Meet the Mets

I have and will always be a Yankee fan. They're the team I always hope to win the last game of the season. But as this baseball season saunters into its third month and starts to take form, I can't help but be amused by baseball's current top team, the Mets. They just won a game that included eight homers, and did so with a spectacular double-play grab by their golden boy, David Wright, to stifle a ninth inning rally by the persistent Phils. This right after the Mets trampled all over first-place Arizona in Phoenix, scoring 15 runs in a game without any homers.

Perhaps it's the efficiency expert in me, but I really admire a team that is on full throttle and so apparently tuned on so many frequencies. The line-up is not just strong and balanced but full of characters worthy of central casting's best demographic profile. I would run to see a "Major League IV" that consisted of these true characters:

Jose Reyes, classic import finding his stardom now, promising 70 steals and some pop as well (and gracing my Rotisserie rosters).

Paul LoDuca, who is following Mike Piazza's career path literally, if not figuratively. Another stalwart Italian catcher beguiling the Angelenos, then sent off to Florida for a brief stop before hopping to Shea. A great steadying influence.

Carlos Beltran, whose one insane week in the 2004 playoff earned him an extra 20 million in his free-agent contract. Last year he tanked, This year he's worth it.

Carlos Delgado, a powerful 1B who can hit 40 HRs and does not like George Bush.

3B David Wright, who'd be played by Heath Ledger orPaul Walker. A potential Hall-of-Famer, and the Mets' white-bread answer to Jeter's swagger.

Jose Valentin, who does comic turns at the microphone for ESPN.

Xavier Nady, who is French, and just had an appendectomy, so he's been temporarily replaced by Rookie phenom Lastings Milledge, whose name you'd think would be found on the Mayflower Compact.

They don't have a good representative Japanese star, since Kaz Matsui was a surprise flop. But his depareture did bring to the Mets, of all people, El Duque!

El Duque has wonderful play-off experience and good Yankee karma, as does the manager, Yankee semi-great Willie Randolph. Willie is a story in himself, serving as Yankee coach and waiting patiently year after year, rejected countless time for managerial slots. He may have gotten the Yankees had Joe Torre not brought in a division championship year after year, preserving his post. Now Willie, thanks to an aggressive management and very talented GM Omar Minaya, have constructed a sturdy ship.

El Duque's experience and aura (he was not just a Yankee champ but with the White Sox as well) may give just enough help to put the pitching staff over the top. Veterans Glavine and Pedro Martinez are at the tops of their games; Glavine brings his dogged Leo Mazzone-trained discipline, and Pedro his fire. And I do not hold any antipathy toward him as a former Red Sox "nemisis." I know he jumped on Don Zimmer, but Zimmer had also been a Red Sox so he deserves it. Pedro had the good humor in defeat to say that the Yankees were his Daddy, and that makes Pedro a human.

It probably should be noted that most of this team has been bought, just as blatantly and greedily as the Yankees, who seem to get the moniker "The Best Team Money Can Buy" while the Mets get a bye. But so fucking what? Good for Pedro and Omar and Willie, and the gang, and I will be rooting for the Mets to go to the Series, as they seem to do once a decade. This bunch may be as talented as the one that beat the Red Sox and Buckner in 1986, and that same match-up is a keen and appealing possibility. But at this juncture, officially, I'm calling a Mets-Oakland series, and a Mets world title.

Age of Stupidity

One of the truisms I stumbled upon at a young age, in a moment of precocious clarity, had to do with the nettlesome issue of stupidity. It suddenly occured to me that one could never overcome another's stupidity, but could learn to take advantage of it. As the world turns, I find this fact never changes, and many folks, from Barnum to Bush, have put this axiom to practice.

Stupidity has been weaving its noxious way through our society and is more evident than ever today. To the universe it is merely a small period in wich a minor planet revolves once about its axis. To the charlatans of this world it is June 6, 2006, or in a numerical abbreviation, 06/06/06. That neat coincidence was enough to generate all sorts of doomsday predictions from the Idiots of the Apocalypse, who continue to misinterpret the writings of the Scriptures to decide that "666" represented the number of the AntiChrist.

Now sensible scholars have studied the texts and proposed that #666 was a contemporary allusion to Nero, a rather nasty Roman emperor, whose name, when spelled out in Hebrew characters--which are and were also used as numerals--comes out as 666. I'm sure the persecuted Jews of that day saw him as a great beast and could certainly fear his resurrection as much as any one in the next few millennia. But of course those Idiots who choose to read the Bible literally are all agog about the number. I remember one otherwise rational friend who went apoplectic when the last three numerals of her credit card number were 666.

But for marketing, what a wonder the number makes. This is especially too for the opportunistic producers of the remake of "The Omen," a nearly iconic horror film of the vivid '70s, which followed the shocking climax of its progenitor "Rosemary's Baby" with a devil-wins-out denouement of its own. I will not be celebrating this date by attending the opening of yet another remake, but there are surely millions of stupid folks out there who will, and then will go home to read their "Left Behind" novels and start storing up on duct tape. Stupidity wins.

Another issue in the forefront today, speaking of more stupidity, is the "Defense of Marriage Act" that President Bush is trying, insincerely, to foist on congress, as a salve to his most cretinous supporters, the fundamentalist crackpots who believe that their marriages are so fragile that they cannot stand in the face of two lesbians in Massachusetts taking a vow and kissing. There is actually a debate going on now in the Capitol, but I can't imagine what actual evidence the proponents of the bill (and would-be Constitutional Amendment) can provide to illustrate how any one marriage has been harmed by the desire of a small minority of same-sex couples to live in monogamous support of each other. As usual with this Administration, the new "law" has been given an Orwellian twist in its title. Gays aren't attacking marriage; they are supporting it. Far be it from the bill's advocates to call the bill what it is, which is the "We Hate Fags Amendment."

Meanwhile 50 people a day are being slaughtered in the ongoing Iraqi quagmire, and they are being kidnapped and beheaded and occasionally slaughtered by angry American marines. But how important is that compared with the need to keep Barney Frank from tying the knot with his boy toy? And how coincidental that Bush's anti-gay marriage onslaught occurs on the day that several states are having their primaries. Well, homophobia won him an election in 2004, so it's worth a try. Bush knows how to take advantage of stupidity; as Woody Allen once said of his prowess in sex, he "practices a lot when he's alone".