I have come to terms with The Collapse Part Deux surprisingly easily.  As a general sports fan, I understand that losses are a part of the game and so are devastating ones.  As a Mets fan, I realize that those heartbreaking losses will come more often than they do for your average sports fan.  As a Mets fan you’ve probably quit by now if you can’t tolerate agony and disappointment.   

Last year, I was probably more upset over failing to make the playoffs than I am this year - for a number of reasons.  First of all, last year was more dramatic and it happened in a much uglier fashion.  They lost more games down the stretch last year, blew a bigger lead and lost in a more ignominious fashion.  This year, I have the experience of suffering through the legendary collapse of last year and still recovering to find the Mets in first place in September of this season. 

Plus, there is a larger issue on my mind.  Like I said, I can tolerate The Collapse Part Deux.  On the other hand, Citi Field troubles me. 

I’m not devastated that Shea is gone - and don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of memories that I will never forget, and it is a venue that housed the Mets,  Yankees, Giants and Jets all in the same season (1975) - but I am disgusted that they are building a stadium with more than 10,000 fewer seats.

It is truly shameful that the Wilpons are sacraficing thousands of seats, the opportunity for thousands of fans to go to a game, in order to build a few extra luxury boxes and earn an extra couple bucks.  In fact, MLB teams have financial incentives to build luxury boxes beyond the obvious ones. 

Revenue from general ticket sales is divided between the home and away teams of a given game.  For the American League, the home team receives approximately 80% of the revenue while the visiting team receives only 20%.  The National League is weighted more heavily, with the split being closer to 95% versus 5%.  However, there is an interesting catch - teams keep all the profits from luxury box sales, and do not share them with the visiting team.  Thus, there is a greater incentive to destroy regular seats in favor of luxuary boxes.  So, part of this trend towards smaller stadiums with more luxary boxes and less seats is due to MLB, the MLB Players Association and the collective bargaining agreement.   

Just for a second right now, think about how hard it was to win playoff tickets this year with the Mets online lottery.  If you didn’t try this year, how about last year?  Now, imagine trying to do the same thing with so many fewer seats available to purchase.  Did you ever try and look on StubHub for a playoff or Subway Series ticket, and think it was outrageously expensive?  Just ponder what the prices will be with more demand and less supply and it’s scary.  Jailing so many fans out of games and hiking up ticket prices so much demonstrates how out of touch the owners (mainly Jeff Wilpon) are with the game of baseball and what it’s all about. 

It’s cool that there will be good food, wider seats and a lavish concourse at Citi Field.  But, what good is it when there will be so many fewer fans there to enjoy it?

It’s disgraceful that Citi Field offers so many fewer seats and by doing so slaps every Mets fan hard across the face.  Once upon a time, baseball was America’s past time meant to be enjoyed and appreciated by as many fans as possible.  What happened to that?       

Compared to a lot of the other reactionary talk surrounding the team immediately after the season, I feel like the conservative Mets fan.

Firstly, as others have pointed out, Jose Reyes, David Wright, and Carlos Beltran should stay for obvious reasons. They are a part of the illustrious Mets “core” and should go nowhere. Why? Because they are good players.

Secondly, I am for picking up the option for Carlos Delgado. Like virtually everyone else, I did not think I would take this stance months ago, but not only has Delgado won over the hearts and minds of Mets fans (at least for one more year) with his clubbing power, but there really is no one else. Mark Teixeira is just not worth the money, either, especially when there is pitching to be had.

Rather than going after Orlando Hudson or bringing back the aging tandem of Luis Castillo and Damion Easley, I think the Mets should turn to Daniel Murphy at second base next year. This reasoning is also rather predictable. Like many other Mets fans, I like Murphy’s potential, especially since he’s such a patient hitter at such a young age. And he’s got INTANGIBLES~! since he always seems like a guy who is hard-nosed in interviews. Murphy’s most value would be at second base, but encouraging reports from the Arizona Fall League would make Mets fans feel better about Murphy’s defense there (or anywhere).

Like many other Mets fans, I am in favor of letting go of many of the team’s free agents (Moises Alou, Pedro Martinez, Orlando Hernandez, even Oliver Perez unless he would settle for like a two-year deal or something.) Even more disappointing about this season is I feel like half of it was convincing Omar Minaya he had made mistakes he needed to correct in the future, such as signing El Duque, Alou and Castillo. And while it was always talked of as a possibility to bring back Pedro, his 2008 made sure (at least, I hope) that he never pitches in Citi Field.

As for Minaya and Jerry Manuel, I feel ambivalent to their returns. While neither particularly excites me, potentially because they’ve been with the team for a while now, I can’t really think of any exciting replacements. And chances are, a regime change might slow down the progress of the team, and I don’t think the fanbase is even close to being ready for a poor season after the last two heartbreakers.

So yeah, I have a lot of predictable opinions about the Mets, which makes me the ultimate conservative fan. The only shed of excitement I could offer for the Mets’ offseason plans would be to stock up all the saved money from letting go of free agents to go after a highly-touted pitcher — CC Sabathia or Francisco Rodriguez. It may make more sense to go after multiple, lower-tiered pitchers to fill up more of the Mets’ holes, but the hot stove has not revved up, and I’m not thinking straight yet.

It was easier this time.

Not because the Mets “collapsed” in 2008. SNY’s Ted Berg gives a good case for why the Mets did not collapse, and after reading it, it really started to bug me when ESPN could not talk about the Mets missing the playoffs without using the word “collapse.”

Grant it, they were just as brutal on the Chicago Cubs on Saturday. (I think it’s hilarious that the Cubs were swept. Like Andrew Beaton, I don’t buy the “lovable loser” moniker either, and somewhere along the way, I grew to want to see the Cubs lose. Maybe it’s all the media attention. Regardless, the best team in the National League was swept in three games. Hilarious.)

It’s not because I didn’t think the Mets would get out of the first round. While I was pessimistic, for sure, I could see the Mets pulling what the Dodgers pulled this week. Everything changes in October. We’ve seen it before.

It’s not even because I thought the 2008 Mets couldn’t get the job done on the final weekend. I honestly thought maybe they could.

It was simply because it had happened before.

For some reason, 2007 feels so much worse than 2008, and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because, throughout 2007, we as Mets fans deluded ourselves into thinking this was the same team as the 2006 Mets when, at least after April, they really weren’t. In 2008, after the calamity of being under .500 in June and the firing of Willie Randolph, there were no more delusions, only harsh reality.

But it’s weird because, at the same time, I don’t really buy the argument that the Mets overachieved either. No self-respecting Mets fan thought in March, with the acquisition of Johan Santana, that the Mets would be good to simply add one more win to their total and not make the playoffs again on the last weekend. Just because the Mets were terrible in June does not make those expectations go away.

Personally, I always look back on full seasons, and I think of 2008 as yet another lost opportunity. I just hope the door is not shutting, and none of us are noticing yet.

There is something really depressing about the end of this season. After the 2007 season, I felt heartbreak beacuse the NL East division crown felt entitled to the Mets after such a large lead in mid-September. This year, a playoff berth did not seem a given at all, and as a result, when the Mets did not achieve a spot, I just feel empty. I feel like another improvement year from David Wright was wasted. So were all those outings by Johan Santana. So was Jose Reyes‘ 2006-like season and Carlos Delgado’s potential last-hurrah power surge.

It feels like this team had so many extraordinary independent accomplishments but too many lineup holes and bullpen woes to get them to October.

So, two years and two September swoons, and what does the guy behind all of the moves get? A three year extension of course. It’s only standard procedure to reward your GM when the team has severely underachieved for the better part of a year and a half. As you can see, I do not support giving Omar Minaya this three year extension. I know Billy Wagner got hurt, and that hurt the chances of this team making the postseason significantly, but plenty of those 29 blown saves happened before Wagner went down. Minaya made no moves to improve the bullpen preseason, or at the deadline. Luis Ayala helped some, before teams realized that, well, he was Luis Ayala.

Depending on the arm of Duaner Sanchez was a huge mistake, as we all realized that Sanchez would not be the 2006 guy who looked so impressive before going down with that devastating shoulder injury. Depending on a bunch of specialists was a mistake, and although you can’t blame him for Aaron Heilman’s dismal year, he should have brought in a few bullpen arms. Granted Minaya has made some nice moves in his tenure as the Mets GM, he has also made some head scratchers. I know I’ll get bashed for this, but I’m starting to sour on the Milledge-Church deal as well. Trading Milledge when his value was at it’s lowest for a decent OF and a bad catcher was not a smart move. I know that Milledge was the quote un quote “Bad Boy” in the clubhouse, but all i care about is results, and Milledge sure turned it on in the 2nd half, and is looking like a real 20 homer 25 steal guy in his prime.

If you’re interested in a fantastic read, for Page 2 on ESPN.com, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter J.R. Moehringer writes a goodbye of sorts to Shea Stadium. 

Moehringer, a correspondent for the LA Times, grew up in Manhasset, New York, which is very near Shea Stadium.  In the article, Moehringer describes his Shea Stadium story with his cousin McGraw, who as Moehringer notes has Vin Scully calling the Bill Buckner play as his ring tone. 

In one particular passage, Moehringer writes quite beautifully about Shea and articulates something that many Mets fans would certainly agree with:

Shea is often compared to a concrete doughnut, a giant toilet, but seldom to a house of worship. Shea is routinely dismissed as a sin against aesthetics, and telling people you love it is like saying you love a nuclear reactor. Or a landfill. Built during a benighted period in American architecture, named after a lawyer, set virtually alongside the taxiways at LaGuardia, Shea has long been criticized, but recently it has become a laughingstock. Personally, I always found Shea beautiful, in its homely way, but I no longer admit this in public. I can’t bear people cocking one eyebrow and saying, “Shea? Really?”

All love is indefensible, especially stadium love, which has nothing to do with aesthetics. The first stadium you see is the one you love, end of story. Maybe not see, but enter, since every baseball stadium is a complex delivery mechanism for that first view of its inner pastoral utopia.

Firstly, Moehringer is a great writer and this piece is nothing short of phenomenal. 

Second of all, what a great idea McGraw had- having the Bill Buckner call as his ring tone.   

Interested in winning a copy of Dana Brand’s book Mets Fan?

Hot Foot is giving one away!

To enter, post a comment explaining what makes YOU the ultimate Mets fan.

Our team of writers will read all submissions on Friday, October 10th and will choose one of you to recieve this amazing book.

We look forward to hearing what makes YOU the ultimate Mets fan!

I recently had the privilege of talking with Dana Brand, author of Mets Fan, to discuss his book, the Mets and other things that popped up during our discussion. Below is my experience:

In the summer of 2005, Dana Brand was encouraged by his colleagues to submit one of his personal essays to Newsday. Brand, a lifelong Mets fan, had written a piece explaining why he is a Mets fan. The powers that be over at Newsday published the essay, entitled “If You Prick a Mets Fan, He’ll Bleed Blue and Orange.” According to Brand, an English professor at Hofstra University on Long Island, that was when he made the decision to write Mets Fan.

Mets Fan is a collection of personal essays regarding all things Mets. One of the most remarkable things about this book is the passion behind it. This was not written by a sport writer. In every word, every sentence, you know this was written by a Mets fan. Brand discusses everything, from his favorite games to the announcers on WFAN. The most surprising thing is how he seemed to put everything I was thinking on paper. As he described Steve Somers, I could hear his voice.

As Brand discusses in his book, during his time at Yale University, he became very close to one of his professors, A. Bartlett Giamatti, who would go one to become the commissioner of Major League Baseball. According to Brand, they would constantly talk about the things going on in baseball. Once Brand became a professor, he found that his students knew of his book because he had done a reading at Hofstra University after the book was published.

Brand also talked with me about the current state of the Mets. I met with Brand on September 22^nd, just at the Mets were beginning their final homestand at Shea. When asked how he felt about what is going on with the team, he replied “helpless and scared”. His prediction was that the Mets would take the wild card. I asked him how he would feel is the Mets didn’t make the playoffs, his response was “it will be 3 years down the drain. If they make it to the playoffs, its like 2007 never happened, but if they don’t, it’s like 2006 never happened.” As expected, his shared that he felt that the bullpen is fatal. He told me he was attending 4 games that week, including the last game at Shea.

According to Brand, Lynn Cohen is a big fan of his book. During one of their conversations, he mentioned that his dream would be to be able to take his mother, also a diehard Mets fan, to game at Shea before it closes. Lynn made that possible by inviting him and his family to sit in the picnic area at Shea during the one of the last games at Shea Stadium.

Dana also shared with me his daily blogs that he looks at. They include Mets Blog, Faith and Fear in Flushing, the Ed Kranepool Society and of course, Hot Foot.

As for what’s next for him? He shared with me two exciting pieces of news. His is currently finishing his next book entitled “The Last Days of Shea” It is expected to be out next summer. Equally as exciting, Dana Brand has been given permission to have a conference at Hofstra University on November 3-5, 2011 to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the Mets. While it is still in the planning stages, we hope to help in the creating and success of this event and will bring you updates as they become available.

For more information about Dana Brand, and to read his thoughts on the final week at Shea, visit his website.

In this week’s ”Point After” column for Sports Illustrated, which as usual is on the last page of the issue, columnist Phil Taylor wrote “That Voodoo That You Do” and he discusses various good luck tactics throughout the sports world. 

In the column, Taylor gives a shout out to Hot Foot and my lucky Mets tube socks.  Taylor writes:

Aromatically speaking, that’s far preferable to blogger Andrew Beaton’s attempt to stop the Mets’ second straight September slide. After watching his team drop consecutive games to the Nationals, Beaton announced on hotfootblog.com that he was donning his Mets tube socks, which he said “contain the mystical power and the ability to give the Mets a win.” On Sunday, Milwaukee edged New York for the NL wild card, proving that when it comes to crusty talismans, a pie trumps a pair of old socks.

The article also discusses many other humorous luck tactics, in addition to discussing the magic number fiasco that we all witnessed at Mets Blog, where as Taylor writes, “some of the site’s visitors were so enraged, you would have thought it was Cerrone himself who had come out of the bullpen to blow all those leads.”

Despite the Mets collapse this season, the tube socks ended up with a record of 3-0.  Friends have already criticized me for failing to wear them on the final day of the season, but the lucky Mets tube socks didn’t summon me and forcing them upon my feet would be sacrilegious. 

I think he misinterprets the holy footwear by calling it voodoo, but I’m not one to be picky over words, so I digress. 

Just because we’ve suffered another devastating September collapse doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy some October baseball.

Granted, it’s tough watching the postseason knowing the Mets aren’t in it, but hey - it’s baseball at the most competitive level with everything on the line.

This post season, I’m rooting for the Rays.

In general, I don’t think it’s good for sports when certain teams always lose like the Rays have in their limited tenure in Major League Baseball.  Similarly, I find it boring when the same teams make the playoffs every year, which is why I am particularly enthused that the Yankees failed to make the playoffs this year. 

I also think it is good for the sport to prove that dishing out the dollars doesn’t buy a playoff birth.  Of course I would never want the Mets to miss the playoffs, but it is important to note that the teams with the three highest payrolls (Yankees, Tigers and Mets) all failed to make the post season.  It is good for the sport as a whole when a team builds through the farm system and creates a playoff caliber team internally, rather than purchasing overpaid mercenaries through free agency.     

Plus, I’m also a sucker for an underdog story and I think it’s awesome that a team with a $44 million payroll beat the Yankees ($209 million), Red Sox ($133 million), Blue Jays ($98 million) for the always contested AL East crown. 

Briefly, here are my thoughts on the other playoff teams:

• Angels: Frankly, I like them a bunch too - they play baseball the way it was meant to be played.  They play mistake free, heads-up baseball that is rarely seen these days, especially in the American League.  Mike Scioscia might be my favorite manager in baseball.
• White Sox: I like Kenny Williams, but other than a source of laughter I strongly dislike Ozzie Guillen.  Plus they beat the Twins, who I like for many of the same reasons I like the Rays and Angels.
• Red Sox: I’m happy they won once, but I’ve had enough of their winning.  Boston as a city is becoming too dominant in the sports world. 
• Dodgers: I’m glad they made the playoffs just to stick it to the Yankees for low-balling Torre, but nothing else about them particularly excites me. 
• Cubs: I don’t buy into the whole lovable loser story, but that’s just me.
• Phillies: I hope like last year, the Mets win as many playoff games as the Phillies.  If you can’t do the math, I hope they get swept. 
• Brewers: Again, I like when teams that typically haven’t done so, do make the playoffs, but I can’t bring myself to root for the team that we handed our playoff spot.

Yeah, it is tough to see Scott Kazmir pitch and imagine what could be and then realize sadly what is reality, but it’s time to get over that and get behind a fun, youthful and underdog Rays ball club.