I ♥ Mike Lupica

At the end of Lupica's column today, which was focused on the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports in general and with Jason Giambi and Floyd Landis in particular, was this vignette:

The Mets have now had Guillermo Mota, one of their better relief pitchers, test positive for steroids and too many players in their minor league system do the same.

So it is time for them, up and down the organization, to make sure they are more relentless about drug use in baseball than any other organization in the game.

You lead by example, the way they have with a Dominican-born general manager and an African-American manager, this at a time when all pro sports preach diversity in management and do so little about it.

Now the Mets can lead the same way, in New York, with a franchise this prominent, when it comes to performance-enhancing drugs.

It starts with convincing kids that they don't need this stuff - starting with their first "B-12" shot - to be great, even though they've grown up at a time when they think they do.

I couldn't agree more, Mike. and I’m grateful to you for articulating one of the things I love most about the current incarnation of the Mets, from the front office to the field (in bold, above). it’s a team that looks like and sounds like the New York I grew up in, and it’s not just the guys on the field who spoke Spanish at growing up (and probably still do at home now).

we visited four Southern African countries on our honeymoon, and when asked for a favorite, I have to say Botswana. yes, South Africa is gorgeous, and our time in Krueger was amazing—in terms of the animals we saw, it was a far more successful safari than those we had in Chobe National Park, in the north of Botswana. but Botswana was the only place we stayed where both the workers and the bosses of the businesses we came in contact with were black, which I believe contributed to a demeanor in the folks we met there that was different than that of most of the black folks we met in South Africa and Zambia. the Setswana (as they refer to themselves) are citizens of the country often called Africa’s biggest post-colonial success story, and her people are as kind and friendly as Mma Romatswe led me to expect they would be.

similarly, it seems a no-brainer that part of the reason the Mets are such a tightly knit bunch (see their hairless heads for all the proof you need) is that their leadership reflects who they are and where they come from. in my mind, it's this characteristic that makes the current Mets team quite possibly the best representation of the New York they play in than ever before. it's true that the owners are still all white (as are many of the owners in Botswana, though a much smaller percentage are white owned than is true of MLB teams!), but the leadership comes from the same place as the workers. it's a good dynamic.

this is not to say it's perfect (our one Asian player is still in the minors), but it's certainly true that part of what binds my emotional connection to this current team is that in the same year, the Mets have more Jewish players than any other team (3) and were the first team ever to have three men named Carlos in the starting lineup. that's a good way also to describe the floor I grew up on. they reflect my New York, and I love them for that.

I think this goes the other way, too. part of why I don't like the Yankees is that they represent what I see as some of the worst of New York-- the desire to win at any cost, and to get nasty when things aren't going perfectly or questions your performance. Lupica finishes today's column with this bon mot about the man who embodies Yankee fans to me, which pretty much says it all:

"Rudy (I, Me) Giuliani takes credit for everything good that happened in New York while he was mayor, but now we're supposed to believe that he only had his big command center at 7 World Trade Center on Sept. 11 because he listened to other people.

Right."