When November rolls around and all the champagne has dried up and all the ticker tape has been swept off the streets, all the championship teams share the same common denominator-They win close games. They push, and get pushed back. They slip and fall, but they get back up stronger. They refuse to lose.

We see that perserverance in one National League team. I’m sad to say it’s the Phillies, and not the Mets.

Philadelphia won’t catch the Mets in the division. I think deep down, every Met fan realizes that. They haven’t caught the Mets all year, even when it seems inevitable that they are going to. They are an imperfect team with woeful starting pitching that will undoubtedly stumble for a couple of games in the home stretch, but they fight. The Phillies have moxie, passion, tenacity.  This year’s amazin’s don’t.

This whole season has been one giant, symbolic parallel to Carlos Beltran looking at strike three in Game 7 of last year’s NLCS.  This team is far from complacent- it’s clear that everyone in that dugout wants to win bad- but for one reason or another, they haven’t come out on top in tight games all year long. That doesn’t bode well for the playoffs, where you can’t go into a weeklong slump only to rebound a week later.

It’s silly to blame Randolph for leaving Sosa in an inning too long, or the Mets bullpen for walking batters, or Jose Reyes for striking out yet again with the bases loaded. The bottom line is, these Mets have found a way to break your heart in every way imaginable this year, and although I’m not a big believer in karma, I’m starting to believe that the boys from Queens are a little more aware of their fallbility.

All I know is it is a good thing I’m moving to Bristol, because I can’t stomach another Yankee parade through the city if they stomp over the Mets in October.  I really hope I’m wrong about these guys.

I’ll try to get my act together with the posts for the pennant race.

Nevertheless, I’m finally back and writing about my favorite team. If there are any loyal readers out there, I’m sorry for the long absence- I haven’t abandoned my boys, just haven’t had much computer access recently. I’m sure everyone is still reeling from how well Brian Bannister is doing in KC and trying to decipher who is the greater of two evils - Pat Burrell or Chipper Jones, but at least the Mets applied the turnicate to their season with a sweep (SWEEP!) of the Braves at Turner Field. Maybe all this team needed was a little

pressure.

Except, that is not all they are getting. We have waited 9+ long months for this, but the golden boy is finally returning, and not a moment too soon. Say what you want to say about the poise and durability of this Mets pitching staff, but the Mets sorely need Pedro.  You know it, I know it, and Willie knows it. They need him in the dugout, in the locker room, in front of the cameras, dancing with Mr. Met in between innings, smacking Jose Reyes around a little bit, or teaching Oliver Perez a changeup. He’s the ignition that starts the Mets car, and it has been unmistakenly apparent this season with this successful but lifeless Met team.

Chris “Mad Dog” Russo has repeatedly said that all you can expect to get from Pedro is a five inning start in Game 3 of a playoff series. To back this dubious claim, he points out that Martinez has barely eclipsed 88 on the radar gun in his rehab starts. Someone should tell Russo that Billy Wagner doesn’t usually surpass 92 on the gun during Spring Training, but that isn’t really the point. Whether or not Pedro was holding something back off his fastball  during his minor-league stints (And knowing Pedro, he almost certainly was), Russo should know that Pedro is the unofficial leader of this Mets clubhouse. We saw it from his first day in the dugout wearing a Met uniform, and it will be no different this time around. He injects a shot of adrenaline into anyone who comes into contact with him, on and off the mound.

When Pedro and Duque couldn’t pitch last postseason, we saw a Mets team struggle to conjure up any kind of momentum. With Martinez on the DL this season, we’ve seen a talented but underachieving team clinging to first place since the All-Star break.

On the day Pedro returned to the dugout, a team that had just been agonizingly swept by their biggest rivals in a ballpark where they never lose suddenly walked into Atlanta and smacked around their biggest nemesis in a ballpark where they never win.

Coincidence? Maybe. Chris Russo would undoubtedly tell you so. But it makes no difference to any rational Met fan. We all know that no matter what shape he’s in, as long as Pedro can still walk out to the mound and throw, this Mets team will improve prodigiously more than any five inning, game three start would indicate. So go ahead. Vote for Pedro.

After 6 days of intense tutelage and practicing, I have a gained a tremendous amount of appreciation for what Gary Cohen and Hernandez/Darling do, but even moreso what Tom Mccarthy and Howie Rose bring to the airwaves. There is so much more responsibility in calling a radio play by play, as you don’t have the video as your background.

Sportscasting, or play-by-play, at least, is all about preparation. You have to know teams in and out- you have to know statistics, injury updates, and farm reports. You need to have nuggets on all these players, and you need to know all of this like the back of your hand. Sure, you can have notes, but if you look down and miss a pitch- well, it’s kind of hard to explain that on the radio.

It’s also takes an imagination, expression, and an unbelievable command of the English Language. A lot of the technique comes with practice, and you get used to the speed of the action. But you never know what’s going to happen at a baseball game- yet as a the radio play-by-play man, you can never find yourself at a loss for words- it’s your job to put the words in your listener’s head. And man, is it tough.

After a week of intensive sportscasting, fun homerun calls (”John Maine makes that pitch his MAIN course”) , I’ve fallen in love with the profession. I always thought I wanted to be a sportswriter, and part of me still does, but man, is it fun to be a broadcaster. I’m not talking about the fancy suits and personal assistant celebrity broadcasters either- because those jobs are few and hard to come by. In reality, its a long, hard road to the top, and not very glamorous.  If you don’t love the craft and love the lifestyle, then you weren’t cut out for the gig. Now that I found out it’s for me, the long journey begins.

That’s all for now. Sorry about the drawn out tangent, I know we should be talking Mets tonight, but despite the nice road trip, I’m going to gag if I think about Chipper Jones one more time. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen him make an out at Shea. If the man has another kid (he’s named one Shea after his success in the ballpark), he better name him “Citi.” It’s the only way the man can redeem himself in my book.

I’ll get back to you guys tomorrow, and maybe we’ll talk playoff rotation- or is it too soon?

1. There’s good and bad in everyone, and everything - Harry is the imperfect protaganist. He isn’t the best or the brightest student at Hogwarts, he was often socially awkward, and he had to learn to trust the ones he loved most, and not push them away. The series is not about “Harry the hero,” but about an average boy who grows into a hero by making the right decisions. Often, Harry failed to see the good in people, and it almost led to his demise. Potter thought his father was inherently good, and Snape inherently evil - it didn’t quite work out that way. As a lifelong Met fan, I’ve come to the realization that I have no right to hate the Yankees, the Braves, or even Roger Clemens. Sure, all Mets fans are sick of the Yankees always stealing the spotlight, just like Ron was sick of Harry. Rivalries will always develop in sports, and it’s all in good fun. But the important thing to remember is that we aren’t fighting wars here. When the final battle ensued at their Hogwarts school, most wizards united against and overcame the evil dark lord, who failed to see that absolute power was not more desireable than the greater good. Though I love baseball as much as anyone, and I’m dying to see the Mets win a World Series, I refuse to let it lead to developing mortal enemies. So the next time you hear a “Yankees S-ck” chant at Shea, just remember there are more important battles to fight than starting wars over personal allegiances.
2. Have some faith in you leader- Metsblog.com sells a t-shirt that reads “In Omar We Trust.” I think we’d all be wise to follow the advice of the shirt. One of Harry’s personal anguishes in book seven was that he almost lost faith in the deceased Professor Dumbledore’s character and leadership. Harry often wondered whether Dumbledore was as wise and sincere as he previously thought him to be, and grew increasingly frustrated when he had to piece together Dumbledore’s plan to defeat the dark lord. We should reach the same conclusion that Harry does, and show the same patience and loyalty that Omar Minaya deserves. He has made good trade after good trade. He has robbed teams of untapped talent (Oliver Perez for example) and pushed all of the buttons at precisely the right time. As fans on our couch, we often think we know it all. The truth is, there are a lot of factors in personnel decisions that as fans, we never thought to consider. If Minaya can’t land a front-line starter by the end of July, there just might not be one out there. Everyone loves a juicy deadline trade, but sometimes the best ones are the ones you don’t make. With Milledge starting to blossom, and Alou, who can fall out of his bed in the morning and hit a line drive, on his way back, there’s plenty of offense to go around. Let’s trust in Omar, and Willie too. They have the team’s interests at heart.
3. Enjoy Shea while it lasts- I think most of us take a look over the Centerfield wall at the new CitiField and beam with excitement, as well we should. It is going to be a beautiful modern ballpark. Let’s face it, Shea’s a dump. A severly outdated Stadium that probably wore out its welcome a decade ago. But Shea is still the park we all grew up in, where all of us became Met fans. Everyone has memories at Shea, and I suspect we will all miss the suprising hospitality and cheerful nostalgia that the tacky blue monstrosity brings us every time we go through the turnstile. It was only when Harry was leaving Hogwarts did he most appreciate the school that was his only home. Shea has been our only home as Mets fans, and time is running out. Cherish it.
4. Age is overated- Harry Potter has taught us that young people can do incredible things, and can mature right before your very eyes when afforded some responsibility. The Mets are young at some positions, and aging at others, but I think we’ve learned from Dumbledore’s incredible strength and Harry’s incredible courage that as baseball fans, we shouldn’t worry so much about age. After last year, I doubt anyone will be happy with anything less than a World Series appearance, so maybe now is not the time to worry about the future. The Mets have enough bats to carry them once Beltran and Delgado start to hit again, and arguably have the best starting rotation in the National League. This team has enough talent to win it all. We’ll worry about ages in the off-season. In the meantime, let’s trust Gotay and Milledge, and see what they can do for us.

It’s been a fantastic road trip, and with the Mets consistently hitting, I think the club will begin to pull away from the pack in the NL East. Hopefully Glavine will get his 299th tonight, so we can all stop hearing about it. I expect an easy and convincing sweep over the sinking pirate ship.

But something has got to give.

Willie should be admired for his unwavering loyalty, his incredible sense of faith in his veterans, his ability to not let public opinion phase him, no matter how strong or how vicious the talk radio airwives have been.

But enough is enough.

At some point, Randolph has to realize that the Mets have a real problem here. The Met’s horrid hitting with runners in scoring position has become a mental epidemic, and while staying the course can work in some instances, it is clear this problem isn’t going away.

the first question that needs to be asked is why Jose Valentin is still put in the lineup, and Ruben Gotay is not getting four at bats every game. Sure, Valentin fooled me last year, when he suddenly went from barely being able to swing the bat to suddenly scoring homeruns out Shea. The more I see Valentin, the more I’m starting to think it was a fluke. Gotay may not prove to be an offensive juggernaut in the long run, but he is lightyears ahead of Valentin, who at the moment, is an automatic out.

When you are having trouble producting runs, you have to keep going to your hot bats. It’s mind-boggling that Randolph has let blind -loyalty get in the way of winning. Though I respect Willie’s opinion, at some point you have to get out of your own way. After all, its been widely rumored that the Rick Down firing and Franco demotion had Omar written all over it.

Willie can’t be blamed for the woes of Beltran, Delgado, and Lo Doca- nobody believes that. But it’s way too long for a third of your lineup (and most of the Met’s offensive power) to be in a prolonged slump.

Delgado and Beltran have always roller-coaster rides at the plate- they can look clueless for a month, and then carry teams on their back for two weeks. However, time has run out. The Braves aren’t going away, and the Met’s schedule is only getting harder. The Mets simply can’t keep putting this much pressure on their pitching staff.

This kind of lack of run production frustrates the starters, humbles the bullpen, and taxes the entire staff as a whole. You have to give your staff some blowout victories, where starters can throw strikes and roll outs, and the bullpen can regain some momentum. Willie is not the problem, obviously- but he has to do more to fix it. Isn’t that what a baseball manager is paid to do?
A baseball manager just simply can’t be passive in the midst of an underachieving ballclub. You can count on your hand the number of games a manager wins and loses each year because of in-game decisions. The truth is, a manager is only worth as much as he can get his team to play for him. Whether Willie has to bench some players, jumble the lineup, or start a bunch of rookies, as a manager he has to do something to change the thought process and the vibe of the team, or else you are doing little more than collection a paycheck.

There is a scene in Bull Durham where, Kevin Costner, who plays the part of Crash Davis, is asked by his frustrated minor-league manager for advice on how to break the team’s slump. “Yell at them,” Crash says.

While the manager in the dugout of those guys in the Bronx has never been a great baseball strategist, he has survived longer than any other Yankee manager because he has found a way to get his men to play for him, no matter how much controversy or distraction infiltrated the locker room.

Maybe it’s time Willie took a lesson from his mentor.

Luckily, it didn’t matter on Thursday, as the Mets, perhaps because of the Red’s mere futility, won their first game after the All-Star break, holding onto a 3-2 lead despite only scoring one run after back-to-back home runs from Jose Reyes and Ruben Gotay led off the 1st inning with back-to-back home runs.

In it’s first game since firing hitting coach Rick Downs, hiring Rickey Henderson and replacing aging bench player Julio Franco with young outfielder Lastings Milledge, the Mets were looking to shake up it’s woefully inconsistent offense. It looked like it worked, as Reyes and Gotay drove hanging curveballs from Bronson Arroyo over the right field wall.

After the dramatic offensive explosion, however, the Mets could muster only 6 hits and one run, and needed every bit of Orlando Hernandez and the Mets bullpen to secure a victory. Hernandez earned his fifth victory of the season, going six innings and allowing just two runs on three hits.

The Mets were able to hold off a Reds threat in the ninth inning, as Brandon Phillips got caught in a rundown after he tried to reach third base on a routine ground ball to Jose Reyes. Phillips had led off the inning with a single off of Billy Wagner.

So far, the addition of Milledge to the roster seems to be paying off, as he is a much needed reinforcement to the Mets wounded outfield. A seemingly focused Milledge hit the ball hard in his first two at-bats and scored the winning run in the fifth with a terrific hook slide into home plate to avoid the tag from Red’s catcher David Ross. If Milledge can jump on the early count fastballs he will undoubtedly see and avoid any off the field distractions, he could finally live up to his ceiling-less potential.

While Franco’s presence in the clubhouse will be missed, baseball roster spots are always a numbers game, and the Met’s needed more legitimate threats off the bench. Bringing up Milledge and Sandy Alomar Jr. will give Willie Randolph much-needed flexibility in the late innings, especially since Ramon Castro has proven to the Met’s most consistent bench player.

Beltran went 1 for 4 on that chilly October October night, and scored the only Met run in that devastating defeat. But  the ducks on pond he left on base in the ninth is what he’ll be remembered for.  More than the three homeruns he hit that series, the cannon throw that nailed Eckstein at the plate and saved Game 1, his .396 average and 11 homeruns in the playoffs, and his two Met walk-off home runs.

As a team, the Mets have been putrid with runners in scoring position and two outs, undoubtedly the most clutch opportunity in a baseball game. Jose Reyes is hitting .211 in those situations. David Wright .175, Paul Lo Duca .171., Carlos Delgado .194 Yet these are our heroes. We don their jerseys, join their fan club websites, and bow down to their bobbleheads. Yet Carlos Beltran has never been revered, or even appreciated. This is the man who was booed before he even took a swing in 2006, the guy who is fervently trashed on talk radio the entire offseason. The player who almost turned his back on the city after they clearly showed no disdain for turning their back on him.

It was Beltran who made the catch on Saturday, charging up a hill he spent countless hours practicing on and making a diving catch with his back to home plate in order to save the game for the Mets. It was Beltran who got the game-winning single in the bottom the seventeenth that ended the excruciating stalemate and sealed a much-needed Mets victory just hours before the All-Star break. Sure, the game as critical as Game 7, and the moment not as critical as Chavez’ leaping grab, but the heroism was equivocal.

The Mets offense has been in many collective slumps this year, and Beltran has not been immune from the sickness. It was the Met offense, collectively, that cost them a World Series title last year, and a bigger lead in the National League East this year. Meanwhile, Mets fans continue to thank their lucky stars for Jose Reyes and David Wright, but vow eternal frustration with their centerfielder. 

Fans will say he is overpaid because he took the contract that was offered to him, that he doesn’t care because he runs with a gentle, graceful gait, and hits with a steady disposition. They refuse to embrace him because he shies away from the locker room microphone, and say he is soft for complaining about soreness after he runs into a wall to make another game saving catch.

 Reyes and Wright will continute to be adorned by the media, and Beltran will be content with blending in, breaking out of slumps,  gracefully diving up hills and running into walls, dominating All-Star games, and proving, as he does by the end of every season, that he is the best player on the field, offensively and defensively- whether or not the court of public opinion ever sides in his favor.

When Carlos Beltran starts his third consecutive All-Star game this year, he’ll once again be gracefully representing the city that so often yearns to chastise him.

One thing seems certain, however. The Jason Vargas experiment may be all but over.

You have to assume Mike Pelfrey will get one more start when injured starter Jorge Sosa’s spot in the rotation comes up on Friday, and he better make the most of it. Pelfrey has had six major league starts this season alone, and while he has shown signs of promise, it’s time for him to show ample improvement.

The former first round pick has had ample time to get his feet wet in the Major Leagues. With the trade deadline looming closer and closer and the return of Pedro Martinez at least a month away, the Mets need Pelfrey to, if nothing else, keep them in the ballgame every once in awhile and keep his own trade value from plummeting any further. Once a seemingly sure thing, Pelfrey is looking more and more like the long lost fourth member of Generation K (Where have you gone, Paul Wilson?).

As bad as the starting pitching has been, the offense may be worse. Is it too much to ask for a comeback victory every once in awhile? Or even a late inning, clutch hit? I don’t know what the numbers are, but nobody in the lineup is consistent with runners in scoring position. One way or another, this needs to be addressed, and I don’t think the return of Moises Alou is the answer.

Outfielder Marlon Anderson was released by the Dodgers today, and this seems like a no-brainer for Omar Minaya. Anderson was terrific off the bench for the Mets in 2005, is a substantial improvement as a left hand bat  off the bench over Ricky Ledee. Although he’s been hurt, he’s almost 13 years younger than Franco…

Let’s hope the Mets can turn things around in field formally known as Enron. Houston is fading fast, and maybe a sweep on the road heading into the All-Star break will be enough to persuade Astros GM Tim Purpura to begin his inevitable firesale by sending Roy Oswalt to Queens.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m just glad no Mets pitcher will have to stare down Kaz Matsui at the plate tonight… I need some advil.