Bad and good news today, the bad being the palpable sense of disappointment at my beloved Mets these last few weeks. You can pick any of the losses over the last twelve and say that was the one that cost them the NL East crown, but the true cause is the attitude the team took on over the last two or three months, and while each player (with exception to David Wright and Carlos Beltran, in my opinion) had some truly astounding lapses in play and/or judgement and Willie Randolph & Omar Minaya need to somehow lose their affinity for older, already-spent players like Jeff Conine, there's one culprit that's been skating by in the media blamelessly thus far: Rickey Henderson.
Okay, he's just the first-base coach, how much harm could he have done? Plenty. When Rickey was a player with the Mets in 1999, he was more of a cancer than a leader to the younger players. The kids that looked up to him soon bore his arrogant swagger, got into scuffles and arguments with officials, if I remember correctly, and then there's the infamous incident in the during Game Six of the 1999 NLCS when Henderson didn't like being taken out late in the game, so he left the dugout and played cards with Bobby Bonilla in the clubhouse instead of remaining with his team. So what do the Mets do with this jerk they couldn't wait to unload in 2000? They bring him in to counsel their golden child Jose Reyes as base-stealing guru and first-base coach, and at first the leap in aggressiveness in snatching bases was dramatic and impressive. Some time later, however, Reyes' boyish attitude gave way to immaturity, a weakness Reyes hadn't possessed in the early part of the season or in past seasons. Now Reyes, the spark plug for the Mets offense, was being instructed by Rickey on how to adopt the mindset he had when he stole 130 bases in one season. That mindset was based on what, according to Rickey himself? Arrogance. Rickey has been quoted this year as saying he was passing along to Reyes the arrogance he felt made him a bullet on the basepaths throughout his career.
Thanks, Rickey. Go back home, your ego is calling. And thanks Omar, it took a lot of mindpower to bring in as counsel to your team's offensive catalyst a guy who made a career of not bothering to learn his teammates names.
What the hell were we talking about? Oh, yeah, good news. I found out today my oldest friend, the produced screenwriter, just wrote and directed a feature out in L.A.. He's in post-production now, he says it looks great even though shot in HDV (good format, nothing to apologize for in my opinion). I'm so proud, can't wait to see it. I've got plenty of time in October since I won't be watching baseball.
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