Well, the most important thing is who El Duque isn't: He isn't Jose Lima or Jeremi Gonzalez. That makes me happy. Yeah, I'd seen Julio's stuff and thought big thoughts, but teams with 2 1/2 starters can't be picky, and as we're currently constituted Julio was a reliever searching for a role. And before anyone asks, who cares that Kris Benson is an Oriole? Beyond the fact that I don't ever remember calling you up and yelling, “Greg! We gotta go to Shea! BENSON'S PITCHING!”, beyond the relief I feel at not hearing the beat guys repeatedly ask Carlos Delgado if it bothers him that Anna thinks he's a traitor and a flag burner, if we had a time machine built expressly to undo trades, I think we'd be off to Tampa Bay, Cincinnati and Anaheim during the Nixon administration, not Baltimore.
Granted, El Duque was once a Yankee, and the Empire's Guild of Vile Propagandists made it sound like he escaped Cuba on two logs wrapped together with the twine from a baseball, when in fact it was a 30-foot fishing boat with a 480-horsepower diesel engine. But you know what? That was a long time ago, and putting on our colors absolves him of any misdeeds that can now only be glimpsed in the rearview mirror. (Funny what a change of laundry can do.)
But here's the least-important thing about El Duque, Met, that pleased me the most: I too saw the news on SNY, with Omar live. I love that we've got one of these shiny network things of our own, so I don't have to find out about trades by squinting at the bottom of the ESPN ticker. I love that they were trumpeting it like Mideast peace. (Isn't it?) I could get used to it.
Oh yeah, and I love that after METS TRADE JORGE JULIO I didn't see AND LASTINGS MILLEDGE.
Say, this isn't Hideo Nomo, is it?
What really warmed my heart was El Duque's stories about all his shark encounters in Arizona.