Why It's Bad for Us that the Mets Stink

It's summertime, and Theatre of the Absurd seems to have opened up for yet another season over in Flushing.

First, we have Jason Vargas joining Brett "Bleach Gun" Saberhagen and Bobby "Let Me Show You the Bronx" Bonilla in the growing tradition of Mets players who have attacked or threatened to attack older, weaker guys who are forbidden by their employer to fight back.

Meanwhile, Manager Mickey Callaway has yet to don Bobby Valentine's old Groucho Marx disguise, but he's probably being fitted for it as we speak.

Hey, you have to be a real stud to threaten to punch out somebody who will be fired if he punches back.  Reminds me of how that choice thug Chris Christie used to go around getting in people's faces with his bodyguard a foot behind him.

Mr. Vargas, to date, has made over $63 million turning in 14 years of thoroughly mediocre pitching.  If he were on my team, I'd have the press secretary making reservations for Mr. Studly on the Palookaville Express, but this is just par for the course over in the three-ring circus by the Sound.

Callaway asked, not so rhetorically, if Billy Martin hadn't punched out a sportswriter.  No, he specialized in marshmallow salesmen and his own pitchers, and loved such tried and true methods as the sucker punch and the cold cock.  The one time he didn't make sure there were people around to break it up, Billy ended up almost bleeding out in a Texas alleyway.

This is not a role model for anyone in today's game, or even yesterday's game.  But hey, it seems that Callaway, who so far has gone through an entire half-season without getting his own lineup wrong, has decided to send a more macho message.

Willie Randolph must shake his head in wonder that, 12 years later, he's still on the shelf while this bozo runs a team.

In short, it's the same as it ever was out in Queens.  All that's missing is a bunch of clowns in a tiny car and Vince Coleman to toss firecrackers at the fans.

The real estate racket known as Wilpon & Son has filled up its holes with the usual suspects, has-beens and never will bes such as Todd Frazier, Joggy, and Lagaras.  Their gold-glove shortstop of the future has now let up more runs than any other fielder in baseball, and yet another can't-miss, young guns pitching staff has shot itself in the foot, both knees, and at least one testicle.

Sure, it's hard not to laugh.  That's the thing with clowns.

But the last laugh is on us.  HAL and the rest of the human calculators who run your New York Yankees don't need the Mets in town.  It does us no good to have the idiot younger brother over there, the perpetual fuck-up cousin who has just completed his third DUI class and is thinking about selling Amway products for a living.

Even the Nets are pushing the Knicks now.  What the Yanks need is the same:  a wily, well-run NL rival that will fight them for every dollar and back page, to the point where even HAL will start to worry that he might lose the town—i.e., big bucks—to the other guys.

Instead, we have this:  yet another bellyflop into Fishhooks McCarthy's toxic bay, while the Wilpons spend their nights stuffing all that Madoff money into their mattresses.

Hooray for them, but the way to improve is not by competing against a team of Fredos.