New York Sports Fans

This is another of those really fun times to be a NY sports hater in New York City. The NBA season is coming to a close and the Knicks are a raging embarrassment, currently sitting at 28-52 and 22 games out of first place in the Atlantic under second-year head coach Mike D'Antoni. The NHL regular season ended this past weekend, with the Islanders finishing 2010 in 13th place out of 15 teams in the East, and with the Flyers eliminating the Rangers as well from playoff contention on Sunday in both teams' final regular season game and in most agonizing fashion as they won a shootout at home in a game where the winner would go to the playoffs and the loser would go home for the offseason. How both New York teams can fail to make the postseason in hockey of all sports -- where almost any five guys who can skate can qualify for the playoffs given the bloated post-season structure of the sport -- is just mind boggling, especially given the blank check at least the Rangers are given year in and year out to go out and acquire top talent.

And then there is baseball, the only other major team sport we have going on right now, and of course the Yankees are the Yankees, off to another hot start after signing all the best players in the game over the past few years and beginning their sleepwalk back to the 2010 World Series.

And then, my friends, there are the Mets.

Sunday night was just awesome as a Philly sports fan stuck in New York. Seriously, I took the extra long route home from the gym at night just to add to my minutes listening to the local sports radio stations so I could hear whining, crying pussyfans lamenting how the Rangers could suck so bad, how could they beat the Flyers on Friday and then still lose when it counted on Sunday? How could the NHL allow an entire season, and whether or not a team goes to the playoffs or goes home, to come down to stupid penalty shots? A shootout? The horrors.

And then the Mets fans began calling in, and this is what had me making that left onto Main Street instead of the right, and taking the long long way home. While your two-time defending NL Champion Philadelphia Phillies went 5-1 on the road in their first week of play -- albeit against subpar competition in the Nationals and the Astros -- the Mets have started off a much less promising 2-4 through their first six games. And unlike some of the teams out there, the Mets have also benefited from a largely weakass schedule so far in 2010, playing all six games at home so far, and against the Florida Marlins -- who are predicted to finish just under .500 this season -- and then the lowly Washington Nationals, who won all of 57 games last season. So against the projected two worst teams in the NL East this season, playing three-game series against both at home, the Mets just went and lost not one but both series at home to start their year.

And from what I heard on Sunday and again this morning on the way into work, the Met fans are smart enough to have given up on the year already. They can see it -- a team that plays with this much no-heart on a nightly basis isn't worthy of anyone's optimism or hope or even their attention. But even though I can see it myself and in fact anyone who's read here for a while knows that I've known this would happen for two full seasons already, it is still so effing fun to listen to these no-heart fans calling in to decry their no-heart team, here sitting just 6 games into a 162-game season.

Ironically, the Mets' badness is actually going to be a negative for the Phillies this season I would say, as the Mets' bungling GM Omar Minaya will surely be fired by season's end for his inability to build anything that resembles a winner despite spending $150 million a season for the game's second-highest payroll year after year, and the team's manager Jerry Manuel -- without a doubt one of the least intelligent, least aware, and just generally head-in-the-sand head guys in the game today -- will also clearly be shown the door, I imagine sometime long before season's end in fact. And just given the dedication and love these two clowns have shown for no-heart loser players over the past several seasons, changing from these two management guys to virtually any other two randoms off the street would have to be an improvement for the Mets, and will therefore make the longer-term success of the Mets' divisional opponents that much harder to attain.

So here's to enjoying our last season of total and utter ineptitude and embarrassment out of the New York Mets. When are those guys gonna break down and just go rehire Bobby Valentine already?