I usually don’t write these types of posts and in fact I don’t believe I’ve ever done this before, but here goes…

For the greater part of this year I’ve been very down on MMO – a site I started on March 5, 2005.

I’m not talking about our content which I am always proud of. We have one of the best teams of Mets bloggers ever assembled and they never cease to amaze me with the quality of their writing and amazing insights. It’s a privilege to count myself among great talents like Ed Leyro, Rob Silverman, John Strubel, Mike Silva, Robert Patterson, David Conde, Jim Mancari, Matt Balasis, Joe Spector and countless others who I’m equally grateful for.

I’m not down on our readers, who continue to grow and now average over 18,000 a day with plenty of 20,000 days sprinkled in every month. I am humbled by your ongoing and endless support. Many sites today are always trying to sell you stuff or harvest your emails or get you to subscribe to something. Each visit is accompanied by popup ads, subscription requests and all sorts of endless annoyances. We would never do that to you on MMO.

Instead, we would rather show our appreciation and that’s why each year we give away well over $2,000 worth of signed Mets memorabilia, books, tickets, jerseys, caps and videos.

It’s our way of saying thank you for being so awesome… Thank you for being the best baseball fans in the world… Thank you for being the biggest die-hard Met fans on the web…

The reason I’ve been so down on MMO lately is on account of the 4-5 people who choose to pollute our threads with their endless poison and vile. You know who they are. The harder I try to get rid of these vermin, the more relentless and vicious their attacks become.

They will stop at nothing to take the site down, and this week alone there have been over a dozen brute force attacks on our server. Each time we were able to avert disaster except for Friday when the site was disabled for almost two hours. Luckily we suffered no loss of data and we were able to get the site back up, but it came at a great cost in dollars and frayed nerves.

I have a very good idea of who was responsible for this as the person had threatened to take us down only the night before. It’s a shame that some people get their joy in life by inflicting pain and grief on others.

These people even have the nerve to blackmail me by writing me to say they would leave the site alone under the condition that I eliminate and get rid of certain writers for the site. Of course my response to them was no. I wasn’t decorated by my country for my willingness to succumb to hostile threats – let alone threats from internet bullies who hide behind false identities and cloaked IP addresses.

It’s been a tough month trying to deal with this situation while battling health issues and a grueling physical therapy schedule at the same time, but I’m not a quitter. I may be down right now, but I’m not out.

Eventually, we will prevail and restore the comment threads back into the hands of real fans of all ages, genders and races. It’s a shame that in this age – in this America – we still have pariahs who run free and push their despicable agendas of hate. I just want you to know that I’m trying to eradicate this scum because there’s no place for it on a baseball site or any site for that matter.

They can laugh for now because they won a hollow victory for a short while on Friday, but in the end we will prevail.

I apologize to those of you who have been the object of their ignorant attacks or insults. They were bred to be this way and there is no reasoning with these animals. They are everything that is ugly about human nature.

The shoutbox is gone. At the request of many of you I brought it back, but I can no longer support a vehicle that was being used mostly for a small minority to spread their message of hate. Please don’t ask me to bring it back, because it’s not going to happen. I loved that feature too and for five years is was a great way to interact with other fans to discuss the team. On a slow day we’d get 2,000 comments and on a geat day we’d break 5,000. But until I find a protocol that will keep the undesirables out, the site is better off without it.

Anyway, I just wanted to have a heart to heart with you and let you know why the site was down on Friday and why I removed our chatroom. I also wanted to let you know that we are doing all we can to make this site what it used to be before the creeps invaded. We’re not giving up. It’s not in our DNA…