#metspolice

Last February, before the team and staff heading down to Port St. Lucie for Spring Training, Sandy Alderson spoke with season ticket holders at Citi Field. I'll throw it to a MetsBlog post from February 7, 2014 to tell the story:

Sandy Alderson expects the team’s payroll to increase with on-field success, but only if they’re supported by fans at the gate...

Well, that's one half-assed way to go about it, but let's assume that's the thought process in the Mets front office.

On Tuesday, MetsPolice posted a Newsday article claiming that ticket sales are already ahead of where they were at this time last year:

Ticket sales are up 19.26 percent ahead of last year, season tickets are up 12 1/2 percent.

If that is in fact the case, that means the Mets fans are buying in - even with no shortstop, no second lefty in the bullpen and two aging corner outfielders prone to injury.

Mr. $63, the voluble Mets maven Shannon Shark, points out your favorite National League franchise has started the "awkward De-Dickeyization" of the team's public image.

This morning many of us got a holiday e-card from The Mets.  That’s nice.

It has several nice highlights from the 2012 season.  There was that time Santana threw a no-hitter.  That was nice.

There was that time David Wright (Happy Birthday) broke the team hits record.  That was nice.

I feel like something else happened.  I can’t remember what it was.

Of course, as in Mary Poppins - but in a bad way - this has all happened before. Think back to last off-season. The Mets were coming up on their big 50th anniversary celebration. They created a video for the occasion, a real tapestry of all the great Mets moments and players from the across the decades. Everyone was in it - oh, except the team's all-time greatest shortstop and holder of franchise records in many offensive categories - you know, the beloved teammate who had just decamped to Miami after Sandy Alderson failed to offer him a contract ... and then followed that all-time Mets personnel disaster with his famously snide remark about a "box of chocolates."

So Jose Reyes was "disappeared" from recent Mets history. No shocker this is happening with R.A. Dickey now. I guess the Mets take their public relations techniques from these guys:

Amazingly, there are some sane responses to the sad and pathetic dumping of R.A. Dickey in a deal that means the Mets won't seriously compete for many years to come. Some writers have done an honest job of avoiding the lame sycophancy so many bloggers and beat writers suffer from when they hear the sonorous, pedantic tones of one Richard "Sandy" Alderson. We'll highlight a few in a few quick posts for your reading enjoyment.

First up, the prolific and organic Shannon Shark, purveyor of MetsPolice and a blogger with the equivalent of a Mets barcode stamped on his forehead in indelible ink (blue, not black). A critic of the broad Mets fan experience, Shannon nonetheless had seemed to make peace with the organization based on some of his well-publicized (and hard-earned) victories on important franchise style points: Banner Day, black drop shadow on the uniforms and the like. Well, the Peace of Flushing appears to be over. Shannon works around the edges of personnel decisions, so you have to read the tweets and grace notes - like this these:

I have some new favorite quotes I will be using all winter.

“We certainly are not punting on 2013″

and now “our price to value is right where it should be.”

Opening Day tickets start at just $63.  Come see Duda, Kirk, Baxter,Dickeyand the rest of the Mets!

Take that, Dave Howard!

And then there were these tweets from the Mets Twitter scrum of the last few days, which balanced misguided euphoria at the deal that sent a Cy Young winner to Toronto for Lotto tickets, to sadness and despair.