This Mets Team Is Too Boring To Write About

By Mike McGann
Posted Sunday, June 3, 2007

Curse you, Omar Minaya!

The Mets are 34-18 and and have built up a nice little lead in the National League East.

They are so boring. Boooooooooring, I tell you. They have no married superstar players out cavorting with blonde strippers (evidently, Scott Boras negotiated A-Rod’s marriage deal, which gives him full stripper grazing rites — which, frankly is a more impressive deal than the silly one he signed with the Texas Rangers. I have to admit, that I too, have full stripper grazing rights, as long as it’s paint stripper and I use it around the house, to strip paint. Any grazing of the silicon-equipped kind of stripper would lead my wife to perform cosmetic surgery on me with a blow torch and length of lead pipe. But then again, A-Rod has a better agent than I do.).

The Mets haven’t made an incredibly stupid trade since shoving Scott Kazmir on a plane in Binghamton. Neither the manager or the general manager is about to get fired. None of the players, other than Guillermo Mota, have admitted without quite admitting to using steroids (and Mota fully admitted it, took his penalty, and has managed to escape the “new, incredibly stupid statement of the day” process that seems to be de rigeur, uh elsewhere. Evidently, letting go chief spokesman Rick Cerrone solved a lot, chief.).

The closest thing to a controversy with the Mets is that a guy who worked for the team 12 years ago admitted to dealing steroids. And how lousy they all look with no hair, except Carlos Delgado, who is both properly bald, and now, properly smashing the snot out of the ball.

So what’s a columnist to do? Invent trade rumors? Oh, wait, that’s been done.

Oh, by the way, informed sources tell me that Armando Benitez will get traded. Again. Possibly as many as three more times when teams realize they could bring in fans to pitch as well as the former Mets’ right hander without paying them just a shade under $10 million for the privilege — providing a deja vu moment from 2003 when the Mets, Yankees and Mariners played hot potato with him and all seemed thrilled just to have him off the roster.

Smart baseball sources also suggest that both the Braves and Phillies are in the market for bullpen help and are ready to make totally pointless, yet cosmetic deals, trading young talent for both washed up and has-been middle relief arms. Could Benitez end up with both teams before July? And this just in: Bobby Cox is expected to argue balls and strikes with home plate umpires, while Phillies’ manager Charlie Manuel will say something stupid, pointless and frustrating to the press. In fact, he’s probably saying it right now, as we speak. And now, too.

Speaking of columnists and trade rumors: a lot of rumors continue to swirl about certain writers using performance enhancing substances. Yup. Marijuana. Mary Jane. Pot. And really, that should be of great relief to their regular readers (not to mention their overworked editors) who assumed they must have been smoking crack. It would be nice, though, if the media would refrain from tossing dozens of empty Doritos bags out the press level at Shea. At least they’re not all over the Twinkies — A-Rod has that covered, but propriety forces me not to divulge whether they’re cream-filled or not.

The Mets won’t even bring a past-his-prime star out of retirement to keep the fans happy. Yes sir, Marty Noble remains firmly retired.

So what the heck is a columnist supposed to write about this team if they’re not running a crystal meth lab out of their parents’ basement? Okay, admittedly, that does drastically cut down the number of local columnists struggling with the problem, but still.

Should we write about the injuries? Like you couldn’t see Shawn Green getting hurt after watching him play the outfield? Since he’s never been on the disabled list before, it’s obvious that his other teams let him wear one of those giant, padded Sumo wresting suits in the outfield. Moises Alou? He got hurt signing his contract. Yeah, no one saw that coming.

No real news flash there, ace.

Stir up more issues about the Mets raiding the Savannah roster to bolster the Brooklyn roster? Yeah, good luck with that. The Sand Nots are 14-396 so far this season, but with any luck they hope to get within 200 games of .500. A number of the players have begged to be traded to Darfur — so things might not be so great in Brooklyn, either this season, even when they send Anderson Hernandez, Sandy Alomar Jr. and Sr. and Ben Johnson to Brooklyn on “rehab” assignments when the Cyclones start the season 1-19.

Even the bloody Citi cough-wet-dream-about-the-Dodgers-cough-Field is getting built ahead of schedule. Things are going so quickly, that the Wilpons are already looking for a new stadium site in Van Nuys, Ca, for when Fred realizes his lifelong dream to completely emulate Walter O’Malley by moving to California and abandoning millions of New York baseball fans for no good reason.

Even the usually controversial Keith Hernandez has behaved in the booth this year. Of course, it helps that he remains on suspension for last year arguing that women shouldn’t be allowed in the dugout without knee pads, prompting a long suspension from SNY. At least Mex got a warm fan letter from A-Rod.

This team is so bloody boring. It is completely impossible to write anything interesting about them, so I give up.

Just as an aside, do you wonder what comes up when you search google for “stripper, Doritos, cream-filled Twinkies and Armando Benitez”? Neither do I.