Month: December 2011

Kamikaze Jets

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My husband is a "12th Man" for Seattle

My husband is a Seattle Seahawks fan.  True story.  He started watching them in December of 1983, and became a die hard ever since.  No one ever told my husband he was “basic,” and that’s the truth.  Although he’s a local Mets fan (but he grew up in the Bronx of course), his basketball team is located in Utah (Jazz), and football team is in a city he’s never visited (Seattle, natch).

Imagine his surprise when last year during the football playoffs, AM New York had a feature on team-focused bars, and they featured Carlow East, a Seattle Seahawks-fan bar that broadcasts every game (and since the Seahawks aren’t exactly a “national” team like, say, the Dallas Cowboys are, it’s rare he gets to see them on National TV).  They don’t have a kitchen, but they have cheap drinks, and are chill about allowing you to bring food into the establishment.  But on football game days, they do bring in a buffet.  Just your standard pastas, salads, wings, and wares like sausage and peppers.  Drawbacks are that they don’t make mimosas (no sparkling wine), don’t have coffee (so no nutty Irishmen or other adult coffee drinks), and they’re on the East Side of the island which is like Guam to me.  BUT they made up a lot of ground by offering us take out menus (an extensive list) and by suggesting I get my own coffee from across the street, and then charging me for a “shot” to “nutty it up,” as the bartender said.

For a brief moment, I wished I was a Seahawks fan, or just a team that doesn’t exactly have “local” roots.  During the game, they had Seahawks based chants like “SEA-Fense!” or “Sea! HAWKS! Sea! HAWKS!”  Whenever the Seahawks scored a touchdown, they gave everyone a round of Seahawk-blue inspired Kamikaze shots.  (Similar to what the Chapmans do on Mets opening day each year, they substitute Blue Curacao to give the margaritas a blue tinge, as opposed to using just plain ol’ Triple Sec, a colorless orange liqueur).

    

Yes, we went from euphoria (well, as euphoric as I can get watching a game with no rooting interest…but I did appreciate being there with a fan base I know so little), to watching the Jets game.  The life of a Jets fan, of course.

Anyone have a hit of Viagra I can use?  That game was as flaccid as…well…never mind.  Simply, the Jets were just awful.  It was so bad that I actually enjoyed, THOROUGHLY enjoyed cleaning my house.  I even cleaned the cat’s litter boxes.  My house is now clean, but the Jets still got annihilated.  At least I can hang my hat on THAT, watching it in a clean house.

So what went wrong?  Well, whatever it was went very RIGHT for the Eagles, a team I cannot stand.  Look, nothing business, just personal.  I hate the goddamn city.  I hate that they have a NYC complex (they should already know we’re the superior city).  I hate Michael Vick (Sorry but I actually DO think most animals should be treated better than people).  I hate the Phillies.  I hate all their stinking drunk idiot fans.  And they ALL spill over into the Linc when the Phillies aren’t playing.  I have an exception for Flyers fans though.  They seem to know their shit.  I can respect that.  All I know is for all the goodwill that the Phils are bringing to their city, sportswise, no one fucking appreciates it.  They’d give it all up for ONE Super Bowl ring, and they all know it.

Now that I got THAT out of my system.  The things that went RIGHT for the Iggles?  Well they proved that not only practice makes perfect (they have a chance to bounce into the playoffs after a lackluster start to the season, how about that for some shit), but that studying does indeed go the extra mile or in this case, extra few hundred yards or so.  The Eagles found the weakness of the Death Star of Jets defense, as they were running plays easily being called.  Fab.

I suppose if there were a game they had to lose, it would be today.  In the category of how ’bout that for some shit, still, the Jets didn’t technically lose any ground.  Huh.  It’s not going to be easy of course, considering they had their life in their hands, and blew it.  Well, all I can say is they better fuckin’ win next week, in the Toilet Bowl as EJ from Happy Recap called it on Twitter yesterday.  Because Sexy Rexy is running his fuckin’ mouth AGAIN.  Look, say what you want about Rex Ryan, but he always flaps his trap (he won’t stop so we may as well enjoy it).  Yet, he can admit where he’s wrong afterwards and ALWAYS takes the heat off his players when it comes down to it.  Seriously though, after this shit show the NY fans had to be subjected to this week?  Although with the shoe on other foot, when the Giants countered with a trash-talk won’t help the Jets, but hey, this game has just as much bearing on the G-men too.

If all was right in the world, this game would mean nothing but bragging rights to the winning fan base (and honestly, I don’t dislike the Giants. I just prefer the Jets).  But lately there’s been a lot of “my overrated quarterback is better than YOUR overrated quarterback” so I’d nothing better than to bash the Giants’ skulls in at any chance.  Yet this game is all of a sudden a must-win scenario for either team.

JUST WHAT I NEED ON CHRISTMAS EVE WHEN I’M AT MY MOM’S, PEOPLE.

I started the day drinking Kamikaze shots in honor of my husband’s team, while the Jets shitbombed their own kamikaze attack on themselves to make a game that should have meant nothing mean everything.

Sounds about right to me.  Merry Fucking Christmas, Jets fans.

Baseball Bacons

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Baseball Broads Sitting in Shea Seats Together

It’s the holiday season.

We’re smack dab in the heart of football season, with playoffs upon us and must-win games with the Jets and the Giants next weekend (oh, did I mention that they’re facing EACH OTHER?? Yes, I’ll need to stay off Twitter for fear of feeding the trolls).

Yet this week, I have a “59 Days Still Pitchers and Catchers” Party to attend.  Over the weekend, it was also a celebration of my birthday and Dee’s birthday, officially, at Strawberry’s Grill in Douglaston, NY.  Of course, this is Darryl Strawberry’s namesake restaurant, run by him and his family, with Mets and Yankees themes throughout the restaurant (he did play for the Evil Empire after all).

Baseball is the Kevin Bacon of life: we are all just six degrees of separation from it all.

I detailed in my post from last week, The Decemberists, about Dee and I going to a football game for our birthdays.  For years, we always hated that we had to be relegated to staying indoors for our birthdays because it’s so cold.  That we always wanted to celebrate our birthdays at a baseball game but while we could say “It’s our birthday” any other day, it’s not truly the same.

When life gives you lemons, we make lemonade.  Look on the bright side.  There’s Christmas in July.  Life is full of these hokey little cliches that infiltrate our lives.  We may celebrate birthdays or Christmas or whatever denominational holiday you observe, but why does baseball get shafted?  No, seriously.  If we need a little Christmas right this very minute, why can’t baseball be alive and well in the winter time?

I’m not talking about winter ball.  For those of us who don’t celebrate holidays or maybe just observe whatever for the sake of observing, most of us can subscribe to celebrating baseball 24/7/265.

Poet Laureate of Flushing, Greg Prince, attended the Second Annual Coop Dee Ville Birthday Spectacular and was also in attendance for the inaugural party in 2010.  He once said that “Every poseur wants to be at Opening Day. Closing Day is a rite for the secret society of baseball fanatics.”  While “Closing Day” allows us to reflect on the season at hand and think about the what-might-have-beens, Closing Day has an aura of sadness around it.  Opening Day has all the hope of a New Year, a new rotation around the sun.  Yet, conversely, it provides hope, Closing Day that is.  It provides us with the idea that our team can get better, and we can become better fans as well, subsequently better people.  Is that true? Is that hokey?  Who knows?  All I know is that I don’t believe in Santa Claus…but I do believe in baseball.

My birthday happens to coincide with the winter solstice.  The days start getting shorter right before, then start getting longer and longer.  Pessimists dwell on the lack of daylight.  I like to dwell on the fact that the days will only get brighter from here on in.

And isn’t that what our problems have been with our birthdays before we met, Dee??  We focused on the fact that our birthdays get overshadowed by the larger and all-encompassing holiday season.  Not on what we do have: lasting and fulfilling relationships, mostly from being sports fans.  I met my husband by being a Mets fan.  And most of the attendees at the soiree on Saturday night were less than Six Degrees of Separation from my being a Mets fan.

There’s my dad, who was there.  As legend had it, I was in the womb rocking out to Rosalita while my mom attended a Bruce Springsteen concert.  When I was out of the womb, my dad sat crying in front of the television on June 15, 1977.  I used to mock him for it, but now I understand.  I haven’t had that moment as a Mets fan, but I have been betrayed by my ownership team like Dad once was.  But he made me a Mets fan, for better or for worse.

As a Mets fan, I liked to write about baseball.  I started following blogs in 2004, and started my own in 2007.  As a result, I became part of the Mets-erati, the “Lost Generation” or “Jazz Age” versions of baseball writers.  Greg Prince of Faith and Fear in Flushing introduced me to the Chapmans, who have enriched my life to the extent that they are my family, not just my “summer” family.  The Chapmans introduced me to friend Phil, another Mets fan who introduces me to several adult beverages and road races.  I guess they’re like my Yin and Yang.  Bad influences too, but bad-in-a-good way.

 

My associations with the Chapmans and Greg also gained me a friend in DyHrdMet from Remembering Shea, a collective of Mets memories, honoring the past and making sense of the present.  We may be told to get over the past, but DyHrdMet appreciates the balance of what history and romanticism means to a Mets fan.

From blogging made me part of a die-hard crew of Mets fans who act like we survived a war or something.  There’s always some kind of tie that binds us, and DyHrdMet does that, but it also gained me a friend from the Twitterverse in Richie S from Random Mets Thoughts.  We are Mets fans, we are music fans…but most of all, he is a dad who made his daughter a Mets fan.  I’m sure she sometimes feels the same way about that fact like the way I do with my dad and the Mets: we equally love and hate them both at times (the team and our dads for introducing us to this life of sometimes-Jobian-existence).  Richie fits right in with the rest of us, obsessing about the Mets in a mid-winter board meeting as he called our soiree.

 

From Twitter and blogging, I met Nik Kolidas, who is a damn fine musician, but also a knowledgeable Mets fan and blogger.  From these ties, I started writing at KinersKorner.com, and we started our own podcast The Kult of Mets Personalities.  It’s a roundtable of fun and funny people who understand the bigger picture of Mets fandom and baseball fanaticism.

Social media added another layer of Mets fandom to the next level.  While blogging may have exposed our thoughts, Facebook and Twitter among others have provided our hearts as well.  Alvin and Anne Marie are both Mets and New York Rangers fans.  Jason is another friend who is a hockey fan (Devils – boo! but Mets fan too).  So I have not only gained new Mets fans in the mix, I have people I can watch and go to hockey games with.  Sweet.

Lastly, I invited a friend I’ve known for years, Martin, to my shindig.  He had hurt his ankle early in the week and didn’t know if he’d be able to make it.  He said after a few days of rest, he had cabin fever and wanted to come.  As he came, everyone wanted to know his baseball affiliation.  He said, “I’m a Mets fan too.  But that’s because Coop tells me to be one.”  Another one bites the dust, kids.

I met Ed through outlets like Metsmerized Online and Facebook subsequently.  We got married.  Good for us.  But as a result, I met other people through the Metsmerized community.  I met my soul sister Dee through those channels, but I also gained two other people as a result of knowing her:  mother Arlene, whom I refer to affectionately as “Aunt Arl” but also her best friend from childhood, Angie.  They often say that life is full of happy accidents.  Seriously, how much of it can be truly planned if it’s so unpredictable?  But I never knew that being a baseball fan would get me a husband, a best friend and de facto sister, someone I look on as a mother, and a new friend to boot.  Happy accidents, indeed.

   

Then bring that back ’round to my dad, Mr. E or Mr. Coop or Eddy or Alan Eddy Cooper Jug Band leader.  My dad knows everyone.  I can’t tell you how many times as a kid we’d walk into a store, and he’d spend 20 minutes chatting someone up about something.  He’s not one of those “weirdos” you want to look the other way on the train.  But if he can find that connecting quality with someone, you’ll have a friend for life.  Dad was amazed looking around at the cast of characters at Strawberry’s on Saturday night.  If you think about it, Darryl Strawberry played for the Mets, and we all loved Straw.  As a result, he opens a sports bar in Queens, home of the Mets.  A bunch of Mets fans meet in a roundabout yet seemingly so simple we wonder why it took so long to begin with.  As a result, we act like army buddies.  Dad said, “This is different than in the ’70s and ’80s.  We didn’t have cell phones or Facebook.  But we did have bars.”

During the night, another guest who should have been there but was 3000 miles away, brother from another mother and concerned Mets fan Senor Solly, kept jumping into conversations.  He’s never met my dad, but he helped me serenade my dad for his birthday this year.  Senor Solly has not met the majority of us, physically (my dad was amazed my husband and I were the only people, actually), but he’s touched our lives in numerous ways.  Simply by being a Mets fan.  And by Sharon telling him to go fuck himself.

Baseball is an amazing sport.  It brings people together, whether or not you’re affiliated with the same team.  I got overwhelmed at one point thinking about how my life has changed so dramatically in the past decade or so simply by the baseball team I root for.  They drive us nuts sometimes, but I often say that the best times to be a Mets fan is during the down years because that gives you character and introduces you to characters.  No one can ever say we’re not devoted.  At the same time, it’s the middle of winter, there are football playoff implications, there is hockey to be watched (and even watched Bradley Richards score a dramatic .01 of a second left in the game winning goal against Phoenix on Saturday), we had birthdays to celebrate and holidays to worry about.  We talked baseball.

Maybe world peace is a distant phenomenon that can’t ever be attained due to the natural aggression of human nature.  Eh, that’s a bit overdramatic.  Maybe if baseball were the universal language, it could get us to that point.

Kevin Bacon may own the whole six degrees thing in cinema.  But baseball owns the six degrees of life.  Therefore, baseball is the Kevin Bacon of life.

And we all love bacon. AmIRite?

Bears and Bacon on a Stick

Remain Calm! ALL IS WELL! The motto of Mets fans.

The Decemberists

New York Jets, NFL, , , , , , , One comment

Football games in December, especially in the northeast, midwest and any place typically north, are well-known to be cold.  We’ve been fortunate in New York this season though.  On days that you would expect to be just cold (not even factoring in “bitter” or “wind chill”), it’s been balmy and dare-I-say “unseasonable” weather.  My dream is to someday live in San Francisco, and we’ve been blessed with Bay Area-like weather.

Of course, not on the day I was scheduled to go a game.  But as you see, my friend and I dressed appropriately.  A few years ago, I read an article about dressing for games during the playoffs at Lambeau Field.  I remember the guy had like 10 different layers, but most importantly, thermals with the butt flap.  We don’t have it that bad, at least, not yet.  But for me, I had thermals on, a sweatshirt, my Jets jersey, jeans, a North Face, a scarf, and I had gloves.  I didn’t really need the gloves, and I had a hat for a break-in-case-of-emergency.  My friend wore her Jets cap though, for reasons other than weather (I’ll get to that in a minute).

Dee, who posts for Metscellaneous, and I met a few years ago.  Brought together by our love for the Mets (and baseball), we realized we had some eerie things in common.  We’re both only children, we like to write (which is technically how we met), we both don’t like raw tomatoes (but we like tomato-products…I have a hard time explaining this to other people, but luckily, she gets it), we love margaritas and chain restaurants (don’t judge), and we’re both born in December.  It’s irony, really, because we are not WINTER folks (though, that is her last name..again, irony), but we can identify with the season and having our birthdays overshadowed by everyone else getting into the holiday spirit.

I never got the whole “this is your Christmas AND birthday gift,” mainly because I’m an only child and my parents never were torn in other directions.  What we did get, though, was the whole nightmare of trying to plan birthday parties that were convenient for your friends, family and kids’ parents.  I have a better appreciation for it now as an adult.  But now since we’re adults, we’re taking matters into our own hands.  We not only decided to have a joint birthday party and “share” our friends and the wealth of having a December birthday (and some people can get territorial about their friends, go figure), we said, hey, we can’t go to a baseball game for our birthdays…but we CAN go to a football game.

So December 11th it was, against the Kansas City Chiefs.  I was so concerned about buying tickets for this game, yet we were told at the tailgate we went to that we could have easily waited till that week and gotten super-cheap tickets in the upper levels.  It ended up not mattering either way, and I’ll get to that later.

So first things first, we meet at Penn Station, me with coffees in hand and we chill for the train to Secaucus, and transfer to Meadowlands.  We’re there before 10:30 am.  That may seem early but when you’re tailgating, the time passes very quickly.

I went to the same tailgate I attended back in October, when I went to the game against the Dolphins.  My friend Kevin is part of a tailgate group, where they basically have a communistic set up of beverages, snacks, real food, and then other wares, like chairs and wood-burning stoves.  Kevin is married to another baseball chick I know, Sharon, and she came to celebrate our birthdays (since this was the birthday game).  Sharon ended up going to the game, which wasn’t part of the original plan, but it ended up benefiting us for several reasons.  One is that we love Sharon and she’s a lot of fun to hang out with…the other is that later on, we got to sit with Kevin and a few of his friends in the 200 level.

 

Dee and I were greeted with a strawberry margarita (courtesy of Kevin’s battery-operated margarita maker), and there were comforts of home such as yummy food and wood-burning stoves.  We didn’t really need it though, since you can see I lost my scarf and had my coat al fresco after a bit (plus I was drinking a frozen alcoholic drink).  The guy on top of the truck was leading us in a J-E-T-S chant, and the dude in the middle of our photo is Frank, the ringleader of the L11 tailgate.  There was also a filming of a television show that these dudes were pitching to Food Network, for I guess best tailgate burger.  Frank was the winner of the golden spatula.

I wanted to get there earlier, after all there were huevos rancheros on the menu there, because two and a half hours does go by quickly.  After all, times flies when you’re having fun.  It came time to go into the stadium and root for the Jets.  It was Dee’s first live football game, after all.  And yes, I’m trying to set a record for the most “after alls,” in one paragraph.

Our seats weren’t terrible, but because they were underneath the lights, we got dripped on! (It rained here midweek, but I guess the sun shining brightly for days afterwards led it to melt any ice that may have formed).  I felt like I was back in the Mezzanine at Shea, when you were underneath the awning, even if it had rained like a week before, if there was a puddle, you got dripped on.

 

 

We had a pretty good view of the field, more so than my first game of the season where I was behind the goal post.  Don’t get me wrong: those seats were awesome on the 100 level, and my friend basically just gave the ticket to me so he wouldn’t eat it.  But the drawback here were the drips…Dee had to put on her hat so that it wouldn’t drip on her head! We had a good view of Fireman Ed here (as evidenced above), but the crowd really wasn’t going strong till later in the first quarter.

Sharon told us her husband had some empties by him, and we should head down there.  Good thing we did!  We stayed there the second half, and for the rest of the game.  Look how sweet these seats were!!

 

 

We had a better view of Fireman Ed, who basically has carte blanche to do anything at JetLife Stadium.

As for the game, yeah, it was a blowout, and as well it should have been.  There wasn’t much to say except Mark Brunell came in the game eventually to relieve Sanchez, since there was no point in keeping him in there.  The Jets are now in control of their own destiny too, as far as playoffs go.  That can be a good or bad thing.  Mostly good, since they don’t have to rely on other teams losing, but then they have to depend on winning and we all know how well that can go sometimes.  I have an impeccable record for Jets games though, and now so does Dee.

When we walked out, we had another post-game tailgate to hit with another December baby, the friend we affectionately refer to as Woooooo because of his greeting on social media networks.  He is the consummate host, offering us beers, different types of foods (rice and beans, london broil, bison burgers, dogs)…there was even a birthday cake, since his is coming up this week. Sure, the cake was half-eaten by the time we got there, but it was still yummy nonetheless, and a great capper of the evening.

 

NJ Transit is ass-backwards as far as game day travel is, but we had a finite time to return which was 5:48, the last train out of dodge.  Of course, they kept us waiting and waiting and waiting, and the train Dee wanted to take back was missed by literally two minutes.  Not to fret, we decided to go outside to get some hot cocoa at Dunkin’ Donuts.  She casually mentions, yeah I’d like to see the tree.  I say, hey, what else do we have to do tonight.  So after the game, we pranced all over the city and did touristy things and made the day even more complete.

 

(Some bears made a special appearance)

As we walked towards the L7 tailgate after the game, I asked Dee what she thought about the game.  It’s a different atmosphere than a baseball game, for sure, she said.  She did say she almost liked it a bit better than baseball.  I can understand.  Nothing will ever replace my love for a spring or summer day game or even a night game, socializing with friends, drinking booze, eating nachos.  But it can get diluted for me, which is sad, but it is what it is.  Like Dee, we go to way many more baseball games.  This has to do with proximity, availability and the number of games.  I get a little jaded at times simply because I go to many games.  I can take it for granted.

Football games are special though.  There aren’t many, but there’s a lot of commitment in going to a game.  Woooooo told us there was a friend of his in the tailgate who drove up every weekend from Washington, D.C.  D.C.!!!!  I bitch and moan about NJ Transit having a pain in the ass schedule on game days.  This is especially dedicated for tailgaters too, like Wooooo and Sports Yenta (whom I met yesterday, oy!) and Frank and Kevin and everyone else.  Thank you all for hosting us and making our birthday game special.

Dee and I were bonded by birthdays and baseball, and always hated that we couldn’t spend our birthdays going to baseball games.  What a crock!  We should have been grateful for what we did have, and that’s football…but then again, we are Jets fans, so that could have something to do with it.  But now we have our own tradition and are making it our own.  So as I’ve said before, I not only gained a baseball friend, I gained a baseball sister.

So happy, happy birthday to my dearest Dee.  May all your wishes come true, and I hope you look back on this game with as much fondness as I do you!

Points and Shoots

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I went to a fight, and a hockey game broke out.

I HATE motherfucking shootouts.  Especially in games where your team HAD the goddamn lead late in the 3rd, and still managed to lose in a shootout.  Losing in a shootout is one thing; losing in a shootout where a) you had the lead going late in the 3rd AND b) not even getting a goddamn shot in the net in the shootout is annoying.

I digress.  I went to the game on Thursday night.  I’m sure you’ve heard about the “Shot Heard ‘Round The World.”  No, I’m not talking about Bobby Thomson, I’m talking about Artem Anisimov reacting after scoring a shorthanded goal.  I love shorthanded goals: I was spoiled as a young child when the very first game I ever went to, Brian Leetch scored one.  My dad had to give me a crash course on what exactly happened.

But I wasn’t prepared for World War 3 to break out afterwards.  Granted, I was too busy standing up to celebrate to notice Anisimov’s Anisimoving.  I was confused and had to retreat to my Twitter feed to see what set this thing off.  Several misconducts, minors and penalties later (oh, my!), it looked as though this was almost too easy.

But let me ask you Rangers fans something.  Doesn’t it seem like Henrik gets a little complacent late in games, like he gets a little too comfortable with leads…even if he shouldn’t be?  Not to mention, I’ve always equated Lundqvist to be kind of a “closer in a non-save situation” in some games.  It’s almost like big leads don’t challenge him.  Either way, Henrik gets a little complacent for my liking, no matter how good he is.

So this game could theoretically be one that got away.  I could say that about a lot, but what a killjoy, especially when there were fights breaking out EVERYWHERE.

Few other thoughts:

~ The Garden is coming along nicely with its construction.  I can see their inefficiencies from the old set up are still there from the old design.  Hence, longer lines but better food you are willing to wait for. I could do without having just ONE ladies room on the 400 level, along with the two whopping mens rooms. Seriously?

~ The sky bar is the exception to the rule. I had the NICEST and efficient people helping me up there with my beer and hot dog. Not that it takes a rocket scientist, but still. When I saw the lines on the 100 level, I was pleasantly surprised. And I still love the frickin view from there.

  ~ I got to chill with my girl, KB.  While I’d always like a Rangers win, it’s fun to watch a loss with someone who loves the team as much as you do.

~Bonus: It was Jackie’s birthday!  Con: the Rangers STILL lost.  Didn’t they get the memo?

~The bear in the pic is Gabby, the newest addition to our bear family.  She is the first non-Mets jersey and New York Ranger fan bear.

I’m still a hockey purist.  I guess I have to learn to roll with the punches and changes and all.  But I still hate shootouts.  I hate this particular game that the Rangers had in the bag and lost a point in the standings.  Sigh.

Unlike Artem Anisimov, the Rangers couldn’t finish the job and gain points and shoot in the shootout.  What else can you do but dust yourself off and move on to the next game.

Dirty Laundry

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A little bit of loyalty goes a long way...for fans AND players.

I was 13 years old when I first had my heart broken.  True story.  My dad called me after school one day and said, there’s a rumor the Rangers might trade Tony Granato.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTT?????  I had to calm myself down and take a walk around my suburban neighborhood.  I had become a Ranger fan for good earlier that year (1989), when my dad took me to see some dude named Mario Lemieux play for the Pittsburgh Penguins against the New York Rangers, where another dude named Brian Leetch scored a shorthanded goal.  Hard to believe I was sitting in an arena with future hockey hall of famers, yet when I was thumbing through the program I saw two pictures that made my heart soar as a teeny-bopper 13 year old: Tony Granato and John Vanbiesbrouck.  Granato was also another rookie who came up along with Brian Leetch — defenseman of the future — and Beezer was a fan fave.

But to trade *my* favorite player and the hottest guy on the team?  Heart wrenching.  I could only imagine what my mom might have gone through when the Beatles broke up, as a girl of 14.

Yet, it prepared me.  Granato was traded, and the Rangers ended up winning the Cup a few years later on the back of hard workers like Mark Messier, Mike Richter, Adam Graves and Brian Leetch.  Leetch, who should have been a Ranger-lifer, was traded in the last few years of his career, but still came back to hoist his number to the rafters.

Cutting ties with Beezer was easier to take when it happened (especially since I loved Mike Richter). When my crush Gregg Jefferies was traded for Bret Saberhagen, my dad called me to break the news.  Expecting a shriek, I said, “Well, it’s Saberhagen.  He’s good.”  My objectivity kept me grounded.  And I learned to not get attached to certain players.

And that my friends, is our lesson of the day: you root for the name on the front of the jersey, not on the back.

Gone are the days, as Frank at NY Fan in South Jersey, of the Cal Ripkens and Tony Gwynns of the world: baseball greats who are synonymous with the teams for which they played.  I don’t count the Yankees’ “core” of Jorge Posada, Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera because they overpay for the first two and Mo is a freak of nature.  Pretty much, we have the Houston Astros, whose Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell (to a lesser extent Lance Berkman) who are all over the leaderboards for the team but were also there for a generation, and Atlanta Braves’ Larry Jones.  Don’t give me the “Big Three” as an example: Tom Glavine left for the hated Mets (to them, not to me, of course) at one point and Greg Maddux, hypocrite who wanted to stay with the Cubs but opted for money, fame and championship caliber baseball in Atlanta.  Not like I can blame him.  I’m sure many of us would do the same thing.

The concept of the “hometown discount” is dead.  I would say you heard it here first, though many on Twitter said so today and even our very own Metstradamus said as much yesterday.  The Mets lost Jose Reyes, but this isn’t a team known for cultivating their own talent and keeping their homegrown players.  It should not surprise us nor should it be unexpected that this would happen.  Steve Keane at Kranepool Society said that he knew the Mets wouldn’t sign Reyes, and as he said a few months ago on our Kult of Mets Personalities podcast, that he actually thought Alderson HOPED someone would give Reyes a six-year contract.  Someone did, and we see the fallout from that.  We can only hope that it turns out to be a 20/20 hindsight good move.

Yet, I was surprised…nay, SHOCKED, really…that Albert Pujols left the Cardinals.  Yes, I know he and the Cards couldn’t come to an agreement before the season.  But I also know that people counted the Cards out when Wainwright was hurt.  And hey, did you hear who won the World Series this year?

But raise your hand if you thought if there was such a thing as “company loyalty” left in baseball, there was such a thing as a “hometown discount,” that Pujols would have typified that.   **RAISES BOTH HANDS AND FEET**  Yeah, I am that chick.  I hear all these great stories about the fans in St. Louis, how loyal they are, how every player LOVES playing there, no one ever wants to leave.  Even careers get rejuvenated in St. Lou.  Look at Berkman, who seemed like he left his best years behind in Houston.  Even though Pitchers Hit 8th told me that Pujols pretty much stated he wasn’t looking for a hometown discount, I didn’t believe it.

There is Larry Jones.  There is Derek Jeter.  But these guys are exceptions to the rule that the name on the back of the jersey does not trump the name on the front of the jersey (yet, if you talked to Jeter’s GM Brian Cashman last year, he made negotiations uncomfortable by telling Jeter to get another offer better than the one they were offering).

I was 13 years old when I learned my lesson.  That you’re only as good as the team you play on, and if you can get a better return in value, then that happens too.  I’m not saying we can’t get attached to our favorite players (I am accepting of losing Reyes, but I will still miss him and wonder “what could have been”), but if we realize that we root for a larger entity as fans — the “laundry” — we’ll save ourselves much pain and anguish in the long-run.

The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow

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I’ve been a Mets fan since I was seven.  I’ve seen a lot in my not-so-short yet not-quite-as-long as others.  I’ve seen the Mets win a World Series in front of my own eyes, but I also saw Mike Scioscia sucked the life out of a team and a fanbase on a cold October night in 1988.  I’ve seen two celebrations for an NL East at home, but I also saw Carlos Beltran take strike three.  I was at “Closing Day” at Shea Stadium, but I’ve been to many many games at CitiField, where we’ve yet to create our fond memories.

I was in diapers when Tom Seaver was traded, but rumor has it I was snoozing in my crib while my dad cried watching the evening news that night.  I was in first grade when the Mets were on WOR and some guy named Keith was playing for them, and my dad had baseball on more often than he had before.

I saw Dwight Gooden fall to his demons many many times.  I saw Lenny Dykstra and Roger McDowell traded for Juan Samuel.  Darryl Strawberry, nicknamed the “Black Ted Williams” when he was being scouted, walked away from the Mets to go home to L.A.  Generation K never lived up to our expectations, and Bobby Jones started out as overrated but became underrated as he left the team. The great dream of Scott Kazmir was dashed away when the Mets decided to become a “win-now” team with missing puzzle piece Victor Zambrano.

So is life, as Harry Belafonte once sang on The Muppet Show, for a Mets fan.

In the offseason leading to the 2008 season, I wrote a piece at my inaugural Mets blog My Summer Family when Johan Santana was traded to the Mets.  Its Always Darkest Before Dawn, I called it, because it was right after 2007 and the collapse and everything sucked.  And I just remembered that it’s never easy being a Mets fan.  And look…Johan Santana hasn’t quite lived up to our expectations either.  Then again, we should not be surprised.

The sun will come out tomorrow.  Little Orphan Annie sang this about better days to come.  I think we can gain a lot from this message for a lot of aspects of life.  If you’re still breathing, you have a bad day, you get dumped, whatever, chances are the days will go on and you’ll overcome it.

And we’ll overcome our loss of Jose Reyes.  It won’t be easy, and it won’t be fun, but it will happen because…it will happen.  It just has to.  When Beltran’s caught looking ended an improbable run in 2006, and then started a chain of events for failure with the team, we’re still here.  We’re still breathing.  We’re still rooting and believing just like we normally do.

Is it horrible to lose Reyes?  I won’t lie to you: it is.  But not for the reasons you think.  To be blunt, this is a business.  Free agents come and go and Reyes was no exception.  It happens. We root for the laundry and not the player (just the players who wear the laundry).  Sadly, this team was not winning with Reyes…they can keep not winning without him.

That can be simplistic I know.  Especially for a man who was the Mets’ first batting champion and is beloved by fans all over.  At the end of the day, Jose Reyes will be a Miami Marlin…and we’ll have to get over it.

The sun came out this morning, and will continue to rise in the east and set in the west every day after.  So fare thee well, Jose.  We’ll miss you, it will be hard to get over you, but we’ll do it eventually.

To Hilda: With Love, CC

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I liked Chris Capuano.  The Mets offered him a one-year contract last year worth $1.5 million.  Keep in mind that he had not pitched for a year prior due to injury.  Now that he’s proven himself to stay healthy and can be an innings-eater, the Mets no longer want anything to do with him.

I can see that side to the argument.  But clearly, Sandy Alderson did not consult with ME or any of the Lady Mets who like to “look” at their team.  And by “look” I mean “ass.”

Brian Schneider — now of the hated Philadelphia Phillies — had an ass like two scoops of butter pecan ice cream.  Capuano wasn’t that nice…but he had nice calves and a nice smile and was easily the cutest Met on the team this year.  Sigh.

What’s more: I became Twitter buddies with someone I consider my “West Coast Baseball Twin,” Hilda Chester. We have the same type of baseball personality: we live for the sport in the summer time, but can certainly enjoy the fringe benefits that come along with it…meaning: good looking menz in uniform.  She pinged me earlier in the season and said something to the effect of Chris Capuano being a cutie and that he had nice calves.

Needless to say, whenever he pitched, she’d watch the pitches with me, although she herself bleeds Dodger blue.

Some of the pics I am posting here today of Capuano were taken with Hilda in mind.  He was doing some practice pitches at one of the last home games of the season, and my husband was able to get some good shots of him in the bullpen.  (What can I say, he’s an enabler) There’s even a pic of him smiling!

 

Yesterday, Hilda’s team got the best looking pitcher in baseball signed to a two-year deal.  Capuano is going to be gracing his presence in a Dodger uniform next year.  So Hilda, I give you my pitcher and the last great pictures we took of him as a Met at CitiField.  Enjoy looking at him, as many of the female fans did this year.

But I actually will miss his consistency on the mound.