Mr. Willet’s Point of View

For years now…probably ever since my last day working for the New York Mets in 2001, I have been trying to somehow reconnect to the team in my own way. To somehow embed myself with my beloved Mets. My skills seem to be in writing and websites and I have tried different gimmicks in both.

I built a website (www.LGM.me) years ago to act as a sort of aggregate of Mets news and blogs that included my own writing as well as some variation of “this day in Mets history” and an old-school message board. Despite the fact I haven’t done anything with that site in years, it is still aggregating news and blogs and somehow manages to draw 5,000 visitors a day. I’d like to build on it and refresh the blogs and news it pulls in, but the platform it is built on is several versions behind and I feel I’ll break it trying to upgrade it. And I think I need to do that before I can actually edit the site anymore.

I’ve tried doing daily poems and fancy blog posts and anything I thought would draw attention. However, the internet is a very large ocean and nobody is going to notice me pouring cans of surgery sweet blue and orange soda into it.

One of my favorite gimmicks that came up with the LGM.me site was “Mr. Willet’s Point of View”. It is named after Willet’s Point, the stop on the 7 Line Subway Train that Shea Stadium was at and now Citifield. I planned to use Mr. Willet as a sort of pen name and just to write about the Mets and baseball from the perspective of an older person than I am. I love baseball history and felt that I could provide enough historic perspective on the modern game to flesh out a blog. While I really failed to do much with that, I always liked the name.

Ultimately, all these things failed because I overcomplicated them and, well, I tend to go through cycles of being a bit lazy. Sure, I can excuse it away with my full-time job, helping take care of my young sons with my wife, and trying to write a novel on the side, but, at the end of the day, it came down to making a thing too tough for a notorious procrastinator to keep up with.

However, I still have that nagging feeling that I want to somehow be a part of the Mets through my writing. I had big plans for this season, but quickly realized I was once again overcomplicating it. So, I have decided to simplify things a bit and dust off old Mr. Willet. But instead of trying to write as someone else, I am just going to write my own thoughts on the Mets without anything fancy. Is Mr. Willet yet another gimmick? Surely, but it is just a way to categorize what I am writing…nothing fancy.

So, simply, when I can, I am just going to share my thoughts about the Mets here, under the category of Mr. Willet’s Point of View. The posts might be long. They might be short. Days, maybe even weeks might pass between entries, but I know the only way I am going to be able to do this is to keep it as simple as possible and, who knows, maybe it will be like that slow ground ball down the first baseline from 35 years ago that leads to something bigger.