Author: Tim Donner

Postcard from Port St. Lucie: Mets’ Identity Crisis Is Over

We entered to the strains of We are the Champions and Another One Bites the Dust echoing through the cavernous backfields surrounding the newly named – again – Clover Park, winter home of the New York Mets.  It cannot be said that these 2020 Mets are an unsure bunch. For those of us who make the annual pilgrimage to this fast-growing, golf-crazed, one-time sleepy backwater midway up...

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It’s Going to Take Another Miracle: Processing the Mets’ June Swoon

Growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s, one of the annual occurrences which seemed as inevitable as death and taxes was that the San Francisco Giants would fall victim to what was called the June swoon. They would get out of the gate quickly, raise hopes, and then falter as spring turned to summer.   Forget the Giants. The Mets have now elevated the June swoon to an art form. Indeed, it hardly seemed...

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Postcard from Port St. Lucie: New Faces in Old Places

If there is something particularly comforting for those of us who make the pilgrimage to Port St. Lucie on an annual basis to celebrate the first hint of spring and the return of the greatest game on God’s green earth, it is familiarity. We are accustomed to getting as up close and personal as we ever do to the guys we have watched at a considerable distance over the years. So despite in-depth...

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Featured Post: How Much is Mickey Callaway to Blame?

We all knew that importing a pitching coach from a small city in a different league with no managerial experience to a high-profile position in the world’s biggest and most sports-hungry city was potentially fraught with peril. We knew there would be something of a learning curve, but most of us believed the fresh outlook, energy and contemporary perspective offered by Mickey Callaway would...

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2018 Mets: Expect the Best, Prepare for the Worst

One of the myriad reasons to love baseball is the way it mirrors life. You have to wake up every day and play. Both good and bad days are assured, often without warning or expectation. Even the best teams will lose 60 times, and the worst will win 60. Each day by itself carries limited meaning, but forms a piece of an exponentially larger and unfolding mosaic. Thus, it always seemed that the...

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