Shooting From The Hip - Starita Style

By Tom "Mr Star" Starita
Posted Sunday, October 7, 2007

I have no idea what to say right now. It’s like all my thoughts are trying to charge through my brain at the same time, causing a traffic jam and a massive headache. Everything is disjointed, muddled and full of profanities. Therefore, today’s column will be a homage (rip-off) to Mike Lupica’s “Shooting From the Lip.”

Last Friday I sat with nuns, little kids and Matt/Mike/Rich down the left field line in Mezz Box and cursed like a sailor. Usher Jim thought I was going to swan dive off the deck and I believe I stopped blinking after the seventh inning. Walking down the Shea ramps I mentally checked out. We were done and I was coming to grips with it.

Last Saturday I sat for the last time in Mezz 16 with the usual crew and watched the best pitching performance I have ever seen in person. (The only performance better since I’ve been watching Mets baseball would be Bobby Jones’ one hitter to clinch the NLDS in 2000.) Usher Jim was laughing at the complete 180 in my demeanor and I believe the smile never left my face after the first inning. (Except when Hoover hit his check-swing eighteen-bounce single with two outs, two strikes in the eighth.) Walking down the Shea ramps I believed if the Phillies just lost one game we were going to steal it. We were back in it and I was on top of the world.

Last Sunday we all gathered here, at the World Famous APT because for the first time ever, we couldn’t get tickets when we wanted to go. Seriously, first time in my life I couldn't get into Shea.

Thank God.

Although Mike DID manage to score four tickets to Philadelphia on Monday, right field second deck, if there was a game. Looking back, with my mouth, win or lose I would have ended up arrested, deported or killed.

I’m glad I waited a week to write this, because the anger has left. All that remains is the emptiness and plenty of lingering bitterness. I won’t compare this to a death, because I do have SOME perspective. Instead, this akin to having broken up with a long-term boyfriend or girlfriend.

The analogy makes perfect sense. When you’re with someone for the long term, and by long term I’m talking two years plus, you talk everyday. Whether it’s in person, the phone, texting, online, smoke signals, whatever, you talk everyday. Conversely, the Mets play almost every day, and if they don’t you still talk about them or read about them every day. Your partner and the Mets are part of your routine.

Now the routine is gone.

Except that it’s not. There are games still being played and if you’re a masochist like me you’re watching them. This is like knowing your ex is now dating someone else and you bump into them at some bar. Of course since I’m watching every game this is like bumping into the ex with a new guy every single day!

Hold on....I need a drink!

There is nothing you can do to fill the void. Sure, you can try to occupy your time, but it’s still in the back of your head. The only thing that will fix this IS time. Unfortunately for you, me and the rest of the faithful this means waiting a LOOONG seven months.

As for Willie…

Listen, I know there are some of you out there who want to see him take the fall. After all, if the manager gets the credit, he gets the blame – especially for a monumental collapse.

But unless Bobby Valentine is walking towards a podium with the Mets logo on it, I want Willie to stay.

It’s real simple. Pitching wins ballgames. And when your pitchers can’t get out of the fourth inning every night it’s going to wear out your already fragile bullpen, resulting in games where your offense averages seven runs a game and you still lose.

So are you blaming Willie because Tom Glavine decided to go on early vacation for the entire month of September? Or are you blaming Willie for El Duque getting hurt once again down the stretch? Is it Willie’s fault there wasn’t ONE reliable arm in the bullpen? Or that Billy Wagner came down with back spasms after Marlon got the biggest hit of the year with the three run double in Florida?

I know some people want to see more fire and emotion from him. They want him to act like Paul Lo Duca, who goes crazy and gets thrown out in the ninth inning against the Phillies. What does that do? Keith Hernandez said it best when Gary Cohen asked if a manager getting thrown out fires up a team and Keith said it never fired him up, it was more of an annoyance. These are paid professionals, not little league kids. A fifty-year-old man going nuts is not going to inspire them to play harder.

Like it or not, a manager isn’t THAT important. You’re going to tell me the Phillies won the National League East because of Charlie Manuel? Or the Yankees won four championships because Joe Torre is a genius? The only manager I know of who ever STOLE games and series was Bobby Valentine – who managed rings around Dusty Baker and Tony LaRussa in 2000.

If Willie had a pitching staff we would be in the playoffs.

The End.

Can we stop with the over-analyzing of Jose Reyes!

Here’s what happened. The kid went into a slump. He pressed. The slump got worse. He pressed more. Now it’s September, the slump is horrible, he’s stressing out, the team is losing and he went mental.

The End.

In fact we, as Mets fans, should be old pros with this, considering David Wright went through the same thing last year. And if I remember there were some Mets fans who were suggesting that Reyes was the steal and David was going to be overrated. Hell, there were some Mets fans who BOOED David in April.

Now Jose Reyes is garbage and Buster Olney thinks we should trade him for Johan Santana.

MISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSTAKE!

He’s 24, and despite three horrible months had 191 hits, 78 stolen bases and scored almost 120 runs, despite no one driving him in during the first half. Plus he walked over 80 times. All in basically half a season.

Please, don’t read more into it than a slump. Rickey Henderson didn’t poison his mind, he isn’t doing drugs, there are no family problems (that I know of); it was simply the case of a 24-year-old kid panicking because he couldn’t get out of a slump that he knew was affecting the entire team. All he hears is, “As Reyes goes, so do the Mets.” You have newspapers and talk radio overanalyzing every swing like it's the Zapruder film. There isn’t a person reading this right now who wouldn’t have freaked out like he did.

The good thing is, just like David learned from 2006, Jose hopefully will learn from 2007. No one wants to trade David now and I suspect no one will want to trade Jose at the end of 2008.

Can we also get off Lastings Milledge PLEASE? OK, he freaked out and was suspended; major mistake, INEXCUSABLE mistake to make. But other than that, what did he do wrong in 2007? The kid hit, played a good right field and was a model citizen. Yet all we hear is he is a punk kid who should be traded. This is the same punk kid, who, according to the media, was the ONLY Mets player to stick around and watch the Phillies game last Saturday. Everyone else went home and Lastings stuck around to watch the game in the player’s lounge.

The kid wants to win!

He cares!

He’s only 22!

And unless Johan Santana is involved, I want him in right field in 2008.

Tom Glavine, following Sunday’s abomination: “I’m not devastated. I’m disappointed, but devastation is for much greater things in life. I’m disappointed, obviously, in the way I wanted to pitch. I can’t say there is much more I would have done differently.”

Goodbye Tom. I hope you sign with Atlanta and I hope we knock you out in the first inning every time we play. The month of September came and went and the Mets were DESPERATE for someone to step up and pitch seven innings. What does our Hall of Famer give us? Four HORRIBLE starts in a row. Thanks for struggling for the first two-and-one-half years you were here; thanks for losing 68 times to Atlanta; thanks for losing Game 5 against St. Louis last year; and thanks for only being disappointed after choking in the biggest game of the year. I’m happy to see while myself and millions of other Mets fans are beyond depressed you can skip merrily back to Atlanta and hang out with your BFF KIT 143 LMNOP John Smoltz.

Goodbye and good riddance!

If I hear another person wish we still had Heath Bell I’m going to jump out the window! Do we NOT remember Heath Bell? Every time he came in he gave up at least one run. Every….single….time! Did I ever hear anyone say Heath Bell should be our eighth inning guy? NO! All I heard was Heath Bell bashing. Well, now he straightened his career out. Good for him. He needed a change in scenery and I hope he has a good career, except when facing the Mets!

Chip Caray has no class. Singing “Beat the Mets” while announcing for the Braves shows how petty and amateurish he is. Hey Chip, you aren’t announcing high school baseball, this is the professionals, lets act like it.

FINALLY – to the Phillies, who decided to fire up their fans by showing highlights of the Mets collapse before Game 1 of the NLDS…

Instant karma is gonna get you....!!!!

Tom appreciates all the calls, texts, IMs, and myspace messages from everyone who were concerned for his mental health. He prays to God he gets to pop the champagne bottle that’s been sitting in his fridge since February 2005 before he dies. If you want to commiserate email him at MrStarita@yahoo.com or the forums, which you never use anyway but I’ll continue to push until I’m blue in the face.