No matter how hard I try, I can't get too worked up about Al Leiter's supposed comments to Carlos Delgado. For the record, here they are from the original Toronto Sun article, a retelling of the Delgado saga that is perhaps thorough to a fault:

"Who better to discourage him from going to New York? ... In New York you have seven or eight competing papers, TV networks and their affiliates and peripheral periodicals. It's fine when you are dealing and kicking butt."

"[When you're not kicking butt,] it just chip, chip, chip, chips away at your resolve, cracking away your protective toughness. Every bad game it's like 'are you worried? ... the manager says this ... are you worried?' You begin to doubt yourself. That's why slumps in New York are so elongated."

"Then, the guys on (talk radio) get on you, move it up another notch and everyone driving to the game listens. You get to the park and your home fans are booing you and after the game you say something stupid."

Now, it's not as hard as it should be to make me outraged, and I join many Met fans in having had enough of Al Leiter for the next year or two -- from all that's been said and written I do think he had too much influence on ownership and the front office, and I do think those were Al's fingerprints on Kazmir's exile to Tampa Bay.

But was what Al said really such an affront to Met fans? First of all, he isn't talking specifically about the Mets at all -- he's talking about New York, and he basically said that with all the media attention, it's a tough town where slumps get relentless scrutiny, fans are unforgiving and dumb remarks made in frustration in the clubhouse get blown wildly out of proportion. Nothing inaccurate there.

Which leaves only one point of contention: Leiter billing himself as the perfect person to discourage Delgado from going to New York. Well, if you were the Marlins GM and suspected Delgado might have reservations about New York, which player on the roster would you tap for the job? Sheesh, it's not like Leiter signed a noncompete. I know our local sports pages like to stir up shit, but honestly -- what part of "free agent" isn't getting through here?

I don't mind that New York is too tough a town for the Alomars and Cedenos of this world. But there is a New York mentality that sports stars who succeed here are therefore always and forever New York sports stars, and if they go somewhere else after their glory years, it's either a silly temporary thing for us to be smug about, or an affront -- since these athletes can no longer play in New York, shouldn't they just retire? Apply that kind of attitude to the rest of your sports-fan life and hey presto, you're a Yankee fan.

Like I said, I do blame Leiter for some of this organization's dysfunction in recent years. While I was always interested to hear what he had to say about games or baseball in general (they miked him for a game in San Francisco last year and his comments about pitching decisions were riveting), when it came to civic and franchise boosterism I always thought I detected the sheen of snake oil. But I can't find a smoking gun in Delgadogate, and I've looked. I can't even find a gap in the tapes. On to the next controversy, please.

Wasn't John Shelby in our camp one particularly misbegotten spring? I remember being upset about that. Though it wasn't as bad as Jim Leyritz, which prompted Emily's funniest-ever reaction to a Met atrocity, as well as proof that she's a baseball fan of the first order, and hold any grading on the gender curve, thank you:

Me: The Mets did something awful.
Emily: Oh no, what? Is it going to upset me?
Me: Yes.
Emily: Did they get [name of some player we hated at the time but weren't possibly going to acquire -- possibly Chipper]?
Me (briefly baffled that this is what she'd think): What? No. No. Not a major move.
Emily: Who?
Me: You have to guess. I refuse to say his name.
Emily: This is stupid. I won't get it.
Me: What player would it most upset you to see in a Met uniform?
Emily (instantly): Oh my God, they did NOT get Jimmy the King.
Me: YES.
Emily: No! I hate them!

It's funnier, of course, since JTK never made the team. In a similar vein, I enjoyed seeing him during last year's playoffs, being interviewed in his so-three-years-ago Jimmy Cagney roughneck hat and his ridiculous leather jacket covered in team logos, braying his eternal loyalty to the Vertical Swastika. I enjoyed it because the dark legions of the V.S. lost -- had they won, I'd still be seething that JTK was the final harbinger of doom.

Thinking back, that '88 debacle was my first brush with personal, adult-sized disappointment at a Mets disaster. Falling short in '84 and '85 (and looking like it would happen in '86) hurt, but it was a kid's hurt, somehow -- I dwelled on it, but it didn't infect everything else I did. '88 was different -- watching Keith Hernandez crawling through the mud filled me with a personal dread, like I was now fated to go under the wheels of a bus myself, Shelby and Scioscia felt like not being able to breathe, and Game 7 was a long, slow slide into corrosive anger, one I watched all of only because I knew when it ended there would be no more Met games until March. That year I didn't watch a single inning of the World Series -- something I've never willingly done since  -- and friends who knew what a baseball fan I was asked how I could possibly live with myself having missed Gibson's homer. Kirk Gibson? I wanted to see Kirk Gibson like I wanted to see a surprise midterm.

Actually, now that I think about it, the first brush with that kind of disappointment wasn't '88. It was Terry Pendleton's homer in '87. Which suggests that the change wasn't adulthood, but having won it all. Winning changes everything, I suppose, and not all of it's for the better. Oh well. If it happens again anytime soon, I'm pretty sure I'll figure out a way to endure the not-for-the-better part.

(I will now go turn around three times and spit. Sorry, man.)

The worst stomach-punch of them all, though, had to be that second meltdown against the Braves in '01. I was stuck working on the weekend, away from home because of 9/11, and after it had all come unglued (goddamn Armando, goddamn Franco) I really thought I was going to vomit. The only thing I could think of was having read that when you felt nauseous, you were supposed to put your head between your knees. So I did. For about 45 minutes.

Some actually substantive stories today about the bullpen: Looper, DeJean and Felix Heredia are seen as locks, with Bartholome Fortunato and Heath Bell leading the rest of a field that includes the likes of Grant Roberts, Scott Strickland, Todd Van Poppel and Roberto Hernandez. Having Felix Heredia be a lock for your bullpen doesn't strike me as a good thing. Meanwhile, I know the Mets, being a modern baseball team, will opt to watch the Hernandezes and Scott Stewarts of this world blow instead of trying a Fortunato or Bell. Sigh. Oh well, we'll deal with it. As long as Franco doesn't come in to face Brian Jordan. 

(I really did turn around three times and spit. I'm insane.)

"I've got a speech if he wins, I've got a speech if he doesn't."
"You wrote a concession?"
"Of course I wrote a concession. You want to tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing?"
"No."
"Then go outside, turn around three times and spit. What the hell's the matter with you?"
"It's like 25 degrees outside."
"Go."

-- A sensible Toby Ziegler admonishing a presumptuous Sam Seaborn on "Election Night" in "The West Wing"

Last fall, I was going on about one thing or another with Chuck, articulating my anxieties over Cardinals versus Astros or Red Sox versus Yankees or Kerry versus Bush (two of three ain't bad), and as I planned and replanned and edited my strategies for following and potentially affecting the outcomes of each contest, I blurted in all seriousness to him, "I'm not a superstitious person."

Chuck takes pride in claiming to know me better than anybody else does. He stopped me in midrant.

"Greg," he told me, "you're the most superstitious person I know."

I waited for the laugh to indicate he was only joshing me. But he wasn't. When I doth protested too much, he catalogued about a dozen instances of how I had told him over the years I wore this or that, stood here or there, thought that but not this so I wouldn't disturb whatever forces of nature were going to work in favor of whatever cause ­-- almost always the Mets ­-- I absolutely needed to succeed at that moment.

In all those instances, I insisted, I was kind of kidding around with him, but now that he mentioned it, I guess I was a little more serious every time that I let on how worried I was about jinxing and kiboshing and gumming up the works for the Mets even though I have yet to play in a single game for them.

Being told you're superstitious after a lifetime of being sure that you're not must be like finding out you were born in Utah. "I'm a Utahan? I am? Wow, who knew?" I don't avoid ladders, I don't care much for the Osmonds and I'm not one of those fans who thinks he's So Crazy because he has a hundred little rituals spoken and unspoken, but evidence is evidence. And Chuck knows me better than anybody else does.

Last night, another dear friend got in touch to ask if I was going the partial season ticket plan route again, à la what you and I did in '01 and '02. "It might be nice to have a shot at playoff tickets," she said.

It was like 25 degrees, but I demanded she go outside, turn around three times and spit. As of this writing, I don't believe she has.

So now we're screwed.

There's too much damn blind optimism around this team right now and it scares the hell out of me. When Mets fans who should know better are worried in February about playoff seating, I'm reminded of whichever 1920s tycoon it was who decided it was time to sell off his securities when he heard shoeshine boys furiously exchanging stock tips.

Yes, this is the time of year when every team's a contender, every rookie's a keeper, every McEwing's a McCovey. That's fine. But I'm used to having my Mets sensibilities offended by sneering, not cheering. Usually by now (and it hasn't been totally absent), I'll read something about how the Mets have some nerve aspiring to finish as high as last and I'm ready to crack media heads.

Instead, I read yesterday a comparison between this new, untested infield which could be, if all goes well and nobody gets hurt, pretty serviceable and the (gasp!) 1999 Greatest Infield Ever. Olerud, Alfonzo, Ordoñez, Ventura. Twenty errors all year. Two gold gloves. Shoulda been three.

I've heard our rotation -- three old guys coming off not peak seasons and two younger guys with a history of arm problems -- referred to as the best in the National League. Better than the Braves. Better than the Dodgers. Better than the Marlins.

And Carlos Beltran has been elevated from very talented .267 hitter to the only "six-tool player" in baseball because not only can he do it all on the field, but he's comping the kids at Gold's Gym, where I can just hear hamstrings a poppin' any minute now.

Worst yet, I've been told the Mets are answering their phones, "The New Mets." I thought back to the New Orleans Breakers of 1984. Yes, the New Orleans Breakers, a USFL franchise which had just moved to the Bayou from Boston. The Breakers had been doing well in their division at mid-season, so their switchboard operator greeted callers with "First Place New Orleans Breakers!"

The New Orleans Breakers fell out of first, didn't make the playoffs, moved to Portland and evaporated along with the rest of the league within two years.

Come to think of it, did our Tuesday/Friday plan of a few years back yield us any playoff tickets?

It's not superstition I'm selling here. It's pre-emptive non-presumptuousness. All of my tics and impulses are not about doing things to help my team win. It's to keep the other team from beating us. I can't help the Mets, I know that. The best I can hope to do is not hurt them. I haven't worn a rally cap since the mid-'80s because the one time I did, it killed a rally. I almost never clap with two strikes because when I do, it always leads to four balls. Always. It's only because of my complicated commute and commensurate stadium exit strategy that I dare stand up with two outs and a six-run lead in the ninth. I don't actually think Looper or Benitez or Franco or Skip Lockwood has it in the bag. Why would you think I would think that?

The tipping point from happy, proactive "we're gonna win!" rooting to anxious, preventive "oh god, how I have effed them up now?" writhing came the afternoon of October 9, 1988. I had a friend in high school with no interest in baseball. He went to college and settled in Boston and developed -- as one will, I suppose -- a fondness for the Red Sox. I had teased him a little bit two years earlier when his new team lost to my old team in the World Series. But he was a good guy and he was not unsympathetic to our cause. And in October 1988, the possibility existed for a Mets-Red Sox rematch.

Except on the Sunday afternoon in question, the Red Sox had just been swept out of the American League playoffs, four games to none, by the A's. The Mets would play that night, up 2-1 on the Dodgers with Doc Gooden going at Shea. I called the guy in Boston and got his machine. I left him a message of condolence and told him to look at the bright side: Now you can root for the Mets in the World Series against Oakland.

That night, in case you've forgotten, the Mets were three outs from going up three games to one when Doc walked John Shelby and surrendered a home run to Mike Scioscia, knotting the score at four. The Dodgers won in the twelfth. They went on to win the pennant in seven.

Needless to say, I don't pencil in World Series appearances or angle eight months out for playoff tickets since then.

And I try not to use the phone at all if I can help it.

This is the time of year when one of two things is happening to your baseball team: Those coming back from injuries aren't doing as well as they would like (or are off getting MRI #1), or everyone is throwing well, getting along, adapting to their new positions and getting ready to hit .300.

So far (and my goodness it's early) we're the latter kind of camp -- the "happy ball clubs are all alike" camp, if you don't count music. Which is a lot better than the "every unhappy team is unhappy in its own way" camp, except for the fact that, well, it means nothing.

Felix Heredia? Throwing well! Braden Looper? Throwing well! Dae-Sung Koo? Thr... you get the idea. Kaz Matsui? Looking surprisingly comfortable over there at second! It would save everybody a lot of time and trouble if Atlanta just gave us the keys to the division.

Unfortunately, as we know, there's a reason you play 'em -- and a reason you scrimmage 'em and stretch 'em and every other thing. But right now, it's all good, even if it means nada. As you noted, we've been more or less no-shows on the back pages. In February that's a good, good thing.

So what the heck. Let's enjoy the intangibles that never even achieve not-showing-up-in-the-box-score status. Pedro has adapted wonderfully to his status as the lead dog in the clubhouse -- who's heard a whisper from Glavine this year? Carlos Beltran has taken Wright and Reyes under his wing, and might even be able to reach young Jose about doing all those pesky exercises. It goes against the Met fan pedigree, but I'm going to try to just enjoy it all as a vicarious dose of Florida sun.

Though here's a memo to Bartholome Fortunato: Don't knock down Cliff Floyd, even in fun. He tends to break.

The thing I really like about spring training, I decided, is that after months of seeing ballplayers as businessmen and bounty and celebrities and vessels for our unfulfilled, unreasonable dreams, we are now seeing them as ballplayers. Press conferences and personal appearances are secondary to what it is they actually do for a living, which is why we're interested in hearing from and seeing them to begin with. Every one of them has to work out in public view. They put on their baseball pants (presumably one leg at a time) and their tops -- no suits anymore -- and their caps and they don't smile for the cameras. They run out on the field and stretch and shuffle and sprint. They all do it, every one of them at every camp.

Now that's baseball like it oughta be.

When the Mets network fires up next year, I hope they show live infield drills. Live BP. Live "attaboy" and "get that glove down" and "all right ladies, once more!" Spring training without actual baseball activity was getting on my nerves, too. All through the honey-do season, I didn't feel terribly deprived because there was so much news surrounding the Mets and I was a little smug about how it overshadowed the so-called winter sports. Then, the first week after players started trickling in was endless. I'd seen enough faux-baseball. Let's get it started, indeed. Actual game action can't be too far behind.

But will the vets last 'til then? Channel 2 had the best coverage last night of the marathon session that Willie inflicted on his charges. It occurred to me I had never seen baseball players look physically drained the way I would if I ever got any exercise. Cameron in particular appeared ready to agree to play left out if someone would just toss him a bottle of Aquafina. He was shvitzing. So were Piazza and Floyd. What did they do here when Howe was in charge? Arrange tee times and make reservations for an early lunch at Hooters? (Probably.)

This business about Beltran taking the kids under his wing is absolutely adorable though I'd be more comfortable if they could vacuum-pack Reyes at the end of the day. He is fragile. He is delicate. Don't mess him up, Carlos.

Of course Wright wants to work out some more. Ernie Banks' attitude would disgust Diamond Dave. "Only two? But there's time to play two more!"

When I was 9, I came across a sports comic book. The hero played for a team called the Bluebirds or Blue Jays. (Toronto was five years from expansion.) It was a baseball team in summer and football team in fall, according to the house ads; this was October, so it was football. Anyway, the plot of this particular edition was all the vets on the team were grumbling that only the young guys got to play. So the coach acted on a great idea from the hero: Use only veterans in the first half. For a while, it worked and the team played well. But by the second half, the veterans were out of breath and were getting beaten. So the coach put all those other guys back in to join the youngish hero and the sidekick (the only non-vets who started) and the team won. The moral? I think it was that you were worthless if you were old. Perhaps the manager will come to the same conclusion monitoring Wright's and Cameron's divergent reactions to Randolph's Regimen.

If after all this huffing and puffing the Mets have any fight left in them for anybody but the skipper, then bring it on, my core philosophy of non-violence be damned. Used to be you could count on one good brawl a year the same way there was an annual pitcher's home run. For all the legitimate concern that somebody (likely Reyes) will get hurt, it makes me feel like more of a man to see my boys out there getting one or two shots in against some headhunting goon. What's the best we've had in the last few seasons? Zeile and Penny shouting obscenities followed by some milling and meandering? "Suck on this for Shinjo!" should've become a rallying cry.

In 1980, the Mets and Expos threw down at Shea during the nightcap of a July 4 doubleheader. Bill Gullickson, creep, dusted Mike Jorgensen who had taken one in the head to seriously deleterious effect earlier in his career. Montreal was in first place and the Mets -- the "Magic Is Back" Mets -- had crept to within 3-1/2 games of them after winning the opener. I was on my bike with my radio on when the fight broke out and I pedaled mightily to Shell Creek Park where Joel Lugo was working so I could deliver the news as if it had come straight from Lexington and Concord. All at once, the Mets were dead serious about contending and standing up for themselves. A few weeks later, the Mets were dead, but I couldn't know that at the time.

Did I see Kerry Robinson in No. 22? That was fast. I'm not in the cult of Leiter, but you'd think it would maybe go to Pat Mahomes if not into mothballs for just a bit. I remember how shocked I was to see the Mets issue 36 to Wayne Twitchell in 1979 when Kooz's locker wasn't even cold. Flushing does not believe in tears.

Jason Phillips put on 15 pounds in the offseason. I've been trying to come up with a joke about this since Saturday, but really, it couldn't hurt.

Here we are at the first stir-crazy point of spring training, the first afternoon that 1:30 rolls around and you think, "Can't they televise a split-squad game or something?" At least a week from now they actually will play a game. It'll even be an actual game, at least by spring training's low standards. It'll even be televised. It'll even be on ESPN.

Yeah, I know, it'll only be on ESPN because it's the Nationals' first-ever game, but I'm still thinking of it as a Met game. I'm glad we got to see the Expos' final game ever (forever known in the Hietpas household as Young Joe's debut), but I'll be a heckuva lot more glad to see that first Nats game, if only because I didn't have to wait four months to see a baseball game before that last Expos affair.

Trivia question: Who was the last player to play baseball in an Expos uniform? (Answer below)

One reason I'm happy to see Pedro on the mound is somewhat shameful: He will hit people with a baseball in situations that call for people to be hit with baseballs. This will be a welcome change -- I'm still steamed about Bobby Jones' turning the other cheek after Steve Avery hit Jose Vizcaino, let alone Shawn Estes' missing the Antichrist (just aim for the middle "6," for Chrissakes) or Glendon Rusch hitting Tino in the ass with a palmball after said Antichrist tried to decapitate Piazza. Try that with Pedro and yeah, he probably will blow your head off. And what's wrong with that? Good old-fashioned country hardball in my book, particularly now that the guy's wearing our uni. As Mike told the papers, he's an SOB out there on the mound. (Star-Ledger customers, who apparently are thought to be shrinking violets, read that he's a tough customer.)

In fact, I was at what I'm pretty sure was the last regular-season Met fight. (Apologies if you were too.) A Google search indicates it was May 11, 1996: Pete Harnisch felt Scott Servais's attitude would be improved by punching him, leading to 18 minutes of mayhem with the crowd chanting "Let's Go Mets!" and John Franco getting ejected on John Franco Day, which is pretty priceless. As befits Shea's silly prudery, there was no mention of the ejections, leaving us all to resort to radios to figure out why our closer wasn't coming into a razor-tight game. Pretty good game -- Rico Brogna won it with a homer in the 9th -- and somehow the Republic continued to stand.

(Piazza's freakout at Guillermo Mota doesn't count, because it was spring training and he didn't catch him. No onus attaches to new favorite Heath Bell for peaceability, however: He was ordered not to retaliate by Lights Up the Room, and looked unhappy about it.)

Postscript to John Franco Day: Our friend Chris was there, and in the early innings he was explaining how a staggeringly high percentage of the games he attended featured on-field fights. (He's a Boston fan who goes to Yankee Stadium, so there should be an asterisk.) When Harnisch punched Servais, Emily and I looked at him and he shrugged and said, "I'm the Human Fight," a nickname he retains to this day.

Random news gleanings: Philip Humber is the winner of spring's First Rave That Means Nothing -- he is (brace yourself) Throwing the Ball Really Well. Oh good.

Answer to trivia question: Brad Wilkerson went on MLB's tour of Japan as an Expo last fall. There's a doomy short story in there somewhere. 

Ah, Fonzie. You and I are never going to agree on this, and that's OK -- if we wanted bloodless analysis everyone could agree with at a glance, we'd be actuaries. To me, it's pretty clear that Fonzie's bad back killed his career, or at least maimed it -- his power numbers have dipped into the decidedly ordinary, he walks less, he never could run and his range has become tiny at third. It's only a bit of an exaggeration to say he's become Dave Magadan. Of course, I still mourn Bill Pulsipher, who never even had two weeks of good numbers, so obviously I'm an idiot.

And I still miss the hell out of Fonzie, stats notwithstanding -- if I close my eyes I can see that little twirl of the bat knob he liked to do, and he sure isn't doing it in orange and black. I loved that little bat flip around the hand -- I loved how it was evidence that for Edgardo, having a bat in his hands was perfectly natural, perhaps more natural than not having one, and his hands knew that bat so well that they could make the frickin' thing levitate. Here's hoping when his contract expires he comes back as our Miguel Cairo and we celebrate with a public tarring and feathering of Steve Phillips. ("God, Jeff, that was YOU strapped Lecter-style to the hand truck? We've, uh, made a terrible error. Don't know how that happened. Oh, here's the hand truck with Skill Set. Guess we'll have to do this again.")

OK, that's taking it too far. Hmm. Maybe it isn't.

I liked Dave Magadan too, of course -- if he had only been faster than, say, an air-conditioning unit being wheeled around by Teamsters ready for their hourly break, he would have hit .360. (And if Olerud had been faster than the above, we still would have cheaped out and let him go to Seattle.) Though I was always somewhat spooked by Magadan's resemblance to late-80s Bruce Springsteen. Danny Heep looked strangely like Billy Squier, while I'm exhausting the subject.

Tidbits from my pre-work scan of the papers: The reporters can't agree on who's the last man in camp. Leaving aside the visa-problems guys, it's either Gerald Williams or Jeff Keppinger. If I were either of those guys, I'd have made sure I was in camp by now, but what do I know. Please, please, please, let this be the end of the Gerald Williams era. There is no more perfect example of how ridiculously unimaginative a baseball front office can be than the fact that we let Gerald Williams play the outfield for us in the second half of last year.

Mike Cameron's nickname is "Midnight," which is insanely cool. Jon Heyman, having frightened himself by expressing admiration for David Wright, thinks Mike Cameron is a phony and/or a criminal. We don't have a captain right now, which is as it should be -- honestly, the fact that our captain was a lefty specialist was pretty pathetic. ("And Steve Kline is leading his Orioles onto the field!") I feel bad about making fun of Heath Bell (though that'll pass) after reading about him rollerblading in the driveway with his daughter. I now have a nonlaundry reason to root for him, which is nice.

Oh, and it has to be said: Willie Randolph may lead us to the promised land, in which case I'll eat these pixels, but he's behaving like a typical Bronx mullah. No loud music in the clubhouse? OFFS. It's getting a little Torborg in here....