Kiss My Best

I HAVE BEEN TRYING to avoid the Best of Manhattan ruckus in the New York Press offices. Every time I go in there, someone mentions how nightmarish the Best Of issue is, and then that same person will kind of tilt his head at me, and cock his eye at me, and then squint in this accusatory way, like he's letting me know how fucking lame it is that I'm not in there every day suffering and slaving over 100,000 frantic words of New York minutiae like everyone else.

Well, I'm not about that. I'm at a stage in my career, and in my personal life, when one of the few pleasures I can really count on is coming into an office full of frazzled, half-broke liberal arts grads in their twenties, loudly monopolizing a desk and making a great show of having nothing to do.

This isn't about overdoing it. This isn't about slumping in a chair and staring at all the interns with an open mouth full of salmon roe and water crackers and then suddenly sitting up in attention when my agent "surprisingly" calls with the latest gigantic counteroffer from L.A.

I don't even aspire to that. This is about the simple pleasures. This is about doing enough loyal, honest labor for New York Press for a long enough period of time that I can now brazenly get away with just this one thing and not feel even the slightest bit of guilt about it. This is about gliding down the hallway on the way out of the office at 4 p.m., peering in to the editors' room to catch a glimpse of Sarah Shanok's ashen, exasperated face, and thinking to myself: I'm going home, goddamnit. I'm going to eat a can of pineapple rings and watch a baseball game. And then floating out the door with a big smile on my face before she or anyone else notices I'm long gone.

That is a small pleasure, I deserve it and I don't want to hear any shit about it from anyone. Besides, I'm officially giving in at the eleventh hour. I actually had these written weeks ago as a last tribute to New York Sports Express, which would certainly be doing its own version of this issue if it were still around.

Anyway, without further ado:

BEST BAD-TRADE FLURRY

KRIS BENSON AND JEFF KEPPINGER FOR TY WIGGINTON, MATT PETERSON AND JOSE BAUTISTA; SCOTT KAZMIR AND JOSELO DIAZ FOR VICTOR ZAMBRANO AND BARTOLOME FORTUNATO

It may not be Joe Barry Carroll for Robert Parish and Kevin McHale, but the two-day brain seizure in the Mets' front office this past summer may yet go down as the worst set of trades in the history of professional sports. What was worse? Jason Grimsley for Curt Schilling? Robert Traylor for Dirk Nowitzki? 590-year-old Doyle Alexander for a strapping young John Smoltz? Cliff Hagan and Easy Ed Macauley for Bill Russell? No, no and no.

I used to think nothing could top the all-time "Let's eat do the rest of this coke and see what action we can scare up on the phones" trade: Peter Forsberg, Mike Ricci, Chris Simon, Steve Duchesne, Kerry Huffman, Ron Hextall, two first-round draft picks, and $15 million to Quebec in exchange for Eric Lindros. Shit, the Flyers in that one just took a couple of Stanley Cups and hurled them right out the window into traffic. The people of the city of Philadelphia love to wallow in their own misery, but even they're quiet about that one.

The Mets lost their first three games to the Braves after the trade, which meant they were immediately knocked out of the race this year, and winning this year was the only reason to trade for Benson rather than wait until November and sign him. In other words, it took less than three days for the Mets to realize they'd given up Peterson, Wigginton and Justin Huber (whom they sent to the Royals for Bautista) for absolutely nothing. The worst thing? Watching Scott Kazmir beat the Yankees five times a year from now until the end of time. Waytago, Mets. Anyone got Cyclones tickets?

BEST SHOWING OF GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER MASQUERADING AS AFTERNOON SPORTS RADIO

SEAN SALISBURY VS. CHRIS "MAD DOG" RUSSO

One of the great running tragedies of the American experience is the fact that both of these guys are on the radio so much, playing to an audience of depressed, balding male commuters. Why? Because a great many of these listeners get in car accidents and die while listening to sports radio, and for many of them, it could very well happen that Chris Russo or Sean Salisbury, bitching about Paul Hackett or John Clayton, will turn out to be the last voices they ever hear. It is hard to imagine what kind of karmic bounce that would cause. Reincarnation as barnacle or mange would be my guess.

But both of them, together-that's not depressing. The two most irritating shouters in all of sports radio met at the end of the last football season and had the best cat fight since the Miller "Let's Make Out" girls. "You wouldn't know what it takes to be on tv, you sit behind a microphone for five hours," hissed the ex-mediocre quarterback Salisbury. "It's not nuclear physics, Sean, it takes 15 seconds to explain!" sez the Dog. "You're not going to shout at me like you do to everybody else!" says the meathead. And so on for 15 furious minutes, until the Dog grumbled, "Good job, Sean, good job," and hung up. ABC immediately started production on a new pilot: Days of Our Irritating Lives.

BEST RACE AGAINST TIME IN THE UPCOMING BASKETBALL SEASON

Which comes first: Vin Baker is discovered passed out and shitfaced on the banks of Roosevelt Island, or Peter Vecsey constructs 15-syllable pun out of the name "Podkolzine"?

This is a tough one. Vinny Baker made it through about 15 solid games with the Celtics last season before he fell off the wagon and started drinking tall boys until four in the morning in front of the QVC channel. Apparently the Boston media was too much for him, the Seattle media having been too much for him before that. No doubt, he will fare better in New York, where fans are happy with the Knicks generally and are not burdened with unreasonable expectations.

Vecsey, meanwhile, is on a bad-pun roll. From "Danny Rearrainging" to "Rashweed Wallace" to "Lord Bye-Ron Scott," the Bearded One has sunk to new lows this year, firmly cementing his legacy as the most odious print personality sports has seen for a long time. He spent most of this summer pretending to have been a close friend of the late Cotton Fitzsimmons, misanticipating the Erick Dampier deal and eviscerating Dick Vitale, if one can believe this, for being annoying. Somewhere upstairs, Grantland Rice is weeping. On the plus side, Vecsey did manage to go a whole season without tinkering with the name "Zeljko Rebraca." We're not so positive he'll leave Pasha Podkolzine be. Who cracks first-Vinny or Petey?

BEST FAN ANGER WEBSITE

SELLTHEMETS.COM

One of the most beautifully humorless pieces of self-pitying fan rage ever observed, this anti-Wilpon site incoherently uses the poster from the movie Gigli as an unadorned illustration on several pages, apparently lacking the words to express something important about how profoundly the Mets suck. o