Friday, March 26, 2010

Your Official 2010 Mets Preview Thread of Rock Bottom Expectations, Rogue Thyroid Glands, and RAGE RAGE RAGE

Because Rickey is wholly unable to discuss the New York Mets in commonplace prose format, we’re throwing this one up Q&A style, (now complete with superfluous cultural references!)

So Rickey, I read that Vegas has the odds of the Yankees winning the 2010 World Series at a formidable 14/5 after the line opened at 3/1. Has anyone calculated the odds for the Mets?

Uh, yeah, we’ll get Hank from accounting right on that little query… Dude’s not nearly miserable enough. Rickey heard that somebody actually tried to figure out the odds, but promptly committed seppuku when they learned that Luis “Meat Train” Castillo has another 734 games to go until he’s halfway through his contract as a New York Met.

Well what do you calculate the Mets odds of winning the World Series to be?

Haha, you’re cute. Rickey admires your doe-eyed tenacity. The odds are about as good as Mrs. Henderson successfully teaching Rickey how to correctly load the dishwasher. What? Why can’t Rickey place the dishes face down on the lower rack? The knives don’t get put in the utensil basket pointy end up? Wood objects don’t go in here? A thousand curses upon you and this infernal machine, you treacherous harpy!

But you’re still going to attend a few games at CitiField, right?

Let Rickey tell you a story. Last week, Rickey went into the office men’s room to relieve himself, opened an unlocked stall door, only to find a rather portly man (thankfully not a coworker) sitting on the john with no shirt on. Rickey bolted from the scene and has since avoided that bathroom like the plague. Why wouldn’t the door have been locked? Why did that rotund man feel the need to take his shirt off? What the hell? All Rickey knows is that there’s some seriously bad mojo going on in that bathroom and he hasn’t gone back in there since. The point of this story: Rickey feels pretty much the same way about venturing into CitiField this season. It’s like walking into what you thought was an unoccupied bathroom stall only to find a shirtless fat man sitting on the toilet.

Aren’t you at least excited about the Jason Bay acquisition?

Absolutely! And Rickey will be even more excited when he stubs his toe on opening day, blames his .198 batting average on that and sits out the second half of the 2010 season collecting millions of dollars!

But we can still expect you to blog about the Mets from time to time, right?

Uh, don’t count on it. Three years since the 2007 debacle, Rickey’s keen satirical eye has waned to tired exasperation. The challenge of mocking this team is gone. Want some amusement? You’re better off writing your own “Choose You Own Mets Adventure” book at this point. Turn to page 118 if Ike Davis gets traded for an injury plagued Orlando Hudson during the 2011 offseason! Turn to page 78 if Jose Reyes’ thyroid goes nuclear!

What is Reyes’ deal anyway? Is he better now?

Reports suggest that yes, his thyroid levels have normalized and he will be available for opening day. So that was an interesting little diversion. You know what’s fun? When a news story about the delightfully insane decision to place a shortstop with a .435 career slugging percentage third in the batting order actually gets dwarfed by an even more maddening news story about their thyroid acting up. But yes, Reyes is back, which is good, because as far as Rickey knows, the Mets’ two backup shortstops are Rey Ordonez and Corrado Soprano.

What of Carlos Beltran? How’s he doing?

More and more, his tenure as a New York Met resembles that of Rubin “The Hurricane” Carter’s jail stint. The poor guy is so terrified of the Mets’ medical staff that he had his own doctor perform knee surgery on his ailing leg. Not that Rickey doesn’t have the utmost of faith in the Civil War battlefield surgery level expertise of the Mets’ doctors… Ahem.

So it’s safe to say that the Mets’ fanbase is a little disgruntled?

Well yes, but that’s generally always the case. This year it’s just a little bit more pronounced. Also, it doesn’t help that 99.8% of Mets fans are completely out of their goddamned minds. It’s not unusual for call ins like this to transpire on Mike Francessa’s show on WFAN:

“Hey Mike, tanks fuh takin' my cawl. What do you think of trading Beltran to da Cawdnuls for Wainwright and Pujols? I think it's a slam dunk fuh da Mets, why doesn't Omah make dat trade? I'm gonna hang up and listen to youah response.”

Rickey’s always wondered, why do the WFAN callers always hang up so quickly? Those lunatics spend hours waiting on hold and then they hang up after spitting out 50 words of jibber jabber? Really?

So what’s your final prediction for the 2010 season?

If they make it over 76 wins, Rickey will be shocked. If they don't we've got the return of Bobby Valentine to look forward to. Now for that, Rickey will get excited.

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

My favorite WFAN Met call goes like this:

"I really like this Murphy kid, Mike. (cuz he's white) He works so hard! (cuz he's white) Why doesn't Manuel and Omar give him a chance? (cuz they're brown)

THEY GAVE HIM A CHANCE!!! I thought he was going to be the next Dave Magadan? He wishes!

In 155 games and 556 plate appearances, he hit .266 with a .313 OBA and a .427 SLG. Reyes has more pop.

Oh, and Ike Davis? The name sounds African-American but he's white as a KKK hood. I'm sure he's smart, willing to work hard and would make a good husband. (cuz he's Jewish)

Now you have to comment on my ladyboy post.