…this Met fan’s version, anyway:
Watching the first home exhibition game yesterday in Port St. Lucie on SNY-TV with Johan Santana in a Mets uniform on the mound.
*****
Is THIS what they mean by FANTASY BASEBALL??
It sure fulfills all of mine!!
*****
THE FIRST PITCH
*****
STRIKE ONE!
O.K., so he had one bad pitch that Juan Gonzalez took advantage of, but so what?!
How pathetic is this?
They already had CHEERLEADERS, for God’s sakes. Wasn’t that embarassing enough?
And Florida Marlins ownership has certainly been cruel and indifferent to their fanbase over the years, basically playing Let’s Make a Deal at the end of any even slightly promising season.
But adding insult to injury this year: not only are Miggy and Dontrelle long gone, but in their place (No, not literally at third base and on the mound, thank goodness!) will be a troupe of overweight male dancers, dubbed the "Manatees". Auditions for the newly-formed ensemble were held yesterday.
THIS is supposed to make fans forget that their star players were shipped off to Motown??!! Yeah, right.
O.K., Mets fans.
I know you’re probably thinking, "Well, we come from a SERIOUS baseball town. Nothing like that would ever be instigated here."
Perhaps not. But even so, let’s just pause for a moment and reflect once again on the gift(s) that we’ve been given and just make sure that we have given proper thanks for all we have received as we embark on this new season filled with hope and promise:
OPENING DAY 2008 – SHEA STADIUM
*****
OPENING DAY 2008 – DOLPHIN STADIUM
Suffice to say life is good–
REALLY good–right now.
If you’re a Met fan.
Isn’t it??!!
Omar knew letting Johan get away after getting this close would’ve been one terrible trick to play on Mets fans.
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU, Omar, for REALLY giving us something to look forward to in 2008!!
Except for the Marlins throwing a few fish into the Tigers’ open jaws (which seems like eons ago), the biggest news in the baseball world lately has centered around steroids and the Mitchell report.
I don’t wish to address this subject except to say that it is quite obvious that players one watches in person and on television on a regular basis can obviously be leading lives off the field that, when brought to the attention by the media, often come as a disappointment to their fans.
It did not come as a surprise to me, personally, the number of players involved nor any specific individuals named in the Mitchel report, but I gather a lot of fans registered shock at both.
Maybe this sense of "betrayal" felt by some fans might come from the mistaken thinking that–because they see these players so regularly in such close proximity, e.g., extreme close-ups shots on TV, batting practice, etc., they feel a certain familiarity with players that actually doesn’t exist. In truth, they probably know very little about the person inside the athlete.
But one can also make a discovery about an athlete’s off-the-field conduct that can engender even more admiration, respect, and loyalty from a fan than he or she had for the athlete before.
Thanks to Daily News writer Peter Botte, I made just such a discovery yesterday about a Met player.
Back in September, as the days of the season dwindled away and with it the Mets’ lead in the division, many of us die-hard Mets fans were riding a roller coaster of emotions, from denial, hope, frustration and anger to full-blown rage. We spent hours speculating about, arguing about, reading about, listening to rants on sports radio about, blogging about (1) Should Willie have rested Jose Reyes? Was he just tired? Was this an attitude problem coming from his being benched in Houston? (2) Is Willie truly not concerned? If so, why the **** not?! Shouldn’t he be throwing things and yelling at this point? (3) The Phillies couldn’t stay this hot for long, right? RIGHT??!! (4) Speaking of the Phillies, if the Mets blow this, we said, it would be a collapse of historical proportions. Not since the 1964 Phillies would a team have blown such a comfortable lead. These and countless other topics all related to WHAT HAPPENED??!!
Not that we weren’t allowed to be heated up about the Division win that got away. Fans like myself that invest that much time, thought, and–yes–MONEY(!) have a right to be a bit disappointed when the bottom just seems to inexplicably fall out. And I haven’t found one fan who liked the idea of Tom Glavine being "disappointed but not devastated" and insinuating that Mets fans would do well to put the end of the season in perspective.
However, reading the above-mentioned Daily News article had a somewhat sobering effect on me when I remembered how emotional I had gotten over baseball in late September: for all that the losses meant to us fans and to the team itself, I now realize that Pedro Feliciano had been simultaneously trying to save his team’s life and save his infant daughter’s fragile life.
It truly does put things in perspective, as I’m sure Pedro would be the first to tell anyone who would’ve asked him then or now.
I’m so glad that Christmas time brought to him and to his family truly the very best possible gift. I wish him the very best in the new year…no matter what the Mets do, I have a feeling it will be a terrific one for him!! And that’s what counts!
I can’t tell you how many times I was asked that question in September and October.
Often it was followed by another question:
"Do you follow football?"
Well, no. Never have.
I don’t think it’s the sport itself, however. Perhaps it’s all the bad memories I have of being in marching band: the endless practicing of the stupid half-time shows, riding the uncomfortable school buses to rural Oklahoma towns to tag along behind the football team. The team always got the glory; we got to freeze our butts and our reeds in the rock-hard bleachers, playing stupid songs nobody really wanted to hear anyway and, then at half-time, we got to go out and embarass ourselves on the field with our retarded little five-minute dog-and-pony show.
Get the idea that I hated band? But I became a musician? How did THAT happen?
I had to stay in my school music program to be eligible to participate in All-State Orchestra and Solo and Ensemble Contests every year. Thus, I suffered uniform inspections, pep rallies, parades, half-time shows, and summer band…and became a professional musician in spite of it all!
Incidentally,my high school sweetheart WAS on the football team–the Tahlequah Tigers, so the high school football team itself certainly cannot be to blame. Surely, young love would’ve countered my negative secondary school music experience.
Maybe my lack of interest in following football could actually be chalked up to the fact that I expend so much energy, time and–yes, quite frankly–money during the baseball season that I don’t care to follow some other sport.
Or so I thought.
With both a treadmill and an elliptical trainer right in our home, I have the luxury of being able to exercise whenever I want and to tune put on whatever TV channel I want. With upbeat pop and dance tunes on my iPOD and the TV muted with the closed-captioning on, I usually have on ESPN or sports of some sort. Unfortunatley, once the baseball season ends, those channels tend to be filled with more and more football (except for upt-to-the-minute news of A-Rod and George Steinbrenner, of course) and less baseball. Not finding an acceptable substitute for my sports channel addiction, however, I just continued to watch.
What I found was that I started getting interested in various teams and rankings and rivalries. Stories I had watched with some detachment while exercising I later read about in more detail in the New York Times Sports section the next morning.
No, I’m not ready to bundle up and go to the Meadowlands for a Giants game, but I did turn on some of the Cowboys-Giants game a couple of weeks ago. That’s really a first for me!
But this is REALLY a first for me: being interested in the outcome of a COLLEGE football game!
No, I’m not watching this particular game this evening. I must play a performance. I’ll just be checking the score at my intermission–probably half time of the game.
My parents’ alma mater, University of Kansas–known more for its basketball program than for its football program, has been surprising everyone with how well the Jayhawks are doing this season. Tonight on national television (8PM Eastern on ABC), they face their long-time rival, University of Missouri, in an important match-up.
Not having followed football, I did not know how bitter this rivalry was. My mother said, "Oh, YES!!" and probably would’ve elaborated further had time allowed.
I don’t know about more recent football history, but being a Civil War History buff myself, I have truly enjoyed the recent articles devoted to the long, LONG-time rivalry between the two STATES themselves. Technically, though, the discord began BEFORE Kansas was even a state. Whether or not slavery was to be permitted in the soon-to-be state, not a football championship, was at stake.
Articles like "A Rivalry Born in Bloodshed" (New York Times) and "The Border War" (SI.com) have mentioned the incidents of residents of Missouri (where slavery was legal) voting in Kansas elections to try to assist in passing legislation to legalize slavery in the new state, William Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence, Kansas–
home to the University of Kansas–and, of course, John Brown, the abolitionist who with his vigilante sons led many of the guerilla-like attacks–in defense of Lawrence and upon pro-slavery groups in Kansas territory and in Missouri.
As you can probably tell, I’ve had a blast experiencing a refresher course of sorts on my pre- and Civil War History…inspired by a sport–at the collegiate level–that I didn’t even know I was interested in!
Maybe not voted so by Sports Illustrated, but in my book, he’s definitely one of this year’s TURKEYS!
This 2007 Turkeys of the Year Photo Gallery is DEFINITELY worth checking out:
And speaking of A-Rod, in honor of the holiday here is a list of things this Met fan is particularly thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day:
HAPPY THANKSGIVING to ALL…yes, even to Yankee fans!!
Excitement continues to build in Florida this week surrounding the most expensive free agent available.
I for one, would love to see the Mets walk on by the A-Rod booth at the GM convention.
I have actually felt that way all along, but getting word late Tuesday afternoon of David Wright’s having won his first ever Gold Glove Award just solidified the argument in my own mind for keeping David Wright RIGHT WHERE HE IS, thank you very much.
My husband was oh-so-quick to counter that, since A-Rod had been a shortstop and had then learned the position of third base, why couldn’t Wright stay at third and A-Rod could then take on second base?
Um. Well, something tells me there would be a pride issue involved there. Rodriquez would probably want one of the Mets players to relinquish a position for HIM.
*****
It seems to me that–as usual–the Yankees have continued to hold court even after their season was long over: through the whole Joe Torre/Steinbrenner scena, the A-Rod opt-out announcement on Fox during World Series Game 4, and now the whole "Where will A-Rod go?" soap opera.
The Mets, having commanded very little media attention of late may be beginning to feel that a dramatic move or important signing to garner attention and get fans and the media talking is needed and that perhaps this is just the thing to get everyone hyped about 2008.
I, for one, think the Mets have problem areas, e.g., pitching and finding a catcher, to address. The acquisition of A-Rod–especially with no obvious place to put him defensively–would appear to me to be a distraction from those priorities and an "impulse buy" for which there could be serious buyer’s remorse later.
I’m not unsympathetic to the fact that it must be easy to get caught up in the excitement of this whole circus. (That’s EXACTLY what Boras wants, of course. Duh!) And, I suppose, given the fact that the Mets are one of very few teams that could seriously consider flinging that sort of cash around, there’s no actual harm in flirting with the idea of signing Rodriguez…as long as it doesn’t end up alienating Wright or the fans in the process.
*****
But just because the Mets COULD acquire A-Rod
doesn’t mean they SHOULD.
_____________________________________________________
It’s sorta like the pair of shoes I’d LIKE to get
versus the ones that I probably SHOULD purchase.
The Donald J. Pliner red velvet/antique metallic cowboy boots with fleur-de-lis zipper pulls are to DIE FOR! No doubt about it. They are absolutely eye-catching.
Naturally, I have absolutely nothing in my closet that would go with them, so purchasing them would in turn necessitate purchasing a red satin Western shirt (involving additional time and expense.) And maybe a bolo tie and a Western belt and…
For the few times I would wear this outfit, I would have everyone’s attention, but I’m not sure how long these fetching boots would stay in style, and the money I would spend on these boots–$247…no, not $350 million!…is no small sum and would naturally prevent me from making other clothing purchases for quite some time. I would probably end up wearing these boots far fewer times than I had anticipated I would and they would sit in the back of my closet unworn for lack of occasions to wear them. No doubt I would have buyer’s remorse sooner or later, thinking of how much I had spent on them and what an impulsive purchase they had been.
There is also the small matter that I would never have the opportunity to wear these boots for work because I need to wear black footwear in the orchestra pit. These obviously do not meet that requirement, so although that is a somewhat minor consideration, there is that additional impracticality…besides their not matching anything in my closet and requiring me to spend more money and probably not staying in style for long.
The others–sleek, soft nappa Stuart Weitzman booties–while maybe not attracting immediate attention because of any unique or stand-out qualities would be entirely fashionable and are not so "trendy" that they would be likely to go out of style any time soon, would match anything in my wardrobe–including my orchestral attire, would perhaps not generate stares or cause jaws to drop, but those in the know would immediately recognize them to be a well-made, thought-out, flattering wardrobe purchase that I could make use of for seasons to come.
Please shop smart, Omar.
The Mets may have lots to spend,
but they don’t have money–or a season–to burn.
That was our October, courtesy of the Mets. A pretty dirty trick, I’d say: that amazin’ fall from first.
But here’s hoping that come NEXT Halloween, the Mets will have plenty of TREATS in store for all their fans.
In the meantime, here is some Halloween/Mets art work done by my daughter two years ago.
Some of the Mets players she depicted at that time have moved on to other teams. Also, her artistic skills have become even more refined since this piece. Obviously, I’m totally biased, but I’m just a total fan of this kid’s work!!
Perfect Pitch 
