New York Mets catcher Paul LoDuca (right) sits in the dugout with pitching coach Rick Peterson after the New York Mets lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-0, at Shea Stadium in Flushing, New York, Thursday, September 27, 2007.
A message to my friends: Thank you for the e-mails and phone calls, the empathy and curiosity about how I've been handling the Hindenburgian flameout of my beloved baseball team, the New York Mets. I'm O.K. Really. I've been through worse... even though this was, well, awful beyond imagining. The lossesseven straight to the crude, macho Phillies, then 12 out of 17 down the stretch. The incessant errors. The pitchers throwing cantaloupes to hitters who didn't belong in the majors. The mental errors that weren't scored as errors. The feeling, in the end, that no lead was safe becauseno...
