Hot Foot

True to his word, Mets manager Terry Collins has the air horn working today so no one is standing around.

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—	@KBurkhardtSNY (via sportsnetny) If only there was some sort of job position for that. Who wouldn’t be on the first flight to Florida to be the Mets’ “air horn person?”

He stole the show. I mean he was outstanding. I know that Jerry Manuel says ‘You know, spring training, you generally have an idea. You can’t put too much weight in spring training games.’ But you know, with guys like Jenrry Mejia, and a guy like Takahashi, when you have a team that could not throw strikes and he comes in and throws nothing but strikes, it’s hard to ignore I think.

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—	Spoken by Kevin Burkhardt on Hisanori Takahashi, during the PIX 11 broadcast of the Mets/Nationals spring training game. Something tells me you’ll be hearing Takahashi’s name a lot more often pretty soon. He looked very solid today.

Its Finally Here, Baseball is Back

Today marks the start of the 2010 Spring Training season for the New York Mets. At 12 noon SNY will begin their coverage of the Mets first spring training game vs. the Atlanta Braves from Port St. Lucie, and at 1:10 pm, what seemed liked an eternity will have finally arrived, baseball season.

Today’s lineup, as per AdamRubin of the Daily News, will be as follows:

Gary Mathews Jr-CF
Luis Castillo-2b
Jose Reyes- ss
David Wright-3b
Jason Bay-LF
Mike Jacobs-DH
Jeff Francoeur-RF
Ike Davis-1b
Chris Coste-c

Nelson Figueroa will start the game.

For today, the disaster of 2009 will be a distant memory. We will forget about the Carlos Beltran fiasco, or the JJ Putz interview. The criticism of the Mets off season moves or lack thereof, will be behind us. Articles about who should have been signed, posts of who were signed and what their impact may be, for today, will be set aside. As today, it will be about baseball, the game itself and the team we love.

So today, no matter what your expectations for the upcoming season are, just sit back and enjoy America’s favorite past time, the start of a new season, and the mark of a new beginning for the team you love to root for, The New York Mets.

The great Rogers Hornsby once said:

“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring”

Its been a long winter but today, baseball is back.

Feel free to follow me on Twitter at vcMETSFAN28

Recently I saw a physician for a personal health issue. He gave me a medication, not a steroid, which he thought was okay to give me. Unfortunately, the medication was banned under our drug policy. Under the policy that mistake is now my responsibility. I have been advised not to say anything more for now.I do want to say one other thing; I’ve taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past five seasons. I want to apologize to Mr. McCourt, Mrs. McCourt, Mr. Torre, my teammates, the Dodger organization, and to the Dodger fans. LA is a special place to me and I know everybody is disappointed. So am I. I’m sorry about this whole situation.

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—	Manny Ramirez