Never Mind the Playoffs: For Mets Fans Baseball Ended in July

There is an old adage that says, "As soon as one door closes, another opens."

As the New York Mets come back to Flushing for their final homestand of the season, I am certainly glad that the start of the NBA's regular season is now less than a month away.

Not only that, but the NFL is approaching its fourth week, the puck drops on the ice hockey season at Madison Square Garden in two days' time, and the English Premier League is less than a quarter of the way into its 2009-10 season.

As much as there is to look forward to, being a Mets fan first and a sports fan second, there is also a lot to look back on.

The Mets have been horrible in so many ways, both on the field and off it, that this season really just needs a mulligan. In a year which began with so much promise, it is hard just six months later to find more than a few redeeming features.

How can you be excited about getting beat down by the Yankees, swept by the Braves, or shutout by a former fan favorite? What about dropping pop-ups, missing third base, or your offense giving your aceno run support?

I have a few major gripes with my beloved Amazins' this year, ranging from statistical to the managerial, the ridiculous to the unfortunate.

Leaving aside the catalogue of errors mentioned above, here are four other things which sadly highlight the Mets 2009 campaign.

Injuries

Yes, injuries are a part of the sport, and I am not using the Mets' collective stint on the DL as an excuse. But that collection of bumps and bruises really did decimate the team this year.

Between a lack of depth at any position, a mediocre bench and a sub-standard farm system, the Mets were never really in a position to compete.

Here is a quick stat:

The Mets' Opening Day lineup of Schneider, Delgado, Castillo, Wright, Reyes, Murphy, Beltran, and Church played together just four times all season and no combination of eight players have played together more than seven times. Successful teams are built around continuity; the Phillies have fielded the same defensive lineup only 58 times.

Citi Field

Here is a bad experiment gone wrong. Don't get me wrong, the park itself is nice and clean, as you would expect with a brand spanking new stadium. But listen up, Mets top brass: Do you think people care about your 850 TVs or 80 extra toilets?

Of course they don't. You are lucky so many people are turning up to see the team play.

You have a team in the richest baseball market in the country—that is your only saving grace.

It is not a team that should be attracting 38,000 fans each night, but luckily, Mets fans are loyal. Well, loyal and fickle in equal measure, myself included. With a distinct lack of history and laughable dimensions, Citi Field isn't really too welcoming for fans or batters.

Yes, the Mets are a team, historically at least, built around pitching. But when you have limited pitching, how often do you expect your AAA replacements to drive a ball 408 feet and over an 18-foot wall.

The Mets have 93 home runs. Their nearest rivals are the slap-happy Giants with 118. The Yankees, in their joke of a bandbox park up in the Bronx, have 241. No player has hit more than five home runs at Citi Field this year.

Would it help to have sluggers on the team? Undoubtedly. Ryan Howard has four dingers in nine games there; Mark Reynolds has four in 12 at bats. How does a player with the calibre of David Wright have just five in more than 250 chances?

Over-Zealous?

In April, less than one whole month into the season, Mets' security confiscated a bunch of the strikeout "K" signs that fans hang each time a home pitcher strikes out a batter.

They argued that they would ruin the new HD leftfield facade.

David Lennon of Newsday wrote this about the debacle:

Johan Santana's 10 strikeouts Friday nearly got three graduate students from Syosset kicked out of Citi Field for posting K cards on the leftfield facade.

Santana was up to six by the middle of the third inning when Keith Heller, Ryan Krochak and Larry Ziegelbaum said they were told by security to remove the white signs with Ks made of duct tape because they were blocking an electronic ribbon board. When the trio asked if they could move the signs away from the scoreboard, they said their request was refused and the signs were confiscated by the security officers.

"People were yelling at [security], telling them they were ruining a tradition," Ziegelbaum said. "Everyone was supporting it."

Mets' fans should have known by then that the team was chasing the Nationals for the title of the most dysfunctional franchise in sport.

Signing Off

Doc Gooden got into trouble with the front office when he signed his name on the bar wall in the Ebbets Club restaurant. After much deliberation and many changes in opinion, they decided not to erase Doc's Sharpie-etched John Hancock.

Shortly after they reiterated plans for some kind of Wall of Fame monument near the food court.

Too little too late, considering Opening Day was two weeks earlier.

A Personnel Farce

Two words—Tony Bernazard. In July, the Mets sent Bernazard on his way after a series of blunders which, once again, had the baseball world talking about the Mets for all the wrong reasons.

The former vice president of player development had gotten into spats and arguments with players, locker room staff, and scouts, challenging a minor league Mets player to a fight, yelling at closer Francisco Rodriguez, and reaming out an employee for not asking another team's scout to leave his Citi Field seat quickly enough.

Now, I will be at Citi Field to cheer on the Mets this weekend. I will applaud them on and off the field, win or lose.

I will be at Citi Field next year and the year after that.

I'm hypocritical at times, but I'll always root for the team. Playoffs begin on Oct. 7, but for me, baseball ends on Sunday.

Scratch that. Baseball ended at some indistinguishable point over the summer. That's why I'm glad that basketball is on its way.

The Knicks never fail to disappoint, right?