That’s it folks. Right there at the beginning of that video, before Wainwright threw that 3-2 curve ball in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS. That was the last time a Mets fan felt genuine optimism about the outcome of a season. We were destined for greatness that season and Carlos Beltran was at the plate with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th, trailing 3-1. Such a glorious, naive time. How we lost that game after Endy Chavez made one the best home-run robbing catches in MLB history is still a mystery.

Everything you need to know about the Mets’ next 6 seasons can be summed up in that fans’ reaction. “Noooooo! Oh my goodness… called third strike, boy I tell ya, that’s a hurt.” Little did that fan know how much he would hurt over the next couple of seasons. Two major second half collapses the next two seasons, including losing a win-and-in game to the Marlins in 2007, followed by complete irrelevance for the next 4 years. How is it about to be 2013 and the Mets haven’t played a playoff game since that devastating called third strike?

Part of the answer to that question stems from bad free agent signings. No one had any way of knowing that Jason Bay would be this bad, but in typical Mets fashion he becomes another good player who became historically bad after signing with the Mets. So bad (.234 AVG, 26 HR and 124 over three seasons in New York) that he and the team have agreed upon an early expiration on his contract. Maybe if he put up those numbers in one season, we wouldn’t have this problem but since it took Bay 3 seasons to reach 25 HR, the Mets are going to be pay him $21 million to not play.

Bay probably goes down as the worst free agent signing in franchise history. (The Mets are still paying Bobby Bonilla, who hasn’t played in New York since 1995, $1 million annually by the way). It clearly was not going to work with Bay, no matter what happened so I guess this is the right move. Bay got booed every step he took yet he continued to bust his ass all over the field, running directly into outfield walls and having little regard for his body. No one took not living up to his contract harder than Jason himself. I feel for him and hope he finds success elsewhere. Given the Mets history, you can bet he will have a season worthy of comeback player of the year wherever he winds up.

What’s done is done and I’m focused on the future, as I hope the team is. David Wright needs a long-term deal immediately no matter how much we have to pay. Resigning R.A. Dickey should be priority number two but recent reports have said that the Mets are entertaining trade offers for the knuckleballer. I really hope Dickey remains a Met. I love his story and think that he can be a very productive starter for at least the next 5 seasons. Wright and Dickey are the best shot we have to return that feeling of optimism last felt in 2006. Make it happen.

History was made last night and I was happy to be a part of it. Obama won re-election and became the 3rd consecutive President to win 2 terms. The stat of the night came from NBC’s Chuck Todd: The Republicans have not won a Presidential ticket without a Bush or Reagan on it since 1928. We knew it was going to be a very tight race and it was. Romney gave a very gracious concession speech even after admitting that he did not prepare one. I definitely felt for Mitt because he clearly really wanted this job and he was thoroughly disappointed. Obama’s victory speech was stirring and I have to admit feeling the same way I did in 2008 – that great change was not only possible but imminent. Obama is one of the best orators we have ever seen.

After all of the money spent on campaigns and all the talk about what needs to change, Washington D.C. is not that much different on November 7, 2012 than it was for the past 4 years. Obama is President; the Democrats control the Senate led by Harry Reid; the Republicans control the House led by Speaker John Boehner. Americans are desperate for bi-partisanship and some evidence of two parties putting their differences aside for the greater good of the country. Whether this election leads to action and the Republicans and Democrats working together remains to be seen, but I’m confident that the politicians got a sense of the people’s frustration during this election season.

Election coverage has always fascinated me. I made sure to watch as much of the coverage as possible from 7:30 pm to about 1:30 am straight last night. It’s fun to flip around from station to station and compare.  The integration of touch screens throughout the coverage, especially on CNN and NBC, was really impressive. I spent the majority of the night watching NBC, which cleverly used its’ real estate to provide a nice visual touch. 30 Rockefeller Plaza became Democracy Plaza and they lit the iconic building blue on the left side and red on the right side. Respective Obama and Romney banners ran up the building’s face, getting higher and higher as they each approached the 270 electoral votes needed to win. NBC also utilized the famous ice rink by turning it into a map of the country and coloring each state either blue or red depending on which candidate carried it.

No matter what side of the political aisle you lean, everyone can agree that election night is always memorable. Of course it’s noteworthy because the country is deciding who its leader will be for the next 4 years. But it’s also significant due to the fact that every citizen has the right to cast his or her vote and have a say in the future of the country. It still amazes me that 240 years ago, the founding fathers envisioned this country and set the foundation for what would become the greatest and most powerful nation in the world.

It’s important to vote because it is our right and Americans are risking their lives overseas to defend that right. It is eye-opening to see the lengths that citizens of other countries will go to achieve it. Having the rights and freedoms that we do in the U.S. is a blessing that I often take for granted. When the country is on the precipice of great change, I’m reminded how fortunate we are to have the opportunity to be a part of that change and decide our own future. The United States is far from perfect but Election Day always makes me proud to be an American.

When the Giants schedule came out in April, Week 9 was circled for a number of different reasons. First, the Giants and Steelers are storied franchises owned by families who have been overseeing their respective teams since before World War II. Second, both teams have been in the top half of the league for the past 8 seasons, combining to win 4 of the last 7 Super Bowls. Third, given their place in opposite conferences and the layout of the NFL schedule, the two teams meet just once every four years (unless they meet in a Super Bowl, of course). Finally, their franchise quarterbacks are linked not only because of their success but because of how different things might have been had the 2004 draft gone differently.

Archie Manning, Eli’s father, made it clear before the draft that he did not want his son to play in San Diego. The Chargers had the 1st overall pick and intended to take Manning. The draft pool featured other good quarterbacks including Philip Rivers and Ben Roethlisberger, so when Eli Manning said he would sit out the first year if selected by the Chargers, San Diego got on the phone. The Giants answered and decided to make the trade that would shape the next 15+ years for 3 franchises. New York selected Philip Rivers with the 4th overall pick and traded him along with a  bunch of draft picks to the Chargers for Eli Manning.

The third piece of that puzzle was Ben Roethlisberger. The Giants and GM Ernie Acorsi really liked Roethlisberger and were content with trading their 4th overall pick to the Browns, getting something in return and then taking Big Ben with the 7th overall selection. However, when the Chargers called, Acorsi pulled the trigger and secured Manning as the franchise quarterback. Roethlisberger ended up falling to 11th overall where Pittsburgh snatched him up.

Had the Giants decided they did not want to do the trade, Eli is in San Diego and the Chargers are stuck with a quarterback that doesn’t want to be there. Big Ben is in New York and Philip Rivers is somewhere else – it is tough to speculate where but we can be sure it wouldn’t have been with the Chargers, Giants or Steelers. It’s crazy to think back about how different things could have been.

But that’s how it went down and now each team has had 8 and a half seasons with their quarterback. Eli has 2 rings and has evolved into the most clutch quarterback in the league. Roethlisberger has 2 rings and has become a reliable Top-10 quarterback who has the ability to extend the play like no other. Philip Rivers has just 3 playoff wins and has been average recently, leading the Chargers to a 21-19 record since the start of the 2010 season.

As a Giants fan, I couldn’t be happier we made the trade and got Eli Manning. He is on his way to being the greatest quarterback in franchise history and is spoiling us as fans with his constant ability to win games in the 4th quarter. Roethlisberger is no slouch though and both Eli and Big Ben have become accustomed to winning. For just the third time, the two quarterbacks will go head to head on Sunday. Big Ben got the better of Eli at Giants Stadium in 2004, but Eli answered by winning at Heinz Field in 2008. Now it’s the rubber match at Met Life Stadium.

The game would have been compelling enough for all of the reasons previously mentioned. However, 5 days before the game, Hurricane Sandy hit the tri-state area. The damage was devastating and now New York and New Jersey look to the Giants for a little distraction and a sense of normalcy.

The Steelers are traveling to New Jersey this morning – the day of the game. The flooding at the hotel that Pittsburgh was scheduled to stay in forced the NFL to make an exception to its rule that teams must travel at least a day in advance of the game. Unselfishly, the Steelers agreed to stay in Pittsburgh until game day so that those in need of help can have places to stay. The circumstances surrounding today’s game are far from normal. Millions are still without power and around the corner from Met Life Stadium in Secaucus and East Rutherford, the lines for gas stretch for miles.

Today’s game is an important one that will have playoff implications and features quarterbacks linked by their 2004 fates. More importantly, today’s game is a big one for the people of the tri-state area because it is a step in the rebuilding process. Maybe for a couple of hours on Sunday, people will return to being concerned about the outcome of a football game instead of constantly thinking about repairing the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy.

This is really disappointing news and not a good sign for the state of the lockout. Obviously there is a lot of planning involved in organizing an outdoor hockey game but it can’t be a good sign that the league is already cancelling a game scheduled for 2 months from now.

The Winter Classic is beautiful. Aesthetically, it is really pleasing to watch hockey be played outdoors and there is that innocent,  kids playing on a frozen pond, feel to it. In 5 short years, the Winter Classic has become the most anticipated event of the hockey regular season, easily surpassing the All-Star Game and skills competition. It creates a spectacle and the extra attention paid to it greatly benefits the league. HBO even capitalized by doing its fantastic 24/7 series on the two participating teams in the weeks leading up to the game. This will be missed as well.

It’s amazing to see fans pack into a baseball stadium or any other outdoor stadium in the dead of winter to watch a hockey game. The sight lines and proximity are far inferior to that of a game being played in a normal arena, but you can bet 9 out of 10 hockey fans would choose attending a Winter Classic over any normal regular season game. This year’s was set to have the Red Wings host the Maple Leafs at Michigan Stadium (“The Big House” as it as more commonly known), which seats 110,000 people. Having two original 6 teams play in front of what would have been the largest hockey crowd in history would have been electric. This cancellation is a huge loss for the NHL, the owners, the players, NBC and most importantly the fans.

Hockey is the the third major sport to have a work stoppage in the last 2 years. Fans are becoming accustomed to lockouts, but it always hurts when a part of the season that you especially enjoy and look forward to will not happen. Hopefully the players and owners can work out a deal before an entire season is lost. Either way though, it won’t be the same without the Winter Classic.

Wow! This was quite the storm and another reminder (they seem to coming more and more frequently) of how little power we have against Mother Nature. New York looked like New Orleans in 2005 and the damage caused along the Jersey Shore and all throughout the tri-state area is unbelievable. If we didn’t just live through this storm, it could have easily been confused with photos taken from a special effects edit bay on the set of War of the Worlds or The Day the Earth Stood Still.

But it’s very real and it left millions without power and brought the most densely populated area of the country to a stand-still. The horror stories being reported are terrible, with people losing literally everything. I feel for everyone affected and I’m extremely grateful not to have suffered any injuries or major damage. It will take time to rebuild everything that was destroyed during Sandy’s 24-hour rampage, but as we’ve seen before, we will move forward. People and communities from all over will join together and offer assistance. Eventually the entire northeast will re-establish a sense of normalcy.

For all of the sadness and loss that has been brought about by Sandy, there are an equal number of heroic stories. My favorite involves hospital workers wheeling a woman in labor, in the dark, to another hospital after their generator failed. Minutes after arriving at the other hospital, she delivered her healthy baby. That’s one of millions of stories which showcase the true heroism and selflessness that such treacherous situations require. Emergency responders have been working non-stop for the past 2 days and some haven’t even been to their own homes yet. Without these people, who knows how much worse the damage could have been.

Although this is such a difficult time for so many, I am always enthralled by the stories of everyone (from firefighters to policemen and women to EMT to volunteers to bystanders) working together to help those in need. It’s a great reminder of what we are capable of and that regardless of any differences, we are all in it together.

Game Day! Time to avenge our Week 1 loss to the Cowboys. What better place to do it than Cowboys Stadium, the monstrosity of a venue that the Giants have never lost in. We’re coming into this game off 2 nice wins but don’t expect a letdown.  You know that Coughlin and company don’t want to lose twice to the Cowboys in the same season – Let’s go GMEN!

Ian O’Connor wrote a great piece today on ESPNNewYork.com entitled “Who Thought Eli would be this good?” My first thought when I saw that headline was “Me, I thought he would be this good.” I’ve been saying it for years. When the Giants drafted Philip Rivers fourth in the 2004 draft and then traded him for 1st overall pick Eli Manning, I felt confident it was a move that would pay dividends. Eli would be the guy who was going to bring championships (that’s right plural) to New York. I had a hard time making believers out of anyone that I expressed my opinion to before 2007. A few people were more receptive to the idea of Eli as an elite QB after his first Super Bowl, but there was still many doubters. After 2011, my feelings on Eli were finally the majority opinion and now we get these articles about how he isn’t just the best clutch QB in the league, but he is the best QB in the league period.

When no one believed in Eli, it didn’t bother me one bit – even when he was throwing off his back foot with that exasperated look on his face and his hands in the air. It was part of the learning curve and it didn’t help that he had to deal with selfish receivers. Getting receivers who were more concerned with the team than their individual touches coincided with Eli’s rise in ability and confidence. Shockey got hurt and Eli asserted himself as the leader of the offense and the leader of the team. That led to the 2007 playoff run and once he had the first little bit of success, it snowballed. He became the leader that led the 2011 team to another Super Bowl and the guy that has conditioned his fans to expect 4th quarter dominance, no matter the situation.

It takes takes time for a quarterback to mature and come into his own and that is exactly what Eli has done to this point. It wasn’t that crazy to list him as a good quarterback even before 2007.  He made the playoffs in his first two full seasons as a starter (an accomplishment on its own) but failed to win either of those postseason games. After 2 Super Bowl MVPs and countless 4th quarter comebacks over the past year, he not only has his locker room behind him but everyone agrees that he is one of the best quarterbacks in the league.  He has turned undrafted wide receivers into superstars and he’s just at the beginning of his prime. Even my high expectations from back in ’04 can be exceeded. He doesn’t win every game because that is impossible, especially in a league with such great parity.  But he wins the big ones and I would want no one else under center. He’s going to have a better career than Peyton, something that was laughed at when I said it back in ’06.  I always believed we had a superstar and now that the rest of the world has figured out what I knew along, I couldn’t be happier.

During the final presidential debate leading up to Election Day, moderator Bob Schieffer fell victim to the unfortunate coincidence that the most powerful man in the free world and the man he killed, who was the USA’s biggest threat, have names differing by only one letter.

“We know that Pakistan has arrested the doctor who helped us catch Obama-uh-bin Laden,” Schieffer said, realizing his slip of the tongue immediately but not correcting himself. It’s a mistake that you never want to make given the dichotomy of what the two men stand for, but he is not the first to make it.

During media coverage of Osama bin Laden’s death in May 2011, many media members made the same mistake. ABC News ran a scroll on its website declaring “Obama Bin Laden Dead.” Diane Sawyer’s blog reported that “OBAMA WILL BE BURIED AT SEA.” Geraldo Rivera said “Obama is dead” on Fox News before correcting himself. And those are just the tip of the iceberg.

The first time I ever heard the error, it was a not an error at all. 30 Rock brilliantly wrote it into an episode while Obama was running for President back in 2008.  The self-absorbed and far from intelligent Jenna Maroney is the victim of the slip of the tongue (or more likely pure stupidity).  Either way, Tina Fey and company were way ahead of the potential for disaster surrounding the two news-makers’ almost identical names. Hearing the mistake made again last night brought me right back to Jenna on Hardball and was just more proof of how great 30 Rock was and continues to be.

Thanks to YouTube live streaming the Austin City Limits festival last week, I have rediscovered Jack White.  I watched his performance live from Austin and he was amazing. He immediately jumped up my Top 5 of artists that I need to see live in the near future. I was always a fan of the White Stripes but I somehow missed Jack White’s solo album released in April. Luckily, I have found it now and I recommend just about every song on it. Here’s the one I’m enjoying the most right now – Freedom at 21

Jack White has had some career and everything that he does seems to be critically acclaimed. It’s easy to see why. I’m just grateful I stumbled upon that live show in Austin and it led me to his first solo album.

A new report from Senator Tom Coburn’s office reveals many different examples of government waste in the past year. When I saw the study, I didn’t think much of it because it is a well-known fact that the American government is an inefficient bureaucracy. Seasons change and the sky is blue – nothing to see here. However, I continued to read the findings and was taken aback at exactly what the government was spending taxpayer money on.

Here’s a couple examples and please think about these the next time you see the year-to-date amount taxed on your next paycheck. The government put aside $325,000 for the development of a squirrel robot that is so realistic it can deceive a rattlesnake. Add that to $40,000 spent on production of a video game where players can virtually enjoy a pond in Massachusetts. That’s not the only video game the government is developing though. It spent $516,000 on a video game called “Prom Week,” which simulates the interactions of teenagers surrounding the much-anticipated rite of passage. Your tax dollars are also contributing to the $1 million a year that NASA puts towards researching what astronauts would be able to eat on Mars even though there no plans for a manned mission to the Red Planet. Finally, $150 million a year are contributed to The Murtha Airport in Johnstown, PA by none other than representative John Murtha. The airport boasts a $7 million air traffic control tower, $14 million hanger, and $18 million runway big enough to land any airplane in North America. There are exactly 3 flights a day in and out of John Murtha Airport.

It’s ludicrous that this type of spending is allowed to occur. It’s so ludicrous in fact that Ludacris himself would denounce this reckless spending (and he owns a Ferrari 458 and a Rolls Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe). I understand that the amounts listed above are marginal compared to the amount the government actually receives in taxes but there is absolutely no reason any amount of money should be spent developing two completely worthless video games.  Aren’t there private companies spending their own money on such ventures? The government has bigger things to worry about and the fact that it even spends a penny on a virtual New England pond is embarrassingly hilarious.

It’s kind of like when someone has just inherited a fortune and has too much money than they know what to do with. “Let’s spend some money on an airport and never use it,” said the guy who’s net worth just jumped from $50,000 to $50 billion. America doesn’t have so much money that we don’t know what do it with all. Has the government forgot that we’re in trillions of dollars of debt and our economy hasn’t been this unstable since the Great Depression. We need to be frugal and smart and make wise investments now more than ever unless we want to be more in debt to our biggest threat China.

Let’s wisen up as a country and a government. If we start allocating all of our money to the right places, the country will get back on track. If I were involved, my first step would be cutting the video game and useless airport budget. Maybe then we can avoid the heated Presidential debates centered around tax plans. I’m sure this is easier to say than do and I’m not naive – I know the country isn’t in debt because of the video game budget.  But at least it would be a start and show the country we are making an effort to use the taxed income wisely and efficiently.