A quick reminder to our boys wrapped in orange and blue layers for when they begin their season in Arctic conditions today or tomorrow or whenever there isn’t a projected 29-degree wind chill with 60% chance of snow showers in Cincinnati:
Play every game. There are 162 on your slate. Play all of them. Play all of them as well as you can. Don’t take days off unless you, as an individual, have been in fact given the day off. Keep playing. Play now, play later, play to the end. Play hard 162 times. Do not let your minds wander after a dozen or so games. Do not spiral into a funk after sixty or so games. Do not mentally wander the desert after 120 games. Consider the season as an in-progress entity even after you’ve reached the black-magical mark of 145 games. At that juncture, institutional memory will tell you to ease up, not compete and lose more often than you win.
Do not listen to it. You are contracted to play all 162. You start, the schedule says, this afternoon. You keep going straight through to October 4 at least.
At least.
Thank you in advance for your efforts on our behalf. Please don’t make us regret our faith in you again.
A great way to wait out rain delays is to read Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available from Amazon [1], Barnes & Noble [2] or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook [3].