Huh?

This Afternoon's Lineup (minus Reyes)

1. Pagan
2. Castillo
3. Wright
4. Beltran
5. Delgado
6. Church
7. Easley
8. Schneider
9. Santana

Soup on Mets Weekly

soupsoup:

Catch yours truly on Mets Weekly at noon today on SNY, thats 625 on DirectTV, check SNY.tv for your local SNY channel.

 Go, Soup!

Baseball & Me, the Free-Agent Fan

peterwknox:

I was born into a Soccer family. There are approximately 68 years of soccer playing amongst my father, brother, and me. If you throw in watching, following, and experiencing soccer, it’d stand for the collective years of our lives. My mom was the quintessential soccer mom, with the car pool of kids in the minivan on their way to practice with water bottles and orange slices. When Dad was the coach, it was just soccer, all the time. And we loved it.

Needless to say, there wasn’t much love/recognition of baseball growing up. I vaguely recall being a part of the Pittsburgh Pirate’s “Knot Hole Gang” and going with the family to Reading Phillies minor league group events, but the experience was focused on the activity of attending a game. Rarely was the tv ever tuned to that night’s Phillies game.

I can remember Schilling, Dykstra, and Krut from my schooling years, but beyond that, I was blissfully unaware of any baseball happening. As I aged, fell in love with football, I began to appreciate baseball, but not understand or follow it. It had a hard time holding my attention and the 162 games with random start times on random days was too much to handle for an adolescent with part time jobs, schoolwork, sports, and friends that weren’t into baseball either.

College, was in Maryland, and while I could suddenly appreciate watching a baseball game with a cooler and a bag of seeds, I wasn’t dumb enough to get roped into the Orioles or the returning Nationals, much less even inspired enough to try to watch a Phillies game. However, I did start paying attention to the playoffs and was completely aware of the inherent magic in Boston’s comeback over the Yankees to go on and win the series in 2004. I might not have been a fan of any particular team, having never followed one in any capacity, but I knew I wasn’t a Yankees fan.

[It should be noted, here, that it was during HS and college that my support for the Philadelphia Eagles solidified into a lifelong dedication to being a die-hard fan. I LOVE football and I LOVE the Eagles. There’s no parsing that bond I have with those men in green during those 16 all-important, all-encompassing games each fall. I’ve given hundreds of dollars and years of my life to caring for, thinking about, cheering on, and giving back to my tragic team. But this post isn’t about football, it’s about baseball.]

Flash forward to graduation and my move to New York. I entered into a regular 9-5 and suddenly found myself in a city that breathed baseball for nine months out of every year. A city where I could drink before, during, and after a game, and take a ½ hour train ride home high off the stadium energy only to do it all over again the next day. A world without homework where I could watch Baseball Tonight, check ESPN regularly, and read coverage in the free dailies. I’d sit at home with my roommate, an avid baseball fan, who would explain the nuances and strategies of the game I had overlooked for all these years. Finally I had the time and interest to be a baseball fan.

Now there are people who say that since I came from Philadelphia I must support the Phillies. There would be no better way to kill a blossoming interest in baseball than to decide to follow a team from another city. There would be no games on tv, no coverage in the papers, no one to watch games with, no chance to stop by the stadium on a nice day, and no incentive whatsoever to maintain such forced fandom! It would kill my interest before it took hold.

The summer of 2006, I weighed my options coming to the season late. I knew I couldn’t sign up with the Yankees; that felt like something that you either had to be born into (like privileged spoiled kids), or lack enough self-esteem that you’d jump onto the bandwagon of the winningist team in baseball. I was neither, and frankly couldn’t subscribe to the Yankee philosophy of big money conformism. The Mets, on the other hand, seemed to represent my borough of choice, Queens, and came off as just good guys. The kind of guys I’d like to get a slice and a beer with on a Thursday night. The happy go lucky (occasionally loveable losers) upbeat boys in blue and orange and black and white. At this point I had been to both Yankee Stadium and Shea and the choice was clear. In March of 2007, prior to Spring Training, I bought a Mets hat and declared myself a fan.

(a picture I took last fall)

Yes, this is only my second season as a Mets fan, but it’s something I’m working to earn, like that ‘New Yorker’ label. There will be those that say if you weren’t born here, if you weren’t born into it, then you can never be it. I can’t apologize for where my parents decided to raise me, and I wouldn’t change my childhood for anything, but they left the baseball fan slot wide open for me, and I’ve been able to chose, as an adult, where I want to live and for whom I want to cheer. And watching last night’s game, in a bar, there was never one moment when I felt remorse for those in my hometown frustrated by the final call at home plate. I was too happy celebrating already.

Stat Corner: Adam Eaton, Met-Killer