More Met Thoughts

Even Mr. Met is ashamed to be seen with this team

From listening to Mike and the Mad Dog on the way to drop off dry cleaning:

1. The Mets may not be the toast of New York, but they are the talk of the town - with the Yankees presently in the toilet, the call-in shows are dominated by Mets talk these days. This will probably ebb as the Yanks work their way back into the division race - they're presently in the mix for the Wild Card (Seattle, Cleveland, and Detroit are not exactly covering themselves in glory while no one's sure if Tampa Bay's for real) and the Red Sox, putative best team in baseball, have not run away with the A.L. East yet. For now, though, the Met fan is exhibiting the proper mixture of paranoia, frustration, and, yes, hope, to keep him on the airwaves for weeks at a time. The Yankee fan is either despairing, or biding his time.
2. It occurs to me that Willie's race theory (discounted by Mike and Chris) and the Met fan's rejection of Willie because of past Yankee ties (endorsed by same) are both placeholders for the same phenomenon - i.e. Willie's unpopularity tracking with the team's performance on the field. Willie doesn't want to believe that the Met fan doesn't like him because the team is listless, and the fan prefers to couch his distaste in something more fixed than simple wins and losses because it makes him seem more discerning and less fickle. Anyway, it's worth noting that though Randolph featured on those World Series-winning Yankee teams of the late '70s and as Joe Torre's third base coach, he grew up a Met fan in Brownsville and wrapped up his playing career with the team in the early '90s.
3. The Met fan seems less interested in Willie's race comments than in the fact that he called them out at all. An ongoing theme in 2008 is the relationship of the fans to the team - booing on Opening Day, booing Scott Schoeneweis and Aaron Heilman, booing Santana in his first Shea start (the proportion of booers is still a matter of dispute), booing Carlos Delgado and then ripping him for his refusal to take a curtain call, et cetera, et cetera. Personally, I consider booing one's own team to be counterproductive; it certainly doesn't help the team's morale, does not encourage the players to do better or try harder - instead they end up pressing, and might even hurt the team's ability to land free agents - all things being equal, why would you want to play for fans that don't appreciate you? However, the fan is king: it's his dime (or $100 bucks) that pays those exorbitant salaries, and as a result, he feels that he has a right to expect the team to put the best possible product on the field. No one likes to be booed, sure, but it's extraordinarily counterproductive to get into it with the fans; as a fan who doesn't boo, I don't like being painted with the same brush as those who do, and what's more, I don't want to hear it from somebody who's pocketing $16 million this year and batting .222 with an equally anemic .303 OBP. You know what? You don't like being booed, then earn your fucking money, you ponce.