There can't be a historically minded person in Metland who didn't at
least cringe a little bit after reading Willie Randolph's rules for the
team: no beards (guy-in-the-pool-cleaning-van 'staches are OK), no
earrings on the field, 1 a.m. spring-training curfew, no booze on the
team bus or plane, etc.
Part of the hackle-rise is the reflexive little-brother rebellion
against all things Yankee, which it's our job as Met fans to take a bit
too far: Whaddya mean, we've gotta go to the postseason every year? And be just like the Yankees? Screw that!
But there's also the specter of a certain horrible early-90s manager.
No booze on the team plane? C'mon. I can understand some rules to
prevent '86-style debauch — something along the lines of No vomiting out the emergency exit at 35,000 feet while feeling up another player's wife — but after you've been beaten 9-2 by San Diego and are stuck on the redeye, booze is practically mandatory.
Nice to see that we've got some new horrible spring-training duds to
affront the eye. (Or maybe those blue-black-orange-white disasters
aren't new, and I had just successfully blocked them out.) Amazingly, I
think these are even worse than the wave-me-if-lost-at-sea orange ones
from last year. The distress-flag orange unis hit you immediately, at
least; the sheer awfulness of the new ones keeps coming back at you
after you think you've absorbed it all. Can't Willie make a rule about that?
Enjoyed Piazza's remark that the moustache would go because he doesn't
want to look like “70s Burt Reynolds.” On first glance it wouldn't seem
like looking like 70s Burt Reynolds is all that different than looking
like a little lost Allman Brother. But on further review he's
absolutely right. (On the other hand, would it have been cruel to tell
Matt Ginter, “You can keep that beard, kid — Norfolk ain't got no
facial-hair ban.” Yes, probably.)
The Star-Ledger morphed Pedro Martinez into Perez today. What's going on over there?
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