NL East Infection: I Do Have a Time Machine

New York Mets

The Mets and Yankees share many things:

• The name “New York”

And other stuff, I’m sure.  One thing they will not be sharing is a minor league baseball stadium in Newark, New Jersey.

The Yankees needed a place to stash the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees next season, and after Brian Cashman surveyed the landscape in and around Riverfront Stadium, he decided he wanted it to be the answer, and because he’s Brian Cashman, it was.  Until he found out he had to call the Mets first and ask them if he could use it due to jurisdictional issues.  After making him perform a series of humiliating and degrading feats to earn the right, the Mets inevitably made fart noises into the phone and hung up.

But you gotta give them a break.  Another Mets season ended in tears, and even their own players don’t want to play for them anymore, no matter how hard Darryl Strawberry begs.

Florida Marlins

As one of the few remaining NL East teams to have never experienced a historic collapse, the Marlins get to have the last laugh in 2011.  It may be a sickly, hoarse laugh that leaves a small, yet disturbing streak of blood on the wall, but its an indication of mirth.  Slightly.

I don’t have a time machine, but it seems things may shape up in South Florida.  The Marlins will be the Miami Marlins, Ozzie Guillen will be in charge, and everything will calm down.  Finally.

"“F*ck, what’ve they done?”–Ozzie Guillen on the Dolphins"

And they’ll look even better after the Great Nationals Collapse of 2012 (The Nats go 40-8 and then Strasburg blows his arm out, accidentally sending a wayward fastball into Harper’s spine, who stumbles comically into a poorly placed stack of bats that tumbles into Espinosa and Werth and Tyler Clippard walks in with the pizza, slips on a bat, and a scalding hot pizza lands on his face) the Fish will be the last team standing.

Yes.  I do have a time machine.

Washington Nationals

The Nats closed out the Marlins season/stadium by beating them in one of the few games that happened last night that nobody watched.  Now, if that’s not a team Davey Johnson wants to return to, I don’t know what is.

Fortunately, it is, making sentences like that last one merely a weak transition rather than anything meaningful.  Not only that, Johnson is looking to keep the entire coaching staff intact, as if the team is a stack of Jenga blocks, to which they are hoping to add some highly-touted pieces without a collapse.

But its not as if Nationals Baseball is without any alterations.  There’s the whole “Spring Training Facility” situation, which involves demands, insecurities, and $700,000.  Good luck to the Space Coast in preventing Major League Baseball from slipping away entirely.

Atlanta Braves

It may have taken all 162 games, but the Braves aren’t making the post season.