Even Costumes Can't Hide the Ugliness of a 90 Loss Season

Last night, the Mets lost their 90th game of the season to the Nationals’ Ross Detwiller, who earned his first Major League victory. Despite a good performance from journeyman pitcher Nelson Figueroa, the Mets anemic offense could not break through against the Nats. Playing another round of listless baseball, this team is clearly done for the year and is now just mailing it in until the season comes to a merciful close.

In April, no one would have expected the Mets to have the sixth worst record in baseball. After missing the playoffs by a hair in 2007 and 2008, Sports Illustrated even predicted this team to go to the World Series. Unfortunately, a ridiculous rash of injuries threw a wrench in that plan, but even so, there really is no excuse for the mediocrity this team has displayed on the field over the past three months. Lack of hustle and a complete ineptness when it comes to baseball fundamentals is what has put this team at 90 losses and counting. You can expect some degree of mental and physical mistakes when most of your regular 25 man roster is replaced by subs and young minor leaguers, but we have also seen a ton of mistakes this year from the veterans and it is inexcusable.

While I don’t necessarily advocate Jerry Manuel and the coaches being fired, some blame has to be shifted on to this staff because clearly, the team is not responding. The same thing happened under Bobby Valentine and Willie Randolph towards the end of their respective runs as manager as well. I can’t say that about Art Howe because the leadership wasn’t there with him from the very beginning, but that’s another story. But once the season ends, Omar and Jeff Wilpon really need to evaluate everything. This includes the major and minor league players and the coaching, medical and scouting staff throughout the organization. They need to find out what isn’t working and make changes. They also need to set a direction for the club so they have a specific plan in place to fill the areas of deficiencies both on and off the field. There is no cohesion within the Mets and that needs to change because next year could be another bust if they head into spring training and everyone isn’t on the same page.

You may ask yourself, how bad is the lack of direction the Mets have displayed this year? Well, it is so bad that the players can’t even get their rookie hazing ritual right. This rag tag collection of randomness just perfectly illustrates the lack of direction, cohesion and teamwork. Check out: Mets 2009 Rookie Hazing.

And on the flip side, you have the Yankees 2009 rookie hazing, which was well planned with a consistent theme – much like their team. And, their costumes don’t look like the $19.99 specials from the nearest Halloween Adventure stores.
Yankees 2009 Rookie Hazing.

Pretty obvious just in comparing these two photos which of the New York Teams are playoff bound and the other is preparing for a long offseason.


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Beltran's Back, But Where's Jose?

After missing more than two months with a bone bruise, Carlos Beltran will supposedly make his return to Citi Field tonight in the opener of the Mets series against the Marlins. When Beltran went down in June, this marked the beginning of the downward spiral of the Mets’ 2009 season. At the time, the team was coping fairly well with the absence of Delgado and Reyes, but Beltran was on fire during April and May. With him in the lineup it almost looked as if the Mets could hang on without their regular shortstop and first baseman. Before Beltran went on the DL, the Mets had a 35 and 32 record. Since then, they have gone 27 and 42. Now granted, many other injuries have come into play since Beltran went down, but in my mind, losing the second Carlos was the straw that broke the camel’s back for this season.

Considering the ridiculous amount of injuries that have befallen this team, I look at Beltran’s return to the lineup with some trepidation. With less than a month to go in a lost season, I’m not convinced his return is the wisest move, even though the bone bruise is improving. The way the chips have fallen for the Mets this year, my fear is that the bruise will get worse by playing, the team will wait the winter to see improvement and when they don’t, Beltran will have surgery that ruins the 2010 season as well. Let’s face it; the Mets’ medical staff’s track record is pretty tarnished right now. Getting another thing wrong would just be par for the course.

But with all of this being said, I definitely commend Beltran’s effort and desire to come back and play again in 2009 - even if only for a few weeks. It takes guts, heart and commitment to do this. Many players would have just shut it down and waited for 2010. Instead, Beltran stepped up, showed leadership and did the right thing. Perhaps Jose Reyes can learn something from all of this because the silence on his part is inexcusable. The fact that Aaron Boone returned to the Astros roster after open heart surgery before Jose could return from his hamstring injury is preposterous. It makes you wonder if this is the fault of the Mets medical staff with another misdiagnosis or just the case of Jose being Jose. Somehow, I think it’s a little of both.

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A moment of clarity in the midst of the fog

I live up the street from 3-way intersection in one of the busiest parts of New York City. The streets are often filled with young children and elderly arts patrons, but the street lights at the corner are so poorly timed that it's absolutely impossible for even the briskest walker to cross the street before the light turns red. I've witnessed countless near-misses, and brought the problem to the attention of the city and our local officials. One day, someone will be killed at this intersection. As is all too often the case, it will take a tragedy for the problem to be fixed.

David Wright was beaned last week. There may be no scarier moment in baseball than this, one that may end a season, a career, or a life. While his brains rattled around within his skull like a toddler on a trampoline, the crowd was silenced. Slowly assured by visible breathing, then again as he sat up, and finally as he was able to leave the field on his own two feet, greatest fears slowly melted away to the more superficial. "Is he alive?" became "Is he okay?" and then "when can he play?"

A few days later, from the safety of the disabled list, the Captain-apparent spoke volumes with just a few words: "I'm embarrassed to be on the DL."

These were words of ethos, and with them David Wright separated the men from the boys. It took a near-tragedy, but it brought a huge problem to light. The Mets are a small core of die-hard team players surrounded by others who might rather think of themselves simply as worker bees.

Many have speculated that Wright's comments were pointed at Jose Reyes, who has been neither fish nor fowl spending most of this season on the DL. Rehabbing an injury that doesn't respond, he also doesn't seem to want to get on with surgery so that healing may begin. Reyes has been on the DL for longer than anyone could have possibly expected, but one has to ask how fragile an injury this must be for him to be totally incapable of progress, and if so, why it isn't being addressed more aggressively. It's been said that if Reyes can't come back at 100% he won't come back at all. Who among us is at 100% each day, let alone a professional athlete who is expected to endure bumps and bruises every day, yet bounce back like the Energizer bunny? Expectations need to be realistic. 100% is not realistic.

Last season, Johan Santana pitched and won a complete game on an injured knee that required surgery. This season he has again showed the heart of a competitor, capped with his now-famous "I am a MAN!" Like Wright, one can surmise that Johan lives to be on the field. Other's don't seem quite as eager. Last season, Oliver Perez followed Johan's complete game with a disemboweling that sealed the team's second collapse in as many years. This year, he's conjured up injuries to mask his professional impotence, seeming to relish the opportunity to be the highest-paid regular addition to the minor leagues. Last night he "tweaked" his knee, but rather than dismiss it to the questioning reporters, said he'd have to see how he was doing, as though he was making a bed he was planning to lay in. He has pitched without any heart but plenty of excuses, and without an ounce of contrition. Failure appears to be an option for Ollie, and his mediocrity is greeted with enthusiasm. He does not live to be on the field, he lives to collect a paycheck a magician conjured up for him. His numbers do not adequately portray the ineffectiveness of his performances, but surely anyone who has ever heard of Bernie Madoff knows that numbers lie.

Alex Cora has been playing the brunt of the season admirably without real use of both thumbs. Could you even eat an order of french fries without your thumbs? Cora has relished his opportunity. He has stepped up. His season is now over and he has nothing to be embarrassed about.

Gary Sheffield will be inducted to the Hall of Fame one day. He is far from being a spring chicken, but he has fought for his position and puts everything into every at bat he has. At times he seems to be in need of a walker when he plays left field, but he gives his all every play, every game. He has nothing to be embarrassed about.

Carlos Beltran has appeared to want to come back to the team in the worst way. At this point, when they're talking about surgery still being a viable option, why not let him? What's the worst that's going to happen? He'll need surgery? He probably will anyway. Let him play, let the chips fall where they may. Carlos has nothing to be embarrassed about.

And then there's Mike Pelfrey. No injury, just demons. Mike Pelfrey is the red light on the corner waiting to be fixed. Either someone will fix him, or he's doomed to be a continual problem. Big Pelf has heart, but he needs help that may not be coming from within this organization.

Each player, each coach, each member of management needs to simply make their best attempt toward some form of success to wash away some of the embarrassment before this miserable season is finally put to bed. Whether aggressive options at this point in a doomed season should even be explored any longer is well beyond me. But what isn't lost is the cry for a solution that goes well beyond the stats, well beyond the rhetoric, well beyond everyday expectations. From a position of crisis, David Wright cried out for his team of professional athletes to push themselves toward performance. More importantly, management needs to pay attention and recognize that the Wrights of the team need to be surrounded by more of their own. Embarrassment comes from many sources. The most embarrassing for the team and its followers is a lack of willingness to go further to test themselves, to prove themselves. Each player need not get on the field prepared for a Kurt Schilling championship moment, but let's hope the lessons of this tragic season bring along some action that helps make it something that no one on the field or in the stands has to endure again.

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Wanted: 9 Healthy Starters and an Exorcist

I’ve not been one to look at injuries as the reason the Mets have been hosting a losing season. With any level of depth, my reasoning has been, the lack of a star or two should be able to be absorbed by the reinforcements and the bench. And as much as I don’t believe you can judge how a team will fare by their play the first few weeks of a season (see: Yankees), the beginning of this season left the Mets looking like there would never be a level of strength and synchronicity on this team for it to dominate the division as it did in 2006, or even contend to the end as it did in 2007 and 2008. The injuries seemed like a convenient excuse for a team that had been believing its own press.

We’ve reached a point now where the reality of how decimated the team has been must be acknowledged. Just in the past 2 days, 3 more injuries and yet another setback for a returning starter. The cries for mercy have been structured as “Imagine what the (insert team name here) would be like if they didn’t have (insert numerous star player names here).” Understanding the Mets this year requires this now be taken to a different level – Imagine if you had 2 or 3 starters on your roster and regularly rotated the remainder of the team onto the field each day from a mix of aged veterans, green pre-rookies, and odds and ends who’ve been recruited for pick-up games in A ball. The New York Mets that are playing the second half of the season are not the team Sports Illustrated ordained pre-season. No one would have ever envisioned this team would exist, and it only does because for 56 more games, a team must be fielded. That they’ve won at all is a testament to the law of averages more than skill. With all the known players occupying the triage unit, it’s a true wonder there’s a team that could possibly have a worse record in their division, let alone in baseball.

Earlier today I quipped that the banner outside New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery should read “Official Clubhouse of the New York Mets.” Somewhere, someone must surely be to blame? Is it the training staff, who some have argued hasn’t put nearly enough effort into making sure their athletes were properly conditioned? It could be, but these athletes have been playing baseball competitively almost since they were children. They didn’t just forget how to run or lose coordination because a trainer didn’t make sure they were properly warmed up.

Maybe this season is simply cursed. There was a rumor pre-opening that in building Citi Field, three Phillies jerseys were buried into the concrete as it was poured by a construction worker from Pennsylvania. When it happened in the Bronx, they dug the Sox jerseys up. I’m not a big believer in curses, but at some point you’ve got to wonder if there’s something to it when players drop like flies in unheard of numbers. Maybe those shirts need to be exhumed so peace can be brought back to Flushing.

This season is history. It would be nice to think a clean slate can begin in 2010. I’m not holding my breath. Citi Field has been devoid of any sense of Mets identity since it opened, and I’m not optimistic that any new championship drapery will be earned any time soon. I’ll still root for my team, but right now I’m still waiting for my team – the whole team - to take the field.

As an aside, lets go back about a month and revisit what I posted on July 8th:

“”For the record, I’ve got some predictions for the second half: I don’t expect Carlos Beltran to return to the team for any appreciable length of time this season. I believe the bruise he has will be found to be a more severe injury that will require more radical treatment. Similarly, I don’t expect Jose Reyes to be able to make a triumphant return, but will rather re-injure his leg quickly and either play out the season at much less than 100% or require season ending surgery. John Maine seems almost inevitably on the road to another medical intervention. Of the major players, I believe Carlos Delgado and Billy Wagner will come back just in time to show they still have enough talent to be worth something on the open market next year.

And unless there’s an epiphany within management or talent well before the end of July, I’m sticking with a prediction I made after just 2 weeks of this season had passed: This team, even healthy, doesn’t have what it takes to win enough, and will end the season in 4th place in the NL East.”

There are still about 8 weeks left to the season, but right now I’m looking like Kreskin. If only I could conjure up 6 good Lotto numbers as easily…
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Perception as reality

Not having watched the show I can’t vouch for the validity of this, but based upon a huge number of Twitter mentions, it would appear that comedian Jimmy Fallon’s monologue Monday night included this quip: Tomorrow is the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. Or as the Mets like to call it, "vacation."

By the sheer volume of redistribution of this little pearl of wisdom, one might think this was the greatest comedic utterance since Costello first asked “Who’s on first?” But in truth, the line’s about as funny as it is accurate. Of the 29 MLB teams, 13 rosters didn’t hold a single player voted as an All-Star. And, of the remaining 16, only one - the Phillies - had more players (5) invited to the season’s halftime show than the Mets (4).

I’m not about to indict the misguided Fallon for assault with a foolish tongue. The fact of the matter is, if you’re perceived as a joke, you are a joke, and so far this year the Mets might as well be wearing joker’s hats instead of baseball caps. Player lowlights don’t just end up on local news, they grace the entire world online and live there in perpetuity. Just as HD television takes note of every minor skin flaw your favorite reality star is sporting, the internet makes every major flaw of your favorite sports star a broadband reality and the potential butt of any joke, late night or otherwise.

If the Mets are going to allow themselves to be defined by their troubles - walk off errors, base running blunders, bat anemia, and an inability to portray that you actually do understand all the rules of the game (just to name a few) - then they’ve created the true playing field that the rest of the world judges them on. By not rectifying their problems on the field they’ve allowed perception to become reality. Today’s reality is that the Mets put up a comedic first half. It’s up to the players to change the perception by providing a new, improved reality, no matter who within their system might be playing at any time on any given day.

Management is another perceived joke that has seemed to be laughed at more and more since Omar Minaya’s plane touched down on the west coast and Willie was sent packing back east. However well he may believe he break danced around any criticism about how that particular situation was handled, Minaya’s personal presentation in the year since has invited the perception that he is a bit of a stammering joke. Through all the team troubles, Minaya has appeared to be incapable of displaying himself as forthright and fully educated. Through injuries he’s appeared unaware of status or expected treatment, and through player moves he’s appeared less than honest and, frankly, ignorant. Most importantly, through a period when the need for any type of field and plate relief would appear to be a no-brainer, he’s stuck his neck out just enough to bury his head in the sand while the inadequacy of the farm team he's responsible for is beginning to ring clear. While Jerry Manuel’s mantra could be categorized as “don’t give up,” perception is that, for at least this season, Minaya already has. For a team to which he’s devoted the second highest total salary in the major leagues, that might be considered the very biggest joke of all. That is except for the All-Star game itself, which is arguably in a league of its own.

For all you twitterati who might be interested, feel free to follow my ongoing musings at twitter.com/MikeVooss

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Placing truth on the disabled list

The ball sailed over the fence to end the 2006 season, and took with it the final hopes of the Mets in the World Series. No miracle, Endy or otherwise, would change that. After a few hours or days of disbelief, it was easy for a fan to look back at the season with pride in a job well done, if not completed. As winter waned some months later, pitchers and catchers couldn’t report for duty fast enough.

April ’07 rolled around and it was easy to be optimistic. So close, yet so far just 6 months earlier, it was to be a season to fulfill the promise of the previous one. But, come September, The Collapse.

The summer of ’08 led the Mets into the All Star break as the then hottest team in baseball, having finished the first half with a 9-game winning streak. But once championship home-field advantage was surrendered to the AL (almost single-handedly by Dan Uggla), the Mets’ season’s surrender appeared to follow close behind. In the end, another collapse, this one awash in a surreal feeling of familiarity. The darkest road is never again as uncomfortable as the first time it’s traveled, and we’d now been down this road before.

Beginning this current 162 game stretch of passion, fans again had reasons to believe. Not just because of the massive improvements to the previous year’s Achilles heel of a bullpen, but because within each of us innately rests the belief that lightning which has struck twice couldn’t possibly make a third visit.

Mother Nature has a funny way of defying expectations.

One has to ask why Mets fans seem to be so beaten so early in a year wrought with such misfortune. Mets fans have always been an emotional bunch. Maybe it comes from the history of the club and the Casey Stengel that lives in each of us. Maybe it’s the nature of rallying behind an underdog, or, in most years, a palpable sense of heart that rubs off into the stands. But after the tightrope heartbreak of the past few seasons, maybe it has more to do with a sense of entitlement, a feeling that fans deserve a return instead of being punished by the regular day-to-day trials of this team. For their investment of time, money, and emotion, fans felt they were owed a great year from what was billed as a reinforced core, to make up for the embarrassment of the past two.

Or maybe the feelings come from a long hidden reality that is now finding the spotlight: The evil Phillies or the killer Braves or the resurgent Marlins, all of which miraculously and seemingly sadistically “step-up their game” whenever they face the Mets, have nothing to do with why there haven’t been new banners to adorn the new stadium. Instead, the team that three times came so close to its post-season aspirations hasn’t made it far enough because they’re simply not good enough. Not strong enough physically, not smart enough tactically, and most certainly not stable enough mentally.

In turn, much in the same way the Wilpons were bilked of their imaginary investments off the field, fans who have turned a blind eye to what their team has been are being Madoff-ed in return, having their own hopes, dreams, and emotions for the team they invest in of themselves now shown to be baseless.

Adding insult, the only ones not wielding bats who actually can work to right this ship have made it clear they are totally disinclined to do so. In return, it’s alright for fans to take issue with the stance management, specifically Omar Minaya, has adopted. The answer to having problems isn’t “they’ll be fixed when they’re fixed.” The response should be “what can we do to fix them right now?” Yet when pointed in this direction, Minaya seems to only expect broken players to miraculously heal in time to fix a season that will then be beyond repair (if it’s not already). In the process, the signal he’s giving the existing players tells them he doesn’t believe they’re good enough to devote resources to. What a great way to inspire pride and drive: If your players haven’t already resigned themselves to failure, give them every remaining reason to check out. Whether big moves or some smaller ones, any level of action from management would give the players and fans the ability to move forward for a fight through the remainder of the season. And keeping the fans in the fight for the remainder of this season would at least allow us to keep picking up the pieces of the past few years, moving out of 2009 united behind every idyllic believer’s favorite battle cry: “Wait till next year.” In spite of everything, fans have still had heart, and expect their stammering General Manager to do the same.

One final note to Mr. Minaya: Action would probably also go a long way to keep filling seats in your new, pretty stadium, and keep the working stiffs who are contributing to your contracted salary with every ticket they buy (a contract that is third only in idiocy to the ones you gifted to Luis Castillo and Prince Ollie) from thinking of their local bar, SNY and Papaya King as a viable alternative to a trip to the ballpark.

For the record, I’ve got some predictions for the second half: I don’t expect Carlos Beltran to return to the team for any appreciable length of time this season. I believe the bruise he has will be found to be a more severe injury that will require more radical treatment. Similarly, I don’t expect Jose Reyes to be able to make a triumphant return, but will rather re-injure his leg quickly and either play out the season at much less than 100% or require season ending surgery. John Maine seems almost inevitably on the road to another medical intervention. Of the major players, I believe Carlos Delgado and Billy Wagner will come back just in time to show they still have enough talent to be worth something on the open market next year.

And unless there’s an epiphany within management or talent well before the end of July, I’m sticking with a prediction I made after just 2 weeks of this season had passed: This team, even healthy, doesn’t have what it takes to win enough, and will end the season right where they stand today - 4th place in the NL East.

I can’t begin to tell you how much I hope I’m wrong.
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Jerry’s Lemonade Stand

The trauma center known as the Citi Field claimed its latest victim early this week when Carlos Beltran was sidelined with an ongoing deep bone bruise of the knee. With 9 major components of the team on the DL, Jerry Manuel seems to have gotten a free pass for the season. How can you blame the manager for the play of a team that is a shell of what it should be?

A good manager never takes credit for the success of the team, and all the blame for its failures (well, unless it’s Omar’s fault, but that’s another story). In the process, a good manager should also be able to overcome adversity and create winning opportunities. So while the current pandemic in Queens may breed a safe cocoon, I’m thinking that more than ever this is the prime time to be scrutinizing the skipper’s ability to be functionally creative. Before the cavalry comes back to try and clean up whatever mess may happen in the coming weeks, let’s see how Jerry’s able to make lemonade out of lemons.

Fernando Tatis has been batting cleanup the past two days, an experiment Jerry has explained as giving the opportunity to see if he can reclaim some of his spectacular rejuvenation during last season. In the process, Tatis has single-handedly redefined the art of sparking double plays for the opposition. Both days his already scary proclivity for doing so would be even greater had David Wright reached base ahead of him a few more times. Placing a slumping player in a lineup position normally relegated to cartoonish behemoths with questionable hormone levels has to raise the eyebrow of anyone paying attention. Let him rejuvenate, just don't do it there. I don’t doubt Tatis’ heart or the possibility of rekindling the fire in his offense, but this is the major league, not a feel-good Disney movie, and cleanup isn’t the place for batting practice. Mix it up and get Reed or Church in there, with a displayed ability to get hits when they’re in a groove. If you’re going to give someone a chance at redemption, don’t you want them to start with the bigger bat?. If Tatis is going to find his groove, he can find it at 6 or 7 just as easily. Would Cora, Church, Santos and Wright be a less effective front 4 than what’s up now? If Jerry’s going to think out of the box, maybe he needs to think farther out.

There was no way the Mets were going to win against Pineiro yesterday, who had a masterful game. But with Livian Hernandez batting, Jerry called for a very rare hit and run. The questionability of this is overwhelming. That’s not creativity, or working with the tools you have. It’s grasping at straws, but the team that won the night before certainly didn’t look like it required desperate moves. The season still has a lot of time, but it’s past the time when you can afford to give up games carelessly. I realize these examples only spotlight two games worth, but these past 3 months have generated plenty of other possible inclusions.

As engaging and insightful as he can be when describing wins post-game, Jerry has a way of sounding awfully like Willie Randolph when the team loses. The standard lines of “tomorrow’s another day” and “we just have to put this one behind us” have gotten old even before halftime. I’m not about to drink the Kool-Aid that says Jerry can’t win with the team he has, he’s not to blame because of it, and we shouldn’t worry as long as the team that’s playing .333 ball is over .500.

I’m waiting for lemonade.
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Injuries Will Be A Test Of Their Met-tle

Yesterday looked to be another bleak day in Metsville when news broke that Carlos Beltran was headed for the 15 day disabled list with a progressively worsening bone bruise. As if to add an exclamation point to the bewildering number of injuries that have plagued this team this year, word then gets out that Jose Reyes and trainer Ray Ramirez were in a car accident earlier in the day. Even more ironic is the fact that they were headed to the Hospital For Special Surgery when it happened. Thankfully, no one was hurt but the level of ridiculousness here is just a little spooky.

Since the season began almost half of the Mets’ roster has been plagued by injuries. Missing most notably are Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado and J.J. Putz, but the absence of all of the players that have succumbed to one malady or another has played a huge role in where this team stands right now. It is by no means the sole reason the Mets are currently floundering, but it definitely plays a significant part in their June swoon.

Losing Delgado and Reyes have been the two most difficult of the injuries to overcome, but Putz, even though he was not pitching well when he went down, was a huge loss in the sense of how the rest of the bullpen has been overused. You can almost directly attribute all of last week’s losses to Putz’s absence.

Now, with Beltran down for 15 days or more, these next few weeks become the real test as to whether the Mets can hang in there until their many walking wounded return. Last night’s game was an encouraging sign that maybe, just maybe, this team can get it together and survive their DL blues. Kudos to Tim Redding for pitching 7 innings and getting his first win as a Met. It was not his best outing run-wise but aside from the home runs by Ryan and Ludwick, he was in control of the game.

On the offensive side, for the first time in a while, pretty much everyone contributed. The highlights were Daniel Murphy’s 2 for 5 night, including a home run, and Luis Castillo’s 3 for 3 night. Also notable was the fact that they made no errors and essentially played solid fundamental baseball against the blazing hot Cardinals, who had just swept the Royals over the weekend. Pretty nifty!

Whether or not the Mets can sustain the momentum from last night’s game remains to be seen but the fact is, even with this hodge-podge roster of subs, if they expect to stay in the race until the regulars return, they are going to have to step it up a notch. That means good starting pitching (preferably six innings or longer), clutch hitting, good fundamentals and team work. Do the little things right. Like actually catching routine pop-ups, stepping on third base, hustling to first and knowing how to lay down a bunt. Some clutch hits with the bases loaded would also be much appreciated, thank you. Play small ball until the big boys return and play as a team and the results might just surprise everyone. And let’s face it, after the last three years, every Mets fan could use a nice surprise. Here’s hoping that after a June of rain, doom and gloom the sun will start peaking out through the clouds over Flushing some time soon. Ok, I rhymed…time to stop now before I jinx everything. Read more!