FanHouse NewYorkMets

NEW YORK -- Blasphemy, you'll say, but think about it. What are you going to remember about Tuesday night's Yankees-Red Sox game? David Ortiz's third home run of the year? Nick Green's second? Maybe Josh Beckett, fine, but the fact is this isn't 2003-04 anymore, the Red Sox own the Yankees now and they're both probably making the playoffs anyway, what with the Rays looking like World Series-hangover-roadkill.

No, this here is where it's at for big-time baseball rivalries circa 2009. Mets-Phillies has morphed from spring training trash talk to nailbiting, in-season theater, complete with all the subplots, drama and good, intense baseball you can take. Tuesday night had everything anybody could ask of a midseason rivalry game, and in the end it was the battered-underdog Mets who came away with a 6-5 victory that was in no way easy but in all ways satisfying.

NEW YORK -- Assuming the rain holds off and they play baseball here at Citi Field Tuesday night, this could be a night for which Mets fans have been waiting excitedly for a while now -- the major league debut of outfield prospect Fernando Martinez.

In a slew of pregame moves, the Mets placed shortstop Jose Reyes and right fielder Ryan Church on the disabled list. They announced that the MRI on center fielder Carlos Beltran revealed a bone bruise on the tibia and that he would miss the remainder of the current series. They acquired shortstop Wilson Valdez from the Cleveland Indians for cash. And they called up Martinez from Triple-A Buffalo and put him in the starting lineup -- playing right field and batting sixth.

NEW YORK -- Managing Oliver Perez is like trying to climb a sheer, slippery rock. There aren't too many places where you can get a real good grip, so when you find out, you grip it real, real tight.

This is where Mets manager Jerry Manuel finds himself. At a loss to explain why Perez's results so often struggle to match up with his ability, Manuel said this afternoon that he'll start the struggling left-hander Saturday in Philadelphia against the World Series champion Phillies because he thinks this is the kind of game in which Perez will actually pitch well.

NEW YORK -- Friday night was a freebie for the Mets. Few things in baseball are a better bet than Johan Santana against the pitiful Nats, and so it was that a four-game losing streak went quietly by the wayside, giving the Mets a night to breathe and forget about that ugly three-game sweep in St. Louis.

But Saturday it all starts up again, with Mike Pelfrey set to go in the afternoon heat. Pelfrey is one of the Mets' starters other than Santana, which means he represents one-fourth of the biggest problem the Mets have had this young season.

Mets starters other than Santana are 3-5 with a 7.32 ERA this year, infecting the team's start so severely that the people running it have already started discussing a shakeup. Per Adam Rubin in the New York Daily News:

NEW YORK -- After his dad ripped a fastball into the left-field stands at Citi Field on Friday, 6-year-old Jaden Sheffield got a piece of paper and a blue magic marker and wrote:

"Hooray you hit it, you hit your 500th home run."

For Gary Sheffield, it might as well be on sheepskin.

"Now I can say I'm in the club," Sheffield said after reaching the milestone in the Mets' defeat of the Brewers. "It's like getting your degree. No one can ever take it away from you."

NEW YORK -- There was a moment Monday night when the script felt so perfect. It was the bottom of the fifth inning, Mets down three with two men on base and David Wright at the plate. The count was full. The crowd, which had started booing starting pitcher Mike Pelfrey three innings earlier, suddenly realized something was up. Everybody stood. They roared. And Wright delivered.

The Mets' third baseman hit a three-run home run -- the first official homer by a Met at Citi Field -- to tie the game and send the paid crowd of 41,007 into a frenzy. This was it. This was the defining moment of the new ballpark, on its very first night. The face of the franchise had authored the comeback, and all of the ghosts of miserable Met seasons past could just stay buried under the rubble of Shea Stadium, a parking lot away.

But then came ... the rest of the game.

As neatly as it turned out, it's tempting to wonder if the Mets scripted it just this way. A one-run lead after seven innings. J.J. Putz pitches a scoreless eighth. Francisco Rodriguez a scoreless ninth.

The 2009 bullpen holds a lead to which the 2008 'pen would have set fire. Sure, they might rather have plated some of those 11 runners they left on base in the first six innings, but they got the Opening Day win anyway, and they did it in a way that sends their fans a message.

"Look," the message says. "We fixed our bullpen."

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NEW YORK -- This is the thing about Gary Sheffield that people don't get. He really isn't a bad guy. He's not a clubhouse cancer or a bad teammate or any of the things people seem so comfortable calling him when they bring up reasons he shouldn't be on their team. I've known Sheffield for 14 years -- seen him at his best and worst in Florida and New York. He can be tough on a GM, and sometimes on a manager, but he's been pretty well liked and well respected by the people he's played with, because he more or less keeps to himself in the clubhouse and is a very tough player.

So when he shows up today at Citi Field and says he's going to be fine with the part-time role for which the Mets have signed him, I think he means it. I am certain that he believes it to be true.

I just don't think it is.

NEW YORK -- Only the bobbing Home Run Apple beyond the outfield walls seems familiar, which is probably just as well. There wasn't much anyone wanted to lug from the festering dump next door -- not the roaming feral cats, not the stench of overflowing toilets, and certainly not the wretched string of September collapses and dashed hopes.

Good riddance to Shea Stadium, now a pile of rubble.

NEW YORK -- It's a pleasant spring day here -- the kind of day that makes us think/hope/pray/beg to somebody that this most miserable of winters might soon, finally, at long last be over. So in the spirit of spring, I went to a ballpark.

Specifically, I went to Citi Field, which is the new home of the New York Mets. (They've got two new ballparks set to open in New York in the next couple of weeks, in case you hadn't heard.) They didn't have a game at Citi Field today, but they did have the next best thing you can find at a ballpark -- food.

Oh boy do they have food at Citi Field.