The Mets lost today by the score of 8-1, missing the postseason after having led their division by 7 games with 17 to play.

I know this to be true because I was at Shea Stadium to see it. Otherwise, it would be difficult for me to believe that any professional baseball team—let alone one that spent nearly the entire season in first place—could end its year in such spectacularly poor fashion.  read more »

Gaudy approval ratings notwithstanding, the theme of Michael Bloomberg's insensitivity to the problems of ordinary New Yorkers seems to surge and recede with each crisis.

A caller to the mayor’s weekly radio show just now asked about the mayor's decision to award Mets pitcher Tom Glavine a key to the city the same day the subways were shut down, leaving commuters stranded throughout the city.

The caller suggested that Bloomberg would have done better to give Glavine, who won his 300th game recently, the honor some other time, when the city isn't in a state of semi-chaos. “Who would want the key to the city that day?" she asked.

Bloomberg's response: “Maybe you’re a Yankee fan."

UPDATE: An interested party suggests I should have been clearer here. This was not Bloomberg's entire response. He also dispute the caller's suggestion that he hadn't paid enough attention to the transit problems and noted that he had been out in an affected part of Brooklyn earlier that day.