...if you want perspective, can-do, rah-rah, exhortations to stay the course, solidarity with our boys, or any of that shit. Because you're not going to get it. You're not going to get one little scrap of it.

This team sucks. And they don't suck in a wet-behind-the-ears way that makes you want to see what they'll turn into next year. They suck in a way that makes you want them to just go away. Which it certainly looks like they'll be doing at the end of the week.

And really, honestly, how can you care about this pathetic baseball team? Horrifying mental mistakes, stupefyingly dumb tantrums at umpires, ludicrous mismanagement of the bullpen and roster, listless play and innings and innings and innings of bad baseball -- which part of this rancid stew makes you want to remember your boyhood heroes, or daydream about green fields and summer nights? And should the Mets somehow pull out of their death spiral, which part of it makes you want to fork over $75 a night to watch them sleepwalk through the first week of October against the Cubs or Padres?

This New York Observer article is full of dreadful admissions from Carlos Delgado, Pedro Martinez and Tom Glavine, all of whom said that yeah, the Mets play complacent ball. If you didn't read it already, go do so. You're back? Good. One of those articles that makes you want to look away for fear that your fandom is about to crumble, isn't it? Because how on earth can those players -- potentially three Hall of Famers -- let such a thing happen in their clubhouse? If it's not their job to stop it, whose is it? Willie Randolph? Dream on -- apparently he's been a winner all his life, and winners don't dirty themselves by asking millionaires they're paid to oversee not to get bored with little details like making the postseason.

What's so infuriating is that the article makes clear something I'd suspected, but shied from confronting. Namely, that blowing a five-run lead to the Washington Nationals -- the fucking Washington Nationals -- is a symptom, not the disease.

“I think at times we can get a little careless. We’ve got so much talent I think sometimes we get bored.”

“We have so much talent that sometimes we relax a little bit and then we get ourselves in trouble.”

“Sometimes when you’re a team as talented as we are—I don’t know if I’d use the word ‘bored,’ but I guess you can get complacent sometimes. You don’t pay attention to details every now and then because you do have a ton of talent and think you can on most days do everything you wanna do.”

These are not things said by pissed-off bloggers fuming in their basements. These are things said in very recent history by decorated New York Met veterans, players universally known as leaders and good clubhouse guys. They are horrifying self-indictments that are about to turn into epitaphs.

And if they somehow don't? If the Mets somehow cheat the hangman, what then? Don't tell me about the 2005 Chicago White Sox and the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals, because I don't want to hear it. I want to hear why on earth I should give a fuck about the 2007 New York Mets. Because there's far too much evidence that the 2007 New York Mets themselves do not.