Me and D-Wright, Lunchtime Roll Dogs

Baseball is back, people!

You see it on SNY. You see it on Metsblog and ESPN. And you see it in the Pulitzer-worthy reporting in the Daily News and New York Times (the Post has some good stuff too every now and then).

Just open your local daily for the proof. I mean, you can go your whole life (or at least an entire offseason) waiting for a story like David Waldstein's in today's New York Times, "Mets' Wright Trusts His Work Ethic, and His Sandwich".

It turns out me and David Wright share more than a misplaced love of the Mets (and the attendant misery). That's right, we both love us a good old fashioned peanut butter and jelly.

"By his own estimate, Wright eats these sandwiches 75 to 80 percent of the 365 days on the calendar," Waldstein writes.

At that rate, Wright's PB&J consumption even tops the Glass Man's. Using his estimate, Wright's eating PB&J's 274-292 days per year.

I'm more of a once-per-workday type of guy; on the weekends or on vacation days, it's pretty unlikely I'm having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Doing some quick, unscientific, and mostly unreliable math puts my number of PB&J's-per-year around 240, approximately 66% of all days in the year.

It's off Wright's pace, but it's enough to get people's attention. Put it this way, my peanut butter and jelly sandwich consumption rate is a topic of conversation among my colleagues at work (who almost uniformly find it strange).

Unlike Wright, I don't make them myself (Little Miss Citi does the honors, though for the record I never asked her to) and I don't put honey on them (though I've heard good things, and perhaps I should explore).

Anyway -- just a little ditty for you on a snowed-in Saturday.

- A.F.O.M.G.

Can You Mejia Me Now?

Just one question for all of us to consider as we grapple with the Jenrry Mejia hype (note: I learned yesterday that each of the last three words have "h" sounds in them) machine.

Why exactly do we want to make this kid the next Joba Chamberlain?

I know the town went nuts for Joba a couple years ago when he was a flame-throwing, fist-pumping, 8th-inning savior for the Yanks, but look at him now.

Now there's a never-ending circus of people who are either shouting that he'll never be as good as a starter as he was a reliever, or that he'll never reach his full potential if he remains a reliever, and besides, you'd be nuts not to want that kind of stuff working 7 innings a night.

Of these three points, only the last has legs. The other ones are only going to screw with Joba's mind; maybe he's tough enough mentally to drown out the voices/doubts, but maybe he's not. Even if he succeeds in either role, there are always going to be questions about whether the Yanks are getting top value out of him.

The question I have is, why put Mejia through that kind of ringer? Why institutionalize that question of whether he would maximize his value to the team if he were an arm out of the bullpen, rather than a starter?

It's one thing if it's September and, somehow, the team is in a pennant race and you want to give the kid a few looks out of the bullpen because you think he can come in and shut the other team down in a big spot. Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention.

But in April there's no necessity for having Mejia up with the big club, it would be, at best, a short-term luxury that could have disastrous consequences for his development down the road.

To my mind, this is where the Yankees went wrong with Joba -- it was fine for them to use him out of the pen in a pennant race in 2007, but they messed up when they decided to break camp in 2008 with him as a reliever, only to turn around a month or two later and make him a starter.

Let's try to avoid that situation with young Jenrry, shall we? If we let Mejia get another year under his belt in Double-A it sounds like there's at least a chance he's pitching at Citi Field regularly come 2011.

Why push it? Who among us thinks the 2010 season is going to prove worth mortgaging any element of our future on?

I realize that (one bullpen session in) he's knocking on the door, and after a full day of media attention, all of us hear the kid knocking. All of us see his tall, lanky frame and his 20 years of age and conjure up dreams of a reincarnated Dwight Gooden.

You know what? I'll bet you Doc would have been a hell of an 8th inning guy too. But imagine if the organization had never given him a full chance to realize his potential as a starter.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Mejia is almost certainly not another Doc.

All I'm saying is, give him a chance to prove it to us.

- A.F.O.M.G.

Citi Jimi

With baseball season just around the corner, it's only natural for our minds to be focused on old friends like David Wright, Jose Reyes, and Johan Santana.

Indeed, when we think of the Mets (once we dispel with thoughts of general dysfunction), it's players like these that we think of.

But there are more characters associated with the Mets than the guys on the field or the guys in "management".

Who among us doesn't conjure up comforting thoughts when we picture Mr. Met miming his way up and down the corridors of Shea/Citi Field?

Who among us doesn't associate Cowbell Man with the Mets fan experience? (If you want to know the truth, Cowbell Man actually really bugs me, but I'll grant that he's part of the deal at this point.)

And who among us doesn't have positive memories of entering or exiting our home ballpark to the sweet sounds of the man we formerly dubbed Jimi Hendrix, but shall now refer to as Citi Jimi?

Citi Jimi has been a fixture at Mets games for as long as I can remember. Win or lose, the man is out there playing that electric guitar of his. He doesn't wow you with his stuff, but with grit and determination on his side, he plays that guitar like a young Joe McEwing stepping in against Randy Johnson.

We'll never need to sign Citi Jimi to another contract, the man is in it for life.

And so it was with great satisfaction that I saw him, yet again, on my way home last night.

In the offseason, it seems that Citi Jimi becomes Wall Street 2/3 Station Jimi. I've seen him several times this offseason, but never had the balls to snap a picture of him on my iPhone until yesterday.

I snapped my picture, said my hello, and dropped a dollar in his collection area. I didn't want to get into it with him, but amid all the videos from Spring Training and articles to read, seeing Citi Jimi was one of the strongest reminders yet that baseball is coming back to Queens.

Just a month and change left to go.

- A.F.O.M.G.

Hope Springs Eternal

It's amazing what the first days of Spring Training will do to a fan base's mood.

When it's snowing again in New York City, the first images of sunshine, bats, and gloves in Port St. Lucie are enough, it seems, to turn all the cynics into believers.

Witness our old friend Mr. Glass, who 48 hours ago was one of the team's biggest question marks. After his first workouts with the team earlier this week and an interview he gave on SNY, he's already being penciled back in for a "typical" Jose Reyes season: 60 stolen bases, 100+ runs scored, 200 hits, 15 triples.

Or look at Oliver Perez, old All or Nothing Ollie. Coming off the worst season of his career (or maybe not the worst, which is really troubling), he shows up in "the best shape of his life" and all of a sudden people are talking about how we've found our No. 2 starter.

Like everyone else, I don't want to be cynical, and I want more than anything to believe in this team. But ask yourself, beyond the sunshine and the good vibes that accompany the beginning of Spring Training everywhere, does this current group of Mets deserve our faith?

* * * * *

Me and Little Miss Citi just spent the long weekend in New Orleans. Technically, it was the last weekend of Mardi Gras, but with the amount of Saints gear we saw all around us, the number of black and gold beads that we caught, and the number of times we heard the Saints' theme song ("Halftime (Stand Up and Get Crunk!)", by the Ying Yang Twins), it was almost impossible to know where the celebration over the city's recent Super Bowl win ended and the annual Mardi Gras festivities began.

I want nothing more than for Mets fans to have a chance to feel what those Saints fans are feeling; New York City will never throw a party for the Mets the way New Orleans did for the Saints, but still, the euphoria of the fans like you and me is what really counts.

So I want to believe, badly, that this team can win. And I appreciate that if a lot of things go right, they can be a contender. If Oliver Perez and John Maine both win 15 games again this season, the Mets have a very good chance of playing in October.

But how good a chance do we think there is of that happening? How good a chance is there that all of our injured horses from last year come back strong? That David Wright won't continue to lose the majority of his home runs to the expanse in right center field where he used to hit so many out at Shea? That running Daniel Murphy, Luis Castillo, and Omir Santos out on a daily basis will end up being more of a positive than a negative?

Each of these things could happen, I just don't think we can expect all of them to happen.

On chilly, snowy days in New York, I appreciate the signs of Spring coming from Port St. Lucie are a harbinger of better days left to come, and I do think the Mets have enough pieces to make this season interesting.

But do they have enough to make it special? It's not impossible, but to me there are too many question marks to get my hopes too high.

- A.F.O.M.G.

End of an Era

Back in those halcyon days of early 2005 as I waited interminably for baseball season to start, I used to search the internet endlessly for any information at all about the Mets.

I'd jump from Metsblog to East Coast Agony (RIP) to a site I can't even remember the name of anymore (nymetsfansonline maybe?).

What was great about that last site was that they compiled pictures of the team as it assembled  for Spring Training. At the time there was no SNY, and as I was in northwestern Massachusetts at the time, I wasn't surrounded by copies of the Daily News or Post; pictures were not the things one came across every day.

Searching that site I stumbled across a picture of Jose Reyes giving Willie Randolph a pound as he arrived at Mets training camp.

It was a picture fraught with hope and possibility. The Mets had a new manager, a new ace pitcher, a new star centerfielder, and an oft-injured ringer named Reyes healthy once again at shortstop.

Dangling from Reyes' wrist was an orange wristband. This was the heyday of the "Livestrong" wristband era; everywhere you turned someone else had one of those little yellow wristbands (not Cheddar Ben, of course, who proudly announced no, he would not give $1 to support cancer relief, on account of a deep and abiding hatred of Lance Armstrong).

I had to have one just like it. Looking back on it now, I can't recall if I was able to find one on the internet -- if my memory serves, I want to say I bought a wristband just like it at Shea on Opening Day.

I made a pact with myself: I would wear the wristband every day until the Mets won a World Series. At the time, the timing of a potential Mets World Series win didn't seem so far off.

I wore that wristband every day until yesterday, when, playing with it idly at my desk, the life gave out on it and it snapped.

I was stunned for a moment, and even a bit saddened. As I looked at its withered remains, I knew I couldn't just throw it in the trash, so I folded it up and put it in the back compartment of my wallet where I keep little mementos (i.e., a card from my grandfather's funeral in October 2002, an apologetic letter my sister wrote me maybe 12 years ago that is completely withered and almost entirely illegible, and a note reading "Today is the first day of War on Iraq" from March 2003).

In life, one must move on, but I had two options for how to do so: should I get a new wristband, or go on without one?

On the one hand, I'm not 22 anymore. I'd be lying if I said there weren't moments, in business settings, where I felt a bit self-conscious about the orange band adorning my wrist.

On the other hand, the Mets are a very central part of my life. I've made it this far; chances are I'm not going to grow out of it.

The choice was simple: I searched feverishly on the internet for the band until I found it. I was comforted instantly.

- A.F.O.M.G.

(If you want to be sympatico with the Glass Man, you can order your orange wristband here or here. They cost $2 and the proceeds go to the Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation, which is devoted to helping seriously ill children.)

Uncle Cliffy and the Awful Truth

"I have friends there, and they say it's just not a good mix," Cliff Floyd said.

"Not a good locker room?" Mike Francesa asked, pressing the point.

"Not a good locker room," Floyd confirmed.

* * * * *

Over the last several years, one of the most persistent questions around the Mets has been whether there's a problem in the team's clubhouse.

The collapses in 2007 and again in 2008 (though I hesitate at calling 2008 a "collapse", given the talent deficit on that team) fueled the fire and lent the storyline credibility.

In response, players on the team, the manager, the general manager and everyone else has been quick to refute the point. They say the problem isn't the guys in the clubhouse, the problem is winning and losing.

Yesterday we finally had a guy break ranks (so to speak). To my mind, in the exchange above, Cliff Floyd, our beloved Uncle Cliffy, confirmed what many of us have suspected: the Mets have a problem in their clubhouse.

Here's what I want to know though: who are the "friends" Floyd's referring to?

We all know he and David Wright are tight -- so I'm going to assume Wright is one of Floyd's confidantes on this topic. Who else?

Looking at the team's active roster, there are 7 players left on the roster from 2006, not counting Wright. Those players are: Pedro Feliciano, John Maine, Mike Pelfrey, Oliver Perez, Anderson Hernandez, Jose Reyes, and Carlos Beltran.

I'm going to wager that Hernandez wasn't on the team long enough for him and Floyd to be in close contact. Ditto Pelfrey, Perez, and Maine.

I honestly don't think Jose Reyes could get down about anything, so I'm guessing it's not him. That leaves Feliciano and Beltran.

Between the two of them, Feliciano seems much more likely to fess up to something like this, but I have no idea if he and Floyd were friendly; relief pitchers and outfielders wouldn't have a lot of natural overlap.

So what about Beltran? Maybe, but he seems like the strong, silent type, the kind of guy who wouldn't want to get mixed up in some rumor mill type story.

Who knows... I guess when I started this exercise I really thought we'd be able to get somewhere.

Perhaps my methodology isn't scientific enough. For all I know he's talking about guys like Billy Wagner or Ramon Castro, who were there in 2007-2008 but not 2009. Plus, Floyd was a bit of a journeyman in his career -- there's nothing saying the friends he's referring to are people he knew from his days on the Mets.

* * * * *

Either way, the point is that we now have it on pretty good authority that there's a problem in the Mets' clubhouse. One of its most popular former players is now saying it, and he's likely saying it on the basis of the team's presumed future Captain, David Wright.

You could argue that saying there's a problem now is a bit self-serving for Floyd; in the interview, his departure is cited as a turning point for the clubhouse, so one could see where it's to his benefit to perpetuate this storyline.

But I don't take Cliffy for that kind of guy. I think he's just telling us what he knows, and I don't think any of us are too surprised to hear it.

If he's right,well, we've had our misgivings about this team all offseason. Unless Jason Bay is a game changer in this regard, it doesn't seem team chemistry is going to help them cover up their flaws.

- A.F.O.M.G.

Ya Gotta Give 'Em Hope

The dead of winter is upon us.

Though we have the excitement of the Super Bowl this week and the promise of pitchers and catchers reporting soon afterward, in these frigid February days, baseball feels a long way off.

And so it was with great delight that I discovered a godsend of a new recording on my DVR. It was MLB Network's profile of the 1986 season.

Now, nothing could ever possibly top the 1986 Mets tape ("A Year To Remember"), but this video provided a great overview for the uninitiated (such as Little Miss Citi, whom I made watch the tape with me even though she was clearly desperate to go to bed).

The hot foot? Check. The four arrests in Houston? Check. The NLCS? The World Series? Game 6? Check, check, and check.

Reliving the memory of '86 is always going to bring a smile to the face of any Mets fan, but as I watched the recording (again) last night, I was struck by something new. As I wrote to some friends:

"MLB did '86 last week and I watched it last night. You know how the story ends of course, but what struck me (perhaps because of the time of year we're in now) was the beginning -- about how clear it was going into Spring Training that the Mets were loaded and the only question was 'how good are they going to be?'

Needless to say, it's a far cry from 'if this and if that then maybe will we be good enough?'"

As I've already lamented on this site, the difference between 2010 and each of the past 5 years is that there's so little hope attached to this season.

Mets fans are angry and bitter over the way the last few years played out, there's no denying that. But the sense I get is that what Mets fans are really angry about is the sense that in 2010, management hasn't given us a reason to hope. With ESPN reporting yesterday that the Mets' wallets are closed until Spring Training, it doesn't look like that's going to change.

Could it all have been different? Was there some combination of moves out there that would have made this team feel like a winner again?

That's difficult to say. Sip was telling me the other day that John Lackey is one of the five best pitchers in baseball; I'm not so sure that's accurate, but he would have helped. Was there some might-have-been trade that would have put us over the top, some road not taken? Who can say?

The result is that everything about the present feels worse, and everything about the future feels less exciting.

It's frigid outside right now; it's been like that all week. It's not unlike any other February, I suppose, only this February, the promise of spring and summer shines a little less brightly, dampened as it is by the creeping anticipation of a lackluster season of Mets baseball.

- A.F.O.M.G.