MISERY LOVES COMPANY

Dear Tigers Fans,

I know how you feel. Your team is filling the record books for all the wrong reasons. Just a couple of weeks ago you had World Series visions dancing in your head. You were on the cover of Sports Illustrated. You were feeling good.

And then, though it really took place over the course of a month, it felt like everything came crashing down at once. Suddenly another team is celebrating, and you're going home.
I know you don't want to hear this right now...but I know how you feel.

I am a Mets fan.

It's horrible. Sitting pretty at the beginning of September, then watching another team play in October.

But at least it didn't happen to you two years in a row.

The losses in April that seemed so insignificant...but meant so much by game 162.

But at least, when you needed to win to stay alive on the final day of the season, you won.

And then, with everything on the line in game 163, you fought back to take the lead a couple of times after blowing leads of your own...even coming from behind once.

That's the kind of heart the Mets never showed with their season(s) on the line.

So, Tigers fans, yours may be the first team in baseball history to blow a three game lead with four games to play.

But right now I can assure you it could be worse.

You could be a Mets fan.

LIKE PUTTING A BAND-AID ON A BROKEN LEG

It's like making sure to turn off the oven while the house is burning down.

The Mets Monday fired first base coach Luis Alicea, while re-assigning bench coach Sandy Alomar and third base coach Razor Shines.

The good news here is that this creates some possible openings for the likes of, oh, I don't know, Hall of Famer Gary Carter. First base coach, then when Jerry Manuel gets off to a slow start in 2010, pull a Colorado Rockies, fire the manager, and put Gary Carter in to lead the Mets to a playoff berth.

Of course, they won't.

Hitting coach Howard Johnson will keep his job. So will pitching coach Dan Warthen and bullpen coach Randy Niemann.

The HoJo news leads me to the most misleading stat ever - the Mets hit .270 this year and tied the Dodgers for highest batting average in the National League. That got them a whole lot of nothing.

Some of these quotes about the firings are making me mad. I feel like the blame should fall on the manager, not the coaches. While Jeff Wilpon says Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel are keeping their jobs, they are on notice, I guess, for another year, because the Mets 'demand' and 'expect' better.

Manuel, meanwhile, says, "The traffic that we had on the bases probably to a lot of degree was not properly managed as well as we would've liked to have seen." You know who the blame falls on for that? I blame the manager. Because that's not the stuff a first base coach should be blamed for. I'm not seeing players thrown out at second stretching singles into doubles as much as I'm seeing players making terrible baserunning decisions. Those are the types of things that need to be taught and taught and taught during spring training, not during the regular season (not to mention the fact that ballplayers shouldn't need tremendous coaching at the professional level on the basepaths...should they?).

So I feel like Jerry Manuel is putting the blame that should fall on him onto his coaches.

And I feel like the Mets are just making sure to shut the door right before the building is demolished.

TWINS-TIGERS: I promised a playoff pick for Tuesday, here it is (I'll have the real playoff picks tomorrow) - I think the Twins will smoke the Tigers Tuesday night. I don't even think it will be close. And I wish the Mets had sent off Shea the way the Twins are sending off the Metrodome.

SUNDAY PAPER

This is not a live blog.

At first glance, that may not seem like news. To understand why it's notable, you would have had to have been reading my work for at least the past couple of years. (You can catch up here and here, if you're so inclined.)

Those past couple of years have featured some marathon days of baseball and football watching, requiring some fancy television maneuvering on my part and some luck in the television schedule (the Jets on network television for my rabbit-eared TV, with the Mets on the baseball package on the cable TV).

The days with the above set-up have ended in utter disappointment, making me wonder which is worse - that one day of disappointment, capping half a month of terrible play by the Mets where they miss the playoffs on the last day of the season (not much worse the second year than the first, to be quite honest), or elimination from any chance at contention by June. I would say each leaves a bad taste in your mouth, with the latter bringing back bad memories of my high school years to go along with the disappointment. The only good news here is that early on I knew this Mets season wouldn't come down to missing the playoffs on the last day of the season.

So much, though, conspired against me having my usual "Last Sunday of the Baseball Season" set-up. To wit:

1) The Mets are terrible.

2) The Mets are early, the Jets are a 4 o'clock start. So I don't have to worry about the two teams going opposite one another.

3) I wouldn't be able to put the Jets on network TV anyway because the Patriots are the 1 o'clock CBS game and CBS wouldn't have the 4 o'clock game on local TV.

4) My rabbit-eared TV doesn't work anymore thanks to the government's move back in June to digitalize it all. (Was that what happened? I don't even remember how that all worked.)

5) I now have two mobile children, as opposed to the one mobile and one infant a year ago.

And so I prepare for another October of watching teams other than the Mets play in the post-season with just a regular Sunday blog. Let's just hope there's not a rematch in the World Series.

**So far having no DirecTV is not having a tremendous impact on my enjoyment of the football season. The first two weeks of the season were on local TV (though I went to the Meadowlands for the week 2 game), and last week I had a great time with Dave in Brighton at a local establishment watching the Jets. I should have no trouble finding Jets-Saints somewhere this afternoon, and my wife has been wonderful about helping me get out to see these games. She rescheduled her afternoon tutoring so that I could go out at 4.

**I can't start picking against the Jets now...why should I? Defense gets the nod over offense - and this should be a really entertaining game. I'll say Jets 21, Saints 20

**My underdogs were pretty terrible last week. I missed picking against the Lions and Bengals, and picking Tampa and Buffalo (no points for the Bills keeping it close late). In addition to the Jets this week, I'm liking a lot of other road teams - Baltimore in New England is getting 2-and-a-half (the Ravens have played so much better than the Patriots this season), Tampa Bay getting six-and-a-half in Washington (the Redskins have looked that bad), San Diego getting six-and-a-half in Pittsburgh (just seems like a lot, considering the Steelers have yet to look that good), and Green Bay getting three-and-a-half in Minnesota (and Favre getting a big target on his back). Seems to me like I'm picking too many road teams this week (I have quite a few road favorites as well), but there are a lot of bad teams playing at home, I guess.

**I think I'm rooting for the Twins to overtake the Tigers, just to see what happens with the Metrodome being occupied Monday night by football when there might have to be a playoff game there. I have no reason to hate Minnesota...I don't love the Tigers, although there's a feel-good story in there with the state of things in Detroit. But the larger issue here is that Detroit is in the midst of a pretty significant collapse when they had a chance to wrap things up. Watching the Mets go through that the past couple of years, all you can think about is how difficult it is to blow a late-season lead like that - not only does everything have to go wrong for the team in the lead, but everything has to go right for the chasing team. Same thing with what's going on out west in the NL, even though both the Dodgers and Rockies have clinched playoff spots. The Rockies were fifteen-and-a-half games out at one point! That's an incredible turnaround. It just seems so hard to blow a lead like that...yet, the Dodgers watched their lead evaporate until they had to fight for the division in the final weekend. Too bad neither of these races will erase the Mets of 2007 and 2008 from their ignominious standing.

**Oh, ignominious and the Mets reminds me of Omar Minaya. Not to beat a dead horse, but with the Blue Jays firing J. P. Ricciardi, it makes me think there's now someone available for the Mets who actually knows a thing or two about baseball. I know Ricciardi pretty much botched any deal for Roy Halladay, but I bet he'd work well with the Mets. Too bad we'll never find out just how well.

**Stay with me this week. After a Jets recap on Monday I'll have baseball playoff picks for Tuesday.

PLAYOFF MATCHUPS

Long-time readers of my work know that when I watch the World Series or the Super Bowl, I don't like seeing re-matches.

Super Bowl XXVII between Buffalo and Dallas was fine...Super Bowl XXVIII between the same two teams was a waste of a year.

And I'm not just talking back-to-back rematches. 2004 Red Sox-Cardinals? Happened in 1946. Again, wasting my time.

Needless to say, it's time for me to start working out some scenarios.
The Yankees have played nearly everyone. The only thing that would make a 2009 World Series appearance by them worthwhile would be a matchup with the Colorado Rockies.

Those Rockies could play anyone except the Red Sox...and while many want to see the Sox play Manny Ramirez and the Dodgers, Red Sox-Dodgers has already happened. A long time ago...but it's been done. Same with Sox-Phillies.

Both the Twins and Tigers would be OK to come out of the Central, as long as they didn't play their NL Central counterparts, the Cardinals. I really would like the Cardinals to get upset, because they've played a lot of teams over the years.

The best bet to come out of the AL? The Angels. Their only World Series appearance came against the Giants, who are not playoff-bound. Even if the NL-favorite Cardinals come out of that League, it would be a new matchup.

And that would give my busy mind one less thing to worry about.