Dan Mooney

The sun rose again this morning, and set this evening. In other news, Johan Santana will miss his next start with elbow discomfort. New Met Jeff Francoeur has quickly taken to his new team, also succumbing to injury, his a torn thumb ligament.

The Curse of Willie Mays strikes again!

In all seriousness, though, higher powers are at work here – dark powers. It’s been a strange few years for the Mets: the ‘06 NLCS loss was heartwrenching, but ultimately decided by the players themselves – Molina hitting a home run, and Beltran not swinging. ‘07 was double agent Glavine bleeding Brave dark blue, pounding the nail in the coffin with a tomahawk and ensuring a Met burial versus the Marlins. ‘08 was eerily similar.

But ‘09 has been a cat of a different color from the very beginning. Frankly, after three years of defeat at their own hands, I’m actually relieved, as a Met fan, that their non-season is not due to a lack of talent, just to a lack of healthy talent. With so many games missed to injury by the starters, I can only and safely assume that this source is not within themselves but something paranormal, man. I’ve never seen anything like it – well, nothing in real life, anyway:

Let’s take a closer look at these misfortunes (found here):

# Player, Position, Fate
——————–
1 Steve Sax, 2B – six life sentences
2 Wade Boggs, 3B – punched out by Barney
3 Darryl Strawberry, RF – pulled for pinch hitter
4 Jose Canseco, LF – saving burning house
5 Don Mattingly, 1B – kicked off team
6 Ken Griffey, Jr., CF – overdose of nerve tonic
7 Mike Scioscia, C – radiation overdose
8 Ozzie Smith, SS – lost in Mystery Spot
9 Roger Clemens, P – thinks he’s a chicken

“But that will never happen. Three misfortunes, that’s possible. Seven misfortunes, there’s an outside chance. But nine misfortunes? I’d like to see that!”

# Player, Position, Fate
——————–
1 Jose Reyes, SS – 36 GP, last played May 20th, hamstring
2 Daniel Murphy, LF – ***
3 David Wright, 3B – Hit in the head Aug 15th, concussion
4 Carlos Delgado, 1B – 26 GP, last played May 10th, hip surgery
5 Carlos Beltran, CF – 62 GP, last played Jun 21st, bone bruise (knee)
6 Ryan Church, RF – Missed 13 G in May/June, hamstring; traded
7 Brian Schneider, C – Missed 39 G, back
8 Luis Castillo, 2B – Missed 3 G in August tripping on the dugout steps (!, …)
9 Johan Santana, P – Elbow discomfort, late August

*** Daniel Murphy has actually played in all but 5 of the Mets’ games this year — good for him, but he’s only hitting .260 with only occasional power, so, just okay for the Mets. Or should I say, “MEHts”?

And — this is was just the opening day lineup! The Meht bench and bullpen were similarly decimated along the way.

Dark forces, right? John Swartzwelder’s not responsible for this.

Whom I will blame? The Wilpons. In the face.

This is what happens when your ownership sacrifices what little history your own team has in favor of celebrating the distant memory of another team entirely – from a different borough, from a different generation – and to the exclusion of another, more successful, more celebrated, more historic franchise that used to play just to your northwest.

There is no good goddamn reason for Citi Field to look like Ebbets Field — for the Dodgers, or for Jackie Robinson, to be so honored in a place the New York Mets call home. If the Wilpons and others want an exhibit honoring the man, and the team, somewhere on public display, tuck it away in centerfield. Fine. All the better — they’re a part of New York baseball history. But just as Yankee Stadium would look silly honoring Jackie Robinson at its front gate, so would, and do, and seemingly forever will, the Mets.

And if Jackie Robinson is such a symbol of equality in baseball, how dare the Wilpons not also celebrate on a similar scale the Giants, the “other” National League team? Isn’t that inequality all the same? Isn’t that unjust? Isn’t that hypocritical?

Where’s Willie Mays in all this?

I fear somewhat to type it, but not so much because I probably wouldn’t be right anyway. But if the dark forces present this year are the first evidence of yet another of baseball’s curses, let’s just speculate that the Mets will continue to lose until at the very least there’s an orange 24 perched proudly in the Jackie Robinson/Willie Mays Rotunda.

Here’s a timely, midsummer post about the not-so-recent NHL Draft!

The New York City area had some crazy weather this past weekend, with powerful but scattered thunderstorms culminating in the ever few and farther between Tornado Watch for some or all of Queens and Nassau County.

I’ve heard of tornadoes threatening to touch down, sometimes succeeding, on the mainland just west of the Hudson, in New Jersey and sections of New York. But on Long Island, where I grew up, we don’t usually get tornadoes. Hurricanes, sometimes (Hurricane Gloria swooshing around the vegetable patch outside my parents’ window is one of my earliest memories, from September of 1985 when I was not yet 4), but not tornadoes.

The radio warning brought to mind a prediction about the future. It’s somewhat bold, and somewhat sad, but will have going for it no exchange of money: Weathermen and Major League batters, paid to fail.

It concerns the hockey team I should have rooted for growing up: the New York Islanders.

I should have, because they remain the team closest to the house in which I grew up. Failing that, it’s because I also root for the Mets and would align myself with the Mets-Jets-Islanders axis rather than the Yankees-Giants-Rangers confederation (even though I don’t root for the Jets, either. Some axis.)

I’ve certainly been to Islanders games. Two in particular come to mind: the first because it was on a February 29th, the one in 1992, and the first of my lifetime when I was old enough to realize how odd are Leap Year shenanigans, really. The second, because Montreal goalie Jose Theodore himself scored a goal AND had a shutout, which is so much more than I did that day:

Anyway, by having the first selection in this year’s draft, the Islanders recently made news, which is news enough in itself since they are not only terrible but forgettable. The Mets lose on huge stages (Castillo, the bat on Beltran’s shoulder), the Islanders in a Soviet-era bunker from which few if any signs of life ever escape.

That bunker, really, is at the heart of this long and winding column apparently about Kansas City Tornadoes, what? The Islanders, taking John Tavares with their high pick, now remind me very much of the deposed Seattle SuperSonics. Kevin Durant, fantastic ballplayer that he is, was able to lift the spirits and melt the hearts of a city for a very short amount of time, before the threats to move came to be realized and ownership shuffled the team from the coast to the American Midwest.

I’m no insider and can’t more than speculate just how dire the Islanders home-arena situation really is. But from what I’ve read, the franchise is leaking money, not unlike a dilapidated vessel their old Captain might have commanded. They are in desperate need of a modern arena, to remain competitive and eventually become profitable. But plans are tied up, and the possibility, however remote, still remains that the team may move, just possibly to Kansas City.

Enter the Tornadoes.

The Kansas City Tornadoes were a hockey team nickname I made up (probably not the first nor last) like many kids do, mine selected from the very best NHLers of the 1992-93 season. I have no access to the roster right now but I’m sure Luc Robitaiile was on it.

I was very excited two years later to be able to play on a roller hockey team called the Tornadoes whose jerseys bore my obsessive logo and color scheme. Phenomenal.

And so, perhaps, it shall be again, professionally. I certainly don’t wish for the Islanders to leave the arena 35 minutes from my house near where I used to intern in the summer of 2002 by those smokestacks. I hope they get their act together. I want Tavares to do his part. I wish DiPietro would get healthy or just give back the rest of his contract. I’d be thrilled for the Islanders to win again.

But. If the foreseeable happens, I just want to call the nickname now: Kansas City Tornadoes.

I was lucky to make it out alive.

It was early morning this past Saturday, way too early for a Saturday. The part of the morning one is normally entitled to sleep through. I was up, hat on head, bag on shoulder, waiting for my LIRR track assignment and to head east for the day. A quarter past six and I was glad to have gotten there in the first place after Friday’s steinhoist.

The fallen were all over. Straight ahead, one ravaged soul in a green buttondown lay fully on his back, arms straight back over his head, knees up. His sunglasses, with no more purpose, lay without meaning to his left. To my right, a young man with shoulder-length hair and a weak beard conserved his last scrap of energy leaning against one of the poles. His girlfriend, still reasonable, shouted unheard instructions. None of the ill could speak.

Two policemen were there. They raised, or roused, these afflicted, but only temporarily. A sharp smack on the knee from a cop got them to their feet, but only long enough to shuffle away to find some other resting place, out of eyesight.

A pair of Asian youths ushered each other by. One was laughing like a salesman, insane without instant cure from the effects of the evening.

These poor creatures were doomed to stumble around this Purgatory, deprived of their only necessity, sleep.

I, on the other hand, having rested, needed no more than a donut to pass the short time before my train arrived.

I walked over to the concourse – succeeding in not tripping over anyone – to the Dunkin’ Donuts where I’d picked up many cups of coffee and tea and pairs of donuts over the last decade.

A giant piece of paper failed to completely cover the abscess.

It was no more. The cases, the machinery, the counter. The sign. All gone, leaving only the dark residue of their memory caked into the grout.

The Starbucks several doors down was still there. May or may not have been open. Didn’t check. Mouth too agape at the vacancy before me.

It made no sense that they’d take out a brilliant little store, a half-store sharing a bedroom with its sibling. I felt the pang of loss. I was no longer a mainstay at any DD franchise but the Penn Station outpost was always ideal for getting me through the next hour plus until I got wherever I was going, which hopefully, invariably had a stockpile of better, heartier food.

I wondered all day, not upset but curious. What had happened? I planned to be at that concourse again, eventually, and would get my answer when I got it.

Monday morning, I got it.

I could only presume that the truth lay in the latest charge of the Canadian invasion. Tim Horton’s: