I am participating in the ESPN Spelling Bee at ESPN Zone in Times Square tonight at 7 p.m. so come root me on!

I will be asked to spell the names of sports figures (coaches, players, broadcasters, etc), alive or deceased. They may ask me to spell either the first name or last name. I fully expect to get bumped in the first round but who knows, it's luck of the draw if I remember my 3rd grade spelling bee correctly.

Want to battle against me? If so, email your name, address, phone number and birth year to this address: SportsSpellingBee@espnzone.com.

Walk-up entries will be accepted if space is available. Registration begins at 6:30 p.m.

We went to the Binghamton Mets game on Saturday night, then drove all the way back to Queens afterwards. Thank God for Starbucks Doubleshot or I would have crashed into the median on several occasions.

Anyways, here are a few observations:


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 A sample:

The Mets have won 8 of their last 10 games and are in first place, but you would think the sky is falling.

When they win, articles I read are positive, and people I talk to are pleased, but they have this raised-eyebrow kind of look. Almost as if they are surprised as they say things such as, "Yeah, I know, crazy right?"

When they lose however, a flood of pent up angst is spewed, as if everyone expected it to happen, even amidst a streak such as this. Scapegoats are appointed, and the person emits a "here we go again" type attitude.

I attribute this to the results of the last two seasons. No matter what Carlos Beltran does, the memory of his frozen bat against Adam Wainwright unfairly won't be forgotten. No matter how good Johan Santana pitches, he is overshadowed by the dark cloud surrounding Oliver Perez's currently squandered contract and uncertain future.

It is almost as if the media, and we as fans, are just waiting for Collapse 3.0 to happen. And this time when it does, we will be ready.  Our coping mechanisms have setup the expectation of failure so that we don't get as upset this time around. We always blame the team for being mentally weak, lacking confidence, and belief in themselves. But I think it is us who suffer from those same insecurities.

Every game has become like a mini-series. Are we overreacting, or is that just baseball?

Here's the bottom line. Only a championship will satisfy us because personally I am tired of reminiscing over one from 23 years ago. We have seen the team coast in first place all year, just to miss the playoffs. We have chanted MVP to Wright and Beltran, and booed them during slumps. Nothing will be good enough for us until they win it all.

Wins keep us quiet, losses frustrate us, and we try to have faith. I know the media needs something to talk and write about, so it is easy to pick on what is not working, plus it generates more discussion. I must try to not get sucked into that vortex of negativity. It is a long season and I am an optimistic fan, but even I can admit that patience is thin. 

Baseball is funny. You have to let each day go, good or bad, or it will affect you the next day.  Maybe, in order to get through the season, I need to do the same.

With all the different lineups the Mets had used this season, I wanted to see how they compared to the rest of the National League.

Mets -19 different lineups, record is 18-14

Most common is:
1. Jose Reyes
2. Daniel Murphy
3. David Wright
4. Carlos Delgado
5. Carlos Beltran
6. Ryan Church
7. Brian Schneider
8. Luis Castillo

Phillies - 14 (16-14)
Marlins - 24 (17-16)
Braves - 23 (16-17)
Nationals - 22 (10-21)

Central
Cardinals - 30 (20-13)
Reds - 22 (19-14)
Brewers - 16 (19-14)
Cubs - 26 (18-14)
Astros - 19 (14-18)
Pirates - 25 (13-19)

West
Dodgers - 18 (22-12)
Giants - 25 (18-14)
Rockies - 28 (13-18)
Padres - 27 (13-20)
D-Backs - 34 (13-21)

So what I thought was very many, turns out to be less than the average of 23. Not sure what this really means, but whatever.

At first glance, the number of lineups don't appear to have much of a factor on performance, as the Dodgers are the only team in first place that has the lowest amount of batting orders in their division.

The first place Cardinals in fact (30), are second to only the last place D-Backs (34).

Check out Oliver Perez taking in a Celtics- Magic game.



I'm all about enjoying down time so I won't persecute him, but c'mon Ollie, at least wear the shades so you're not so obvious.

I recently had the chance to speak with Greg Prince of the blog Faith and Fear in Flushing about his new book which is appropriately titled, Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History.

This is truly a book for the fan by a fan, which is a perspective we don't hear from enough and certainly not so thoughtfully well-written. It's a must read for any Mets fan.

Copies of the book can be found at Amazon.com.

Regis Courtemanche: What was your approach in writing this book, and how long did it take?

Greg Prince: I wanted to tell the story of what it's been like to have been a Mets fan for a lifetime, a story that never really gets told properly from my perspective. The Mets narrative is usually restricted to a couple of big wins and a heaping helping of futility, garnished of late by heartbreak. What's missing is the day-to-day sense of what it's like to live with a team as your constant companion, particularly in the great mass of mediocre seasons. Nobody has really told the story of what it's like to be a Mets fan when they're not horrible and they're not awesome. That's a big part of the story, too, and my book includes it all. Everything you've forgotten, I probably remember.

The actual writing of the book took a matter of months, but the more accurate answer would be it was a lifetime in the making. Many of the stories are rooted in the blog as well as some other essays I wrote before Faith and Fear existed. Some of it is just stuff that's been in my head since I was a kid.

Regis Courtemanche: You have been writing your blog, Faith and Fear in Flushing, since 2005. Besides being lengthier, what were the major differences between writing a book and a blog?

Greg Prince: The major difference is each blog entry is its own universe. Some things come up on a recurring basis, but one day you're talking about Johan Santana, the next Jose Reyes, the next ranting about a pretzel that was too hard in 1995. The book had to be a full narrative, had to bring the reader along across essentially four decades of Mets fandom, had to connect from one season and era to the next. The book was also an opportunity to take a step back and see how all the games and all the years added up, what it meant and means to be a Mets fan. The blog is about reporting. The book is about reflecting.

Regis Courtemanche: Why do you think Mets fans will like Faith and Fear?

Greg Prince: It's the Mets fan's story. Specifically, it's mine but generally it belongs to every Mets fan. The one comment I get in reviews and e-mails is some variation on "your life is my life". We've all had the experience of being the biggest Mets fan anybody knows. We've all felt the euphoria, the doubts, the frustration, the deliverance. We've all take it seriously and personally. It's what we do. My life as a Mets fan is different from yours or anybody else's, but it's also very much similar. I think that's why Mets fans can relate so closely to Faith and Fear in Flushing.

Regis Courtemanche: While reading, I felt a personal connection to your stories. Some things I enjoyed reliving, and some not so much. Why do you and I take the Mets' victories and defeats so personally?

Greg Prince: It's hard to prove in a scientific sense, but there's something about the Met DNA that demands we take it personally, that we make it our own, that it's us on the field as much as it's us in the stands…

Regis Courtemanche: We both became Mets fans during a World Series run.  Do you think if you were six in 1962 when the Yankees won the World Series and the Mets won 40 games, things might have been different?  You had friends that switched over to become Yankees fans, why didn't you?

Greg Prince: I've never considered that as a possibility.  Perhaps if the Yankees had seemed like a lovable underdog in 1962, they might have appealed to me, but they were the entrenched power, and I've never cared for entrenched power. I was destined to be a Mets fan, even if meant 40-120 and Marvelous Marv. Sometimes I feel a little guilty I didn't experience those years first-hand…

Regis Courtemanche: I have seen a parent succumb to cancer as well and thought your chapter, ‘Comeback Player of the Decade,’ was very touching.  Why did you feel that your experience should be shared in the book?

Greg Prince: The subtext of the book is that my Mets fandom touches everything about my life.  Nowhere was this truer than in considering the mid-'80s Mets, the franchise's greatest period, and how it all meshed with what was going on with me away from Shea.  I was out of college, I was rather directionless, I moved back home.  My parents, not really fans in any sense while I was growing up, had jumped on the bandwagon.  I can't recall '85 and '86 and the rest of that era without remembering what it was like to share the Mets with my mother and father for really the first time.  It was astounding to have something that brought us together, particularly my mother and me, who weren't necessarily on the same page at that point of my life.  Sadly, that phase of the story had the ending it did.  But "comeback player of the decade" refers, in my mind, not just to the damn cancer but to the way the Mets brought my mother and me together in adulthood, that when I think of the Mets and those years, I'm able to remember her in a softer light than I might have otherwise.

Regis Courtemanche: You've been a Mets fan since you were six, and have attended countless games.  What are the top three games you were in attendance for, or is there a favorite?

Greg Prince: 3) Winning the pennant in 2000.  It was otherworldly, all soft-focus and slow motion, realizing we were in the World Series for the first time in fourteen years… The world could have ended right then and there, and perfection would have been reached.

2) ‘The Todd Pratt Game,’ knowing instantly that it would be talked about for as long as there were Mets fans… To actually be at that kind of game, and for it to signify the winning of a series, and to share it with my wife and my friends, and just to see the words on the scoreboard that the Mets were going to be playing for the League Championship... it still takes my breath away.

1) The Melvin Mora Game.  Hands down, my favorite moment at Shea Stadium, at the heart of that incredible run of thirty days when the Mets began to fall apart, rose, fought, persevered, made the playoffs, went back to Atlanta, the whole bit.  I love that 162nd game, October 3, 1999, because it was the Mets doing the one thing, even more than winning a World Series, that you always want them to do: They won a game they absolutely, positively had to win.  Remember, when Mora came home on the Wild Pitch to beat the Pirates, they'd technically clinched nothing except the chance to play another day.  But as we've seen the last two Septembers, clinching the chance to play another day is the greatest gift of all.