Fourth Annual Y2K Thanksgiving Spectacular... Presented by Mitt Romney

I feel a bit like Mitt Romney. I remember old Mitt getting up in front of his supporters after each successive second place finish in the primaries.

The first time he started by saying, "Well, we won a silver." The second time it was, "Well, it was another silver." The line was intended to inspire confidence, but Romney was never a good enough salesman to make you believe he could turn silver into gold. In the end it just sounded hollow, like he wasn't sure he believed it himself.

As the silvers piled up it became clear: Mitt Romney had something going for him, but it was never enough to get him anywhere worth getting getting excited about.

Loathe as I am to compare anything Mets-related to Mitt Romney, there is a disturbing parallel between the predicament Romney found himself in in January and the one we've found ourselves in for two Octobers running.

The Mets have been caught in that mid-2000s malaise that plagued the Phillies; they've become the team just good enough to finish 1 game out of the playoffs, which is really no better than the

We've lamented their failings before, and doubtless we will again. But today's a day for giving thanks, so without further ado...

1. Johan

There's no other place to start.

For me, the enduring image of Johan Santana was captured by The New York Times. The picture ran in the September 28, 2008 issue; a day before, Johan had pitched the Mets to a 2-0 victory over the Marlins, drawing them into a Wild Card tie with the Brewers heading into the final day of the season.

In the picture (which I can't find online, regretably), Johan is standing on the mound after the final out of the game has been recorded. He's looking toward his catcher, or maybe the home dugout, his mouth a perfect circle as if to say "Let's Go!" Behind him are blurred images of fans, euphoric, arms above their heads as they applaud.

It was a moment when hope met ability, and it all seemed like it might be alright. In truth, every fifth day felt that way. Santana would warm up as "Smooth" blared in the background, and for 9 innings you'd wonder how you ever questioned this team.

In the end, the problems with the 2008 team were greater than one man. But Johan, a would-be 20-game winner this year, lived up to our expectations all season, and in that final rain-soaked game on three days rest, he surpassed them.

2. Shea Stadium

I've resigned myself to an acceptance of the conventional wisdom about Shea, that it was a dump. I'm fine with that. The memory of Shea is about much more than attractive aesthetics or comfortable seats.

For me, it's about the memories between me and my dad, me and my brother, me and my friends, and the teams we rooted for over the year. Shea is where we grew up.

Nothing against Citi Field, which I'm sure will be great in its way, but it won't be the same going out to Mets games and never having Shea as the backdrop again. For all its bells and whistles, Citi Field can never have those memories.

3. Continued employment

The credit crunch has been a bitch on the blogosphere, kids. We've had to liquidate some assets and eliminate some redundancies (see Momo, Sippy; Ben, Cheddar), but the little site that could is still trucking, just like the Glass Man.

So far my day job has held up pretty well; there's no telling how long that will last, but so far so good. A lot of really talented people have lost their jobs in recent months, many of them no more or less deserving of losing their jobs than I would be.

To those who have lost their jobs, remember, health, family, and the Mets are the important things. Besides, there's always B-School.

4. Sip and Ched

It's not the same doing Y2K without these two.

Sip's one of my oldest friends; the friend I associate with the Mets more than anyone else. He started this site as a bored paralegal, and left it all out on the blog for three years.

Sip's the Godfather of Y2K, without him I wouldn't have known where to start. I know that to be true, actually, because the summer before my senior year of college, I tried. I forget the name (Depressed Mets Fan? Something like that), but I had it all set up, it was ready to go, and then I sat down, and... nothing. I didn't know where to begin.

Sip showed me where to begin, and I still haven't figured out where to end. As for him, the truth is he began talking retirement long before he finally hung 'em up, and I suspect a large part of the reason he hung on as long as he did was because he knew how much the site meant to me. And it meant a lot to me to share it with him.

As for Ched, he comes from a different part of the map, and didn't grow up a Mets fan. He wrote becacuse he loves to write, it's in his blood the way it's in mine.

But for him, as for Sip, life came along and changed the equation. Ched's in law school now, and Sip's in business school. It was too much to focus there, have free time, and blog. It's a shame, but that's how it is.

It reminds me of what they say about managers, how they're hired to get fired some day. Bloggers start only to finish some day. For every Matt Cerrone who's able to make a buck off the thing, there are a million others who do it only for love of the written word or for love of hte subject matter.

Sip and Ched were two of the best.

Door's always open, guys.

5. Football: So back!

Football, who knew!?

For much of my life, it was baseball or bust. I remember one season, 1999 I believe, when I watched the Jets intently. And another, 2000 I think, when I followed the Knicks game-in and game-out.

Since graduation I'd been flirting with the Giants. Last year it finally stuck. I picked them up the week after the Mets broke my heart, and the ride to the Super Bowl was an awesome thing to be a part of.

This year it's been one big gravy train with the Giants coasting and the Jets looking like the real deal, too.

It's a great time to be a football fan in New York. Now if we could only fix the Mets and the Knicks we'd really be getting somewhere.

6. Barack the Nation

This isn't a political blog so I won't dwell on this one, but suffice it to say that I was pleased with the election result this year. It's nice to see that an educated, Northerner still has a chance to be considered the best man for the most important job in the world.

7. Vampire Weekend, Ra-Ra Riot, John Mayer

The three artists that defined my year. Vampire Weekend's self titled album was the soundtrack to those late spring days when summer was so close you could taste it. Highlight tracks include "A-Punk", "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa", "Wolcott", and "The Kids Don't Stand a Chance", but really the whole album is terrific ("One (Blake's Got a New Face)" notwithstanding). Highly recommended.

Ra-Ra Riot was to autumn what Vampire Weekend was to late spring, a last gasp of energy before the clocks fell back. Highlight tracks include "Each Year", "Can You Tell", "Dying is Fine" and "Winter '05".

As for John Mayer, I realize it's not the most macho thing to get into but whatever. Mayer's a soulful dude, and I can get into that. Give a listen to "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room", "Stop This Train", "Vultures", and his cover of "Free Fallin'".

8. Mad Men, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Gossip Girl

The best shows on television. I've only seen the first season of Mad Men, but wow, that show is not whomping around. As different as they are, Don Draper might be the best television character since Tony Soprano.

On to Terminator... chances are you're not watching this gem. If you're not, pick up the DVD and start from the beginning. The brooding, the unbearable man-terminatrix sexual tension, the Brian Austin Green... what a show.

As for Gossip Girl, watch the show then read about it on nymag.com afterward. I take it back, Chuck Bass might be the best character since Tony Soprano.

9. Readers like you

As alluded to above, 2008 has been a year of transition for Y2K. The continued support of our readers is something that I'll always be thankful for. Cheers to all of you out there who make this worth the while.

Gobble, gobble.

- A.F.O.M.G.

Small Town, USA?

They were the moves a New York team could supposedly never make.

On Friday, the Knicks jettisoned their two best players, Jamal Crawford and Zach Randolph, in separate deals to free up cap space for a 2010 (that is, not next offseason, the offseason after that) run at LeBron James the King.

Regular readers are aware that the Glass Man doesn't know basketball the way he knows baseball, so Saturday night I asked someone I trusted.

"Sip [he lives!]," I asked, "how do you like the trades?"

"Genius," he said. "Two years from now we'll remember Friday as the greatest day in Knicks history."

* * * * *

The moves flew in the face of so much conventional wisdom, it's hard to know where to begin.

After years of languishing, uninspiring, nausea-inducing basketball, the Knicks were finally exciting people again. Thanks to a new brain trust, a new head coach, and a hot-enough (6-3) start, the Knicks had finally looked relevant again.

We all know New York is a results-oriented town, and I'm sure it was very tempting for Donnie Walsh and Mike D'Antoni to keep their horses and make a run for the playoffs.

Instead they decided to go for something bigger. They traded today for a large chunk of dry powder with a two-year fuse.

Think about that. They traded what appeared (through an eighth of the season, for what that's worth) to be a good shot at the playoffs in 2008-09 and quite possibly again in 2009-10 for the hope of really making something happen come 2010-11.

* * * * *

I can't remember the last time a New York team made this kind of move. For years we've been told that New York teams can't make this kind of move, that the instant-gratification gene (naturally, a part of the New York fan's DNA) would reject the long-term sensibility.

And yet, when the news broke on Friday, the trades were cheered by nearly every corner of the New York fanerati. So what gives? All this time, have we had the New York fan wrong?

Well, that's hard to say.

It's important to remember that the Knicks' recent history, a whirlwind of ineptitude and unprofessionalism, makes their situation somewhat unique. The Knicks haven't just been irrelevant, they've been a mockery.

If the Knicks slide back into ineptitude this year, that won't be any great change from the recent past; and at least now their fans would have a light at the end of the tunnel. And their fans seem comfortable with that.

All of it goes to show that sometimes, just sometimes, New York fans are willing to take some bad tasting medicine today in the hope that they might feel better tomorrow.

So what's it all mean for Mets fans like you and me?

Right now, very little. Thankfully, the Mets and Knicks are in very different places.

Some day though the Mets will be in rebuilding mode again. When that day comes, Mets management would do well to remember the response these moves generated. It goes to show it's not just the small market teams that can rebuild in earnest, sometimes the big boys can pull it off too.

- A.F.O.M.G.

Pedro's Legacy: Spare Us, Will Leitch

It pains me to write this, it really does. For years, Will Leitch, the creator and former lead editor of Deadspin, has been a guy I've really respected.

And I'm indebted to him on some level; on his watch, Deadspin linked to various Y2K articles, including some written by yours truly, all of which broadened our audience.

But Mr. Leitch, now of New York Magazine, has posted a very ill-considered (and, frankly, poorly written) piece in which he attempts to tell Mets fans how to feel about one of their own.

The piece is called "Leitch: The Unfortunate Legacy of Pedro Martinez". The key word is the one in the middle, legacy.

Your legacy is the story of how you're remembered, and to my mind, Pedro's Mets legacy can only be defined by Mets fans, because only Mets fans have the proper perspective on the matter.

Let me explain because I don't want to seem unreasonable about this. I appreciate, for instance, that I can opine on Manny Ramirez's Red Sox legacy, and I can even be right about a lot of it.

I can know everything the statistics tell me, and I can know everything about the number of pennants they won and fights with the Yankees, and World Championships and the circumstances surrounding the trade that sent him to the Dodgers.

I can know all of that.

But I'll never know what he meant to the team or its fans because I wasn't there during the offseason before he signed his deal with the Red Sox, when members of a disappointed fan base couldn't wait to read their paper in the morning or flip on SportsCenter or NESN or look at their favorite sites on the internet.

I wasn't there during that tumultuous offseason before the 2004 season when the Red Sox came thisclose to sending Manny to Texas for A-Rod. And I didn't have to agonize over the reality of the deal falling through and my biggest rival getting the best player in the game. And when Manny was holding his World Series MVP trophy aloft and talking about how this moment was for all the Red Sox fans who wanted "Alex" he wasn't talking to me or people I knew.

The sum of these moments is what defines a player's legacy within a fanbase. And it's by doing all those things, by suffering through bad losses, by talking to that other guy at the bar wearing your favorite team's cap on some random night in January during a hopeless offseason, and listening to sports talk radio and reading all the newspapers you can devour and the blogs too when you're done, that you develop the perspective necessary to speak for a fanbase credibly.

* * * * *

At the bottom of his lede, Leitch asks whether Pedro "ever, really" had symbolic value.

Anyone who's been following this team as long as we all have knows the answer's yes. We know that because we remember what 2004 was like, and 2003, and 2002.

We remember what it was like hearing a somnambulant-seeming Art Howe droan on about how the team "battled" night after night.

We remember the disappointment of Mo Vaughn and Robbie Alomar and Roger Cedeno.

And we remember the horror of losing the one shining hope the franchise had, Scott Kazmir, whose picture on draft day in his Texas Longhorns t-shirt is scarred in our memories because we were so excited and it was the first glimpse we'd had of him, was jettisoned moronically at the trading deadline.

We remember what Shea had become, a wasteland of hopelessness and ill-will between fans and management.

We remember what a bad feeling that was.

* * * * *

And then we remember how Omar brought in Pedro, outbidding everyone else and announcing to the fanbase, "Yes! We care, too!"

And we remember there was that first season with Pedro when he would have won 20 games (maybe 18) if not for a shoddy bullpen (sound familiar?).

And for some of us there's the memory of racing across campus after class let out so we could catch the very beginning of the season opener; and there's the memory of that jacked up feeling that accompanied watching him pitch in his crisp No. 45 Mets jersey for the first time. And there was the crushing feeling of falling behind 3-0 in the 1st, and there was the amazement of watching him strike out seemingly every batter who faced him after that.

But it was only the beginning. There was the last game of the season-opening road trip that you listened to on the radio home from school, the one where Pedro dueled John Smoltz down in Atlanta and Beltran hit that home run to take an 8th inning lead to keep the Mets from falling to 0-6 heading into their home opener. And then the next day, at the home opener, there were the cheers that erupted for Pedro as rosters were read.

There was the simple joy of his blue glove (which you loved because you remember Doc had a blue glove), and the fans who wore the Pedro jheri curl hair and the way he ran through the sprinkler that time and the way he entertained an entire stadium when his image was stuck on the wall in centerfield (which was supposed to have rotated out and become black so that hitters could see), and even though play was disrupted for 10 minutes the fans gave him the loudest cheers every time his smiling face showed on the jumbotron and he'd give the guns.

* * * * *

This rambling stream-of-consciousness narrative is, to me, the nature of fandom. A fan's memories are vast collections of moments that other people know nothing about unless they're fans too. What I've compiled above is just the tip of the iceberg; I could have shared many more memories or recalled many more moments than this.

To Will Leitch, Pedro's Mets legacy is something about the pratfalls of signing aging superstars. Thanks Will, but we've heard that one before; the storyline wasn't waiting all these years for Pedro to become its archetype.

No, Pedro's Mets legacy is about something much more than that, it's about something more than what you can deduce from headlines or statistics. It's about the way things were for this team before and after he came, all the moments before he signed, and all the moments after (only some of which came when he was actually on the mound).

We know he never delivered a World Series, and we know he was expensive and that he broke down halfway through. Thanks for the research. We'll take it from here.

- A.F.O.M.G.

Pheelin' Good

Fun weekend for the Glass Man. Saturday night was one of my old school friends' engagement party, so I got to see about 10 of my oldest friends, and the parents of those who were in the wedding party.

After the party a group of us bounded downtown for a nightcap. We were just leaving the first lousy bar we'd gone into when I heard someone say my name in that well-what-do-you-know kind of tone that people reserve for those they haven't seen in some time. It was an old college friend, Andy.

I got to know Andy the summer before my senior year of college, the summer of 2004. We were both on campus that summer, and his girlfriend then lived in the house next door to me. I was working at the North Adams Transcript along with Cheddar Ben and Andy was doing research of some sort.

Every Wednesday that summer there was a group of people who would get together for a game of softball. Students, professors, townies, whoever. Being New England, Red Sox-Yankees was everywhere, but the real debates Andy and I had were about the Mets and the Phillies.

Andy was the first honest to goodness Phillies fan I'd ever known.

* * * * *

2004 was a much different time. The Phillies were still perpetual also rans then, the kind of team that always won just enough to finish one or two games out of the playoffs. The Mets meanwhile were running on fumes and relying on the generous nature of fans like you and me, people who could see the charm in their vast ineptitude.

After graduation things started to change. Andy and I both moved to New York; we ran in different circles but saw each other from time to time. The Phillies were still also-rans, but the Mets had changed too. In 2005 they were respectable again, and in 2006 they finally turned the page.

I remember going out with Andy to see the Mets play the Phillies at Shea. What I remember most about those games was the frustration Andy had with the Phillies. Why weren't they better he'd ask. (And really, when you look at the names on that 2006 team, you have to wonder. They had Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Pat Burrell, Aaron Rowand, Bobby Abreu.)

He'd talk about how every year it was the same old story, how every year they were just good enough to make you believe and ultimately not good enough to make themselves winners. Frustrating, that's all.

* * * * *

Andy and I fell out of touch some time in 2007. No real reason, just the way it goes sometimes.

He wasn't there to razz me when the Phillies pulled off the upset in the race for the division. I wasn't there to razz him when the Phillies got their clocks cleaned by the New Rox in the NLDS.

Until Saturday night, I hadn't seen him at all in 2008. Among other things we'd missed a season of baseball, and a notable one for him. S when I saw him, I found I had to ask. What was it like?

It was unreal he said. Every night you'd turn on the television and just feel good, because every night it always worked out. He said it was unlike any experience he'd ever had as a fan.

As he spoke aboout it I found myself overcoming my loathing of the Phillies; I found that my disdain for Philadelphia sports fans in general had dissipated. I remembered his frustration, and I appreciated that if nothing else, he as a fan had earned it. For that moment I let myself be happy for him; I told him it pained me to say it, but congratulations.

* * * * *

The conversation shifted, and the bottles of wine took away the last of our sobriety. Eventually the time came for Andy and his friends to leave. We all shook hands, and to his friend wearing the crisp Phillies hat I said, "2009 -- New Mets! Team to beat!" The friend gave a knowing look.

Maybe it will be our year. Maybe the 2008 Mets were the 2006 Phillies. Maybe we just needed a couple seasons as also-rans before we could ever turn the page. Here's hoping.

Anyway, it's always nice to see old friends. Even the ones who are Phillies fans.

- A.F.O.M.G.

The You Ain't Shit Offseason

As a blogger and as a thinker I find myself drawn to unifying themes. I've always loved the big ideas, the macro level concept under which everything else makes sense.

When a coherent unifying theme is absent, it's very hard to find a workable strategy. As I wrote in a now woefully embarrassing two-part piece in April 2007, from very early on it was clear the Mets were a team without an identity in 2007. They were a collection of guys 25 deep, but really there was no there, there.

That team never had a trademark or a rallying cry, never, that is, until the final day of the season, when its trademark became underachievement, a trademark that weighed on the team through the first half of 2008 and which threatens us anew heading into 2009.

It's with the recent past in mind that David Wright spoke to reporters at his annual Do the Wright Thing gala.

“You go through two seasons that we’ve been through the last couple years and you’re going to need a little bit of a facelift,” Wright said.

Team Tightrope meet Team Facelift.

* * * * *

But back to the unifying theme. For years the Mets supplied their own with some handy sloganeering. The result? A little hit or miss.

2002: "Always Believe". The Mets go 75-86, finishing 26.5 games out of first. Not a good year for believers.

2004: "Feel the Energy". Jason Phillips started at 1st on Opening Day. Guy was a gamer. Gogs!

2005: "Next Year is Now". Easily the best slogan the Mets have ever had. Came about a year too early.

2006: "The Team. The Time. The Mets." Another winner. And you really believed it for about 172 games there.

2007: "Your Season Has Come". And our would-be dynasty has gone.

* * * * *

In 2008 the Mets tried something different. They ditched the slogan, so I supplied my own, "Season on Fire". It was a hope as much as a slogan. A hope that the Mets would respond to the downer of 2007 with a season of inspired play.

I had just seen Field of Dreams the day before, and really, the film inspired the piece. As I wrote at the time:

"Ask me what I want from this Mets team and it's simple: I want them to play with the passion and the joy of a young Moonlight Graham, with the urgency and appreciation of a banned-for-life Shoeless Joe. Really, the man said it best:

Shoeless Joe: Man, I did love this game. I'd have played for food money! It was the game... The sounds, the smells. Did you ever hold a ball or a glove to your face?

Ray Kinsella: Yeah.

Shoeless Joe: It was the crowd, rising to their feet when the ball was hit deep. Shoot, I'd play for nothing!

That's how I want these Mets to play. I want them to play like they never forgot what's so great about this game. I want them to play like they care."

In the end it was a bit of a mixed bag. They played like that eventually, only when they did it was about 81 games too late.

* * * * *

And that brings us to today, to the search for the unifying theme behind the 2008-09 offseason.

Right now I've got two candidates. The first expands on David Wright's concept: the "Team Facelift Offseason". This team is in desperate need of an attitude adjustment, or a conversation changer, or, to borrow from the national dialogue, change! and change! alone.

The second expands on a comment from a classmate of mine, circa 11th grade. Another classmate came into the room and started boasting of his SAT score. The conversation went a little something like this:

Mike: Hey Albert, what'd you get anyway?
Albert: Man, I got a 1400!
Mike: 1400? You ain't shit!!

To me that's what this offseason has to be about. Because for all the close finishes in recent years, and for all their seeming self-satisfaction, the Mets ain't shit.

Man, we finished 1 game out of the wild card in 2008!
Wild card? You ain't shit!!

Man, we finished 1 game out of first in 2007!
1 game out? You ain't shit!!

Man, we made the NLCS in 2006!
2006? You ain't shit!!

The Mets have been resting on some pretty unimpressive laurels for far too long. It's time they take a long look in the mirror and assess where they are.

That's Omar's job. He's got a flair for making the big splash, but me, I want him to construct a team that doesn't rely on one big splash (although another Johan Santana would be nice).

He needs to understand why this team has fallen short the past three years, and he needs to realize that when all you've got are late season pennant chases and late season disappointments, you aren't an elite team.

When that happens, all it means is you ain't shit.

- A.F.O.M.G.

Offseasons Past and Present

With the World Series over and the Hot Stove gathering heat, we are officially in the depths of the offseason.

Offseasons are tough on a sports blogger. It's easiest when a prize is identified early on and coveted for months at a time.

Two years ago that prize was Barry Zito. A guy with an awesome track record and a suspect future, Zito was the perfect offseason quandary. To sign or not to sign? Was he a great AL pitcher waiting to be a dominant NL pitcher? Was he bizarrely, incomprehensibly past his prime at age 28?

The questions were many, and so were the posts devoted to the topic. The first post of the offseason concerning Zito came October 26, 2006, or one week after the season ended.

The first few posts after that October evening were spent in mourning; from the ashes of that failed season came a cavalcade of posts about the man who would be the leader of the Mets' rotation. It was a good two months until it all ended rather unceremoniously on the Glass Man's 24th birthday.

Offseason 2007-2008 was spent coveting Johan Santana. It was a fairly straightforward proposition: if you could get Johan Santana, you should get Johan Santana.

Really, there were only two questions up for debate: one, was it possible for the Mets to offer a more attractive package than eith ther Yankees or Red Sox? Two, was it possible to pry Santana away from the Twins without sacrificing Jose Reyes or another player of his ilk?

In the end, Omar Minaya handled the negotations masterfully, and the Mets received the ace they needed.

It was all joy in Metsville. It lasted until Sunday, September 28.

* * * * *

And that brings us to today, to offseason 2008-2009. On the face of it this offseason shouldn't be much different. What befell the Mets last season was, predominantly, a bullpen only slightly more reliable than an unrestrained Joe Biden.

But where does that lead you? Does it lead to K-Rod, he of the gaudy statistics and violent, injury-waiting-to-happen delivery? Does it lead to Brian "Braden Looper in Waiting" Fuentes? Both candidates come with question marks.

More importantly though, will the Mets be able to construct a team with sufficient depth to make it through 162 games? The Mets have been old and injury-prone for far too long, and they can't make the same mistake again.

To me, then, the point this offseason isn't to find a savior, it's to find a collection of guys who, individually, might be worse than a K-Rod or Carlos Delgado, but who collectively make the Mets a more complete, competitive team.

The point is to put together a team like the one in 2006, where one night you'd win on a homer from Beltran, the next on a tapper from Michael Tucker, and you'd win the game on Sunday with a gutsy bullpen effort featuring Darren Oliver, Chad Bradford and Duaner Sanchez

Happy memories are always nice. For two years in a row though, the predominating memories smack of disappointment.

If the Mets are going to get their mojo back, it's going to take more than one great arm in the 'pen.

So for all of us here, welcome to an offseason of great uncertainty.

- A.F.O.M.G.

The Barack I Met

Things have been kind of quiet for the Glass Man, competition-wise, since the lights went down on old Shea with me, Sip (RIP), the Hound, and S.O.A.F.O.M.G. still within her.

As we come upon Election Day, however, I find those familiar butterflies dancing around in my stomach. It's a fun feeling.

Part of the fun, doubtlessly, is that my horse is in prime position to win. I'm a registered Democrat, and while I am a Starbucks drinker, I like to think I'm more than some garden variety effete New York City liberal. That is, Democrats have to earn my vote, or the Republicans have to lose it.

In 2004 I voted for Kerry for no reason at all, really. I felt a general dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, with Iraq, and with the failure to get -- or even care about getting -- bin Laden. But Kerry himself did nothing for me. Looking back on it, I really can't remember any element of his platform. The point is, in 2004 the Democrat didn't earn my vote, the Republican lost it.

This year it's different. I really respect Barack Obama, and I'm excited to vote for him, and I think a lot of other people are too. If you believe the polls, Obama's got him right where he wants him.

Yessir, I haven't been this confident since the Mets were up 7 games with 17 to play.

* * * * *

One of my best friends from college works for the Obama campaign. In August he invited me down to Washington to meet Obama and attend a couple events.

I hemmed and I hawed but came to my senses eventually and went on down there. That afternoon, Obama presided over a closed door meeting on economic policy. In the room were financial luminaries like Paul Volcker, Bob Rubin, Jamie Dimon, Larry Summers, and Jon Corzine. Warren Buffett was on the phone. And there in the corner, a fly on the wall, was A.F.O.M.G.

Barack opened the meeting by conceding that he didn't have anywhere near the economic savvy as any of his guests. He asked them to tell him what they were seeing out there; he asked them to tell him he needed to know.

His guests would speak for 15 minutes, and then Barack would synthesize what he'd heard from the different voices. When it was his turn, it was awesome to see him in action. Whatever his economic agenda, for this meeting at least he checked it at the door.

He was there to listen, he was there to think, and he was there to learn. And he was there to find the common ground between two or three people at the table who seemed to have none, and sure enough, time after time he made ends meet.

It was stunning really. The novice at the table was the smartest guy in the room. For an effete New York City Democrat like me, intelligence goes a long way. And that afternoon it was plain as day: this guy gets it.

* * * * *

Of course, that story isn't the only reason I'm voting for Barack. I've got my reasons, you've got your reasons, and tomorrow we'll see what happens.

No matter what side you're on, try to keep the right mindset. In politics as in baseball, whatever happens happens. We can lament it, bemoan it, blog about it, but there's no controlling it, and when the final vote or final out is recorded, that's what you're left with.

Either Barack Obama or John McCain will be our next president. From us here at Y2K, good luck to the victor. They're going to need it, and so will we.

Vote or die,

A.F.O.M.G.