Who Is Running The Mets?

As a rule, I try to avoid the loudmouth sports talk television shows that make up most of the programming on local sports cable channels.  Recently, however, I happened upon SNY's Loudmouths, which pits Chris Carlin and Adam Schein, two former talk show hosts/producers on WFAN against each other in spirited, loud debate about current New York sports news.  On this day, they were responding to questions and comments from the fans, and one of them had this to say:

"Omar [Minaya] is going to do the same thing at the trading deadline that he has for the past 2 years; nothing."

Kudos to Loudmouths, an SNY program, for posting this comment, because I feel that this organization has not been criticized enough for its approach (or lack thereof) towards the last 2, even 3, trading deadlines.  In 2007 and 2008, when the Mets were right there in the mix, Omar did nothing at the deadline in both years--both years!--when they clearly had issues, especially ones in the bullpen.  Their complacency is difficult to understand, especially in 2008, when they had come off a terrible and terribly well-documented collapse at the end of the previous year, and they still had the arrogance to basically say, "Our team is good enough as is."

I am not saying it is easy to be a general manager.  But when I see virtually every contender add star veterans while only giving up 30 cents on the dollar (see whom the Pirates received for trading away Jason Bay last year), you have to wonder where Omar is.  Yes, he has brought many stars to this team.  But that's in the offseason.  During the season he just seems...lost.

But I don't mean to allocate all of the blame to Minaya.  As an organization, they have failed their fans.  I do not know if the Bernie Madoff incident has made the Wilpons cheap, but even before that, they didn't seem too keen on adding payroll midseason; it has been noted that they do not want to pay the luxury tax under any circumstances.  So the question I have is - Are the Wilpons handcuffing Omar, or is Omar incapable of making a deal for a veteran?

It's probably a mixture of both, but either way, this team has been bitterly disappointing since that very fun 2006 season.  They haven't added a significant offensive player (Delgado) to this team since the 2005 offseason.  They wasted the last 2 years when they were in contention, and now, they deserve the empty seats they will see at Citi Field in 2009.

If You Say Something Enough Times, It Comes True

We've been trained to think that whoever uses the phrase, "The Power of Positive Thinking" is an idiot or completely out of touch.  Those who practice optimism and blind faith are often characterized as being sappy, over-sentimental, intolerable sponges, and depending on the degree of optimism, that characterization may well be accurate.  

An example of such a person would be a passenger in a car that broke down at 3 AM on the New Jersey Turnpike in the dead of winter.  For argument's sake, we'll set this in a time when regular people did not have cell phones. This bubbly person would bounce out of the car and shout:

"Come on, let's walk to the nearest gas station!  Isn't this exciting?  It's New Jersey, it's 3 AM, and we're roughing it.  Let's go!"

Clearly, this is an annoying person; here, the power of positive thinking is making the others want to hit her.  But as with most things in life, there are two sides to everything, and there is a power of negative thinking as well.  Of negative speaking, in fact.  

Simply and crudely put, if you say something enough times, it becomes true; so if you constantly say you suck, well then, you're going to suck because everybody is going to think that you suck.  Shakespeare said it best in Hamlet: ..."There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."  Now, there are certain things in life you can objectively say are either good or bad.  Air conditioning - Good.  Slave labor - Bad.  But for the vast majority of areas in life about which there can be a variety of opinions, the words we use play a greater role in shaping those opinions than we think.  Sticking with the theatre track, a group of young actors might be putting on a play that has the potential to be quite good, but the actors insecurities are compelling them to bash it or minimize the guest list or subconsciously sabotage it, and so in the unofficial history of theatre, the play will go down as a failure even though there was nothing inherently wrong with the play.

In the world of sports, we see this too.  Sports talk radio (especially in New York) feeds on negativity, and forcing its listeners to believe that there are serious problems with their local teams.  Referring to the 2007 season in which the New York Mets suffered a terrible collapse but the New York Giants unexpectedly won the Super Bowl, sports radio talk superstar Mike Francesa has said, "For us (the sports media), the Giants winning the Super Bowl the way they did, that's a 9.  The Mets collapsing the way they did?  That's a 10."

Anyone who follows the Mets knows there is no sugar coating how badly they played at the end of 2007, but the sports media insisted that this was the WORST COLLAPSE IN THE HISTORY OF MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL.  Not one person, however, has sufficiently explained how blowing a 7 game lead with 17 games to play was worse than what the 1964 Phillies did, which was blow a 6.5 game lead with 12 games to play.  Both are choke jobs, no doubt, but because the media insisted that the recent Mets' collapse was more precipitous, it became truth, without any logic to support the assertion.

This kind of phenomenon is ubiquitous.  I was mildly amused but also troubled by a recent conversation I had with a person from Quebec.  I had mentioned that my mom had, for one reason or another, always insisted that the province's name was pronounced "Ke-Bec" instead of "Kwe-bec."  Somehow or other, this person characterized the pronunciation as an opinion, rather than a fact.  How can the pronunciation of a word be subject to opinion?  If you uttered the word "forest" and it sounded like "xylophone", I'm sorry, but you'd be wrong.  But because so many people say "Kwe-bec", even people from Quebec have resigned themselves to the fact that it can be pronounced either way!

This lowering of our standards is dangerous.  Anything that is said can become truth, as long as no one is brave enough to say "You're wrong," - two words that people have found it increasingly difficult to say.  But we must re-learn to say them.  Before I go, I will leave you with this link to a clip from Star Trek: The Next Generation, which illustrates this idea almost as well as I have.  Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_eSwq1ewsU

Pre 9/11 Time VS. Post 9/11 Time

Don't worry; this post is much less serious than its title would indicate.

I have found that many people struggle to remember when something happened unless it occurred on September 11th, 2001.  Generally speaking, they use that date as a time benchmark and lump everything into a "Before 9/11" or "After 9/11" category, without even attempting to think logically about what year certain events occur in.  For example:

"Hey, that was a fun Vegas trip in 2003!" (Even though the trip was in 2006)

"Mike's wedding was in 1995, right?" (It was in 1999)

"The White Sox; 2003 World Champions!" (They won it all in 2005)

I happen to possess an outstanding memory, and perhaps this is why my understanding of those who do not share that innate ability is limited.  But it is sickening that people don't even know their own lives; they don't know WHY they couldn't have possibly taken that Vegas trip in 2003, or that Mike didn't even know his future wife in 1995.  Unless we go back and examine receipts or look at old invitations, all we have is 3 or 4 important dates in our lives that we use as landmarks and the rest is just hazy conjecture, and what's worse is that we're content to be ignorant of the subtleties of our life's timeline.

When speaking with friends or acquaintances, I've often corrected them on what year an event occurred in THEIR LIFE (or, I've refrained if I didn't know the person that well and didn't want to seem like a stalker).  Like, a person will think that they were hired at a company one year, and I will remind them that they were still a junior in college that year.  How can I have a better picture of someone else's timeline?  This ignorance of oneself is highly disturbing to me, and I think it highlights a major societal problem: we have higher standards for other people than we have for ourselves. 

The Neighborhood Deli

While I was waiting to be served at my neighborhood deli this afternoon, the owner of the establishment was having a loud phone conversation.  He was in the midst of explaining that his store phone was not working, and the person on the other end must've asked him why this was so, because this was the owner's reply:

"Well if I knew the answer to that, I'd be working at the phone company, wouldn't I?"

We've all said things like this in the heat of anger (or frustration).  But I think we're much more capable of mastering our anger than we realize.  Not to get all Dr. Phil--I certainly don't have anything resembling a degree in psychology--but it's the truth.  First of all, it's perfectly within reason that the store owner would have been able to figure out what was wrong with his landline by calling the phone company, making his co-conversationalist's question a valid one.

(Incidentally, there is a mural painted on the gate of this deli which you can see when it's closed for business; the mural depicts the owner and his 3 henchmen as cherubs; they are shirtless, winged, and have halos over their heads.  Very strange, and gross, if you ask me, which you were about to.)

One final word; one time, I was delivered something by UPS.  After the delivery man handed me the package, he walked away without asking me to sign.  This was the first time I had not been asked to sign, and so when I asked him if I had to sign, he said, "Would I be walking away if you had to?"  What if I had saved his ass by reminding him that I had to sign?

All of this is to remind ourselves that there are already enough reasons to snap at your fellow man, so we don't have to go looking for more.

Washington Mutually Awkward

I just called my local Washington Mutual branch to see if they had normal business hours today and the Washington Mutual employee on the other end replied, "Who's this?"

I assure you, I did not dial a wrong number.

I'm Back!

This will be my first substantial blog post in about 2 months.  Who'd have thought that teaching takes a lot out of you?  When I first started this, I intended to post work regularly, and by regularly I meant every other day, if not every day.  Clearly, I have not lived up to that, and because I have lost your trust, you won't be checking this blog regularly, either.

It's funny that in our legal system, we're innocent until proven guilty, but in the court of public opinion of course, we are guilty until proven innocent.  To use a well-known example, Michael Jackson was accused of child sexual abuse but was never convicted, but the public will always believe that he had sex with kids, and he cannot prove his innocence, because it's hard to prove that you didn't have sex with someone, and also, he's dead.  And we want to believe that people who have easier lives than ours struggle with theirs because it makes it easier to accept that someone can have wealth and fame as long as they have their share of problems too.

But this line of thinking, "guilty until proven innocent", extends beyond legal issues.  When you start a new job, very often you're "incompetent until proven competent," which is fair; employers need to show restraint in praising an employee until he/she is certain that they can do the job.  

Among friends, however, this line of thinking can be damaging.  Let's take a 20-something male and call him Bill.  Bill's friends have noted to Bill that they don't think he will ever to run the marathon.  They have labeled him "incapable until proven capable."  Perhaps they have their reasons; Bill has never been in sterling shape.  He likes to stay indoors, sleep in, and watch HBO on Demand instead of spending that hour or two per day on exercise like many people do.  But Bill decides to train for a year and eventually completes that marathon.  Now his friends look foolish.

All of this is to say, we underestimate each other way too much.  Even among friends, I have encountered the attitude of, "I don't think he/she can do something until they show me they can."  This attitude isn't always mean-spirited, but it is often there.  Aren't friends supposed to assume the opposite?  I think we do this because it's comforting to freeze our images of our peers, to think that we're progressing while everyone else is staying the same.  But this is silly.  We would all be more mentally healthy if we admitted that everyone is constantly aspiring to improve themselves, which, of course, is the reality of life.