Thanks, Deb. I think Fred Wilpon does a disservice to his fan base– probably unintentionally, since his roots are as a National League fan from Brooklyn, himself. Sure the Rickey Dodgers were solid citizens off the field, but Ebbets Field, as my mom describes it to me, was full of exuberant self-expression, and the play itself was exciting. Those well-conducted gentlemen– Robinson, boldly stealing bases, the guerilla batteries of Campanella and his crafty pichers– Don Newcombe putting batter after batter on his @ss–hey, it was part of the game! Furillo airing out his powerful right arm from right field, Duke Snider climbing the fence in center.

I love characters in and around baseball– one of the most lovable things about baseball is that it has characters. That’s a big reason for my excessive devotion to Gary Keith and Ron, because among all the other things they do very well, they keep that alive. They appreciate characters –”Gotta have your cast of characters” says Keith– while also embodying them– mostly through Keith.

Deb, did you see that Onion piece from last year, “F***ing Yankees, Nation Reports”? One of my all-time favorite fake headlines.

I love the characters of the game. And characters don’t necessarily have to ingest foreign and illegal substances, beat their wives and/or girlfriends (or BOTH, lol), get into drunken fights and car wrecks… they can simply be characters, like Yogi Berra, or Al Hrabowski, or Roger McDowell, or Jose Reyes. These types give the game some color and put a human and slightly skewed face on it, and imo, the game is much better served with characters in it.

My fear is that the teams playing in these “corporate homage” stadiums are going to become as nameless, faceless, characterless and robotic as are the corporations who give them rise.

And oh, by the way, the Yankees still suck. If you get a chance (shameless blog humping moment, lol) check out my blog for my latest take on the subject of the Yankees and the postseason.

After all, they brought together the ‘86 team (MY team, the team of my heart), won a World Series, then tried to tinker by removing the most disturbing moving parts that they felt they could afford to move. Goodbye, Ray Knight, you talk too much (World Series MVP). Goodbye Roger McDowell, take your hotfeet elsewhere. ‘Bye, Kevin Mitchell, you’re just too . . . erm, “urban” (also a future MVP). Hello Kevin McReynolds with his empty eyes, and Greg Jeffries (ick).

They were jitttery with some reason. After all, the guy they had obtained as a stable foundation, Keith Hernandez, went in front of Congress to talk about cocaine. And Doc Gooden, the Golden Child, ended up in Smithers, recovering from it. They did stick with Doc and Darryl for years, and hung in while they seesawed between brilliance and disasters.

But Fred Wilpon has a very firm vision of what he thinks a baseball player should be– Sandy Koufax– and what he believes a baseball team should be– the Branch Rickey Dodgers– Hodges, Reese, Robinson, Erskine, etc. were all professors and clergymen compared with say, the St. Louis Cardinals of their day. For a combination of corporate reasons and a personal vision, the Mets sadly skewed towards blandness, even when it was clearly counter-productive.

I’ve been a subscriber to XM satellite radio since its inception (about 6 years ago), and admittedly, I have come to take it for granted. It’s kind of like having cable TV in your car! XM and Sirius are in the process of merging and combining their services, so there will be big changes. It is a wonderful thing if you’re a music lover, and a sports lover since XM carries all the radio feeds of every MLB game. They also have a deal with the NHL to carry their game broadcasts, as well as an all hockey, all the time channel, NHL Home Ice. What’s better than that? Well, I know you’ll think of a few things, but remember who’s writing here.

You’re right about Russo having more insight than Francesa. I guess I was focusing too much on his horrendous delivery to realize how passionate he actually is. Beneath all of that screetching and mangling of language, he definitely speaks from the heart, as opposed to Francesa, who often makes his opinions sound like clinical diagnoses. I believe his pomposity is genuine; it would be too exhausting to have to act that way 5 days a week for 5 hours at a time.

I don’t like what baseball’s turning into. It’s turning into the face of advertising for America’s huge conglomerates, giving a face to previously faceless entities, and not a baseball face….the face is becoming the farce. I understand things have to progress, and every once in a while you still get a Nelson Figueroa story or a burst of Jose Reyes enthusiasm, but the straight-arrow unemotional corporate type player which has evolved in this whole scenario to me takes some of the fun and interest out of the sport. I mean, part of the fun of the ‘86 Mets was the boozer, bruiser and dope abuser image, the party boys, the bad boys… let’s face it. Think we’re ever going to see that, or anything approaching that, ever again? I think not.

It’s sad, and I can’t help but think that progress and intelligence could go hand in hand, somewhere, somehow. LOL

As for Francesa, he needs to lose that smugness and horribly nasty attitude of his. When you watched the two of them during the televised portion of their show on the YES Network (my husband the die-hard Mets fan always TiVo’d them; please don’t hold it against him), you could see how irritated and dismissive he was when dealing with the callers. But it was always Russo with his finger on the button cutting them off, with no opportunity for rebuttal.

From a purely cultural standpoint, M&MD founded the sports-talk radio genre. If not for them, the format would probably not exist today. For that, they deserve credit, but I’ve always thought that Russo must have stepped in the most prolific pile of crap to get where he’s gotten. Between his screetching voice, horrible enunciation, and unabashed butchering of the English language, he was the last person anyone would have pegged to have a successful radio career.

Dana, I hope you find something to fill the drive-time void on the days you commute to and from Hofstra. I hear there’s a charming little house for sale quite close to campus, that would spare you the hour and 45 minutes behind the wheel. Your former student is about to head back to the “Motherland” north of the 49th parallel. I’m trading in WFAN for The Fan 590 in Toronto. Finally, sports-talk radio will include hockey, which was always the bone of contention I held with M&MD. Their openly ignorant attitude about the sport infuriated me. I will miss the Mets terribly, but it will be fun to rekindle my Yankee hatred whenever they play the Blue Jays.

Have a great semester. I’ll probably need a recommendation letter at some point in the near future, so please keep one handy for me.

Francesa is too arrogant and smug for my taste, although I do think there is a real human being in there, somewhere, dying to come out. Russo’s crazy schtick is entertaining to a point, but his sycophantic “you’re 100% right, Mike”s really got on my nerves more often than not.

As I said, I believe Russo, without the rather large shadow of Francesa, will blossom and grow. Francesa has a ways to go to make up what he’s losing in Russo.

M&MD do have a weird kind of appeal, though, that transcends sports. I always looked forward to listening to them when a cataclysmic or even significant non-sports-related event occurred, I think there was nobody better than those two in taking such an event and making it personal and relating to it in a way only New Yorkers could. I always appreciated that.

I will miss the show, if only for that, and if only because it was a NY sports institution, and a part of my daily routine. And because I think the sum of the parts was infinitely better than each part, on its own.

I think Russo will be wildly successful, but I don’t think Francesa will, unless he truly reinvents himself and his show. I think he will suffer more from the loss of Russo than Russo will from the loss of him; in fact, I think Russo will blossom.