i waited 72 hours to write this. i believe that’s enough of a period to clear one’s head and reexamine a serious grievance and breach of goodwill before ranting rashly.
i will now proceed to rant sensibly.

so proud to have you, omar
omar, it’s over. every measure of good faith i chose to continue to allot you is gone. you have turned us into a joke. and not the lovable-losers variety of the 60s. we’re talking a cowardly (willie randolph firing), insanely stupid (ryan church concussion handling), judgmentally challenged (bare-shirt bernazard), childish (blaming a beat writer for unearthing bare-knuckle-boxing bernazard’s appalling behavior), undesirable joke.
now to be fair, omar, for all we know, you could be the lame duck gm some speculate you to be – crippled by ownership as a direct result of your previous incompetence. if that’s the case, well, congratulations, you’ve earned it. please forward my regards to jeff wilpon. if he’s not too busy fawning over citi field and the shake shack.
i have to start with the backup catcher supermarket sweep. instead of improving the major league roster in any way, shape or form, you sign two horrendous backup catchers – both on the wrong side of 35. henry blanco, the 38-year-old you signed to give some right-handed “pop” off the bench, batted .235 last year with a whopping 16 rbi in 67 games. chris coste, whose name was actually painful for me to type, declared himself “a phillie for life” and said he never saw himself playing for the mets on the day that you signed him.
let’s pause while i bash my head against the keyboard.
i’m realistic. we had no shot to get roy halladay. but the reason for that is your shocking ineptitude at sustaining any kind of farm system. you were a scout, and yet your minor-league system is appalling. six out of seven minor league affiliates with losing records in 2009. inspiring. triple-a and double-a combine to go 61 games under .500. that looks great next to the “major league” mets’ record.
it’s not your fault that injuries on the big-league level necessitated the promotion of our only untouchable bona fide star prospect fernando martinez, who proceeded to show the world his utter mediocrity and rob him of the mystique that could have produced something on the trade market. but it is your fault that there were no other minor leaguers to promote in his stead.
but during a season in which the dangers of having no minor-league talent became painfully obvious to everyone who watched even one mets game, you fail to sign two of your top ten draft picks?! worst draft outcome in the majors. well done.
during an offseason in which we find out that the mets actually made money off the madoff scam, you fail to pony up the cash it would take to land the only palatable starter on the open market? unconscionable.
oh, but you did sign 100-year-old elmer dessens to a minor-league deal. thank god.
* * * *
now there’s another angle here. even if we did have enough prospects to tempt the blue jays to ship halladay to citi field, would halladay have waived his no-trade clause? not a chance. even if we did attempt to lure lackey with cash, is it so hard to believe the theory that he just didn’t want to have anything to do with the mets? how sad is it that a pitcher’s haven in the biggest baseball city on the planet can’t attract a no. 2 starter guaranteed to make ace money?
we may sign jason bay. we may not. his agent might be following satan scott boras’ blueprint for exacting extra years and dollars out of teams bidding against themselves. or he may be stalling, hoping desperately that any other team will swoop in to rescue his client from the world-class graveyard that is citi field … and i don’t mean that it’s a place where homers go to die. it’s a place – the bastion of a franchise – where dreams go to die. (look what you’ve done to me, mets. you have me speaking in cliches and banging my head against the wall when i should have at least 16 more weeks before i need to break out that paper bag to put over my head.)
but while the outcome of the bay negotiations will certainly affect our on-field potential next season, its success or failure will do nothing to squelch the simple, tragic fact that this team’s management is a train wreck, its vision wholly undefined, its priorities misaligned. hey, at least we’ll have more than enough bullpen catchers.
* * * *
but what do i do now? how do i emotionally brace myself for 2010? i’ve been wrestling with this question since it became apparent that the mets still have the organizational goal of making themselves the team with the most aging players of dubious pedigree (honestly, i think their goal is to only ink players in the twilight of their careers – and the requirements? player must have played for at least five ballclubs and/or spent the majority of their pro seasons languishing in the minor leagues … oh nelson figueroa, how i hope we meet again).
this is how bad it has gotten – i have consulted with the book of simmons to determine whether i qualify for a reallocation of team support. in his seminal 2005 book, “now i can die in peace,” he boiled his original list of rules down from 20, and my situation does make me eligible for such a shift, under original rule 19e, revised rule 6d:
“rule no. 19: once you choose a team, you’re stuck with that team for the rest of your life, unless one of the following conditions applies … e) the owner of your favorite team treated his fans so egregiously that you couldn’t take it anymore … when it happens, you have two options: either renounce that team and pick another one, or pretend they’re dead and you’re a grieving widow.”
after this season ended, i wore black for a week. does that count?
now, anyone who actually believes that come opening day, i’m not going to be wearing blue and orange and fighting like hell for this mess of a team doesn’t know me at all. but baseball is supposed to make you happy, right? there’s supposed to be some element of joy, of an escape from reality. and i’m not going to have that this year. the mets are not going to make me happy.
there is only one person in baseball who can give me that this year, and he doesn’t play in new york. so i’m going to continue to live and die with the mets, but since i know it’s not going to be much of a life, i’m going to look elsewhere for that sense of childlike wonder, of real hope and inspiration. i’m going to find it in seattle, i’m going to find it in “the kid.”

"the kid" represents everything i love about baseball
i hope i express this clearly enough – i’m not going to become a mariners fan, but i’m going to be pulling for them this season. partly because they seem to want to win (what a strange concept for a baseball franchise!), but 99% because i want ken griffey jr., the best baseball player of our generation, to get the world series ring that he so deserves.
the video of the mariners carrying him off the field on the last day of the season made me bawl like a baby – it’s my favorite moment of the season. i wasn’t moved by anything the mets did last year. but watching that griffey video reminded me, in a swell of emotion, how beautiful this game can be. a team with no playoff spot carried an aging veteran – who didn’t produce all that much – on their shoulders because of who he is, as a player, as a seattle hero, as a baseball legend, as a person. the classiest guy in baseball deserves a ring. and seattle, in an incredible display of purpose and determination, is going to do everything in their power to get one for him. i hope they succeed.
my brother jimmy is taking a different approach. our text-message exchange from tuesday follows (edited for profanity):
jimmy: “[freaking] great. we lose out on lackey and halliday, but we’re ‘actively pursuing’ kelvim escobar, who hasn’t pitched for 2 years and has a bad shoulder.”
vic: “[freaking] unbelievable. no wait, it’s perfectly logical. who wouldn’t pick a guy with a bum arm over a sure-thing free agent?”
jimmy: “i’m literally done with the mets for this season. texas rangers were randomly selected as my team this year. a jersey has been ordered.”
vic: “was literally just looking at griffey shirts.”
jimmy: “haha. i got a vest jersey … brand new … $24 on ebay. bad ass.”
vic: “i’m intrigued by the mariners’ team philosophy – it’s a bit foreign to me. i think their goal is … to win?”
how did jimmy decide to follow the lonestar-state team this season? he put mlb 2009 in his playstation, went to the “select team” menu, let the scroll button run for a while and randomly let go.

remember the good old days? (they stopped in september)
and how to explain the fact that the team it landed on has better prospects than the mets this season? well, unless you live in pittsburg, every major-league stadium has less storm clouds hanging over it.
voila. instant hope by random video-game selection.
may all of us in the unenviable position of bleeding blue and orange find some kind of hope this season. i’m thinking the only surefire way to find it if your heart belongs to the mets is to rewind the clock, pop mlb 2007 into your playstation and pray that the video game isn’t technologically advanced enough to factor in september collapses.