“Don't give me pills! I already have plenty!

“This is not pills. Read it!”

“It says, 'Take a vacation from my problems.'”

“I give you permission to take a vacation from your problems.”

“Not a vacation from your work, not a vacation from daily life…”

“But a vacation from my problems.”

“Exactly!”

—Dr. Leo Marvin's prescription for Bob Wiley, What About Bob?

It […]

When you go to the beach, kids, don't assume there'll be an Ethernet cable waiting for you.

Anyway, this half of Faith and Fear is up and running on Long Beach Island, meaning baseball has taken its rightful space alongside sand, sun, water, trips to the grocery store for beer/grilling stuff/etc. and the continuing results of […]

Layered into the manifold embarrassment of growing up nonathletic was gym class and the indignity — the season or sport didn't matter — of being picked last or close to it. In my case, there was usually someone considered slightly more pathetic than me so I didn't necessarily go down as Mr. Irrelevant, but being […]

Whew. Wow. Gasp.

Come in off the ledge. Come down from the bridge. We’re not out of the woods, but there’s some sunlight coming down through the trees.

In the box score this looked like a laugher, but we know better. John Maine’s sixth inning was a passion play. Up 4-0 and with Hudson out of […]

…your declarations no longer make us laugh. You're to be taken seriously, because you've backed up everything you said.

OK, Pat Burrell. Dumb people may have referred to you as “once terrifying, now vaguely pathetic,” but that was a while ago. Those people have been chastened, and never want to see you at the plate against […]

This week's sign of the apocalypse: The Mets have to win a game.

If the Mets don't win this afternoon, they will have been swept by their closest pursuers. They will still be in first, they will lead the Phillies by two games and they will enter September no worse than ahead of the pack. But […]

“I see great things in baseball. It's our game — the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us.”

Walt Whitman may have said that (more likely he didn't), but then he never saw tonight's game. Because that was one of the purest forms of excruciation I've ever spent nearly three […]

Perceptions are tough to shake. For example, last month in San Diego it was noted that Jose Reyes and David Wright had paired to become the Mets' all-time leaders in starting together at short and third with 395 such games in the lineup since 2004. My first thought was “somebody keeps track of that?” My […]

Gosh, didn't see that coming.

To borrow an observation from last week's Mad Men, watching Guillermo Mota set down the Phillies 1-2-3 in the ninth was like watching a dog play the piano. It was very impressive. And you knew he was highly unlikely to do it again.

Mets aren't hitting anymore, are they? For a while […]