Remembering the September to Dismember, Desolation and Other Schadenfreude

Top Ten Potential Mets 2008 Slogans

10. "New York Mets: Best Team on Paper"
9. "Hey, We Fired the Groundskeeper"
8. "We Got Us Some Pitching"
7. "Come to Shea Where Kaz Matsui Got His Start"
6. "The Mets: Our Position Players are Drug-Free"
5. "Come Dance with the Real Stars!"
4. "Wait til you see NEXT season's ticket prices!"
3. "Meaningful Games are Back!"
2. "No Way That'll Happen Again"
1. "F*@?! Hanley Ramirez too!"

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Mets braintrust gathers to discuss off-season strategy

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As a soon-to-be washed up comedian keeps telling me, there's only one October. For me, it's one October too many. I guess I could have enjoyed the spectacle-- the Phils quickly being revealed as the pretenders they are, and perhaps the Yanks $200 million payroll buying them three postseason games (if my math is right, that's somewhere around $66.6 million a game! 666!)--but I can't bring myself to watch "Mr. October" Kaz Matsui lead his new team to the World Series. I know what you're thinking: the guy was Eli Marrero.

Kaz Matsui.

No, I can't let the Metless so-called post-season distract me from trying to fathom how such a promising team could turn us from braggarts to bag-heads in such a short time. I am in no mood to joke about the choke. But I'm only barely up to the challenge of blogging a team that didn't care enough to compete, so I don't have them, those answers you wanted. I have only questions, such as, will David Wright and Jose Reyes ever be our Stephen Drew or Chris Young?

This off-season I can, however, offer you some bitter recriminations followed by some cynical but suggestive bitter recriminations, and then finally as spring nears, some more hopeful bitter recriminations. Banging our heads against the drawing board won't do anyone any good but what else is there to do? If the results of the brutal purge we call the best-of-three playoff series are any indication, it looks like the Mets invested in the wrong elderly vets, the wrong Hernandez, etc. I even wonder if the Mets have the wrong altitude; the cRockies have taken the glass slipper off the Philme's and used it to beat the living heck out of them, in a manner reminiscent of the Philadelphia closer's marital style.

For a guy who previously had difficulty with the difference between schadenfreude and farfennugen , I have become awfully bitter in the last month. For example, I now revel at the following thought:

At least the MLB now must contemplate a Cleveland-Colorado World Series where they lose an amount of money equal or greater to the ill-gotten gains from a season of GAUGING and FLEECING baseball fans with their "Extra Innings" and MLB.TV packages (Insert maniacal laughter here).

So although I still pull for the Sawx and would have liked to see the Cubbies go all the way, I must admit, I am now rooting for the "If-a-World-Series-Happened-and-no one-watched-it" eventuality to come to pass. As long as the Yankees lose in devastating fashion, A-Rod gets 45 mil for 100 years from the Dodgers or something, and Joe Torre applies for Willie's bench coach position, I'll be vaguely satisfied.

But there is also a crappy lining to this cloud. Although it might not cost a single member of the responsible party their jobs (two cheers for accountability!), the Mets September collapsathon certainly has already resulted in speculation of the most untethered (sign A-rod) and sometimes noxious (sign Andruw Jones) kind. It's open season on nut job cures for the Mets ills, and it will last all winter. Sigh.

Some misguided souls have even recommended the Mets sign smirking, bloated showboat ex-Br*ve Jones to play alongside Carlos Beltran in one capacity or another. This is apparently because the Mets need another self-satisfied hot dog, an additional massive head wound for their precious gold glove CF, or the rights to another player the evil masterminds in Atlanta discarded at precisely the right moment. That would be crazier than George Steinbrenner.

So far the news from the real world is rosy, but unsurprising. Atlanta Agent Tom Glavine has declined his option and now either will "come in from the cold" or retire. It was no surprise; the likeliness that Toothless would decline the option was equal to the likeliness he would decline as a pitcher when the Mets made the mistake of signing him in the first place. Despite all his strangely detached, unaccountable post-season talk, he knows he is chump #1. Lack of pride was never the issue here.

So while the other blogs out there spin out every possible trade or rebuilding scenario, bracing themselves for the hot stove following the "September to Dismember," I am feeling more contemplative, philosophical even. If his early mumblings are to be trusted, Omar doesn't plan to run around screaming and crying to fix what's broken; there may be little "dismembering" after all. But show me a playoff team without quality, young, lights-out pitching, and I'll show you an Omar and Willie on the Flushing scrap heap, with all the Doc and Darryls, Generation Ks, and Escobars. Tragedies, all with bright future's that never quite panned out.