NEW YORK, NY – With apologies to Francis Pharcellus Church and The New York Sun, we’re gonna continue with the Christmas theme this week.
- Dear Angry Ward:
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Omar Minaya. Papa says, “If you see it on Meet the Matts, then it’s so.†Please tell me the truth; is there an Omar Minaya?
VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.
DEAR VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have probably been traumatized by three successive horror-filled baseball seasons in Queens. They do not believe except [what] they see. And clearly their parents have been shielding them from all Mets press conferences and news items. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. Take last year’s J.J. Putz deal for instance. Does anyone believe that really happened? All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. This is especially true in Omar Minaya’s case. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him (think Bobby Bonilla), as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is an Omar Minaya. He exists as certainly as Fred Wilpon and Jeff Wilpon and Jerry Manuel exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its funniest moments. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Omar Minaya. It would be as dreary as if there were no Tony Bernazard. There would be no Luis Castillo, no Ollie Perez, no Lance Broadway to make Mets fans laugh. We should have no enjoyment, except in The Shake Shack and, every fifth day, Johan Santana. The eternal light with which baseball fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Omar Minaya! You might as well not believe Razor Shines when he’s waving you home! You might get your papa to hire men to watch all the airports on Christmas Eve to catch Omar Minaya, but even if they did not see Omar jetting off for Texas to trade a boatload of prospects for Andruw Jones and Kevin Millwood, what would that prove? Nobody sees Omar Minaya, but that is no sign that there is no Omar Minaya. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the baseball field? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. How else can you account for all of the errors the Mets made last year? Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart Sammy Sosa’s bat and see what makes the ball jump off it so quickly, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man (Barry Bonds?), nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived during the steroid era, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, and baseball fanaticism can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding, except rising beer prices.
No Omar Minaya! Thank God! He lives, and he lives forever, or at least as long as the Wilpons keep him on life support. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make Mets fans push back their baseball caps and scratch their heads in amazement.
