Tom Brennan - It's Been a Fun Run - Thank You All

Pastor Darryl and a certain amateur writer you may know - two powerful lefties LOL

All of us old time Mets fans remember the greats and not-so-greats.

Willie Mays?  Tom Seaver?  Mickey Mantle?  Ron Swoboda?  Jesse Orosco?  

The Straw Man-turned-powerful-evangelist....and...

So, so many more.

ALL gave us wonderful moments, memorable moments.

Writing for Macks Mets for nearly a decade has been memorable for me.  In writing, I tried to find solutions, even if at times for problems no one else cared much about.  I tried to bring insight, bring levity, bring a young kid's "fan point of view", and joy to all of you who chose to read the articles, and better yet, to those who commented on them.

My favorite part of Macks Mets was interacting with Gus and Bill and Gary and Hobie and Viper and Alex and Eddie and so many others.  After all, you all probably know more about the Mets and baseball than I do.  And you also almost undoubtedly went to, and watched, a lot more Mets games and SNY highlights than I have in recent years.

And of course, I enjoyed the interactions amongst our own writers.

We certainly didn't always see eye to eye.  

And we each wrote in our own inimitable styles:

Mack and Reese being the site's two foundational and prolific writers, both of whose bodies of work I have greatly appreciated, and many other outstanding writers along the way like Remember 1969, Paul Articulates, the one and only David Rubin (the world's biggest Tom Seaver fan), Ernest Dove, Chris Soto, Ray Savage, John, and many others. 

I always enjoyed writing about guppies, subs and scrubs, the foolish Wilpons, Mets Killers, Sugar, Megill, the fragile Fab Five, how players just somehow got worse when they joined the Mets and better when they left, the ridiculous hitter-unfriendly environs, how the Mets couldn't score much at home but no one cared enough to truly fix it - and of course, Jeff McNeil and Tim Tebow.  And so many others.

I advocated for expanded rosters, more minor league pay, sensible rules in baseball, avoidance of budget-crushing long term contracts to short term players, etc.  I moaned often about the lack of home-grown Mets' offensive Hall of Famers and the Mets' paltry club offensive records (thank you, Pete Alonso, for busting the skimpy 41 HRs in a season team record by a resounding 12 long balls).

I'd write articles about what I felt prospects needed to correct, like I really knew, in hopes I could help in some minor way to fix a few of them so they could achieve their dream.  I wrote of guys who were AAA pitchers but for some unknown reason didn't want the big leagues quite badly enough to try out the knuckleball, which only made RA Dickey a multimillionaire and Cy Young winner.

Recently, I think the combination of the pandemic, players and owners who are a little too fussy for their expensive britches, and my own getting older and wanting to make up for some lost time doing other things than write about baseball suddenly caught up to me - I woke up one recent day and just felt like I'd written enough about baseball for the time being.  I am an extremely fast writer, but even so, it took a lot of time over the years that sometimes left me wondering what else I should be doing with my time left on this fine (and sometimes troubled) planet.

Maybe spend more quiet time with the Lover of My Soul, and perhaps focus more on getting back to performing at church events again.  

I regret not a second of the opportunity I have had to share some of it with you.  

Maybe if the site continues on, you'll hear back from me on some of your posts.  

God bless you, folks.  You've blessed me, and I hope I've blessed you.

And thanks, most of all, to Mack, who gave me the opportunity to see that I could write "stuff".  "What do I write about, Mack?"  "Whatever you want - as long as it is Mets." 

All health and happiness to you all.  A wise man once said, "Count it all joy."  

It's been a joy.

In the "new say never" category, though, I can never say (while the site remains open) that I won't ever drop another article out there.  But right now, as I told Shohei Ohtani, this is "sayonara."