Suckdom, Thy Name Is Mets!

An article by Russell Zanca    3 Comments

I know, it’s been a while. I spent the month of August in Uzbekistan, decidedly a country where precious few people care much for the fate of our beloved Mets. Aside from trying to explain the delicious nuances of baseball in halting Uzbek to a couple of KGB inquisitors who were watching a Russian-dubbed version of a Yankees-Red Sox game, my only other exposure to baseball was a once-every-ten-day check of the internet where I got to find out about the further demise of my Miracle-less Mets. Once David Wright got bonked in the noggin, we all knew that was just about all she wrote.

Once home, I jetted to Denver w/ family in tow to spend two glorious days at Coors Field just hoping our Mets would play quality BB w/ Wright’s return. My best friend from childhood—another fanatical diehard—and I had the best seats in the house, aside the Mets dugout. We had a chance to talk w/ many of the players and scream encouragement all night long. Naturally, they lost, but they rebounded the next day, playing like a real MLB team. I actually had a short chat w/ Manuel. A lovely man. I told him, falsely, I’m afraid, that I loved him, believed in him, and knew it was a terrible year. He chuckled and said, “We’re not done yet.” I wanted to say, “Yeah, ya are, Jerry,” but I refrained and rooted our boys on w/ every bit of hand clapping and larynx-exhausting  strength I could muster.

Now, for the past eight or nine days, I have been riveted (for reasons I care not to fathom) to my TV watching the Un-Amazins’ lose ball game after ball game in a fashion that can only be described as literally disgusting. We all know they comprise Double-A and Triple-A subs at this point, but I’m not sure this explains why the quality of their BB is so fundamentally unsound. It’s all so reminiscent of the unbelievable mistakes we witnessed back in May and June when, as angry as we were, we might have thought, “Okay, they’re still ironing out the kinks.” Maybe I am watching now in a  masochistic way just to see what mind-numbing mistakes they can make today! If it isn’t paltry hitting, then it’s inexcusable errors, and if it’s not that then it’s not-ready-for-prime-time-pitching and relieving. I also enjoy playing “Guess that Met.” Honestly, it isn’t funny, and it isn’t fun to watch.

Back in June, I think, I wrote an MMO column descrying the necessity of firing JMAN—yes, the guy I wish were my next door neighbor. He knows baseball, but he has no demonstrable ability to motivate 25 guys to win, let alone get anywhere close to playing fundamentally sound BB. Sure, many of you will disagree; that’s fine. Maybe the sort I am proposing will fail, too, but next year I do want a fire-and-brimstone maniac—the baseball equivalent of Bill Parcells. I bloody well mean it. And, duh, I’d like to see the end of the Omar era, too. We don’t have to be WS champions next year, we just have to be able to watch quality BB being played in Queens.

Moreover, I have long detested the phrase “Blow it all up” in reference to the Mets for two years of collapses and the disaster that is 2009. Now, I have changed my mind. I am not going to pretend as if I know who will always suck, who’s going to have a big turnaround year for the Mets or some other team next year, or who is absolutely worth keeping beyond Wright, Francoeur, Beltran, Reyes, and Santana, but I would probably consider just about every other starting player dispensable. This group does not play quality baseball well together.

You know, people, you are having a miserable fan experience where your only hope or joy in mid-September is that the Yankees DON’T win the WS.