Offseason on Fire

As I write this, the offseason is not yet upon us. Boston leads Colorado 2-0 in the seventh. Anything is possible, but I'm betting the season ends today. And if it doesn't, I'll bet it ends some time in the next week.

For the Mets of course, the offseason came sooner than any of us expected. In the immediate aftermath of our September collapse, there was frustration, anger, sadness, all the usual emotions.

But there was one very unusual emotion some of us felt as well: relief.

Look, we all wanted the Mets to make the playoffs. Forget what's happened from April to September, once you're in, you have a chance.

But there was something peculiarly unloveable about this Mets team. I can't remember the last time I felt less personal fondness for a Mets team. This was particularly strange because the 2007 team was essentially a carbon copy of the 2006 team, at least in terms of roster composition, and I loved that 2006 team.

Through the hopefulness of the Next Year is Now Mets of 2005 and the The Team. The Time. Mets of 2006, there was an ebullience, a fire that was palpable.

This year was different. The Your Season Has Gone Mets of 2007 never had that fire, or if they did have it at one point early on, it was certainly extinguished by June 1.

Like others, I think somehow these Mets felt a sense of entitlement. Maybe it all started with the end of 2006. A dominating 97-win season ended with an unlikely home run by an unlikely player on an unlikely, middling team.

These Mets in 2007 played the regular season as if it were some drawn-out test of patience that that had to be endured before the real business could begin in the postseason. They played as if they were entitled to return to October. It was as if they felt they had nothing to prove in the regular season, and in the end that's exactly what they proved: nothing.

But this is baseball, and in baseball there is never any end. The Mets will be back in 2008, and, I'm quite confident, so too will the fire.

I think these guys know how badly they fucked things up. I think they feel genuine embarrassment about it. I think next season we'll see a side of them we hardly ever saw in 2007. I think we'll see passion. I think we'll see a genuine respect for the regular season. All that entitlement bullshit? I think that'll be gone.

So I'm writing it up now. There's going be something new at Shea in 2008, the old ballpark's final season. There's going to be a completely different energy out there. "Your Season has Come"? Fuck that. "Season on Fire". That's more like it.

On the first day of the offseason, I'm more excited about Mets baseball than I have been at any point, maybe, since a cold, drizzly night at Shea in October 2006.

Hot Stove starts tomorrow. Offseason on Fire, Omar. It's your move.

- A.F.O.M.G.