Things are looking up these days in one of our worlds. Not the political world,where confusion reigns supreme. I am talking about the sports world. For a change,our two local baseball teams are in competitive races and at least one of them, the Mets, looks like they are going to be in the playoffs
The surprising rise of the Mets is not only welcome but long overdue. For the past 10 or so years,Mets fans have been faced with defeat after defeat and a team strangled by lack of cash due to the owners losses of their money to Bernard Madoff.
At the beginning of this season there were few sportswriters willing to predict that the New York Mets were going to be a competitive team.
After a month or so of play, the Mets were looking like the same old hapless group of players expected to be nothing more than a middle ranked team.
And then a strange thing happened. A number of younger players with unknown names,started playing a serious game of baseball.
Most of the high paid old timers were no longer on the payroll and lo and behold the new Mets had become a major force in the National League East.
With the exception of the overweight and aging Barolo Colon, the Mets were now playing at a high level.
There are still quite a few games left before the playoff pairings are set up, but the strong performance of the younger set has made the Mets an exciting bunch of players.
The proof of the current success is the dramatic increase in people going to Mets baseball games. Season ticket holders will tell you that up to this year they were giving tickets away and having a hard time to find takers.
Across the Tri-Boro Bridge, the New York Yankees are enjoying a fairly successful season with a completely different set of players.
Most of the big salaried players are in their mid-30s and one Alex Rodriguez is now 40. Many of those aging athletes are suffering from injury after injury,but thankfully a bunch of younger no name players are picking up the slack.
To their credit,the Yankees didn’t trade some of their younger stars and decided to keep them for the future.
The Yankees have been missing the playoffs for the past five years because their team was just a bunch of aging,injury riddled men.
Things are getting better and the Yankees now have a good chance to be in the playoffs as well.
Back here in Nassau County,the Coliseum is in the beginning stages of a massive renovation.
The building that housed the Islanders had become a dump and no one made any attempt to upgrade the facility.
Hockey fans are sophisticated people and over a period of years the attendance was dropping dramatically. Fans want modern arenas and with all the luxury items that come with them. The local facility had long outlived its usefulness.
The big question is will the job of rebuilding the Coliseum get done or will we be stuck with a dark and abandoned building? Nassau County doesn’t have much luck when it comes to sports facilities so the fate of the new arena is still up in the air.
It is a fact that the Islanders are lost forever due to the lack of government support.
But a bright new facility will, in time,attract sports teams and someday Nassau County will once again host a major league something.
