Things Change, Mox

Hey everyone, A Friend of Mr. Glass' here. Gonna have to make this a quick one as I am really busy at the offi... wait a minute, that's not true. No, today, friends, the Glass Man is reliving the glory days up at the WC.

Things have changed a bit since I was last at my Berkshires alma mater. Lot of construction ongoing, some construction completed; it's come a long way since spring 2005, but there's work left to be done.

As I amble about the place, I find myself thinking a lot about endings. College is over. I can't say I'm particularly fazed about that. I mean, great time, but you get to a point where you're ready to move on, particularly when you go to school in the middle of nowhere.

But it's over, and once it's over, the rest of your life kind of begins. It's not the last new beginning of course. There's grad school, if that's your thing. Marriage. Kids.

But being done with your "necessary" education is really the end of the first phase of your life. Think about it, the first 22 years of your life are pretty much defined by school, if not by the academic rigors then by the friends you make and the schedule it sets.

In much the same way, the past three months have been defined by baseball. Not just for me but for every sports fan out there, cuz fact is, unless you've got a New York Liberty t-shirt on right now, there's not a whole lot in the way of team sports after basketball ends.

That changed yesterday with the beginning of another season of NFL football. Didn't really occur to me until this morning, when I had to deal with that idiotic blowhard Chris Berman reel off a series of seriously unfunny nicknames and refer to himself as the Swami about 20 times in a 5-minute span.

It wasn't all Berman though. It was the fact of football highlights impeding on my accustomed 45 minutes of baseball coverage during SportsCenter (which, removed from SNY, I have to watch).

Some use Labor Day to mark the end of summer. Me, it's the start of the football season. Like college, summer, it seems, is over. Gone but not forgotten. Forever and ever, anon.

Oh well. The good news is that this is a summer's ending that can be celebrated. Much as there is life after college, for Mets fans in 2006, there is life after the summer. And after last night's display, there's still more room for optimism.

Tom Glavine looked great for the first time since June. And when I say looked, I mean it sure sounded like he was pitching well, at least from how Howie and Tom described it on the Fan.

It's the kind of performance which is important now and important later. We need Tommy to get going to give us a strong second starter going into October.

Better yet, the Dodgers are a likely playoff team, and his shutdown performance could be remembered fondly come the NLCS, should the Mets find themselves faced with a 1988 redux.

As if that weren't enough, these Dodgers aren't exactly slouches offensively. They've scored the fourth most runs in the National League, and they have the league's highest average and OBP. Their weakness is their inability to go deep; of 16 NL teams, the Dodgers' 122 long balls rank dead last.

But Tommy did a good job keeping the Dodgers off the bases, allowing 6 baserunners against 26 batters faced. It was the kind of performance we needed to see out of him, our confidence in Tommy having flagged considerably since early June, and he came through. Good to see.

Also good to see was the Mets beating up on the ace of the Dodgers' SI-vaunted pitching staff, Brad Penny. Seven earned in 5.2 innings against one of the NL's best. Again, something we can remember fondly should we face this team again in the playoffs.

So yes, friends, summer is over and the fall is upon us. The Mets are playing meaningless games in advance of their first meaningful October in 6 years.

Just like when college ended, I'm ready for summer to be over. This year, summer being over is a good thing, even if it does mean a little more Berman than I can stomach.

- A.F.O.M.G.