Steve Serby
You are a Mets fan, and this is killing you.
Already you found yourself at wit's end before last night's rainout against the Rockies, living in fear of another year of living hell watching a baseball team everyone finds Amusin' rather than Amazin'.
Yes, you have a gung-ho new manager and an established new general manager, but you do not have Johan Santana, and you do not have a major-league bullpen, and 10 games into the new season, you are wondering exactly when you will be able to have hope again inside Yankeetown.
You have an ownership under siege, compliments of Bernie Madoff, and a growing dread, or maybe sorrow, that the best years of your homegrown stars, David Wright and Jose Reyes, will yet be wasted or, worse, played out in some other uniform.
AP
WHIFFED AND MIFFED: Mets catcher Josh Thole wears a look of disgust on Monday night after striking out during the Amazin's 7-6 loss to the Rockies.
No one in their right mind begins pushing that panic button 10 games into a season, but you are a Mets fan, which means you cannot possibly be in your right mind.
Once upon a time, before most of you were born, the birth of Casey Stengel's Amazin's helped dull the pain of the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn for everyone who mourned the demolition of Ebbets Field. Those early Mets lost and they lost and they lost and no one cared.
They were loveable losers, and New York had a National League team again.
But you have learned the hard way lately that there is quite a difference between loveable losers, and losers.
Once upon a time, you had Dwight Gooden doctoring Ks for you and Darryl Strawberry belting moonshots and Mex Hernandez and Kid Carter and Lenny Nails and Wally Backman and Ray Knight, and there was no way that rollicking, bullying 1986 team was only going to bring one championship home to you.
And yet here you are, wondering if the baseball gods have decreed 24 years and counting of penance from you for Mookie's Game 6 roller through Buckner's legs.
You've endured more than your share, not nearly as much as the Cubs fan, or the Knicks fan, even if the drought seems every bit as long to you.
And no wonder ... The Best Team Money Can Buy ... Bobby Bonilla trying to knock the smile off your face and showing you The Bronx ... Gregg Jefferies ... Kevin McReynolds ... Al Harazin, Jim Duquette, Joe McIlvaine, Steve Phillips, Omar Minaya ... Bud Harrelson, Jeff Torborg, Dallas Green, Willie Randolph, Jerry Manuel ... Bobby Valentine versus Phillips ... Armando Benitez ... Scott Kazmir ... Roger Clemens versus Mike Piazza ... Tony Bernazard versus the world ... Ollie Perez ...
As much as you wanted Backman to manage your team, it was becoming clear to you why maybe it's a good thing that this wasn't his first rodeo. Because you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
That's assuming you even have horses. It is arguably Terry Collins' most admirable trait that he will fight to the death the notion that he is in line to be the sacrificial lamb over the next two seasons while Sandy Alderson looks to rebuild, retool, refurbish, whatever you'd like to call it.
Collins' grim task: convincing his Boys of Summer that they can dare believe with no ace at the front of the pitching deck and a bevy of jokers in the bullpen.
It will help when Jason Bay returns. But Bay can't pitch you into the seventh inning. Bay can't get you to Francisco Rodriguez. Right now no one can. Which means that it wouldn't matter whether Collins or Gil Hodges or Davey Johnson was your manager.
You watched in horror when the Phillies added Cliff Lee in the offseason. You added Chris Young and Chris Capuano. And Irving Pickard.
Of course you know it's early. You also know that, lately, it gets late early around here. You deserve a baseball season, played by a baseball team that never stops trying to make you proud again.
You deserve more than a midseason fire sale mandated by a cash-strapped franchise kneecapped by Madoff. You deserve to be singing "Let's Go
Mets" in a heated September to remember.
Yankee fans have Derek Jeter closing in on 3,000 hits; Alex Rodriguez closing in on Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds; their team chasing its 28th World Series championship, and 4 million at the turnstiles at Yankee Stadium.
You are a Mets fan.
Right now you wonder: What do I have?
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