So the Mets are the number one baseball story in the New York, right?  Guess again.  The number one story in baseball in this city right now is what the Yankees will do after their most recent collapse in the playoffs.  The Yankees, doing their best impression of the Atlanta Braves, lost for a second consecutive year in the first round.  Combine that with the 2004 historical collapse against the Red Sox in the ALCS and you now have reasons for Armageddon in the Bronx.  Will Torre be fired; will A-Rod be traded?  These are the questions that will consume the newspaper pages and Internet sites while the Mets simply go out and play the kind of baseball that New Yorkers love.  What a shame the Mets must have to take a backseat to the mess across the river.

In case you have been on a dessert island ala Tom Hanks, you know that a starting pitching injury laden Mets team swept the Los Angeles Dodgers in three games to advance to the NLCS.  And they did it in typical ’06 Mets fashion by scoring early, getting solid pitching, coming back late in the game, and making the most out of bloop hits and productive outs.  Their bullpen was simply outstanding.  Every one on the Mets team is contributing and when one player fails, the next guy is there to pick them up.  This team is made up of a bunch of guys who simply believe they cannot lose.  They do anything required to win.  As a matter of fact, they remind me of another team that played in New York not too long ago, the Yankees.  Not the current Yankees, the Yankees from the late ‘90s.

It’s no coincidence either.  The tie between the late 90’s Yanks and the 05’ and ’06 Mets (yes ’05 too, that’s really when this started) is as plain as the nose on John Franco’s face. It’s Willie Randolph.  Willie has brought a new paradigm to the Mets collective conscience.  The Mets have a lot of stars on the team but they all see themselves as part of the team.  Every player is willing to sacrifice for the benefit of the team.  What was that line from one of the Star Trek movies—the needs of the many out way the needs of the few.  That describes the Mets, Willie Randolph’s Mets to the letter. 

That winning formula which began in the Bronx a decade ago has now re-appeared in the borough of Queens.  The current Yankee squad has resorted to the days of the Bronx zoo, a superstar at every position but not a team to be seen.  Sure the Yanks won 97 regular season games, same as the Mets, but the Yankees do not seem to have the intangible elements that once carried them to four out of five World Championships.  And it’s those intangibles that do not show up in the box score that are needed to win in the post season.  Paul O’Neil on the Yes post-game show made an excellent point.  He said each Yankee player appeared to wait for someone else to pick up the team rather than do it themselves. This is in direct contrast to what is happening on the Mets. 

So now the Yankees brain trust, whether Steinbrenner is really apart of or not anymore, will do what they have to do—steel as many headlines from the Mets as possible.  Don’t kid yourself, whether the Yankees fire Torre or not is not the issue.  The fact that’s all the media is talking about in difference to the Mets inspired sweep over the Dodgers is.  The Yankee organization will do anything they can to acquire back page headlines even if their season is over.  It has to be killing the Yankees hierarchy that the Mets are still playing and the Yankees are not. 

Omar Minaya has built a winner in much the same way that Gene Michael and Buck Showalter did back in the early nineties for the Yankees.  They developed fine home grown players, made excellent trades and signed key free agents.  Think back, the Yankees of the late 90’s were not an All Star team, but collectively they were winners.  I hope that Omar, Jeff Wilpon, and others in the Mets front office see what has happened to the current Yankees and do not fall into a similar trap.  The Bombers got away from that winning formula and went back to acquiring all star caliber players at huge salaries.  The point is that even a team with a 200 million dollar payroll has no guarantee of getting to the World Series let alone winning it.  The Mets should stick to their game plan, which I feel they will.  What will the Yankees do?  Bump up the payroll to 250 million; throw more good money after bad?  To be honest I don’t really care. On Wednesday while Yankee Stadium is dark and Yankee fans convince themselves that baseball does not exist, Shea Stadium will be shaking with 57 thousand pumped up Mets fans ready to cheer the Mets on hopefully to their fifth National League pennant.  That really should be the number one story.

Extra Innings:  The last time the Mets played later into the year than the Yankees was 1988. 

The Mets will face the Cardinals in the NLCS for the second time.  The Mets played them in 2000 and won in five games.  Mike Hampton pitched a 3 hit complete game shutout in the clincher.  Timo Perez made the final out, remember him.  He single handedly could have changed the complexion of game one in the World Series if he had busted it from first instead of admiring Todd Zeil’s near home run to left.  The first game is at Shea Stadium on Wednesday, time TBD.

The Yankees have not won a World Series since they defeated the Mets.  I think they are under the influence of “The Curse of Mr. Met”.

Plea to Mets fans at the games this week.  Please refrain from chants of “Yankees Suck”.  Not only is this stupid, it makes Mets fans look foolish and insecure.  And quite frankly there is nothing to be insecure about now.  The Mets by sweeping the Dodgers and moving on to the LCS are now a better team than the Yankees, plain and simple.  Further more, why draw unnecessary attention to that other team in New York anyway? 

At a New Jersey festival for kids yesterday where I was with my family, I was stunned, simply stunned by the amount of people wearing Mets gear.  There were probably about 5000 people at this festival at the PNC Arts center. In all I counted three people two of whom were kids wearing Yankee gear.  You have to understand that NJ is predominantly Yankee territory so this was unbelievable.  How things have changed.