Let's Go Mets

Today is not just any summer Friday.

Nope, today is the last summer Friday before the storm. Not the weather, which suggests that it'll be nearly perfect for mid-August in Central Jersey this weekend.

No, the storm will come in the form of returning athletes. Gradually, they will be here, starting with the women's soccer team, which begins practice Monday or so, in advance of the first Princeton athletic event of 2015-16. That would be women's soccer at home against Howard two weeks from today.

That game will be Sean Driscoll's first game as head coach of the Tigers, by the way. That alone makes this women's soccer preseason radically different than those of the last 20 years.

Before long, every other fall sport will be here getting ready for the start of all of the fall seasons.

By one month from today there will already have been 26 Princeton events played across seven sports. Or 27 and eight, if you count sprint football's alumni game.

And, one month from today, it'll be game week for football, who opens at Lafayette on Sept. 19.

But today?

None of that is on the radar. Not yet. At least not here.

Most of the rest of Division I athletics is already in preseason mode. And good for them. There's plenty of time to play for the fall sports. By the time the season ends, the sun will be setting around 5 and the temps will often be half of what they are right now.

So let them all practice in the heat now. Princeton and the Ivy League will be going strong soon enough.

In the meantime, today is just another Friday in the summer.

It's a Friday in which the New York Mets find themselves in first place in the National League East. Actually, the Mets are sort of comfortably in first place, at least for now, 4.5 games up on the Washington Nationals.

The Mets currently rank 30th in team batting average, hitting .237 as a team. Just in case you lost track, there are only 30 teams in Major League Baseball, meaning the Mets are dead last.

So why are they 11 games over .500 and with a great chance of reaching the postseason? And why do people say that the Mets have as good a chance as anyone come the postseason, should they get there?

It's their pitching. The Mets have an army of young arms that have pitched the team to the second-best ERA in Major League Baseball, even if ERA isn't the standard way of measuring pitching anymore.

And of course, there is the whole Wilmer Flores situation. You know, how he went from crying on the field when he thought he had been traded to hitting nearly .400 since. 

These are definitely great times for Mets' fans, those at least who haven't been completely turned off by the team's ownership and recent record of frugality and, well, bad teams. Right now it's all like something from the movie "Major League," which, by the way, is the most underrated sports movie ever ("Field of Dreams" is the most overrated).

If you're a Mets' fan, your team is in first. The crosstown rivals, the Yankees, have fallen on hard times, and seven-game lead over the Blue Jays is completely gone.

So if you like the Mets, do you want a chance to beat the Yankees in a Subway Series? Or would you rather see the Yankees completely fade away here and now?

Jim Barlow, Princeton's men's soccer coach, is a Mets' fan.

He's such a big Mets' fan that he DVR'd games the last few years to watch them when he had things that prevented him from doing it live, even though the team was miles out of first.

Barlow was in the Office of Athletic Communications yesterday. He walked back and forth in front of TB's office about six times before he actually came in, and TB has no idea where he was going or anything.

While Barlow was here, the subjects ranged along the usual - the upcoming Princeton season, international soccer, the upcoming World Cup qualifying and of course Major League Lacrosse. Barlow to his credit knew that Rochester was one of the teams in the MLL final last weekend, though he only knew that from Monday's TigerBlog.

And Barlow talked about the Mets. He was downright giddy about the team and especially the young pitching.

He was calm. Relaxed. Well, he's usually both, but he was even more of both at this moment.

Beginning next week, he'll have some other issues to deal with, such as how to replace Cameron Porter, who led Princeton to a share of the Ivy title last fall while leading Division I in goals per game.

But that's for next week.

This week wasn't a time for that. And this weekend isn't either.

This weekend? Go to the beach. Find a pool. Have a barbeque. Go to a baseball game. Do all those summer things, before you can't anymore.