Mets are a national punch line

Charlie Manuel likes to remind people to watch the game. He says you can learn a lot that way.

I was watching the Phils hammer the Astros when an out-of-town score popped up on the screen. The Mets were up big against the Marlins. Manuel was right about learning something. I learned that the Mets still play baseball. They have not disbanded. Wild.

In advance of their trip to Philly this week, Bob Brookover wrote a column for The Inquirer about how the rivalry between the two teams isn't really a rivalry at all since one of the clubs is good and the other club is the Mets. He was right about that. Even though the Mets crushed Cole Hamels - incidentally, was the booing such a big deal that we had to spend the entire next day addressing it? - they probably don't pose much of a threat to the Phils this season.

Thankfully, actual on-field competition - or, rather, the lack thereof - between the two teams has never hindered the fan base here from hating the Mets or their fans. That's always been the main draw when the (not-so) Amazin's play the Fightin's. The Mets don't have to be good or even mediocre for you to loathe them and delight in their misery. If anything, curb- stomping them while they're down is just as enjoyable - if not more so. And here's the best part: Philadelphians aren't the only ones doing it now. Taking shots at the Mets is fashionable just about everywhere these days - especially in New York.

And why not? The last year or so has been particularly ugly for the Mets. The team's owners were smacked with a lawsuit related to Ponzi scheme swindler Bernie Madoff. The franchise was so hard up for cash for a while that it had to borrow millions of dollars to keep the sinking operation from going completely under.

While all that was happening, the front office was searching for a new minority partner to join the organization and, more important, direct-deposit hefty sums of money into the Mets' emaciated piggy bank. Charlie Sheen was rumored to be a potential candidate, but that union never happened. I suspect Sheen didn't want to be part of such a messy and embarrassing public meltdown.