The Year in Sports. Or how the Jets temporarily made me less depressed, part 1?

Well, Mr. Boyce did a bang-up job giving us a rundown of the best and worst of the best movies of the past year yesterday. I think he deserves a round of applause.../waits for applause/.../waits/...is anyone even here? Oh well. Anyway, he has inspired me to make one of my bi-seasonal posts and to break up the cinematic rote we seem to have fallen into here, I'll make it about sports. I suppose I could write about another topic: like maybe TV...but all I watch on TV are sporting events and movies.

To recap, I root for the Mets, Jets, Michigan football, and Georgetown basketball and probably in that order although I can't really say for sure. So what has been going on with these teams and where do they stand right now? I'm glad you asked.

Jason Bay dying inside

The Mets of New York Town

The 2009 New York Mets were cursed by the goddamn devil, who struck them down with a ridiculous number of injuries. This was not to prevent their winning baseball games but rather to mask the utter incompetence of the front office and allow Omar Minaya to keep his job as L'il Freddy Wilpon's trained monkey/fall guy for another offseason. And what did Señor Minaya do with his borrowed time to fix this roster? He signed poor Jason Bay in a thin attempt to hide the Wilpons' cynical contempt for Mets fans, who they consider so stupid as to believe that they are actually trying to field a championship-caliber baseball team. Here is the Wilpons' true goal: enough "meaningful" late-season games and a "big name" signing or two to trick us into packing into their beautiful little publicly-funded, TARP-sponsored restaurant emporium Dodger museum ballpark and lining their pockets (which incidentally were actually deepened by Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme, the fucking schmucks). Oh I can out-cynical you all day Fred and Jeff, so don't even try me.

Going into the offseason the Mets had as I see it: no MLB-caliber 1B, no MLB-caliber starting catcher, no MLB-caliber RF or LF, 2 reliable MLB-caliber starting pitchers--one of whom was recovering from surgery, while the other continued his life-long battle with the Yips--followed by a bunch of question marks (does anyone realize that the Mets' 3rd and 4th best starters right now are Jon Niese and Nelson Figueroa?!! And they won't even make the team out of Spring Training! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here!), a 2B with no knees, a bullpen that lost "star reliever" JJ Putz, and a continuing lack of MLB-ready depth behind key players. What were Omar's solutions to these numerous and variegated problems?

Alex Cora--$2 Mil with a vest. Had to lock him up before the bidding war ensued I guess.

Jeff Francoeur--$5 Mil. He might swing the bat so hard he hits himself in the back of the head, so there's that. What I'm saying is: his potential comedy value far exceeds his baseball value.

Jason Bay--4 years/$66 Mil with a goddmanmotherfucking vest. Just a wee bit of an overpay there, Omar.

Henry Blanco/Chris Coste/Omir Santos--Gotta catch 'em all! Crappy backups!

Kelvim Escobar/Ryota Igarashi/some other guys--I actually like the Escobar signing and it's always nice to have a Japanese guy on the team. I guess we'll see how the bullpen shakes out.

Fernando Tatis--whatever. He's a perfectly cromulent bench player.

Gary Matthews Jr.--fuck my life.

Nothing else. That's freakin' it! They might sign John Smoltz (or as Ron Darling would say, "John Schmoltz)for some pitching insurance, but he is, as you may recall, 73 years old. Seriously, the guy is six degrees of separation from Old Hoss Radbourn, who threw 678 innings(!) for the 1884 Providence Grays.

I could also get into the Beltran surgery fiasco (guess whose side I'm on) or the fact that JJ Putz was never given a physical last year and then allowed to pitch in the WBC, despite the fact that he had been injured the year before and the Mets had just traded a bazillion prospects for him, but that would just be piling on to my own misery. Suffice it to say, I am not very happy with the current state of the Mets nor am I particularly sanguine about their chances in 2010.

I was going to break down the other teams, but I clearly get long-winded when it comes to complaining about the Mets. We'll save the Jets, Wolverines, and Hoyas for a part 2. And perhaps Boyce will chime in with some thoughts on the Giants and their rather Metsian season.