Friday, June 13, 2008

THE TOP 10 THINGS I WANT THE METS TO DO *RIGHT NOW* (THAT THEY NEVER WILL).

From the home office in beautiful downtown Greenpoint, Brooklyn, I bring you THE TOP TEN THINGS I WANT THE METS TO DO RIGHT NOW (THAT THEY NEVER WILL).

10. Stop speaking in those useless baseball cliches. Everyone. I don’t want to hear anything about “helping the team” or “it’s disappointing” or “best effort,” whether it’s Willie or a player. Plain speaking will serve. Please look to the Tigers or the Mariners for a way of talking to fans about HOW MUCH THE TEAM SUCKS without candy-coating it. The line needs to be “It’s unacceptable,” and spin control stories about closed-door players-only meetings are insulting our intelligence.

9. Make EVERY PLAYER available after EVERY GAME. Hire translators for the players who are more comfortable expressing themselves in Spanish and have them readily available (and not Sandy Alomar).  THERE ARE NO MORE EXCUSES.

8. Johan Santana gives interviews to anyone who wants one about he feels about the team’s collapse. As others have pointed out, he has been painfully absent. He’s gotta be mighty pissed right about now, and it’s about time he got to express that and we have the right to hear it.

7. GIVE DAVID WRIGHT A GODDAMNED DAY OFF. The kid is exhausted.

6. Hold an after-game press conference with Omar and televise it. Not a formal, stand-behind-the-podium thing in the Diamond Club, with Jay Horowitz hovering in the background. Informal and open. His in-game appearance with Ron and Gary this week was laughable and the best example of the Mets’ deplorable PR and spin control.

5. Start talking to the fans NOW about what is going to happen with relocation, ticket plans, partial plans, Citi Field and ticket pricing for next year. NOW. [More on this next week.]

4. Stop giving every Shea Countdown spot to a corporate sponsor. What about the fans who have held their season tickets the longest?  What about letting fans buy the privilege for a donation to charity? If you don’t have someone on the Mets’ staff who can come up with daily representatives who are worth the time to do the spot, then I have some ideas about who could.

3. Speaking of donations to charity, I do not want to get one more press release about “Teammates in the Community”. Right now, they should be focusing on baseball. If you want to send teammates into the community, how about Moises Alou? Surely he won’t break his tibia while reading to third graders. This would also be a good use for Raul Casanova, Fernando Tatis, or any other rummage sale leftover Omar decides to pick up next week.

2. Bring back Banner Day or some tradition that honors the fans showing up and buying tickets, and lets people on the field before you knock Shea down.

AND THE NUMBER ONE THING I WANT THE METS TO DO RIGHT NOW (THAT THEY NEVER WILL):

1. STOP MAKING EXCUSES, WIN SOME GAMES AND STOP BEING OVERPAID, OVER-PRIVILEGED MILLIONAIRES. I don’t care how difficult Marty Noble says this game is. You know who has a difficult job? A kindergarten teacher. A brain surgeon. A garbage collector. An airplane pilot. The guys that run the 24-hour bodega on our corner in 12 hour shifts. Shall I go on? Those people do not get paid anywhere NEAR what a rookie makes his first year in the major leagues, and yet if they offered the kind of performance that we’ve had to witness on a daily basis, they would no longer have jobs. We’re in a recession. Gas is $4.whatever, and you want us out in the ballpark clapping and not booing, spending our discretionary income on parking and hot dogs and beer and souvenirs, and yet we’re going to be told that we have no right to boo because we don’t understand how HARD it is to PLAY baseball?  Give me an ever lovin’ break.

Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?