

malingering. Getting to share a game with Howie and Gary is a pleasure.

Even when it's 10-1.

Speaking of barely remembering, I confess I had completely forgotten

our loathing of Manny Aybar, though I did recall two other things:

Junior's return was one of those rare nights I guessed the next day's

tabloid headline (it was “Junior Whiffey”), and Jackie Robinson Night was its

polar opposite, as it was the lone good pitching performance I can

remember by Toby Borland.

My favorite return by a hated foe is still Bobby Bonilla as a Marlin.

(Somewhere in the bowels of Shea a machine just clunked out a check to

Bobby Bo for more than you and I will make in two months, by the way.)

I was at Shea with Chris, a.k.a. the Human Fight, and the sparse crowd

was hungrily booing Bonilla whenever it could get a fix on him during

warmups. In his first at-bat, Bonilla lashed a ball foul — one of

those drives that looks impressive but is only hit hard because it

can't possibly stay fair. The ball clanked into the seats a few sections

outside the foul pole, and there were so few people there that everyone

could watch the most-enterprising kid in the stands jog 40 feet and

start hunting for the ball. When he found it, he held it aloft for a

moment — and then hurled it onto the field. I'm sure Fran would agree

the reaction was electric.

Later in the game the crowd was too tired and dispirited to boo Bonilla

with much volume anymore, but it did find an alternative: a low,

hooting chant that spread slowly but inexorably through the park…

you suck you suck you suck you suck you suck you suck

…at which point Chris turned to me and said, “This may be the purest expression of hatred I've ever heard.”

Joey Hamilton got released after being arrested for DWI. If you're out

there, Todd Hundley, rest easy. His tower has been buzzed.

Barring hail, frogs, locusts, murrain and whatever other plagues Cablevision brings on viewers, a pretend Mets game will air on MSG Friday night. Seeing as how darkness was one of the Top Ten Plagues of The Week brought forth on the Egyptians by The Big Guy (God, not Chris Berman), I wonder why the hell they play so many spring-training games at night.

I've heard the reasoning, that the regular season is predominantly night games, so the players need to get used to the dark. To which I say hogwash. The most embarrassing individual Opening Day (Day, not night) performance I can remember was Keith Miller looking lost under fly balls in center in 1990. Maybe he was a victim of all those damn night games in St. Lucie. After Opening Day, does anybody truly attribute anybody's performance to what happened in spring training?

Besides, nobody — nobody — gets goose-pimply at the idea of soaking up some of that Florida moon. And when the frost is still on the parking lot as it is around here, a night game sends a diluted message of hope. I'm all for having baseball on TV at night, even in March, but play it during the day and tape it for evening airing.

That reminds me of perhaps the strangest arrangement I can recall in Mets broadcast history. Ten years ago, in the midst of the false spring of replacement baseball, WFAN was obligated to run a certain number of exhibition games. What they did was tape-delay 'em. By a lot. I have a clear memory of making my way south down some newly discovered secondary road in Nassau County at around midnight with Murph and Gary dutifully describing the futile motions being gone through by a lost battalion of Replace-Mets, but allowing that at least it was brilliantly sunny out. Whoever our scabs were playing had Doug Corbett pitching for them. Only thing is, Terry, Doug Corbett retired in 1987.

We've all got our personal archvillains — mini-Chippers and tiny Rockets whose mere existence in our midst set us off into a flurry of BOOOOOOOOOs. Then you're disappointed to learn nobody else in the stadium shares your antipathy and you have to explain to your seatmate why you've apparently lost your mind the way Kenny Rogers lost the plate late one evening in Atlanta. One of those guys for me is the mysteriously present Manny Aybar. I should hope you know why.

OK, if you've forgotten, I'll remind you. It's April 25, 2000. It's the Reds at Mets. It's Ken Griffey, Jr.'s New York National League debut. And it's colder than a Mitchell's hit (you know, Kevin Mitchell, his hit against the Red Sox in Game Six, which they must've found pretty, uh, cold). I'm there with you and Emily because we deemed this a historic occasion. We thought that because of Griffey, but instead we wound up debating whether this night was more frigid than Jackie Robinson Night. Even if it wasn't, it was no night to sit around and wait for some idiot relief pitcher to take his time “warming” up and then pause for Trachselian lengths between every pitch.

That idiot relief pitcher was Manny Aybar. And every time Manny Aybar's name is announced, no matter the temperature, I rub my hands together and loudly curse the day he was born. (His mother was in labor for 54 hours…had to be.) Finding out he is at least fleetingly one of ours sends shivers down my spine.

One of my many peeves regarding Mets fans who aren't me is their tendency to throw ex-Mets overboard without a second glance. Bobby Jones returned as a Padre in May 2001 to the most tepid applause imaginable. The same man who seven months earlier pitched a one-hit shutout to clinch a playoff series (it was cold as a bastid then, too, come to think of it) was now just another Padre to these people. Don't even get me started on the failure to properly adulate Fonzie with flowers and chocolates in 2003. What's just as ignorant is the inability to pick out of a crowd them that done us wrong. A few weeks after the Aybar/Griffey chillout, I was at a game against the Diamondbacks when Russ Springer strolled to the mound for Arizona. I booed. My companion, while jotting the pitcher's name in his scorebook, asked “what do you have against Russ Springer?”

Oh, nothing. Except on a Tuesday night the previous October at Turner Field, Russ Springer took the ball in the top of the eleventh and retired John Olerud, Shawon Dunston and Robin Ventura in all too easy order, preserving a 9-9 tie and telling me in all too clear terms that whatever Mr. Rogers did in the bottom of the eleventh, 1999 was probably at its end. That's all.

If that's not worth vilification, I don't know what is.

[My thanks to big-time agent David Sloane and the continual amusement he has provided so many of us with his bizarre representation of mighta-been Met Carlos Delgado. It was in his honor that every other headline posted here this week was the title of a Joe Cocker song. For more on what Joe's up to, visit cocker.com]

So we finally got past the first day of cuts that mattered a little. Farewell, Bob Keppel, Anderson Hernandez, Craig Brazell, Danny Garcia, Aarom Baldiris, Joe Nelson and Andy Dominique. If they hurry they can catch the just-cut Tim Hamulack, John Pachot and Jesus Flores.

 

I suppose Brazell and Garcia are the only vague surprises in the bunch. Emphasis on vague:

One gets the feeling Craig and Danny have crossed that invisible but

definitive line that separates “Prospect” from “Trade Bait.” Oh well,

that's baseball. Brazell will always have beaten the Cubs late last

year, and Garcia will always be the first Brooklyn Cyclone in the

majors. (Real Cyclone:

Farcical rehab assignments don't count.) And Benny Ayala will always

have hit a dinger in his first at-bat, for all the good that's doing

him right now.

I've been boring in my insistent campaigning for kids over vets, so I

suppose honor compels me to note that it does make sense to go with

veteran bats early. It would be cruel to make Brazell and Garcia bench

players; anything they've got left to show us will only come out if

they play every day, even if it's in Virginia in front of sailors. What

drove me crazy last year was spending August and September watching

retreads about whom we couldn't possibly discover anything new, and who

had no conceivable role to play even in our mid-term future. How on

earth did this team let Gerald Williams collect 129 at-bats? 130 ABs

for Wilson Delgado? A roster spot for Brian Buchanan? For what

conceivable reason?

Y'know, every spring training is like past-life regression, if one had

lived the same life over and over again. (Stick with me, man, there's a

point in here somewhere.) Tonight I was pondering the different

possible makeups of our middle-relief corps when it struck me that none

of it mattered. Like every team, we'll make some dog-and-cat trade with

another organization on March 30 to get the roster down to 25 guys, and

it'll make the calculus about the last couple of spots academic. Then

there's the probability that, like all teams with unsettled middle

relief, whatever we break camp with will be reshuffled by June 1st.

Going north as a marginal middle reliever is like being in the first

wave of minefield-clearers.

I bet I realized the exact same thing on March 10, 2004 while pondering

Orber Moreno, Ricky Bottalico and Dan Wheeler. Or whoever it was at the

time. I'll now set my watch for 2006. Struck by the futility of predicting middle relievers? Hmm, must be March 10th.

Though this ignores the basic truth: Spring training distracts you from

the fact that it's still freezing by offering the chance to obsess over

whether there's anything left to be squeezed out of Manny Aybar's arm.

Pretty silly, but it beats the snot out of staring out the window and

waiting for spring.

The first time I saw David Wright in the flesh was his second game, the one in which he got his first hit. On the scoreboard a bit later, when they greeted groups and individuals, a message flashed: THE METS WELCOME JIMMY DIAMOND. That's what I privately called Young Mr. Wright for the next month. Every time he'd get on base, I'd yell, “the Mets welcome Jimmy Diamond!” I later morphed it to Diamond Dave for clarity's sake.

Not to ride this pony too hard or too often, but our Diamond Dave sparkles too brightly to be believed. Watching Fran Healy interview on him on the Mets Spring Training Report (sorry, don't mean to sound like I'm showing off here in Cablevision territory — we'll get screwed next year), Diamond Dave made Healy seem cynical and a mite downbeat.

David Wright loves his teammates. David Wright loves his coaches. David Wright loves the coaches he had in the minors. David Wright loves everything about the Mets and everything about being one of the Mets. David Wright, as you probably have heard, grew up a Mets fan, but that can't possibly explain his giddy fealty to the cause. If he were really that much one of us, he'd say something like, “I just don't want to stink up the joint like Bill Pecota.”

I don't think ballplayers who grew up as fans of a team are the same as people like you and me and the way we grew up fans of a team. Those boys were out playing under the streetlamp until Ma called them in. Or they begged Dad for one more round of catch in the backyard and then, I swear, I'll do my math homework. (Or they were taking meetings with agents who regularly haunted Little League combines; things have probably changed since our youth.) We've heard so many players say they were too busy playing ball as kids to be fans that we're surprised to find there are a few who actually did watch ball.

On the other hand, guys like us were told to go out and get some fresh air when we were far more interested in sitting ourselves in front of Channel 9 or our dog-eared copy of Screwball. We knew our future was in spouting statistics — there were only like three of them then — and pulling charming anecdotes from our respective vaults. I played ball, enthusiastically, regularly, comically, until I got to college. But the thing I loved to do was watch ball.

Tom Verducci has straddled that line in the current Sports Illustrated, a total must-read article, even if John Gibbons (manager) and John Valentin (Double-A coach) are the only Mets referenced. He spent five days as a Toronto Blue Jay, culminating in his appearance in an intrasquad game. Wore No. 2 and everything.

Verducci didn't necessarily break any news (after all, what's said there stays there), but it's comforting to know that after all this time, ballplayers are still pretty much ballplayers, which is to say kids who haven't quite got all growed up yet. I particularly like the effort the relatively starless Jays — no $16K earrings mentioned — put into giving the insiders' section of their clubhouse a proper title while the nicknames they slap on each other are the essence of no-brainers. If David Wright were a Blue Jay (and let's be glad he's not), he'd be Wright-O. Toronto leftfielder Reed Johnson, for example, is Reeder, like Rick Reed was Reeder. The Utne Reader would be, I assume, Reeder. Or Ut-Hut.

After reading (or Reedering) Verducci's piece, I can understand why a Brian Daubach or a Joey Hamilton wants to hang on. Being a Big Leaguer gots ta be the good life. And why shouldn't it be? For every fifth outfielder we mock, for every last dreary middle reliever we pencil in and erase and then replace with a body double, these guys are great ballplayers. Well, great compared to you or me or anybody we'll run into in the course of our daily functioning. David Wright should be ecstatic and Brian Daubach should be angling for an in, whatever his past war crimes are.

Ya do wonder who knows who in a situation like this. There has to be some kind of degrees-of-separation deal to get from apparently washed up first baseman or pitcher to a tryout with the Mets instead of, say, the Diamondbacks or the Ducks. “Hey Omar, you don't know me, but you do know Frank Robinson who knows Tom McCraw who knows Todd Hundley who hated my guts. Anyway, Frank said I should call you for a tryout…”

Funny you should mention the Hundley-Sheffield throwdown. I was at that game in 1993. It had the potential to be momentous for me and me alone. To that point, my lifetime regular-season games-at-Shea record was 32-33. I was on the cusp of reaching .500 for the first time since I had fallen to 3-3 in 1977. Alas, when the dust settled, the Padres, on a run in the eighth off some promising young hurler named Anthony Young, won 9-8. It marked the beginning of a shameful 6-18 stretch with me in attendance and I didn't reach .500 until 1998, didn't top it for good (pending future horrible losing streak) until 1999. For the record, I stand at 157-125 entering the new season.

I'm fairly certain guys who grow up to be ballplayers don't keep track of these things.

Two new transactions — and

weirdly, both involve players that were involved in run-ins with boys

in orange and blue. Hence the title of this post….

1. Joey Hamilton: Signed to a minor-league deal,

because having Scott Stewart and Roberto Hernandez didn't let us quite

corner the market on washed-up pitchers. Hamilton's crime during

his San Diego days was offending Todd Hundley somehow, after which Hundley

broke the baseball code by musing about how the Mets would have to

“buzz his tower.” Of course, Hot Rod liked tower-buzzing of various

sorts: I loved his home-plate bite-and-scratch with Gary

Sheffield most of all, in part because Bob Murphy cheerfully

noted that their mutual ejection was a good trade for the

Mets, which seemed to offend Gary Cohen. (That happened more often than

we like to remember.)

2. Brian Daubach: Also signed to a minor-league

deal. I have even less against Daubach than I do against Hamilton —

Daubach put up good numbers as a Met farmhand before vanishing

under mysterious circumstances, but he's of course remembered for his

Fenway run-in with Todd Pratt, which I thoroughly enjoyed despite the

fact that it was immediately obvious (at least to me) that Tank was the

one in the wrong. Tank called Daubach a scab, thereby also

smearing Rick Reed and Benny Agbayani, and Daubach won the point by

looking at Tank in disbelief and barking with laughter, which was

much more effective than getting offended about the whole thing.

If memory serves, that was the same game in which Carl Everett

freaked out at home-plate ump Ron Kulpa in one of the better

baseball tantrums I've ever seen. Think it went something like this:

Bobby Valentine: Hey! I keep telling you, Everett can't have his foot on the line like that! Rule 5.381.34344 clearly states that —
Ron Kulpa: Spare me, Bobby. Everett, get your foot off the line.
Carl Everett: [Miscellaneous bad words.]
Kulpa: I'm drawing lines here. See these? You can't step on either one of them. And by the way, there were too dinosaurs.
Everett: [Extremely bad words, spittle, etc.]
Kulpa: One more word and you're run!
Mike Piazza: Hey Carl, did you know scientists think dinosaurs may have had warm blood and feathers?
Everett: [Insane tantrum, head-butting, etc.]

Good times. It's a mystery how Everett's zaniness somehow remained

under wraps during his Met career, at least as far as I can remember.

(The stuff about his kids always struck me as trumped up anyway.)

3. Mother Nature: Another rainout? Good Lord. Rainouts aren't

supposed to happen until at least the point where we're no longer able

to keep stats in our heads (“That drops Beltran to .250!!! Auggghhh!!!”),

with an exemption for when we're down 14-1 and it's the top of the

second. And it wasn't even Kris Benson's day to pitch.  

4. James Dolan: With the Mets heading for MetsTV in '06,

Cablevision will fight. And the Knicks are so wretched that half

their fans are just as glad the remaining games won't be televised.

This will leave me with just the WPIX slate of 50 regular-season

games. Eliot Spitzer, please take note: I have become

a single-issue voter. The road to the governor's mansion is

clearly marked.

Can I note how glad I am Sammy Sosa is not a Met? It's not just that

I never found him as cuddly as everyone else, or that we staged a day

for him while he was trying to beat us, or that when he came to

town half the stadium was rooting for him. It's that Sammy

can't manage to keep his stories straight about why he left the

Cubs' season finale, the Cubs, or much of anything else. The media

would have pounced on him for that, the clubhouse would have

reluctantly backed one of their own, there would have been columns

about rookie managers and GMs' agendas and cork and steroids and …

oh, too many other things.

Whaddya know? There are Met PUs in which worse things happen, too.

Don't know who was playing the Bowery Ballroom, but if it was Joe Cocker, I hope you gave Sloanie, presumably following the tour in a van, our regards. I doubt he's any more amenable to interruptions in person than he is via phone, pager or text.

AREN'T YOU PAYING ATTENTION? HIS BABY SHE WROTE HIM A LETTER! SAID SHE COULDN'T LIVE WITHOUT HIM NO MORE! AND YOU WANT TO TALK BASEBALL? DUDE, IT'S FREEZING OUTSIDE!

 

If that's not exactly what happened, don't tell me it's not.

Ah, the Parallel Universe. Our heads should be out of those PU clouds what with spring training in full swing, but since it snowed all day and the snow blew all night (snow blows anytime), I can see where the celestial static might screw with the reception.

 

I'm listening to some of our many triumphs from the past two decades right now, replayed in the annual March Metness loop they do without fail on 660 AM, K-METS. As you know, they changed the call letters from WFAN around 1993 when they went to the all-Met format, since that was all anybody in New York, sports fan or otherwise, wanted to talk about. Really, Mayor Backman set the tone for that with his inaugural address. (Makes you wonder why more candidates don't run on the drag bunt platform. Worked for him.)

 

Speaking of rewriting history to suit one's pathetic fantasies, Gary Carter nearly blew a happy and peppy and bursting-with-love gasket when asked by FAN's afternoon hosts about the 16th inning in Houston and the legendary option menu that Keith Hernandez gave him: fastballs or fighting. It's so legendary that even Francesa and Russo have heard of it. The Kid said Keith is full of beans. It never happened. I'm the catcher. I call the pitches. Love me.

Having listened to Keith do games these last several years with stunning clarity regarding strategy and player's frame of mind but also absolute muddledness in terms of past events, I don't know who to believe. Yeah, I do. I believe Keith. I believe every story that reflects poorly on the '86 team's professionalism because it reflects that much better on their humanity.

Cripes — Doc and Darryl, Mex and Kid. It's 2005, why are we dwelling on them still? Oh yeah, tradition. Tradition Field. (That is, despite my insistence that 44 years of history is highly tangible, kind of funny.) Did anybody ever think to soothe Thomas J. White's feelings over tearing his name off of what was his stadium? And what about Al Lang? Our former St. Petersburg spring training home, now occupied by the Devil Rays, is called Progress Energy Park, Home of Al Lang Field. I hope the kin of Al Lang demand removal of their blessed patriarch's identity from that travesty. And I doubt the concept of progress is terribly pleased at being associated with the Devil Rays.

In the present, it's the season of the New Mets. Then again, it's always the season of the New Mets. Go through your Books and you should find there were 29 New Mets last year. That's more than a whole roster. All told, there were 52 different players who played in a Mets uniform (including Tom Wilson and Jose Parra who each played one game in the wrong Mets uniform) in 2004. New Mets outnumbered Old Mets, 56%-44%. So what's the Mets' marketing strategy this year? Forget about last year, we've got New Mets!

As for the future, I don't dream about David Wright's 5 going up on the left field wall. I don't dream about the sun coming up tomorrow, either. I just assume both will happen. What does tickle me, though, is your implicit definitiveness that the same left field wall we stare at today will be in use for its 60th season come '23. Along the lines of Andres Galarraga being older than dirt, the hills and Kevin Elster to name three, consider that our beautiful Shea Stadium, which I know you love so deeply, is catching up with New York's National League antiquities in terms of service time.

Ebbets Field hosted its boys for 45 summers. The Polo Grounds in its final incarnation (there were four of 'em) opened for business in 1911, meaning 1957 was its 47th and final season as the land of the Giants. Shea in 2005 will enter its 42nd year. Although O'Malley and Stoneham should be dug up, brought back to life and shot (rinse, repeat) for ever absconding with the civic jewels, I've read more than I haven't that both ballparks were in dire need of replacement at or before the time of their abandonment. Wanna bet municipally built and tended Shea outtenures them? Combined?

Ah, PU …

 

After Mayor Backman gave way to Mayor Jefferies — they overcame a rocky start to become great pals — the new and old Hizzoners came together to cut the ribbon on Strawberry Field, the grandest ballpark in the majors, befitting the stature of its team and the all-time home run king for whom it is named. The brilliant waterfront design by young and upcoming architect Jeff Wilpon — who admitted he'd never seen a baseball game because he'd been too busy working his way through art school — spurred all kinds of redevelopment in what we now know as Goodentown, formerly Flushing. It's a showplace for all of New York and all of baseball. Even games against the lowly Braves are standing room only. Wasn't it something the way beloved Doctor K, fresh from announcing his cure for cancer (remember when we thought “Doc” was just a nickname?) came out of retirement to start the Mets' first game there in 2005? Of course he pitched a no-hitter. Old habits are hard to break.

Leave it to Cliff Floyd to come up with the year's first great line.

Seems Clifford lost a $16,000 earring (Never mind whether or not it can

dangle from your ear — do you have anything in your house that costs

$16,000? Me neither.) and a reporter suggested he might be in trouble

when he explains the loss to his family. Replied Floyd: “I make the

donuts.”

Yo! I'd call that game, set, match for Clifford. (Whose real name is Cornelius, but we don't talk about that.)

Coming back from the Bowery Ballroom it was my cabbie doing his best to

make the donuts — any road that hasn't been salted is basically a

funhouse ride right now. When my cabbie was pushing another cab in

front of him, the speedometer said 70, you could smell something

burning and we still weren't going anywhere, I thought to myself, I live two blocks from here — why in hell don't I get out and walk? I guess, as with the second half of the 2003 season, I just had to see what would happen.

Maybe it was that little hint of mortality that got to me, or winter

leaping out of its pine box to grab us by the throat again, but exiting

the game of Bumper Cabs I found myself thinking about Doc and Darryl,

and suddenly I was practically overcome by how terribly sad it all is.

Take your pick of the papers and you could read about Doc or Darryl

walking around more or less in uniform, looking like they're in

fighting shape. Darryl even wandered around the comically named

Tradition Field with a bat. Thinking about that tonight, I wanted to

know: What would it have taken to get him in the cage? And if he'd roped one out? And then, in June, a minor-league deal….

I know, crazy. But as you noted, Darryl is 43 — a year younger than

Andres Galarraga and about a decade younger than Julio Franco. Doc

turned 40 in November.

In some parallel universe we're wondering if they'll hook on for

another season somewhere, and arguing about whether or not the decision

to let Doc and Darryl go after the '99 campaign was right. In that

parallel universe I'm insisting that Father Time was clearly having its

way with them then and busting out some newfangled stats I don't really

understand to prove it was time to move on, and you're reminding me

that next time I think such heretical thoughts, I need to look at that

string of World Championship flags, eyeball the 16 and 18 above the

left-field fence, think about how no one's really talked about the

Yankees in this city since Jesse Orosco's glove went up and didn't come

down, and find a stat that evaluates that.

But instead we live in this universe, where Darryl and Doc went

thataway, like the ones who meant everything to us or looked like they

would so often do. Todd Hundley burned like paper in fire. Edgardo

Alfonzo's back had a time bomb in it. Izzy and Pulse and Wilson spent

exactly zero starts in the rotation together. Now we have David Wright,

and you want to imagine cheering on a warm Indian summer day in 2023

when the cover drops off the new 5 out there on the wall by Casey and

Gil and Tom Terrific. But you'd be a fool to do that, no matter how

sweet David Wright's swing is or how he seems to have sprung full-blown

from one of those kids' baseball books from the 50s. The odds are not in

our favor; we can bitch all we want about our lost jewels, but it's

life that makes the donuts.

Whew! No blogging after midnight if it's going to be this doomy!

Here's something better: We aren't scheduled to play a single game on

artificial turf this year. Not one. To which I could add that we won't

hear a single Montreal air horn going BRAAAAAAAAP in the middle of an extravagantly pointless 5-1 affair, but we already knew that.

Split-squad games are unique to spring training. Too bad. Wouldn't it be great to keep an extra contingent of Mets on hand for those occasions when they could be helpful? Let's say it's one of those days when the Mets and Yankees are both home and we'd like to help out whoever's visiting the Bronx. We could dispatch Auxiliary Mets, and suddenly the Orioles are enhanced. Or if it's September and we desperately need to make up ground on the Braves. We play our usual game while Auxiliary Mets fly into, say, Colorado to hit home runs.

And no, nobody else can take advantage of this innovation.

Andres Galarraga is older than Darryl Strawberry. Galarraga is still playing. Darryl claims it was Davey Johnson who urged him this winter to get back into baseball. “He told me I played the game right,” he said on Channel 2 last night. Darryl famously grabbed his back to skulk out of a late-season game against the Expos one year and then straightened up as soon as the manager was out of view. But it's nice to remember things differently.

There was a Mary Tyler Moore in which it appeared Ted Baxter would be fired. Lou and Mary had mixed emotions. Mary said she once had this wart that she couldn't stand, but when it was gone, it was strange — do you understand what I mean, Mr. Grant? Yeah, he said.

“If I didn't miss that wart, why should I miss Ted?”

Hence the dilemma over the drumbeat that has Joe McEwing unlikely to make the Mets. We've all seen far too much of Joe McEwing for the past three seasons, but that's not Joe's fault. It's the Mets' fault for being in the position of having to play him. For a couple of years, Super Joe may have been the best utility player we ever had. He was versatile, he hustled, he owned (or leased) Randy Johnson, he had an attitude to die for, he got a few big hits, he drove a forklift when Shea served as a staging area after 9/11. Super Joe was super.

Now Super Joe is excess. Better backup guys are crawling all over Tradition Field. McEwing may be McGone any day now. And it doesn't feel right. Joe's second on the team in tenure. Mike is first. Mike has been a Met longer than Keith Hernandez was. I'm surprised to realize that.

I heard a reference to Beltran earlier today and thought “Rigo?” I was really surprised to think that.

Been reluctantly listening to “Mike & The Mad Dog” because they're live from camp. They interview each player via remote, kiss up to him, and then when the player disconnects, they discuss why that player isn't so good.

Todd Van Poppel, we didn't know ya at all. If he were capable of pitching, he'd be a Brave. But having suited up, he didn't set the record for Met & Run. That would be held by non-roster invitee Kevin Stocker who, in 2001, journeyed all the way from Washington state to his St. Lucie-area hotel before deciding to give up baseball altogether, not even bothering to report. He came to spring training but he didn't come to play. Jeff Pearlman, then with Sports Illustrated, recorded this underreported quote from assistant GM Jim Duquette: “If you're a minor leaguer, you quit. But since he was a veteran, he retired.”

It was 10 years ago tonight, after working a week of absolutely insane even for me hours, I hopped on the Meadowbrook Parkway going south. All at once, in the middle of rush-hour traffic, I desperately wanted to stop the world and get off –­ total vapor lock. I struggled the last few miles of my trip, chalking it up to fatigue. But I never again got wholly comfortable behind the wheel, especially on highways, which are roads I avoid like Robin Ventura skillfully avoided tags. Maybe someday. Until then, thank goodness for the LIRR and the 7, and thanks to anybody and everybody who's given me a ride home from Shea over the past decade.