Welcome to the doldrums. It’s early January, which means a number of things for the baseball/sports fan. The General Managers’ and Winter Meetings have come and gone. The Holidays are now officially over, the College football championship has been decided – how ‘bout ‘dem ‘Noles?!? -- and the Super Bowl is still four weeks away. [...]
Over the past five years or so, there hasn’t been a fan base more abused from within than that of the New York Mets. Or at least it seems like it. No doubt, there has been mischief done -- mostly unintentionally, one would hope – by the team’s ownership group, Fred & Jeff Wilpon and [...]
So this is what a whirlwind of activity at the Winter Meetings looks like. It’s been awhile. We’d forgotten what that was like. Sandy Alderson and crew headed to Orlando with a pocketful of dreams. They came back with Curtis Granderson – number 3 in your program, number 1 in your hearts! -- officially in [...]
Movement! We Met fans are seeing some movement for really the first time since the last out against the Brewers on September 29. No, Chris Young doesn’t count. It looks like some of the “money-coming-off-the-books” we’ve heard so much about will at long last be freed up. Word is swirling that the Mets are this [...]
We are Met fans. We want the team to do well. We want to know we’re spending our money on something worthwhile. Deep down, we know the team can’t compete with the Yankees -- be it in history, prestige, spending or wherewithal to improve – but we would like them to at least try. We [...]
“We’re still a fraud! We trimmed the attendance again!” -- Casey Stengel, following a loss on Opening Day 1963 The Mets’ first manager many things: quotable, funny, old and brilliant. Turns out he was also prophetic. “News” – if you want to call it that – is that Sandy Alderson is experiencing “sticker shock” at [...]
If you can get away with something cheaper [than $1,000,000.00] as the Mets did for the innings they squeezed out of [LaTroy] Hawkins and the hits they derived from Marlon Byrd ($700K), fan-freaking-tastic. There are budgets and strategies and dozens of contracts to take into consideration. Don’t throw money away if you don’t have to. [...]
The MLB General Managers’ Meetings are starting to wrap up down in Orlando, and – color me shocked! – the Mets haven’t done anything visible. I know…I know…It’s the GM Meetings, not the Winter Meetings: there’s very little in terms of actual player movement that gets done in this go-‘round, the meat of which goes [...]
It’s cool and rainy in the NYC area today. There is no baseball on the horizon. The Hot Stove is barely lit and probably won’t catch fire for at least a couple of weeks. So what does your intrepid columnist write about? He could pick apart the putative $30 million payroll increase, but there is [...]
Belated congratulations to the Boston Red Sox on their 2013 World Series victory. It was a well-deserved win by a group of guys who “know how to play the game,” “do it the right way,” and “have a team-first attitude.” Hoary clichés now dispensed with, the real reason was the usual suspects: great pitching, stout [...]
Your intrepid columnist has been having a lively Facebook debate over the past couple of days with some True New York Mets fans who are decrying the fact that the Mets could have had Michael Wacha – starting in a do-or-die World Series game 6 for the Cardinals tomorrow night – in the 2012 amateur [...]
Your intrepid columnist has been watching the pair of League Championship Series pretty closely. Both are terrifically riveting sets of games – as of this writing BOS/DET is knotted at 2, LA/STL sees the Cards up 3-2 – and both Series have proven the hoary point that “pitching wins pennants.” The roll call is pretty [...]