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Cam Maron tells Mets fans, through Mack's Mets, to keep the faith. Mets catcher Cam Maron and I talked briefly last week. Cam was a 34th round draft pick in 2009 out of Hicksville High School, in Long Island. He didn’t get to play much in 2009 (41 at bats for the GCL Mets), but he showed he was worth the pick: .293/.408/.415/.823. Trust me; the Mets love catchers with an .823 OPS. The GCL Mets actually had four decent catchers in 2009 (Maron, Nefli Zapata, Amauris Valdez, and Juan Torres) so it’s hard to guess where Maron will wind up in the spring. Hopefully, it is somewhere he can be a starter. Mack: So, what are you doing in the off-season? Winter assignment? Instruction League? Rehab? Or just good old fashioned rest and relaxation? Cam: Mack, how's it going? Best of luck with the website and the blogs. After the season I went home and worked out in preparation for Instructional League, which was from Oct 26-Nov 20. After that, I'll be back at it, working out daily, and preparing for the 2010 season. Mack: What was your analysis of your 2009 season? Cam: 2009 was a tough year for the organization as a whole, up and down the entire ladder, from the Majors down to Rookie ball. A lot of injuries occurred throughout and it was very hard to overcome them. Personally, being in Rookie ball this season taught me a lot of small things, and hopefully I can move forward next year. Mack: What are your hopes and desires for the 2010 season? Working on anything new to pump up the volume? Cam: For 2010, my goal is to be in Kingsport at the minimum. Working on defensive skills and my mental game, especially with the coordinators in Instructs. Take those drills and skills home for the off-season and come back ready to compete for a starting position in Spring Training. Mack: Lastly, anything you want to share with your fans out therin Met-land? Cam: Met Fans, I grew up on Long Island, being a Met fan since the day I was born. I been through the ups of the 1999, 2000, and 2006 playoffs, and the downs of the 2001-2004, 2007-2008 seasons. Keep pulling for us, don't ever lose faith. We're working extremely hard in the minors to be prepared for the Major Leagues when our names are called. GO METS!! Thanks for your time Mack.

Imagine if an active superstar like Alex Rodriguez admitted using. Why, I'll bet that if he fessed up during the offseason, the cloud would hang over him for the rest of the following season, that the fans of the team he played for would never forgive him and if he somehow got to a World Series and excelled that nobody would credit him for it, because if there's anything we have as consumers it's a long memory.

Garvey playing for a division winner in '74 probably won him the MVP vs. Brock, whose team just missed while he was setting records.

He also had a Kirk Gibson type episode against the Mets, in Mexico. From Baseball Library: Caminiti's toughness reached legendary proportions in August of 1996, when two liters of an IV solution and a Snickers bar helped him overcome dehydration, diarrhea, and nausea and hit two home runs for the second straight game against the New York Mets in Monterrey, Mexico. The 8-0 win tied San Diego with Los Angeles for first place in the NL West; Caminiti's inspiring play eventually led the Padres to their first division title since 1984. Beleaguered at various points throughout the year by an abdominal strain, a partly-torn biceps tendon, a left elbow that required reconstructive surgery after the season and chronic pain in his back, groin, and hamstrings, the beleaguered third baseman became the first Padre ever to win the NL MVP. Snickers took out newspaper ads celebrating Caminiti's courage and their candy bar. It's not the sole reason he won, but it set him apart. Larry Jones clinched his sole MVP by hitting home runs against the Mets, in 1999. Several minutes later, I realize Bob Gibson won the '64 WS MVP, but Ken Boyer won the regular season version.

MLB Network is running Games 3, 5 & 6 of the 1986 NLCS from noon to midnight Saturday. Perhaps the Jets and Bengals could reschedule.

Marlins president David Samson told The Sun-Sentinel he expects plans to be finalized within the next week. "We have a lot of fans down there," Samson told the paper. "We were asked by Baseball if we were interested and we said absolutely yes." I do not believe, for a moment, that the Marlins have a lot of fans anywhere.

And we have a winner: 9/21/01, Piazza, after September 11, one unforgettable swing. Memorable, indeed. Runnerup: The ten-run inning, 6/30/00. That Mike fellow also heavily involved.

When Andre Dawson would glare in at a Mets pitcher, his bat seconds from furiously swinging and lethally connecting, I felt no fear. Sure, I thought, he might hit a homer here, but at least he isn't very likely to walk. When Dawson went deep, I was relieved because his sorry-ass on-base percentage only went up as a result of his poor batting eye. We may have lost the battle, but we won the WAR. SC Score = 77.9

Polls close tonight, just as "30 Rock" rolls the credits. Vote if you haven't yet.

They also wanted to change the tenor of the clubhouse, where Delgado�s personality could be, at times, dominant. Delgado's personality implied as a negative without further explanation. Too passive? Too quiet? Keeping David from discovering his inner captain? I've read these sorts of hints before, but I'm not sure I wholly get it. When the Mets are playing well and Carlos D. is hitting, he's professional and a calming influence. When they're not and he's not, he's not forthcoming enough after games.

Marty Noble, in an mlb.com roundup of its writers' HOF choices, espouses the Single Spitter Theory: Marty Noble: Barry Larkin and Dave Parker Alomar will probably be elected, and based on performance through most of his 17 seasons, he ought to be. But he will go without my vote this year. I don't like to use the ballot in this manner, but the best second baseman since Joe Morgan -- and probably the best ever -- doesn't deserve my vote for at least one year because of two spitting instances. We're all aware of the one involving John Hirschbeck. I don't care that Hirschbeck forgave Alomar for spitting at him; I haven't. It was unacceptable behavior. And during his 222-game tour with the Mets, Alomar repeatedly spit in the face of the game by playing with conspicuous apathy. His father and brother didn't deserve that, nor did the game. Larkin was a gentleman, an MVP and a genuine offensive force who played the most important defensive position at a high level. He was an easy choice. Parker remains the the best player I ever have covered. He beat opponents every way possible, running over them, if necessary. And he was better at keeping a clubhouse loose than any player I've experienced. I hadn't voted for him until now because of his involvement in the 1985 cocaine mess in Pittsburgh. But I had supported the Hall candidacy of Keith Hernandez, the second-best player I ever covered, despite his involvement with cocaine. That inconsistency had to be rectified. I can forgive their flaws more readily than I can forgive Alomar's. Wait till next year. Rob Neyer, meanwhile, reads minds: If I may indulge in a bit of speculation ... Alomar is obviously one of history's greatest second basemen. A huge majority of ballots already made public included Alomar's name. I can only guess that a significant number of voters were simply too apathetic about baseball during Alomar's career to pay any real attention. I don't say that to explain why he didn't get elected this year. I say that to explain why he'll get elected next year, as a few dozen voters say to themselves, "Hey, this Alomar fellow was almost elected last year. I guess I should probably vote for him!"

On the day Roberto Alomar didn't become a Hall of Famer in Cooperstown, I became Roberto Alomar on Crane Pool Forum. Ironic, sort of.

Spoiler alert... The most important lesson of all, as Darryl now knows, is that all the superstar status in the world is only an empty honor -- unless you're also happy.

At the risk of violating thread sanctity, I was given a pretty sweet Baseball Superstars Comics for my birthday. Cover is somebody drawn to kind of look like Darryl Strawberry. Been given Nolan Ryan, Dwight Gooden and, for reasons known best to my comic-collecting/baseball-oblivious brother-in-law, Los Angeles Dodger editions in the past. They're quite engaging, in their own semi-accurate way. The Sign Man makes a cameo, even.

Re: other Mets not voted in:-- Seven votes for Robin, one for Segui, one for Appier, none for Zeile -- not even frequent flyer points.

Who knew so many voters watched the 2002 and 2003 Mets so closely?

I was about to sarcastically vote for the Figueroa shutout since it signified the end of the season, but then I saw anniversary of '69 listed and couldn't it pass up. The best play of 2009 was losing oneself in something that occurred forty years earlier.

Something Tim Marchman wrote just last week on si.com, pre-Bay, marked a sea change of sorts, I believe: Take the Mets [...] They might be able to get better by signing the owners of Shea Stadium, the Brooklyn recording studio named after their erstwhile, much-mourned ballpark. The recording studio reference is awkward, but he does what maybe no other columnist/writer outside the blog world has been willing to do until now: He acknowledges Shea's place in the Mets fan's heart without resorting to the usual "little missed," "unlamented," "outmoded," "decrepit" and other disparaging descriptors. In the runup to Citi Field, it was seemingly necessary to trash Shea on the way out. In evaluating Citi, Shea had to be dismissed in the second paragraph of every story. But now, one year later, a kind, unqualified word is said on its behalf by somebody working as an impartial observer. This, perhaps, is how default narratives change.

"Pelham," I guess, was Shea's second-to-last studio role, chronologically, with "Old Dogs" released later (and, judging on the "making of" for "Pelham," filmed a bit later). Outside the Big Budget realm, "Last Play at Shea," the Billy Joel concert film/Shea documentary is still in production, reliable sources tell me. A point of order --- in Game Six (2005) and Frequency (2000), Shea appears on television in the film. Count? No count? There was a wide shot of modern-day Shea plopped down in the middle of "Game Six," a small movie that deserved to be minuscule. In the underrated "BASEketball" (1998), an empty Shea is shown as an example of how fans have deserted professional sports. Despite displaying all kinds of wrong allegiances, Lord Tariq's music video "Deja Vu" (sampling Steely Dan's "Black Cow") filmed at Shea, available for viewing here.

Was watching 2009 remake of "Taking of Pelham 123" earlier, which was terrible EXCEPT for a cameo by a certain big blue stadium in the background of a speeding elevated train. Never mind that it was supposed to be the 6 roaring from 34th St. to Coney Island (which couldn't happen either, come to think of it). It was Shea, alive!