100 and Counting...

Contrary to popular belief, writers need to get amped up to share their thoughts with the world. Over the last 4 months I have developed a daily routine that pumps me up and calms me down, putting me in the perfect mental condition to be the best scribe that I can be.

It goes a little something like this.

I stand up from wherever I was sitting. I walk to the bathroom. I hop in the shower. I get out of the shower. I return to my room.

I dry off. I grab my laptop and walk to the mirror and remove my towel.

From there I swing my lap top over my head, completely naked looking in the mirror and repeat the line, "Sippy's the best. Sippy's the best," ten times and then go to my desk and sit down.

Call me crazy, but that's how I get my game face on.

Actually... it's not. I'm usually sitting on my couch in a hoody or gray sweatshirt wondering what the hell I'm going to do with my life.

But I didn't completely fabricate that routine. Indeed, it was more of a loving tribute to one of the greatest Mets of all time. A Met who for one and a half seasons brought, speed, OBP and an unmatchable charisma to Shea, serving as the tablesetter for one of the best Mets teams of the last 15 years. In his down time, this player ran shit in the Shea Stadium poker circuit.

Well over the weekend, he came back.

The Mets announced that Rickey Henderson is being brought back to serve as an instructor at their sping training camp in Port St. Lucie. Somewhere, Steamin' Mikey Lehman is smiling at his frat house and JawnJawn730 is preparing for another Opening Day with No. 24 on the back.

And I could not be more excited.

So today, a landmark day here at Yankees2000, this being our 100th post on this site, we pay tribute to one of the greatest Mets of our generation, maybe the biggest asshole in the history of the game and more so, the coolest...Rickey Henderson.

Before I get to Rickey, I'd like to thank AFOMG for helping out a young, inexperienced Sip through these first 100 posts. I was never much of a writer. That stems from never being much of a reader.

The one thing I always read a lot of was sports, so writing sports was not too hard a transition. Nonetheless, AFOMG, keep up the great work. If I'm giving innings 1-8, then he is Billy Wagner out of the pen.

Except of course that he is the spitting image of John Rocker.

Anyway, and of no greater importance than AFOMG, it is RICKEY TIME.

The greatest article I have ever read appeared in Sports Illustrated in the summer of 2003. In short, it paid tribute to Rickey's amazing baseball abilities, but more importantly, gave us tremendous insight to the outrageous character that is Rickey.

There are so many great Rickey stories.

My favorite, as memorialized at the top of this column, was that Rickey's pregame ritaul had him standing in front of a mirror naked, swinging a bat around his head shouting, "Rickey's the best."

There's the one where a team called Rickey to ask him why he hadn't cashed his signing bonus. His response was that he was waiting for interest rates to go up.

Or the time he framed his first million dollar check and put it on his wall not realizing that it was a real check that needed to be cashed.

And finally, the one true to all Mets fans, when Rickey saw John Olerud wearing a helmet while playing the field, Rickey said, "Rickey knew a guy in New York who used to that, too."

Well Rickey is back. His goal, according to Mets.com, is to tutor Jose Reyes on the intracacies of basestealing and plate discipline in the same fashion that he did to Roger Cedeno back in 1999 when he had his one good season. Reyes' issues with getting on base are well-documented, and if Rickey can teach him a thing or two, well, Josie'd be learning the the greatest of all time.

I'm praying that we bring Rickey back to Shea in a more long-term role. Yes, he continues to hold out hope that some major league GM will come calling, and no, not everything about the way he played the game makes him the perfect role model for young players. Who could forget the time Rickey stood in awe of a towering blast he had hit, only to find himself on first base with a single when the ball ricocheted off the top of the wall? When asked why he didn't run out his drive, which would have been a standing double for Ramon Castro, Rickey responded, "What did you expect me to do? Sprint?"

It's just Rickey being Rickey and truth is, he may not be perfect, but the guy is pure entertainment.

So welcome back, Rickey. We are glad to be sharing 100 with you. To all the haters, salt.

To the rest, we're just going to keep rocking and rolling in the months to come.

VCD,

SM