Archie Bunker's Army

It's good seeing pouty former centerfielder Mike Cameron take his licks for his selfish reluctance to move the hell over and make way for Carlos Beltran already but not even a general disgust with his attitude and phoniness necessarily merits these vicious Cameron for Ugueth Urbina trade rumours. Not even after his assinine take on music in the clubhouse had me wishing he could be magically directed into Cliff Floyd's IPod so he could listen to inanity in stereo. Or maybe that was A-Rod's I-Pod. Hey, how come the Red Sox aren't dissing the Mets? Aren't we good enough to be dissed by the loudest and most obnoxious defending champions in World Series history? If A-Rod deserves all the ridicule farted in his direction by the flatulently overconfident Red Sox, Cameron must merit an entire encyclopedia on talk-is-cheap radio -- o Cameron, o Cameron! How I yearn for the days when you pronounced how happy you'd be to move over to rightfield if the Mets scored T...

Maybe the Mets didn't trade away all their best pitching prospects after all. Scott Kazmir will be getting a taste of the real major leagues when he logs his weed-thin body through an entire season and perhaps by the All Star break, we will have forgiven the front office for this seemingly senseless trade for Carlos Zambrano but even if not, there may be someone better looming on the horizan: "Yusmeiro Petit, 20, is almost a year younger than Kazmir and posted better statistics in the low minor leagues. He struck out 20 batters in 12 1/3 innings at Class A Brooklyn, recorded 122 strikeouts and just 22 walks at Class A Kingsport and went three consecutive games at Class A St. Lucie with at least 10 strikeouts. As a reward, Petit was promoted to Class AA Binghamton and invited to major league spring training." Who's to say Petit can't be the Dontrelle Willis of 2005, popping up from AA, setting the Major Leagues on fire? ***** Forget the D train and the beefy Yus...

It's one of the first moments of excitement of this new season. The offseason was a long high and the last few weeks following the missed stab at Delgado has been time for introspection on just what all the changes might mean for the Mets ability to compete for the NL East this season. But in reading this gem, it's hard not to feel optimistic. At least about Pedro. I'll always disliked Pedro. He's a prima donna, he's got a big mouth, he put down Piazza after the Guillermo Mota incident, and despite all that bravado, he almost always seemed to choke against the Yankees. "Pressure is a lack of confidence." Pedro philsophised in the Vecsey's piece. This is what's changing my opinion about Pedro. Rather than the humdrum nonstatements, the kind athletes and politicians are so enamoured with, Pedro speaks his mind and Pedro shows you what he really thinks. His honesty is refreshing and he seems almost immediately likeable. This was not usually t...

Yesterday, Mets pitchers and catchers reported to camp and it didn't take long for the first sickening thud to register. That thud would be the realisation that Hamstring Jose admitting he's probably gutted another season with obstinance and overconfidence when it comes to his most fragile body. What we learned was that: "In a telephone interview Wednesday, Mackie Shilstone, a sports-performance expert based in New Orleans, who suggested last season that the Mets needed to address Reyes's recurring hamstring injuries aggressively, then took on Reyes as a client, said he examined the 21-year-old Reyes for three days last October and determined "in no uncertain terms" the root of Reyes's problems, which in addition to his hamstring woes included a stress fracture of his fibula that kept him out of the lineup for most of August and September. Shilstone said he advised Reyes to visit him for two more weeks before playing in the Dominican Winter League and t...

Perhaps in deference to the latest drug controversy which has finally dragged baseball's headlines away from Omar's Offseason, the Mets have resurrected Darryl Strawberry in their new-fangled 1986 time warp machine. Strawberry, who will act as a "special instructor" for spring training, is the eighth member of the 1986 team serving the Mets in some capacity. Yet all the while, the Mets organisation carp on about how they are the "new" Mets. In case you've forgotten, here is what Darryl looks like when it isn't 1986 any more. "It was Omar Minaya's idea to start bringing back some of the 1986 players," Jim Duquette, the Mets' senior vice president of baseball operations, said yesterday in either pointing the blame or explaining why the Mets reached out to Strawberry. "There were a couple already in the organization and Darryl was one guy who was noticeably absent. We wanted him to get more involved with the organization....

The Mets, on the verge of Spring Training, have plenty of new faces and attitudes to keep them fresh. But seeing this projected team altogether on paper for the first time makes one begin to cringe a little in the realisation that alot of winter's highest hopes were based upon a really really optimistic forgetfulness of some very large holes in the roster, rotation and bullpen. A quick glance of the our prospects for winning to date from the Mets website: Projected batting order 1. SS Jose Reyes, .255 BA, 2 HR, 14 RBI in 2004 2. 2B Kazuo Matsui, .272 BA, 7 HR, 44 RBI in 2004 3. CF Carlos Beltran, .267 BA, 38 HR, 104 RBI in 2004 4. C Mike Piazza, .266 BA, 20 HR, 54 RBI in 2004 5. 3B David Wright, .293 BA, 14 HR, 40 RBI in 2004 6. LF Cliff Floyd, .260 BA, 18 HR, 63 RBI in 2004 7. RF Mike Cameron, .231 BA, 30 HR, 76 RBI in 2004 8. 1B Doug Mientkiewicz, .238 BA, 6 HR, 35 RBI in 2004 Making the wild assumption that Hamstring Jose will remain healthy, this is not a ba...

It would appear that the Mets are either interested in free agent Magglio Ordoñez, or a little wary . The outfield is far from set with the oft-injuried Cliff Floyd in left, Beltran in center and the unhappy Mike Cameron in right. A happy Mike Cameron in right would have been ideal but the more one reads about his complaining, the more this selfishness reminds me of Mike Piazza refusing to try to switch to first and disabling the team with his horrific catching skills. It would be nice if Cameron heals as quickly as reported and is traded on the first decent available deal out of town. His attitude is Old Mets, the attitude of self and losers and we don't need him, his wonderful glove, his 30 homers nor his whingeing. It's been rumoured since the middle of last season that Maggs would be Mets-bound. So often in fact I think alot of us began to take it as a foregone conclusion that so long as Magglio Ordoñez had healed, he was going to be a Met. Naturally the fa...

There is certainly no shortage of people who will be happy to tell you how lucky The Mets are not to have Sammy Sosa to kick around in Queens this summer. Sosa and his loud music, the steroid allegations and the debate on his decline would have been the story of the Spring, rather than the additions of Pedro and Carlos and this new-found optimism for the future. And it's true. Sosa would have been a hired-gun who perhaps can no longer draw quick enough. He would eat up millions of payroll, form a perfect bull's eye for fans and the media and would have poisoned the clubhouse, blablabla. OR, he could have been the perfect shield to deflect attention from Carlos Beltran in his first season from intense scrutiny if things didn't go right, right from the start. He might hit 55 homers this season just out of spite against the Cubs now that he's got something to prove. He might have helped sell out Shea every night instead of just the nights that Pedro pitches. ...