Pitchers and catchers are reporting. More importantly for our purposes, pitchers and catchers who wear Mets uniforms are reporting as of today. This hasn't been a particularly cold winter weather-wise, and yet it has been pretty chilly when it comes to moves the team has made, or the general outlook expected of it. And yet, just knowing that guys are putting on uniforms and long-tossing somewhere in Florida is enough to dispel your flinty skepticism and cynicism, because it lets you know that some real baseball, even if its quality has yet to be determined, is right around the corner.

When spring training begins anew this time of year, I always think of this clip from a special done by NBC prior to the 1988 season, a time when the Mets were still on top of the world, the A's were an emerging powerhouse, and a disturbingly large amount of baseball was still played on artificial surfaces. I miss NBC's baseball coverage a lot, especially when placed against the terrible productions put on respectively by FOX and ESPN. Perhaps the sober, intelligent approach you see on display here (one in which the announcers don't assume everyone in the audience has never seen a baseball game or can't form a complete coherent thought) couldn't have survived in the 21st century. It would have been nice to find out.

I've been thinking about NBC's bygone baseball broadcasts in the last few days as I've rewatched the 1986 World Series, prompted by the passing of Gary Carter. The big draw is, of course, Vin Scully, who manages to weave his own unique style into the play-by-play without coming across as trite or contrived.

In this clip, he cautions anxious fans and reporters alike to hold on to their perspective, which may be blunted from a long winter. He is, essentially, throwing cold water on everyone's enthusiasm, having seen far too many spring trainings in his day to believe in anybody's hype. It's quite a remarkable thing to view now, when broadcasters heartily encourage us to do the exact opposite: dive headfirst into believing in the Tim Tebows and Jeremy Lins of the world before any reasonable amount of time has passed in which we could accurately assess them.

Scully's testament begins at 1:14. Before that, you will hear a brief tribute to the promise of spring by Marv Albert. You will then see opening credits scored by The Cure (!). No, I don't know why that happened, either.

If you've read anything over at my own blog, you know that I am a huge fan of Jean Shepherd. I was going to say "borderline obsessed with," but I crossed that borderline a long time ago.

Shepherd is best known these days as the man behind A Christmas Story; he wrote the screenplay and narrated the movie. However, that film was largely based on his radio show on New York's WOR. His show was somewhere in the Venn intersection of storytelling, philosophical discussion, social commentary, satire, and self-indulgent goofiness. He would slowly wind his way through a few news items or things he saw on the streets of New York, eventually find himself weaving a tale of his youth, and somehow tie it all together just as time ran out.

And he did it all without using anything remotely resembling a script. There's never been anything like his show, before or since. A whole generation of New Yorkers grew up listening to him with transistor radios tucked under their pillows. (The main reason I got into him is because both my parents were fans.) He had a huge cultish following, which included such diverse luminaries as Lenny Bruce, Jack Kerouac, Stanley Kubrick, and Harry Shearer.

Shep was a huge baseball fan, and grew up on the south side of Chicago rooting for one hapless White Sox team after another. His time on the radio coincided with the birth and rise of the Mets, and he devoted several shows during the 1969 season to their improbable World Series title run.

With the recent announcement of the return of Banner Day, I gave another listen to a show Shepherd did in 1972 on the kinds of signs you would see at Shea Stadium. From the very beginning of the franchise, Mets fans expressed themselves with homemade signage. (See Roger Angell's 1962 New Yorker essay "The 'Go!' Shouters" for a description of primordial Met fan folkways at the Polo Grounds.) Shep, who had attended Mets games going all the way back to their awful inaugural year, noticed a shift in the kinds of signs, and the attitudes expressed thereon, once the team achieved success. In this program, he shares some of those bygone expressions of fan enthusiasm, frustration, and sardonic humor. He also quizzes his audience on trivia related to the truly comedic imitations of professional baseball that the Mets used to perform.

"This isn't really a show on baseball," he advises the listener. "It's a show on the decline and fall of a whole structure."

Normally, I don't like to take excerpts from Shep's shows, as they're best experienced as a eclectic, meandering whole. But, in this case, I thought the AA readership would much more enjoy hearing the "meat" of this show about Shea Stadium than the opening, during which Shep riffs on news items and does a singalong to a novelty tune called "The Bear Missed the Train."

I hope you enjoy this unique look at how Mets fans gave voice to their opinions in the days before sports talk radio. If you enjoy this, there are a bunch of other Met-themed shows in Shepherd's canon, some of which can be heard via a podcast called The Brass Figlagee, which has literally hundreds of his shows handy for your perusal.

Excelsior! (You fathead.)

So Baseball Boyfriends then.

In our accelerated internet mediascape, this story has already been pored over form every conceivable angle. Part of me believes that something as laughable as Baseball Boyfriends is its own punchline, and that women who feel offended by it don't need me to mansplain or express outrage on their behalf. However, I do feel compelled to write about it briefly anyway, because of two people in my life.

The first is my mom. I would not be a baseball fan were it not for her. My dad couldn't have cared less about spectator sports, save the games his kids played in, but my mom is a huge baseball fan. At her job, where she has email but no web access, I send her detailed in-game updates every time the Mets play a weekday day game. She lives and dies with them, but in a healthy way, if that's possible. She will never miss a game if she can help it and gets very upset when they lose. ("Those STUPID Mets!" was a frequent refrain in our house growing up, particularly during the Jeff Torborg/Dallas Green era.) But once a game is over, she quickly recovers and looks forward to the next one.

She comes from a generation that neither expected nor acknowledged female fanhood. She was not wooed to the game of baseball by any outreach on MLB's part, sexist or otherwise. She simply had the luck of growing up in Queens in the 1960s, when it was nearly impossible to not like the Mets, even when--especially when--they were terrible. But I wonder if something equivalent to Baseball Boyfriends had existed then, if she wouldn't have just said screw this and written off the sport entirely, since it is a game that seems laboratory engineered to annoy her, and millions of other women, I'm sure.

The second person is my daughter. She likes baseball, loves going to CitiField, and has said more than once this offseason that she misses Jose Reyes. (I'd rather tell her there's no Santa Clause than tell her about what happened to Jose.) She's also told me, "Nobody else on the school bus likes the Mets, but I do," thus indicating a precocious ability to resist school bus peer pressure.

But she also gets constant cues from the outside world that there are boy things and girl things. She definitely does not get these ideas from home. They are simply Out There; finding this out was an early, crushing lesson in how much you as a parent can not control. Personally, I don't want to raise my child to think there are things she can't do, even if it's a boy thing. I'd prefer she believe the sky is the limit and feel free to choose whatever path she wants. Despite me constantly telling her that she can do anything she wants to do, she will still ask me if girls can do Thing X, or that boys can't do Thing Y.

The reason Baseball Boyfriends bothers me is because it says that girls aren't active participants in life. They can't dream of accomplishments of their own. They can only observe the accomplishments of men and judge their cuteness while doing it.

Like any parent, I simply want my daughter to find happiness. I couldn't care less whether she dreams of growing up to be a pretty pretty princess or a shutdown closer. I do care that she might think only of one of those things is possible.

A year ago ago, I came across a curious find in my in-laws' house: The 1994 Rotisserie League Baseball Official Rule Book and Draft-Day Guide. My in-laws are not huge sports fans, so finding this in their possession was an oddity in and of itself. But beside that, this book provides an interesting time capsule of two sports: fantasy baseball and the regular variety.

Back then, the term "fantasy sports" had yet to be coined. There was only rotisserie baseball, and that pastime was in a bit of a lull. When it was first developed in the early 1980s, it received a fair amount of mainstream media attention as something of a fad and a nerd curiosity. (The rise of Bill James was seen in much the same light.) But by 1994, interest had flatlined; rotisserie baseball had more or less reached all of the fans it was going to at that particular time. In a few short years the internet turned nearly every sports fan into a fantasy sports fan, but that had yet to happen.

This was also an odd time in baseball itself. Bud Selig was just starting to tighten his grip on the sport. Labor strife was just around the corner. Free agent contracts were artificially suppressed by owner collusion (a big factor in the impending strike that everyone seems to forget these days). The construction of Camden Yards made other teams long for their own neo-retro stadiums. And for reasons no one could quite figure out, batters were hitting more home runs than ever before.

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The Mets' rather quiet offseason has reached the spare parts phase, and one thing they still lack (that they can afford, anyway) is a lefty bat off the bench. As such, within the last few days, rumors have rumbled that they may have interest in outfielder Rick Ankiel. Not a bad option as a lefty bat--not a great one, but not a bad one either.

However, I wonder if Ankiel would really want to come to the Mets, because it was against the Mets that the first phase of his career, for all intents and purposes, ended.

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With the first embryonic forms of baseball still weeks away, I am feeling wistful for the Mets promos of yesteryear. Come with me on a video journey through time, won't you?

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Over the weekend, the Mets' interest in free agent outfielder Cody Ross entered the rumor mill. From a pure roster standpoint, it's a thoroughly "meh" move (if it does indeed happen, which still seems up in the air as of this writing). He'd likely be a fourth outfielder, platooning with a lefty bat, presumably insurance for the hopefully imminent arrival of Kirk Nieuwenhuis or if Sandy Alderson finds a salary dump location for Jason Bay.

From a purely personal point, however, I can't stand that guy, and the idea of being forced to root for him is distasteful to me. Not quite as bad as when I found myself having to clap when Jeff Francoeur did things in a Met uniform, but definitely in the same gag-inducing ballpark.

I can't quite articulate why I feel this way, mind you. There was the incident back in 2008 where he tried to start a brawl with Mike Pelfrey. ("It seemed like he got a little more fired up when 24 [teammates] were behind him," Pelf observed at the time.) In his days with the Marlins, I know he burned the Mets more than a few times in terrible games at what Jason Fry calls Soilmaster Stadium, though I can't recall a specific occasion.(If you can, please don't remind me.) Maybe I associate him with the Marlins teams of 2007 and 2008 that delighted in keeping the Mets out of the playoffs.

He just seems like a punk to me is all, and not the good kind. When I picture him in my head, I see him mouthing off from the batter's box or the bench for some stupid reason, screaming at umps or the opposing pitcher for some slight, real or imagined. This may be totally unfair, but hey, sometimes feelings are unfair. And based on an informal poll of fans of other teams, I take it that dislike of Ross is not confined to Mets partisans. He appears to be reviled pretty much across the NL East spectrum.

We all root for laundry, of course, and I'm sure I'll hold my nose and cheer for Ross if he does, in fact, become a Met. But it does raise an interesting question: Is there anyone currently playing that, if he joined the Mets, you absolutely could not root for?

For me, the only person I can think of is Chipper Jones. I don't think I could ever wish anything good to happen to him, and if, through some sci-fi conceit, he somehow wound up on the Mets, I'd still have to boo him. This will never happen, of course, but I think that in some part of himself, Chipper would actually want to join the Mets for the simple reason that it would drive their fans insane. He is that evil.

Is there someone like that for you, someone you consider so awful that not even your favorite team's uniform can cover up his sins? If so, please post your most hated men in the comments.

I used to follow almost every Mets beat writer on Twitter. I've whittled that number down to a very manageable few. I grew to find many of them far too snarky and negative. Not that the Mets of recent vintage give cause to feel much of anything positive, but there's a big difference between a fan grumbling and a beat writer grumbling. Difficulties of the job aside, they are being paid to do something that's the exact opposite of heavy lifting, and seeing them gripe about it can angry up my blood. They're all human beings and they're allowed to feel and write whatever they want, but since those feelings and writings were only upsetting me, I felt no obligation to follow the responsible parties.

One writer I've continued to follow is Adam Rubin of ESPN. His tweets are almost exclusively news. He rarely traffics in rumor or editorializing. His tweets generally lack the negative cast of many colleagues. In general, he seemed to exemplify the unglamorous aspects of what a reporter is supposed to do.

That's why I was so blown away by a series of tweets he unleashed last night. The tweets were not only uncharacteristically emotional, but also full of mushroom-cloud details about the idiocy and incompetence the Mets displayed with regard to medical treatment of injured players, most of which had never appeared before in any forum. The tweets raised some huge questions about what gets reported when, and why.

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A while ago, we took a look at Mike Piazza's forays into the world of commercials. Of course, he is not the only MLB star to lend his face to a corporate endorsement. Baseball and commerce are both as American as apple pie, and as long as we've had professional players, we've seen them in advertisements for everything from pipe tobacco to non-pipe tobacco. Seeing as how we're in a bit of a lull on the news front (the Yankees' recent spending spree notwithstanding), I thought this would be a good time to take a look at some of my favorite commercials featuring MLBers shilling for various things. Come with me, won't you?

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The latest installment of New York magazine's Workplace Confidential series aired the grievances of an unnamed Mets employee. The piece was not nearly as juicy as that description implies, as it contained nothing much in the way of insider info. It had plenty of complaints, but most of those concerned the sorry state of the team and can be heard on WFAN during any given drive-time.

However, one paragraph stuck out to me:

You know what I think when I read about the Mets nowadays? We’ve become the Oakland A’s. We’re the Pittsburgh Pirates. Our fans deserve better than that. You can’t possibly build a dynasty when you’re cutting costs left and right. The only way to turn it around is to sell the team.

As I said, this article is indistinguishable from something you'd hear of Mike'd Up, and the attitude expressed here is one expressed by many fans. However, it's a viewpoint I can't support.

To be sure, I'm fully in favor of the Wilpons selling the team; the sooner, the better, though I have no real hope for sooner as long as their BFF Bud Selig runs MLB. I do think that the team has become something of a laughingstock, even if the Nelson Muntz act the sports media pulls whenever the Mets are mentioned is a bit hyperbolic. And it is a true shame the Mets could not hang on to Jose Reyes , for a multitude of reasons (even if I also think the contract he received from the Marlins is kind of nuts, at least years-wise).

What I object to here is the use of the word deserve. It implies that Mets fans deserve lavish spending and success, and fans of the Pirates, A's, and other smaller market teams do not.

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For a good chunk of my youth, my family did not have a VCR. We didn't have a lot of things, truth be told, but Kid Me felt the absence of a VCR more than any other material good.

My grandparents, who lived next door, did have a VCR, which I set about exploiting as often as possible. Primarily, I asked them to tape cartoon specials (Charlie Brown, Garfield, and the like) so I could keep them for posterity. But one year, my brothers and I bought a video "for" my grandfather for his birthday, largely so we could watch this video whenever we went to his house.

This video was 1986 Mets: A Year to Remember, an hour-long retrospective of the World Series champs released not long after they won the trophy. This was in the days when buying a movie on VHS (as opposed to renting it) was still a bit pricey; the video cost $30, if I remember correctly. It came in a chunky black plastic clamshell case, with an insert that depicted several key Mets (Carter, Straw, Doc, Mookie) led by a hatless Keith Hernandez. It was an oddly low-key picture to put on the cover of something that contained so much insanity.

It wasn't a completely selfish gift; my grandfather was a Mets fan, and the enthusiasm he displayed when we gave it to him wasn't feigned. However, I'm sure we watched this thing far more times than he ever did, because I don't think anyone has ever watched anything as much as we watched this video. When we eventually acquired our own VCR, we asked to borrow the video. My grandfather, being a saint, said yes. It stayed with us forever after.

I am positive that we watched this video at least once a day for two years. This is not hyperbole at all and I will swear on the holy book of your choice to this truth. I could probably recite the entire thing word for word, and I don't think it would be too difficult to do, either. If you spotted me the first line, I could run with the rest.

A Year to Remember contains none of the salacious tales of The Bad Guys Won, or even the SNY-produced 1986 retrospective. When it was made, the personal issues of Doc Gooden, Darryl Strawberry et al had yet to be exposed. So there is nothing in this video but triumph, chest thumping, and clip after clip of unmitigated awesomeness. We all know how crazy the 1986 postseason was, but what we don't quite remember is that, considering they won 108 games, the Mets managed to play a lot of regular season games that were straight-up bonkers.

Considering when it was made, the production values are above reproach. The cheesiness we associate with 1980s sports videos are not evident here. The words "musical montage" might make you cringe, but the ones put together for this video are amazingly well done. I'm particularly fond of a clinic on hotfoot application given by Roger McDowell and Howard Johnson, intercut with other wacky team footage from the 1986 season, to the tune of Emerson Lake and Palmer's "Karn Evil #9." A close second is a Tribute to Grission that prominently features Wally Backman and Lenny Dysktra sliding headfirst over and over, above Duran Duran's "Wild Boys."

This has never been shown on SNY, to the best of my knowledge, presumably because the music cited above would be too expensive to license. There is also footage from the Mets appearing on MTV, and the "Let's Go Mets Go!" video both of which are also troublesome, I assume. So I was going to digitize my own copy and hope the mailed fist of MLBAM wouldn't find me.

But it turns out, someone already went through the trouble of doing so. Thanks to this intrepid YouTube member, we can all enjoy the entire video, in a transfer that is of pretty good quality. Kudos, sir or madam. Truly, you are doing the Lord's work by making this available to the world at large.

Whether it's true or not, Mets fans like to think they have the lion's share of Closer Trauma. In the 25 years or so since major league teams decided the ninth inning is a sacred frame, all the men who've handled that inning for the Mets have driven their fans completely bonkers. I imagine many fanbases feel the same way, but most fanbases don't have ageless wonder Mariano Rivera on the other side of town to provide an unattainable ideal the back pages can point to every day.

When you look at the one-inning closers in Mets history, all of them are remembered far more for their failures than triumphs. John Franco gave fans agita for an entire decade; the only reason he didn't inspire more anxiety is because, for most of that decade, the Mets were terrible. Braden Looper pitched hurt for most of his time with the Mets, a move that could be interpreted as either selfless or just plain stupid. Billy Wagner's meltdowns and injuries contributed to the ignominious ends of three straight seasons. Frankie Rodriguez grampa-punched his way into infamy.

Even among this rogue's gallery, no Mets closer is more reviled than Armando Benitez. I've never spoken with a Mets fan who likes him, and even if I lived to be 1000, I doubt I ever would. And if you've followed this team at any point over the last decade-plus, no explanation for this POV is necessary. We all hate him. It is as much a part of a Mets fan's DNA as Gets By Buckner. If he was a film, his Rotten Tomatoes rating would be somewhere between Jack and Jill and The Room.

Hate isn't a very constructive response to anything, of course, but I do find it interesting to look back at how someone came to be so hated, and see if that level of hatred is in any way justified. I would like to do this with a number of figures in Mets history, but who better to start with than the most hated moundsman in team history?

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Melvin Mora called it quits on Thursday, officially ending his 13-season career. As a self-appointed 1999 Mets trainspotter, this news saddened me, as it means the only active major leaguers left from that team are Octavio Dotel and (technically) Jason Isringhausen. (Edgardo Alfonzo, still plugging away in the Venezuelan winter league, remains a gray area.)

Mora spent most of the 2000s with the Orioles. He had an impressive 2004 campaign when he hit 27 homers, knocked in 106 RBIs, and led the AL in OBP, all of which was good enough for 5.4 WAR and a Silver Slugger at shortstop. Comparatively, his time with the Mets was short--just 145 games over 1999 and 2000. However, he did accomplish a few things in a Met uniform that are worth remembering on this occasion. Several Mora-related images from the 1999 season are imprinted in my mind, and I'm sure the same is true of many Mets fans' minds.

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Talking about fellow AAer Jeffrey Paternostro about Mike Piazza earlier this week reminded me of the simple fact that Mike Piazza was kind of awesome at baseball. I don't think anyone would dispute this, but sometimes it's great to just reflect upon his awesomeness.

I would love to make this edition of Let's Go to the Videotape a collection of great Piazza moments on the field. But since MLBAM is highly litigious and not fond of allowing you to embed their videos, we will have to make do with Piazza's other forays into television--commercials, namely. Between his years in LA and NY, Piazza was quite the sought after spokesman, and he was seen shilling for many a consumer item over the years.

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Is it possible to consider an argument valid while believing many of its most vocal proponents are full of it? Because I feel that way when it comes to one side of the Steroid Era debate.

There are people who believe the rampant use of PEDs in the late 1990s/early 2000s tainted records and the game of baseball itself, particularly when it comes to the "sanctity" of home run records. I don't agree with that point of view, but I know a lot of fans do, and they're entitled to feel that way if they so choose. I could certainly debate the point in a gentlemanly manner with a reasonable person who held such a view.

My beef is more with sportswriters who feel that certain players should be kept out of the Hall of Fame, even those who've never tested positive for anything and weren't named in the Mitchell Report, out of fear we may taint Cooperstown with future revelations. These feelings of "guardianship" over the sport are, at best, too little too late, and at worst, disingenuous and hypocritical.

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Last week, we looked at a news report about Giants fans desperately trying to keep up with game 7 of the World Series while also attending Monday Night Football. Today, we get another on-site news report, this one coming from game 3 of the NLCS against the Astros. This feature from ABC-7 (aka Eyewitness News) sounds appalled at the idea of paying $20 for a playoff ticket, especially if it's in the uppermost reaches of Shea Stadium. The clip gives you a glimpse/reminder of just how awful those seats were, and also has a unique glimpse of Lenny Dykstra's walkoff homer in that game, which put the Mets up 2-1 in the series.

Speaking of which, here is a promo for playoffs as featured on ABC. Apart from featuring Doc Gooden in passing fashion, they also give Reggie Jackson some serious screen time. In my mind, Mr. October was almost done by '86, and the numbers seem to bear me out (18 HRs, 58 RBI, 0.1 WAR). You'd think rookie sensation Wally Joyner (Wally World!) would've been a better choice. Obviously, the ABC promo department was looking to hook in people who hadn't watched baseball in several years.

For a more prominent display of Gooden, we turn to the opening credits of NBC's Game of the Week back in the 1986 season. Doc accompanies the narrator's mention of "baseball's majesty," and he certainly did have a majestic delivery in those days. If you stick around after the open, you get a quick glimpse of a Royals-Angels game from that season, and also what it was like when MLB's game of the week was handled by a legend like Vin Scully and not joyless talking heads like Joe Buck. And no, I don't know why the game picked up in the top of the second.

I don't believe the news that the Mets have sought--and received--another loan from MLB should be all that shocking. But this, combined with the recent loss of Jose Reyes to the free spending Marlins (another team with dubious finances), set off many fans' You Gotta Be Effin' Kidding Me Alarms.

This morning, I even heard a WFAN caller say he would root for the Nationals over the Mets this coming season. While I suspect this caller is either hyperbolizing or not much of a fan (while also sounding like the kind of guy who proposes a Mike Nickeas for Justin Verlander trade), his words were indicative of the kind of anger and fear inspired by this news. It's one thing for the Mets to take a pass on a high priced free agent, home grown or not. It's another entirely to need a $40 million get-me-over from Bud Selig's Money Store.

The line thus far has been that this piddling eight-figure loan is just to tide the Mets over until their wonderful minority shares scheme takes off. That plan is going swimmingly thus far, because the Wilpons have told us it is, and anything else is none of our business, apparently. That's why it's never been explained exactly why anyone would buy shares in an institution with steadily mounting debt, whose owners will probably be forced to sell majority stake before long. Or why the Mets' best hope for a viable, well financed minority owner, David Einhorn, mysteriously dropped out this summer, never to be heard from again.

I've defended the Wilpons on this site before. Around this time last year, I still believed they weren't so much dishonest as gobsmacked, so stunned by the Madoff mess they were slow to realize the true depths of their financial situation. But at this point, I feel there is more evidence that they're simply not telling the truth about the status of their coffers. Or even worse, are possessed of a god-like level of self delusion or crippling amount of stupidity to not realize they don't have enough money to own a baseball team anymore.

So the Wilpons are either liars or morons with blinders. In either case, I'd rather they not have anything to do with my favorite team. And yet, I can't blame them entirely for this mess. In the face of financial ruin, they're simply trying to hang on to their biggest, most valued asset. Wouldn't you?

It takes two to tango in this situation: One to hold out his hand, and the other to fork over the cash. For the latter, we have to blame Bud Selig, MLB commissioner and Wilpon BFF. Fred Wilpon, after all, was instrumental in ousting Faye Vincent and installing Selig as Commissioner For Life, and for that Selig is eternally grateful. It's the main reason why Wilpon, and not his former co-owner Nelson Doubleday, is now the sole owner of the Mets.

If Wilpon was anybody else, would he be toast by now? It's impossible to say, but if the Frank McCourt affair proved anything, it's that if Selig wants someone gone, he can make them disappear with Mafia speed. Granted, McCourt did Selig a huge favor by doing colossally idiotic and unethical things like putting his family on the payroll with no-show jobs and spending lavish amounts of money on ridiculous expenses. But it was clear from day one that the main reason Selig tossed McCourt to the curb when times got tight is that he was not part of Selig's "inner circle." More than anything else, Selig simply did not want that man to own a baseball team anymore.

If the Wilpons' situation isn't exactly analogous to McCourt's--they haven't, as far as I know, attempted to hire a faith healer on the Mets' dime--it is disturbingly familiar to that of another embattled former owner, Tom Hicks. As owner of the Texas Rangers, Hicks was a comparatively good citizen, but he stretched himself too thin and took out far too many loans to cover expenses. He too sought to sell minority shares in his team, until the enormity of his cash problems became painfully obvious.

A planned sale of the team was squashed when Hicks' creditors realized the proceeds wouldn't cover his enormous debts. Selig threatened an MLB takeover of the Rangers, much in the way he'd done with the Expos. Hicks was forced to declare bankruptcy and the team was finally sold at auction to the current Peter Greenberg-Nolan Ryan ownership.

In other words, when Selig even threatens severe action, things get done. The differences between Hicks' situation and that of the Wilpons' is becoming increasingly academic. And yet, Selig has not so much as had a harsh word for the Wilpons. He continues to play along with their Potemkin village version of reality, and it does no one a bit of good, least of all the Wilpons themselves. If Bud Selig and Fred Wilpon really are good friends, the best thing Selig can do is to gently guide his friend out MLB's backdoor.

Back when I was your age, we didn't have these newfangled smartphones and pagers and whatnot. If we weren't at a game or in front of a TV and we wanted to know what was going on in the world of sports, we had to get creative! Bring a transistor radio and a discreet set of headphones! Find a pay phone and call information and hope we got a sports-mad operator! Train each other in semaphore and relay messages across a network of strategically placed crow's nests!

To see what I'm talking about, you young whippersnappers, check out this clip from an NJN broadcast from October of 1986. You see, after the Mets' epic comeback in game 6 of the World Series, Mother Nature interfered by bringing rain that delayed the decisive game 7 until October 27. That coincided with a Monday night game at the Meadowlands between the Giants and the Redskins. Watch us use elegant, gray portable TVs that weighed a mere 75 pounds to keep up with the goings on of Mets vs. Red Sox!

What I love most about this clip, other than the hairstyles, is how the entire stadium seems to be way more into the baseball game they can barely see than the football game in front of them. The crowd is so caught up in game 7 that they frequently distract both Washington and the home team. Phil Simms seems a bit annoyed by this in his postgame interview.

It is a demonstration of two important historical facts. The first is that people have always wished to be able to concentrate on two (or more) things at once; we've just finally developed the technology to make it possible. The second is that the Mets ruled New York (and New Jersey) in the 1980s. Not even a Monday night divisional rivalry game could supplant that supremacy.

You would have had to say goodbye to him sometime. You know this.

In another universe, where Fred Wilpon never meets Bernie Madoff and Jeff Loria is a humble art dealer with no sports ambitions, you might have seen him for a few more years. You might have seen him leg out more triples in a Mets uniform, steal some more bases, execute some more joyous steps in the dugout. You would have seen age catch up to him, as it catches up to all athletes, as it catches up to all of us, and you would have seen his legs slow and his bat slow and his game change, and you would see him leave for elsewhere or retire. Even in the sunniest, Panglossian best of all possible worlds, you never could have had him forever. You know this.

Even if the Mets were in decent financial and competitive shape, they'd be unwise to match the contract he's getting. The likelihood of him staying healthy for the duration of that contract, or remaining with one team over those six years, is slim. The new front office regime is imposing the kind of painful but necessary fiscal sanity it should have adopted a long time ago. You know this.

The Mets have benefited from other teams' hard times over the past decade plus. Everyone from Mike Piazza to Johan Santana came here because someone else couldn't afford them. Perhaps it's only fair, only karma, that the Mets lose one every now and then, and decrying another team "buying" a roster would be the height of hypocrisy for you. You know this.

You consider your child, who knows only one baseball player, who thinks everyone with dreads is him, who has chanted his name at the ballpark, who has said to you more than once this offseason that she misses him. But she is still very young, still learning so much about the world and her place in it. She'll get over it. You know this.

You'll get over this too, someday, though the mere thought of this hurts. There is the pain of any loss, and then there is a moment during that pain when you realize time will pass and you will move on, which is a different pain altogether. That you lose people and you think the world is going to crumble without them but life goes on.

You've done it for other people in your life, people who helped raise you, people you couldn't imagine living without, until you had to. So you'll do it for Jose Reyes. You know this.

When I posted my story on the question of Bobby Valentine: True SABR?, I promised that would be my last Bobby V post for a very long time. AA colleague Chris McShane doubted my ability to make good on this promise; an obvious choice, in retrospect, because here we are.

The reason I'm writing about Valentine yet again is because there's someone else who's been writing about him quite a bit this week, and in far less glowing terms. That would be Keith Olbermann, pundit and baseball fan, who wrote a lengthy blog post detailing exactly why he believes Valentine "was clueless" when he was managing the Mets. During Valentine's press conference on Thursday, he tweeted quite a few snide remarks about the proceedings. He even cited Murray Chass's attempted hit job on Valentine as further evidence of Valentine's unfitness for the job, or any sort of gainful employment among civilized humans.

I was seriously taken aback by the frequency and virulence of Olbermann's attacks. I've seen plenty of people question the choice of Valentine as the new Red Sox manager, but only Olbermann made it seem like a sign of the End Times at Fenway. Citing a crank like Chass--one with a long, unfair history of attacking Valentine almost as often as he hatchet-jobs Mike Piazza--indicates a certain level of desperation in trying to prove his point.

What I found most strange is that, while there are definite blemishes on Valentine's resume, Olbermann's post wasn't a laundry list of complaints. Rather, it concentrated on game 2 of the 2000 World Series, and a decision Valentine made that (to Olbermann) betrayed a fatal lack of judgment on the manager's part. He goes so far as to say it "might be the dumbest World Series managerial move since Casey Stengel completely messed up his 1960 pitching rotation."

I wasn't on the scene for game 2 as he was (he was a sideline reporter then for FOX; yes, FOX), but I've delved deeply into that season and series. As such, his post strikes me as weirdly nitpicky, devoid of context, and indicative of a larger narrative surrounding the 2000 Mets.

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Though the Red Sox have finally, officially chosen Bobby Valentine to succeed Terry Francona, the debate rages in the press over his suitability for the job. In particular, many people question where he falls on the sabermetric spectrum, and what that would mean for the Sox.

It is assumed that any Red Sox manager must be okay with acting as a mere figurehead for Bill James Thought, waving a copy of his Abstract in the air like Mao's Little Red Book. Francona seemed to have an average level of autonomy, but some continue to assume that every sabermetric-minded front office looks on its manager the way Billy Beane looked at Art Howe. (I think everyone looked at Art Howe that way, except for Fred WIlpon.)

Strangely, both sides of the aisle believe Bobby V is not on theirs. Old school types think Valentine is a bit too cerebral for their tastes and believe he will just be a mouthpiece for Boston's front office. Statheads seem uneasy about him, at best, and yet they also fear he is simply a tool of Larry Lucchino et al. (Marc Normandin at Over the Monster thinks Valentine is One of Us, though he seems to be the exception rather than the rule.)

I think this speaks more to an uneasiness about Valentine The Personality than Valentine the Manager. Much of this is his own fault, because most of the baggage he brings with him, he packed himself. His tendency to rat out players to press and his inability to keep his mouth shut are the two biggest strikes against him as a leader of men. Still, the criticisms rarely go this deep. Stories about him inevitably lead with the infamous Disguise Incident and talk about his "clashes with front offices," without giving any other context. Knowing, for instance, that many of those clashes came with Steve Phillips, and many others came with Japanese executives who were intent on undermining him, might shed a different light on his behavior.

Still, the question remains: Is Valentine now or has he ever been a sabermetrician? Looking at the evidence from his Mets days, the conclusion I come to is, not strictly, but more of one than most people seem to think.

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With signings and TRAIDS and so forth in a holding pattern, I figured now was as good a time as any to revisit a feature from last offseason: Let's Go to the Audiotape, wherein I highlight as much Mets-related video as the litigious MLBAM will allow.

At this point, it should be obvious to everyone and his mom that I am enamored of the 1999 Mets. That's why I thoroughly enjoy this clip, the opening to their first playoff game that year in the division series against Arizona. Of course, they'd essentially been playing elimination games for a week to that point, suffering a disastrous seven-game losing streak that necessitated a sweep of their last three games against the Pirates. That, and some help from the Brewers (who were playing the wild card leading Reds), bought them a play-in game in Cincinnati, which they won handily thanks to the arm of Al Leiter and the bat of Edgardo Alfonzo. They then had to hop on a plane and fly to Phoenix and face Randy Johnson.

Chris Berman alludes to some of this insanity during this clip, as does Buck Martinez, then a sideline reporter for ESPN. You'll also see former Met Ray Knight talk about how the Diamondbacks were a young franchise but not a young team (true enough). And of course, a few bloviating Bermanisms, although I don't find him nearly as annoying in this clip as I normally do. Perhaps it's the occasion. If it somehow ensured a Mets playoff appearance, I'd endure a broadcast team of Tim McCarver and a wisecracking robot dog that sounded exactly like Tim McCarver.

At the very end, you'll get a brief glimpse of John Olerud in ESPN's theme montage from 1999, in which players did an ersatz Bob Dylan by dropping cue cards that read EVERY GAME A HERO, accompanied by David Bowie's "Heroes." And not the terrible cover you often hear during sporting events these days, but the actual Bowie version. It may mark the last time ESPN got something like this right.

The Red Sox' offseason has been a turbulent one, as befits a team that committed one of the worst regular season collapses in baseball history. (Nearly as bad as...well, never mind.) Their curiously torturous managerial search is the latest example. You'd think there'd be no shortage of candidates for one of the game's most high profile (and most high paying) jobs, and yet somehow the hunt has dragged on longer than the Orioles' quest for a GM. The team's rumored top pick, the immortal Dale Sveum, joined old boss Theo Epstein in Chicago, thus throwing things into further chaos and hysteria.

The latest wrinkle has Boston GM Ben Cherington interviewing Bobby Valentine. Whether Valentine had always been a candidate or is only now being considered out of desperation is unclear. The truth is further muddied by rumors that Red Sox ownership has already made up its mind about hiring Valentine and is simply giving Cherington a thin but face-saving illusion of choice in the matter.

All of these Machiavellian schemes have overshadowed the fact that Valentine may finally have a major league job again, something he has seemingly craved since he was kicked to the curb by the Mets after the disastrous 2002 season. My own thoroughly informal polling of BoSox fans reveals virtually no enthusiasm for this possibility. At best, there is a sense of resignation or acceptance. Most have varying shades of objection, from "I'm not sure about this guy" to "HELL NO."

As an unapologetic fan of Mr. Valentine, I am here to assuage the fears of Red Sox Nation. I'm of the opinion that much of his negative reputation is just as much narrative as it is reality. He is not a man without faults, but I sincerely hope you get to embrace them.

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The latest wrinkle in the Jose Reyes Sweepstakes is the first concrete offer. Or the closest thing to one so far, anyway. Reports on Tuesday indicated that the Marlins offered Reyes a six-year, $90 million deal. The Marlins, for once, are keeping quiet and will neither confirm nor deny said reports. However, the specificity of this figure indicates it wasn't pulled out of thin air or someone's posterior. And so the natural response to this was to immediately say Reyes was a goner, that the Mets would be unlikely to match Miami's offer.

Money-wise, I could see the Mets giving Reyes more than $90 million, but I can't imagine them handing out a six-year deal. While I don't buy the notion that Reyes is not a "Sandy Alderson type player," a six-year contract for any player is definitely not a Sandy Alderson type contract. And even if this report isn't true (the Miami Herald is now reporting the Reyes offer was "slightly inflated"), it sets a ballpark for the Reyes market. If Reyes absolutely wants a six-year deal, then yes, I would say it's more likely than not that he's gone.

The caveat I would add is this: I can't wrap my head around the idea of the Marlins offering six guaranteed years for Reyes. I don't doubt that they want to make a big splash in free agency, because they've been telling us this since the regular season ended. They want to spend big to open their new stadium in style, and I expect they will. I just have a hard time believing they will hand a contract of that guaranteed length to anyone, let alone Reyes.

Why not? Because it gives them no out if things don't go according to plan. The Marlins are banking on a new stadium and big time players to finally create a fanbase that will stick around for years to come. It could very well work. It could also not work. And if it doesn't, they're on the hook for a lot of money for a long time. Especially if Reyes slows down or gets hurt midway through the contract. The Marlins spending money isn't completely antithetical to their way of doing business (see: 1997), but being on the hook for such a length of time is. That's how they gained the rep as MLB's version of Logan's Run.

If the Marlins are truly offering a "six-year contract," I would guess it would actually be some combination of heavily frontloaded, lacking a no-trade clause, and/or for no more than four actual years with options for years five and six. If that's the case, Reyes can do better, and I'm sure he knows that. Bare minimum, Reyes can get a guaranteed five-year deal from someone. A six-year deal is not completely out of the question, either, though I have to think other teams might be just as wary of such a thing as the Mets.

I also find it odd that this is where the Marlins started, money-wise. They're itching to spend money, and yet they offer Reyes a deal that averages to $15 million a year? This is significantly less than he is expected to get or rumored to want; it's already been rumored that Reyes is looking for a $100 million deal, bare minimum.

Coincidentally, $15 million is how much Hanley Ramirez is making this upcoming season. I don't want to put too much stock into stories of HanRam being not so jazzed at the thought of vacating shortstop for Reyes, because there's been enough conflicting info on that subject to muddy the waters, and in any case, who knows what another person is truly feeling anyway? (Deep.) I do know that though it's been whispered that he'd be okay with it, what he and team officials have actually said publicly on the subject thus far is ambivalent, at best. Add the fact that Ramirez is Marlins owner Jeff Loria's favorite, and you could theorize that the Marlins are worried about offending their current shortstop. Hence, a deal that puts Reyes on more or less equal footing with him.

So the big question is, Does Reyes care more about years than money, or vice versa? Impossible to say at this early stage. However, info like this is leaked for a reason; namely, because someone stands to benefit from it. Who benefits the most from these figures being in everyone's heads? You'd have to conclude it's the Reyes camp. it certainly doesn't benefit the Marlins, as it gives other teams a tangible figure to contemplate and beat, if they wish. It doesn't help the Mets for the same reason (not that they would have had this info to leak anyway), but it does give them an idea of what they have to beat to land him.

it does help Reyes reach whatever contract goal he has in mind. And my gut feeling is it was leaked more to give people of what he wants in years than money. Because the dollar figure is underwhelming; the contract length, anything but.

I say all of this full aware that 1) I may be totally wrong, and 2) it's still very early in this process. A week from now, all of this talk could be a distant memory, as Reyes talks to more teams, or receives a completely different, or is even just rumored to do any of the above. For the moment, however, it's the years mentioned that I find most intriguing--and terrifying, frankly, as a Met fan who wants Reyes to return.

I'm not sure what the Mets can do right. By that, I mean I'm not sure what they can do that won't be taken as a cue to bash them. The recent announcement of changes to CitiField's outfield dimensions--which fans and writers alike have been clamoring for for years--was met with a collective groan. The counter-charge was that the Mets should be concentrating on Jose Reyes and their other offseason issues instead, as if the two were mutually exclusive.

The latest stage of the Reyes saga is a perfect demonstration of how nothing the team does (or doesn't do) can escape unblasted. Within the last week, we've been treated to the vomit-inducing sight of Reyes in a Marlins helmet (albeit a hardhat) as he toured their new stadium (which I'm still imagining as a neon hybrid of the houses of Tony Montana and Henry Hill). We've also heard that Reyes signing with Miami is "a done deal" from various sources of dubious trustworthiness; just yesterday, a rumor from Mad Dog Radio of all places sent Twitter into a tizzy (myself included) before being debunked.

Though it seems highly unlikely that Reyes would sign this early and without meeting with any other suitors, the rumors nonetheless sent a panic through Mets fandom, as they make it seem less and less likely that Reyes will stay in Queens. Therefore, the latest beef against the Mets' front office is that, since they obviously have no intention or chance to resign Reyes, they should have dealt him before the trade deadline. Bob Klapisch tweeted this earlier this week, and Steve Popper dedicated an entire column to it on Sunday. The danger in having not done so, says Popper, is that the Marlins have a protected first round pick, so any draft pick compensation the Mets receive would be much less valuable if Reyes signs with them.

I have several problems with this point of view, the first and biggest being that circumstances made it very difficult to trade Reyes at that time. The shortstop came out of the second Subway Series game at CitiField on July 2 with a hamstring injury and soon went on the DL. He did not play again until July 19 and took quite a while to regain his form. In between his return and the July 31 trade deadline, Reyes' OBP plummeted to .286. Over that time, he stole only two bases and drove in a mere three runs. Beyond the numbers, if you remember watching him at this time, you will recall that he looked tentative, cautious, clearly afraid of aggravating the injury and ruining what was shaping up to be an MVP-caliber season.

In other words, Reyes' value would have been at its absolute nadir: a just-injured player in his walk year. Anyone who acquired would have been taking a big risk on him, especially if they traded big prospects for him and watched him depart in free agency. Therefore, from the Mets' standpoint, not trading him is probably the best course of action. If you can resign him, resign him. If you can't, the draft picks are as valuable (if not more so) than anything you could have received for him at the deadline. For the Mets, who lost years of high-round picks due to free agent signings, even a sandwich pick and a second rounder (what they would get if the Marlins sign Reyes) have value.

If I am well aware of all of this, the writers who followed this team every day throughout the season should be aware of it, too. We're not talking several years ago here. We're talking July of this year. If you needed to refresh your memory, any of these writers could have gone back to look at their own columns, all of which are still available for free online.

Not to mention, the number of writers who thought the Mets should have traded Reyes back in July was few and far between. Everyone is entitled to change his/her opinion, as long as you acknowledge your opinion has changed. None that I know of have. Popper, for instance, obliquely endorsed a Reyes return before the trade deadline.

What has changed since then? Mostly, it's the Mets' inaction on the front of Reyes and everything else. Their silence is widely interpreted as disinterest as far as Reyes is concerned. That could be true, but Sandy Alderson has shown so far that, unlike his predecessor, he'd rather not telegraph his moves or leak much to the press (if anything).

Silence could mean resignation, or it could mean nothing more than silence. The optimistic can believe that the Mets fully intend to try and resign Reyes, and that is the main reason he was never traded. The cynical can believe that this is just a ruse to keep ticket sales from cratering. The neutral can look at the calendar and note that huge deals tend to not get done this time of the year (Jonathan Papelbon notwithstanding). Even the Marlins, who are openly courting players and all but screaming TAKE OUR MONEY! have thus far signed no one. And with the new CBA yet to be hammered out, I have a feeling it will be a while before they do.

Newspapers are in the business of selling papers and fostering clicks, and they consider sober assessments of a situation as sexy as a fake Al Gore book Lisa would purchase on The Simpsons. ("I hope it's as exciting as his other book, 'Rational Thinking, Reasonable Future'!") They would much rather publish rabble-rousing second guessing to inflame the hair-trigger passions of a wounded fanbase, and it doesn't particularly matter if their proposed solution--to have traded Reyes at the deadline--is historical revisionism. But hey, that's their prerogative. Mine is to call BS on it.

We've already reached the silly stage in the Jose Reyes Offseason Sweepstakes, where the shortstop's every move is interpreted much the same way May Day Parade formations once were by Kremlinologists. The Mets front office is quiet. Reyes' camp is quiet. We know of many teams rumored to be interested in him, but have very few facts. This, plus the NBA lockout, leaves a lot of real estate to fill in the back pages. Hence, a plethora of rumor, innuendo, and what-ifs disguised as reportage, or taken as such by fans desperate for something more concrete. Oh, and it's only November 9, by the way.

Randy Medina at The Apple poked fun at this today with a post in which Reyes' choice of a turkey sandwich for lunch is open up to interpretation. Does turkey mean he'll leave or stay?! Sandwich enthusiast Ted Berg makes a guest appearance. It was all good fun, and we all had a jolly good laugh.

Amazingly, however, today's New York Post contains an article that is every bit as ridiculous as reading the sandwich leaves to divine his intentions. Kevin Kernan has dipped his toes into the waters of lyrical interpretation to see what Reyes' reggaeton song "No Hay Amigo" tells us about his next destination. Seriously.

According to Kernan, the lyrics to this song--which essentially say that friends can't compare to cold hard caysh--clearly indicate that Reyes has written off the Mets and will sign with the glitzy Marlins.

Now, could Reyes sign with the Marlins? Anything's possible. Miami has already told anyone who will listen that they have money to spend and want to spend it ASAP (which is a great way to get bang for your buck, by the way). The team has already reached out to Reyes and will meet with him today. But the latest rumor says that the Marlins want to offer Reyes a three-year deal, which says to me that even they are cautious about handing out too many years to him. If the team that's hottest to trot feels this way, you can surmise all of his other suitors have similar misgivings.

I understand the inclination to freak out at the thought of Reyes going to Miami, but just because Sandy Alderson is playing his cards close to the vest doesn't mean he's not playing. Bob Klapisch wonders why the Mets are being "so passive" so far, as if spring training is going to start tomorrow and the team's made no moves. It's November 9, Bob. The Winter Meetings haven't even happened yet. There has been exactly one offseason move so far (Melky Cabrera for Jonathan Sanchez). Maybe chill for a while, is what I'm saying.

If you believe Reyes will go to the Marlins, you can argue that. You just probably shouldn't argue it based on interpretations of a rap written nearly two years ago that, for all we know, Reyes himself didn't necessarily write.

If the major arc of Kernan's "article" that doesn't kill you, perhaps this line in it will.

Marlins ownerJeffrey Loriahas told me his new ballpark will be the best ballpark and I believe him.

"This just in: Owner says stadium owner built is amazing." Wow, what a scoop!

Here's another one that most of the sports press hasn't sniffed out yet: It's November 9. Chill the eff out, folks.

Our roundtable concludes with this question that, I suspect, most of us would rather not ponder.

Let's say Jose Reyes takes the money and runs. (Not that any of us would blame him for cashing a big check.) That obviously leaves a gaping hole at number 6 on your scorecard. Who would--well, no one could take his place, but who would player where he once did in 2012? Who would do so in the years to come? And what can we expect out of them?

The collective thoughts of Amazin' Avenue on this subject after the jump.

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For the last few weeks, the tunnels leading out of the West 4th Street station have been lined with pictures of architectural marvels, in spots usually reserved for ads. I wasn't exactly sure why, since I zipped past them on my way to work at the appropriate urban commuter speed, much too fast to get the gist of its purpose. Is it an art installation? A PSA? An awareness campaign? "Please consider architecture for your next building or edifice!" (The real, non-jokey answer is here. Long story short: It was an exhibition of recent and proposed works sponsored by AIA.)

In any case, CitiField was among the constructions featured, placed aside museums and universities and monuments. It caught my eye one morning, and I stopped long enough to take a peek. Oddly, the photo was taken from an aerial view, so the baseball diamond--not any serious architecture--was its most prominent feature. The legend below the picture called it NEW METS STADIUM, even though the picture itself was new enough to show the "CitiField" logo prominently. My guess is, the corporate name posed some legal issues for whoever put this display together.

This morning, I saw the pictures were being taken down. By the time I arrive, almost all of the posters that once hung on the tunnel walls lay on the floor, crumpled up furiously into huge balls. Workers brutally attacked the remnants with chisels, then scrubbed up the rest with sponges, all to make way for another paying customer.

However, the workers decided to save one specimen from the knife. Very carefully, they had extracted one picture from the rest and placed it lovingly on the wall between two gaping holes of ad space. The picture wasn't even wrinkled in the slightest. Someone was obviously going to take this home and put it in a place of prominence.

It was the picture of CitiField. Someone saw the home of the Mets destined for a chisel's edge and thought, "Dammit, it deserves a better fate than that." Considering how often the stadium is maligned, for one reason or another, you wouldn't think anyone felt this way. But clearly, at least one person does. I found it oddly endearing. There are worse ways to start your day.

Since the end of the regular season, I've seen several headlines along the lines of, "do the Mets need to rebuild?" I wasn't aware this was even an issue. Clearly, they've already started; a team that's not rebuilding doesn't trade away players like Carlos Beltran and Frankie Rodriguez mid-season to get back much-needed prospects. The question isn't really if the Mets should rebuild, but to what extent that rebuilding should go.

The paramount rule of any team in rebuilding mode is first, do no harm. Sandy Alderson and Co. have done a good job of this so far, and I'd expect them to continue to do so his offseason. What that will mean, essentially, is a rather unglamorous winter of minor moves to field a Not Awful team, allowing the products of their farm system some much needed ripening and not endangering future payroll flexibilty. I would also expect them to do little trading, either at the major or minor league level, because they'll need to hang onto their most prized minor leaguers , and the major leaguers of any value are too expensive to bring back a haul that would be worth the trouble.

This will be extremely disappointing to the WFAN Caller set, who have been conditioned by years under Omar Minaya and Steve Phillips to expect a big ticket acquisition for Christmas each year. Better to take our medicine now than keep telling ourselves we're not sick. However, I think it will be possible to do this and still field a competitive team while coming in under budget. And that includes the biggest question to face the Mets in many years.

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During this surprisingly exciting World Series (shows what I know), I've heard it lamented more than once that the Mets gave up on Nelson Cruz and got nothing but Jorge Velandia in return. I normally support any kind of anti-Steve Phillips prejudice you can imagine, but this seems a bit unfair. Cruz had barely played above the instructional level when the Mets traded him away, was subsequently dismissed by two more teams (Oakland and Milwaukee), and took nine years to become an everyday major leaguer, an astronomical amount of time.

It's a familiar refrain, one that pops up any time a former Met farmhand does even remotely well. Earlier this year, people moaned when ex-prospect Philip Humber took a no-hitter into the seventh against the Yankees. "All we got back for him was lousy stinking Johan Santana!" Much like the grousing over Cruz, it ignored the fact that Humber has bounced among several organizations since his days in the Mets' system.

However, if people jump the gun on judgments like this, it's because the Mets have committed some terrible prospect trades in their day. With the exception of some bright periods (late 1960s, early 1980s), the team has traditionally been awful in its ability to hang onto its talent long enough to see it ripen. Mets history is littered with the names of players who were shipped off in short-sighted swaps and became superstars elsewhere.

So let's do our own Mets-themed issue of What If? Let's say you could wave a wand or press a button, and one--and only one--terrible prospect trade in Mets history could be undone. Which one would you pick?

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