Coming Back and Never Leaving

By - Jack Flynn

I did something this week that I haven’t done in a long time. It’s been at least a year, maybe longer, but it’s something I used to do nearly every day during the baseball season.

I checked to see who the Mets were playing that night.

I haven’t stopped being a Mets fan, although the events of the last six years could certainly drive a person into a state of fan-related hibernation. Mack summed it up eloquently in a post earlier in the week about Mets writers (including myself) who have moved away from frequently contributing to this site.

“The whole Wilpon issue got to him over a year ago and he just doesn't have the desire to go rah-rah about this team anymore,” Mack wrote, summing up the explanation for why I haven’t been contributing to one of the best Mets websites on the Internet today.

It’s true. The Wilpon family’s stewardship of this team has turned into a nightmare for the thinking Mets fan. I could quote chapter and verse about the innumerable ownership decisions I’ve taken umbrage with in recent years, beginning with the design of Citi Field and leading all the way to the failure to sign Jose Reyes last off-season.

But those are columns for another day.

Today, the Mets are 21-19 and are in the hunt for one of the two wild card positions in the National League if the season were to end now. Seven of their eight regular position players are homegrown talents. David Wright is an established superstar and has been for several years, but the other six “farm boys made good” are all legitimate major leaguers right now.

The starting rotation also has two homegrown players – and there is plenty of optimism that more are on the way. I happen to think Jon Niese is going to be a star in this league one day very soon. I’m not as optimistic about Dillon Gee, who I think has already maxed out his potential, but there are worse things to have then a cheap innings eater from your minor-league system as a fifth starter.

This is the type of team I’ve been hoping to see for years.

The offense doesn’t rely on older free agents who are being paid for the numbers they put up for some other team. The starting pitching has one emerging young star and the minor-league system is packed with intriguing prospects. Hell, this team even has a knuckleballer in RA Dickey – and what could be cooler than that?

Now I’m still not going out of my way to give the Wilpons any of my money. I’ve gotten my live baseball fix so far by watching the St. John’s Redmen throw their weight around in the Big East Conference. As the college season winds down, there are still a few trips to see the Rockland Boulders of the Canadian American Association in store this summer.

But I’m paying Time Warner Cable too much money for cable service every month anyway, and SNY is part of that package.

Yes, the Wilpons have driven my love for this team into hibernation (and judging from attendance numbers, I’m not the only one). But I'll be damned if I'm going to stop rooting for the Mets to win baseball games just because the owner is a crook and his male heir is a buffoon.

I cheated myself out of the 2011 season because my disgust with the Wilpons was so complete that I could not separate my emotions from the team. It was the wrong thing to do. I'm only going to have so many years on this earth to partake in one of the great joys of my life - watching the Mets play baseball. 

I’m not going to cheat myself out of the 2012 season.