Unrecognized Entity



Well, I hope you’re happy with yourselves.

And by “yourselves”, I’m clearly talking about the ownership of the rudderless S.S. Flushing, which has finally steered the good ship into indifferent waters.  Boy oh boy, visiting teams must love coming to the unrecognized entity known as Citi Field.  Welcoming locker rooms with all the amenities, great post game spreads, and built in visiting fans.  All I can hear on the broadcast is “Let’s Go Giants” and “Tim-my! Tim-my! Tim-my! Tim-my!”  All the way from San Francisco … which isn’t a division rival, and it’s not even halfway across the country.  It’s across the country.  And their fans took over the damn park without any sort of vocal opposition.  The Pepsi Porch might has well been the Principality of Sealand for how easy it was to invade.

And I have to ask, who’s fault is that? Hmmmm, years of mismanagement, ponzi schemes, tone deaf planning, bad hires, cheap giveaways, Oliver Perez … who’s responsible for all of this?   Who’s responsible for the beautiful new park that’s filled with people who scream louder at t-shirt giveaways than balks, drunks who heckle Dexter Fowler and not make any sense (“Hey Dexter! Your mother took me to see The Color Purple last night!”), and dopes who could give a s**t about moving through the rows during play, and real fans who happen to root for the visiting team (and by real in this case I mean: yeah, they may be bandwagon Giant fans who became Giant fans in November of 2010 but at least they know to cheer louder with two strikes on the opposing hitter than they would at the abortion known as “Kiss Cam”) mixed in with the 200-300 true blue Mets fans who put up with all of this nonsense and should be the ones sitting behind the plate in a New York Red Bull style “supporters” section rather than Citibank’s Wine and Cheese Club?  Who is responsible, I ask you?

Oh you know who’s responsible.  And I apologize if this seems like beating a dead horse, but few things drive me crazier than this.  I have a hard time thinking that as small as the attendance numbers were in 1993 when the Mets stunk, that even visiting fans back then would have had a harder time not being drowned out than they would today.  In fact I can guarantee that because I went to enough of those debacles in 1993 that I could honestly say that visiting fans starting chants would not have been heard on television for very long.  But they are now.  They’re heard because ownership has finally driven this fan base to the point where the ones who truly care stay away, and the ones who are there are ambivalent.  It happens way too often now, and the blood curdling screams of joy from the visitors side are on ownership’s incapable hands.

Oh yeah, the Mets lost 2-0.  Maybe if Chris Capuano keeps this up he can be traded for a 25-year-old AA middle infielder rather than a 29-year-old one at the deadline.  And the next time Willie Harris goes up to the plate with a runner on scoring position and can’t figure out whether he wants to swing or not, then as he walks away from the plate after strike three I’d prefer he keep walking until he finds his more unified clubhouse in Washington D.C.  Oh, and that $900,000 we’re paying Tim Byrdak to warm up in the bullpen, this is why you can’t find enough employees to help you at the Catch of the Day fish stand.  More money well spent.  Wasn’t this supposed to be the regime who you can hand a limited payroll to and they’d find better value to fill the lower half of the roster?  Well Byrdak is the greatest warm-up pitcher ever but can’t be trusted to pitch to Carlos Gonzalez, Harris has gone from Tom Emanski’s Defensive Drills to Look Out It’s Headed Right For Me by Pat Burrell, and Scott Hairston has me writing love poems to Cory Sullivan.

Can you freeze your ass off watching a team full of warm bodies?