The blog for Mets fans who can read

The title of this post is a spoof on the motto of the blog that makes the rest of us look like the amateurs we are, that perennial champion of Mets blogging world, Faith and Fear: "The blog for Mets fans who like to read." If blogging has taught me anything, it's the value of setting one's sights low. The title is also meant to signal a literary mood, an interest in quality commentary that has come over me. Don't worry it'll pass soon.

Faith and Fear's recent plug of Mets by the Numbers' interview series with crusty Mets fixture, fan abuser, and journalist Marty Noble has got me in the plugging mood. Go read it, all three parts, you won't be sorry. Here are some gems:

On where the best quotes came from:

Right field? Bonilla never did anything but lie. Burnitz was no good. Straw was Straw. He could be manipulative. Rusty was very condescending when I covered him. Now we’re good friends but then, he was a difficult. Shawn Green is actually quote good.

Relief? Franco was tough. Neil was loose-lipped. Tug was spectacular every day. Billy is good when he pitches like shit. But Tug was amazing.

On the Mets organizational planning:

The Mets always say they want a guy who knows how to pitch, but as soon as the Mets get one they trade him for Ambiorix Burgos. Bannister was going to be a good fit. But Omar thinks of guys who can throw a ball through a wall.

Frank Cashen could open a drawer, take out a piece of paper and show you who would be on the team in three years. I don’t think Omar could tell you who’s going to be on the team in April. They don’t have anything down below. They lost Flores last year knowing they didn’t want to have LoDuca around. They have nobody to be a first baseman and they won’t want to pay Delgado after this year. What happens if Pedro leaves and there’s a good chance he will? I’m not big on what he does. [imfm ed. note: who?]

On who runs the Mets now:

Jeff. He’s OK. You don’t have to be his friend, but you wouldn’t want him as your enemy. He’s doing the right thing. He’s trying to make the team good. And they’re not cheap.

On numbers, lockers and injustice:

How could they give Steve Traschel Tom Seaver’s locker? How could they give Luis Lopez Keith Hernandez’ number? I’m not saying that’s important to the team but some of it is important to the fans. It has zero importance to some of the players. They ask, ‘Who cares about that? Why’d you write that?’ But the readers care.

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Finally, in the "literary spirit," or until I can come up with words of my own (spring games don't do it for me) cherish this lovely all purpose sportsfan quote, courtesy of mailbagman Bill Simmons:

Nobody has ever summed up being a sports fan better than the New Yorker's Roger Angell in his piece "Agincourt and After," in this passage about Carlton Fisk's famous home run in the 1975 World Series:

It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitive as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look -- I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring -- caring deeply and passionately, really caring -- which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete -- the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball -- seems a small price to pay for such a gift.