How can you go wrong with a baseball preview that features passages with phrases like ‘finicky knee’ and ‘parochial lens’ ?:

Some of the bigger questions surrounding this year’s Mets, including Jose Reyes’s mysterious thyroid problem and Carlos Beltran’s finicky knee, did not appear to interest Dolan much, but his parochial lens reminded me that the real suspense in these spring games lies in the competition among teammates—some rising, most fading, others clinging—for the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth spots on the roster. All three candidates for the starting first-base job recently vacated by Carlos Delgado (bum hip) were former Cyclones. Davis was the clear fan favorite, and the fact that he was batting .500 could be interpreted as proof that there was hope after Brooklyn, but Dolan was partial to Mike Jacobs, who would be in the lineup that afternoon, batting cleanup. “Everybody in Brooklyn is pulling for Jacobs to have a good season,” he said. “Jacobs is a beloved Brooklyn Cyclone and also a beloved former Met. When he came up in 2005—remember? He’s the one who got the pinch hit off of the Nationals. And they were going to play Arizona next, and it was between him and a Korean pitcher to stay on the team and go. Pedro Martínez says, ‘The kid’s going on the bus.’ He says, ‘Put his stuff on the bus. Send the other guy back.’ And they listened to Pedro. Jacobs played the third week of August and all of September. He hit ten home runs, twenty R.B.I., and about five doubles. He hit .310 for six weeks.”

(Thanks to Orn for the link.)