'Mets Fans Should Embrace the Suffering'--Marchman

• Because it's not going to get any better as long as the Wilpons run the team:

(Marchman, NY Sun): "A year after their last great collapse, the Mets suffered another one because of

• specific mistakes that weren't the result just of bad judgment, but

• of a misguided philosophy, one that's been consistently held

• as long as the Wilpons have been involved with the team.

This philosophy holds that money can solve all ills, that a team with a few true stars doesn't need to worry overmuch about what

• happens at the margins of the roster, and that

• changes are made to punish past failures

• rather than to prevent future ones.

A team built along these principles can be good, and occasionally better than that, but it can

• never enjoy any kind of sustained dominance.

• And indeed the Mets haven't....

There's little reason to believe that the thinking...will change next year, or any time in the near future. There's thus little reason to believe that the Mets aren't going to squander the opportunity to build a perpetually dominant team around David Wright and Jose Reyes, who will likely become the two greatest everyday players in franchise history,

• or that they are going to do much more than roll out yet another edition of the

• same incomplete and half-baked bunch of mismatched and broken parts

• that's been taking the field in Queens since 2005....

Dour a conclusion as this may be to draw from the wretchedness of the last two weeks (or, for that matter, years), it does point to the one thing that Mets fans can do on their own,

• without waiting for the light to dawn on Wilpon and their capos:

• They can give up all hope.

A pessimist is never disappointed and is sometimes surprised. Only by abandoning all expectations, and admitting the certainty that however badly one might think the Mets can scotch something they'll not only find a way to do so worse, but also to do so more painfully, can

• the Mets fan align himself with the natural order."...

• (This is the approach I've tried to develop as a Yankee fan since the beginning of the 2007 off season. I've had a small amount of success,
• and hope to keep building on my pessimism
• which will continue for as many years as George Steinbrenner's sons run the team). sm

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