To a diehard baseball fan Opening Day is Thanksgiving, Christmas, and your birthday all rolled into one glorious day. What two other words, except “Lottery Winner,” could evoke such passion? Even if you are a Mets fan, hammered all winter and spring with negative news, this is one day-one game to give it a rest. Now, it doesn’t hurt that the Mets are the titans of Opening Day. Posting a MLB best winning percentage (.647, [...]

In Doug’s Dugout today, it’s “deja vu all over again,” with the news that David Wright will miss this week due to a nagging rib injury (but last week he had a great day in the weight room-cue the applause). It’s only March, but what Mets’ fan is not a tad alarmed? This is (already) getting monotonous with injury news rushing in each day. How many times has “day to day”” morphed into the disabled [...]

Friends, there is no joy in Metville today. The prevailing emotion I fee is sadness. I’m sure in the coming days it will be boiling anger. However, losing Reyes-that seemed inevitable, is still shocking. As long as there was a glimmer of hope. He leaves after nine years of thrills that commenced as a young colt of 19. Conversely, he will spend his prime years as the enemy. That alone is enough to churn the [...]

In Doug’s Dugout today we discuss: being a Mets fan, trades, and other thoughts rattling around in an empty head: My friends it’s confusing being a Mets fan theses days. On one hand I can understand that GM Sandy Alderson is trying to rebuild the farm system while simultaneously stock a competitive team that the fans can root for. Moreover, not commit the lions’ share of the payroll to a small handful of players. And, [...]

Now that the Mets have thrown (John) Debus under the bus, maybe it is time to start reshaping this sub-.500 team. It’s a revelation that the bullpen coach was at the forefront of the teams’ woes and that GM Sandy Alderson swiftly extracted him (and a few other scapegoats, such as fan favorite, Mookie Wilson) without rancor. This is tantamount to re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Or shuffling the stack of papers on [...]

I have to say, that although the 2011 version of the Mets is a win, a loss, a loss, a win, there have been no dearth of exciting comebacks this season. For instance, take last night. Down and almost out, they rallied with big hits by David Wright and Lucas Duda (he is starting to relax, and this kid has immense power) to stun the Padres 9-8. Uplifting to say the least, especially after the [...]

In this installment of Doug’s Dugout we discuss, the Steve Blass Syndrome, rethinking Jose Reyes, and other demented thoughts: Steve Blass won 19 games in 1972 for the Pittsburgh Pirates and finished second in the Cy Young Award voting to Philadelphia’s Steve Carlton. Lefty accounted for 27 of the 59 Phillies’ wins that year, but Blass was solid, and also averaged 14 wins a year for his career. Then the unexplained happened: he could not [...]

In Doug’s Dugout today we discuss: the updated version of the Boss, the scrappy Mets, and other imbecilic thoughts. I have never seen such a firestorm over benign comments made by an owner until the other day when excerpts from Fred Wilpon’s confessional in the New Yorker was released (you see the size of that piece-11,000 words-around 32 pages on Word!). What did he really say that was so objectionable or off the mark? That [...]

In Doug’s Dugout today we discuss: Striking while the iron is hot, Father Time, and other insipid thoughts. In around ten weeks Carlos Beltran will be an ex-Met. That is a foregone conclusion. His comeback is one of the only positive stories the Mets have written this year. But why wait? The iron is hot and the time to strike is now. Timing is everything and the stars are aligned for the Mets to reap [...]