Inside the Mind of the Mets Fan

In celebration of Pitchers and Catchers reporting to Spring Training today, I offer you some of the Mets-related thoughts that have popped through my mind since the end of the 2008 season.

• Citi Field will be a beautiful ballpark, won't it?
• Sheets? Wolf? Ollie?
  
• Why couldn't Wright have swung at the 2-0 pitch?
• Cole Hamels was 0-2 with a 6 ERA against the Mets last season.
• What is the music they played at Shea when Carlos Delgado hit a Home Run?
• Between A-Rod and the Torre book, I wonder if the New York Media will even bother showing up to Mets camp?
• Jose...JoseJoseJose...
• I really love Carlos Beltran.
• Gawd, that last day at Shea was depressing.
• Manny.
• I know that it's illegal to implode a building in NYC, and that they probably couldn't blow up Shea because of how close it was to Citi Field, but if they had planned to blow it up, Fred Wilpon would have probably charged fans $50 a head to watch.
• I should have gone home as soon as Spiezio hit the triple.
• Jose...JoseJoseJose...
• As bad as the Wilpons may appear, it could be worse. The Mets could be owned by a guy who called the players greedy while standing on his $4 million yacht and outbid himself for Alex Rodriguez by about $75 million. Ladies and Gentlemen, Tom Hicks!
• Since it's probably safe to assume that a large chunk of Major Leaguers were on steroids throughout the 90s and early on this decade, and the playing field was hopelessly skewed, wouldn't it somehow even out in the grand scheme of things? Moreover, why do people care about this so much? Why is the media so consumed by this?
  
• Jose...JoseJoseJose...
• I'm not worried about Mike Pelfrey hitting a wall.
• I'm worried every time the door to the Mets bullpen swings open. We probably all have PTSD.
• I plonked down $355 for a Weekday plan, and, quite honestly, I'm not ashamed I did it. I never quite understood these indignant people who scream about how they're "never going to another game again!" for one reason or another. These protests don't work. Someone else will always buy the tickets.
  
• The more I think about it, the more I truly have no clue what to expect out of Daniel Murphy.
• Jose...JoseJoseJose...
• Freddy Garcia. I must have drafted him every year from 2000 to 2004 in Fantasy. Him and Javier Vazquez.
• I wonder if I'll be able to see car fires in the parking lot from my new seats?
• Jose...JoseJoseJose...Jose...Jose...
  

Happy Ballclub Day!

Today is The Ballclub's second birthday. As always, we would like to step back from the state of our team for a moment and Thank everyone who has stopped by here for a read, or a kind word, and everyone who has befriended us on Facebook and MySpace.

The second season for The Ballclub was difficult, and that's being kind. For myself, and for just about all of my Blogging Bretheren, the 2008 season became less about the games themselves, and more about the sanity of an entire fan base. There were enjoyable moments, and there were certainly great games. But as a whole, there wasn't much relaxation. In many ways, I think many of us expected things to end the way they did. That didn't make it any easier when it happened, but if nothing else, this particular team had conditioned us to expect the absolute gut-wrenching worst, no matter how much we were led to believe otherwise. Much of the same team is expected to return for the 2009 season, the same old team in a brand new ballpark.

It may seem like a recycled comment, but maybe the third year of The Ballclub will be the charm.

As We Return...

And thusly, though the scenery may change, things remain the same with the Mets.

The re-signing of Oliver Perez probably signals a few different things.

1) The Mets are more or less sated with the starting pitchers they will bring to the table this season.

2) Given the injury history of Ben Sheets and the age & injury history of Randy Wolf, Perez, at 27 and without any major injury problems, was probably the best option.

3) There is a secret hope that Oliver Perez will somehow turn into the 2007 Oliver Perez every time out.

4) Whatever is left to do with the 2009 Mets, will happen to the offense.

It's not the time, right now, to continue to harp on Manny Ramirez, though rest assured I will probably continue to do so at some point in the near future. But if the Mets are done with Free Agents and trades, then they look to be content to return to the table with what amounts to mostly the same team, plus a few better relief pitchers. The starting rotation, from 1 to 4, is exactly the same. But it will continue to elicit questions about how many innings they will be able to eat. We know what Santana can do, and even off knee surgery, I think we'd all be hard-pressed to find a tangible reason that he wouldn't be as good as last season. Mike Pelfrey made The Leap last season, now it's up to him to continue forward. But if you buy into the whole innings count argument, he may not. But I'm not so concerned. It's not like Pelfrey is a slight kid with a violent delivery home. Pelfrey is a 6'7" horse with a fluid move to the plate. I'm not so concerned. Or at least, not so concerned about him as I am about 3 and 4, John Maine and Oliver Perez. I think Maine will bounce back from the bone spur problem, that's one thing. But as Jason at Faith and Fear calls it, Maine has a major case of "Leiteritis," that is, inability to put away batters with 2 strikes.

Then, there's Ollie.

Not much needs to be said.

Basically, this could be another taxing season for the bullpen if the starters can't solve their own questions. It's not something that inspires a lot of confidence in the Mets fan. Particularly if, on the other side of the ball, the offense is going to peck and scrape and claw inconsistently throughout the season. This team as it stands won't get picked by anyone to win anything. I think it's silly for Omar & the Boy-King to stand pat when everyone around him seems to know this. There's no confidence for the Mets fan right now. If these guys want us to be a little more confident, I think the answer is abundantly clear.

His name is Manny Ramirez.

(OK, so I mentioned him. It's all going to come back to him in some way, shape or form as long as he's still out there.)

Another One for the Ages

Yes, he was indeed in.

And with it, another frenetic 4th Quarter flurry of both teams simultaneously finding their rhythms saved yet another Super Bowl from unraveling into an unmemorable mess.

For the better part of the first 3 quarters, this Super Bowl seemed quite a bit like last year's version. That is, a rather unmemorable blur. Sure, there was a bit of excitement generated by James Harrison's electrifying 100-yard interception return, but for the most part, there wasn't anything memorable going on. Pittsburgh's defense had held strong, Arizona couldn't get into any sort of a rhythm offensively, and Pittsburgh's offense basically was doing the absolute minimum needed to win the game. With a 20-7 lead, it seemed more or less academic: Pittsburgh would grind out the rest of the game and win a rather unremarkable Super Bowl.

Then, rather quickly, something changed. Arizona suddenly found their feet, or rather, found their air, sending Kurt Warner back to pass and, and they were moving the ball, and Warner was threading the needle and Larry Fitzgerald was getting open, and the Cardinals were in the End Zone. Pittsburgh went into their Prevent Offense, sending their runner up the middle. Problem was, they hadn't been able to establish a running game at all to that point, and then when they really had to, they couldn't get it going. This would eventually screw them completely in a rather stunning turn of events within about a minute late in the 4th quarter. Pinned back at their own goal line, Pittsburgh couldn't run themselves out of it, and then managed to penalize themselves into a Safety that made the score 20-16 and gave Arizona the ball, and one more chance to try to strike.
And strike they did.

If Larry Fitzgerald hadn't already cemented himself as the premier Wide Receiver in the NFL, he certainly had to with his performance down the stretch in this game. And his 64-yard touchdown, in which he not only managed to split Pittsburgh's safeties to the point of embarrassment, but also turned on the jets and simply outran them to the End Zone could very well have been the enduring image from this game.

I watched the game at a rather sparse party, where beer was plentiful, but food was in short supply. By the 4th quarter, things had pretty much dispersed. Only 5 or 6 of us remained. I resorted to texting a friend, and we began talking about Kurt Warner, and his ubiquitous series of Chunky Soup commercials. I surmised that if the Cardinals held on to win, we would be subjected to Kurt Warner doing those nauseating commercials for the rest of our lives. Perhaps the alcohol had severly impaired my thought process. Or maybe I'd just had enough of Kurt Warner. Either way, I wasn't pleased with the prospects.

But Arizona's pass defense, which had been a liability late in the NFC Championship, and which I figured would be their downfall in this game, couldn't hold up their end of the bargain. Playing in an awful zone formation, the Arizona secondary basically allowed Roethlisberger to pick them apart, moving the Steelers smartly down the field despite an almost-deathly holding call, putting them in prime position to strike, and then hurling the dagger, a picture-perfect strike to Santonio Holmes to cap off their victorious march.
Thus, the enduring image from Super Bowl XLIII was not Fitzgerald. The aftermath would not be a lifetime of Kurt Warner's Chunky Soup. Instead, we're left with Santonio Holmes, his toes hanging onto the ground for dear life, catching the pass and capping off a fabulous game, the kind of Super Bowl that the Super Bowl should be, but rarely is; the kind of Super Bowl that this game almost wasn't for about 2 3/4 quarters.

Thusly, the NFL season comes to a close. Time to turn the page. In New York, I think Baseball season has officially begun.

THE BIG GAME!!!

This is probably going to be very brief...

Ever notice how, more often than not, advertisements and shops and whatnot will not refer to the Super Bowl as the Super Bowl? I know it's got to do with the fear of some sort of copyright infringement, but it sort of removes the spirit of the game. Instead, all over the place, there are signs and advertisements not for the Super Bowl, or Super Bowl parties, rather, they look like this:

"PLACE YOUR ORDERS FOR THE BIG GAME!"

"YOUR OFFICIAL BIG GAME HEADQUARTERS!"

"BIG GAME PARTY HAPPENING HERE!"

We may as well just not call it the Super Bowl anymore. Instead, it's just the Big Game! And so, today, in The Big Game XLIII, we have the Arizona Iced Tea and the Pittsburgh...Whatever the hell they have in Pittsburgh. Rivers? Steel mills? A horrendous airport? I don't know.

The game should be pretty much scenery to the hoopla, it usually is. The stupid hype week usually kills whatever rhythm the teams have, so more often than not, the first half of the game turns into a rather epic crapfest. Look at last year's game. People call it the most exciting game ever, but how many people forget that for 3 quarters, the game was a mess, a 7-3 mishmash of punts and incomplete passes. I guess today could just as easily go the same way. I could talk about the high-powered offense of the Cardinals, or the sterling Defense of the Steelers, but I'm not going to tell you anything you didn't already know. These games tend to come down to who can control the ball and play better defense, and I think Pittsburgh can do both better than Arizona will be able to.

My pick: Steelers 23, Cardinals 14

And by Tuesday, most of you will have forgotten that the Cardinals were even playing in the game.

Enjoy THE BIG GAME, everyone!