A Very Happy Return to Mets Baseball

The Mets didn't win a road series until June last year

While they were being mowed down by Josh Johnson on Friday night, the Mets were being mocked by their own television network.

Hey, why not? Everyone else has taken their shots since the end of last season so why not fire up a little Stewie Griffen.

By Sunday night, though, Mets fans were free to watch "Family Guy" without feeling like they were about to be bashed in the head with an anvil. Even with a rough opening night, the Mets had themselves a fine weekend to start the season.

They won two of three in Miami, which is already one more game than they won in South Florida all of last season. They also didn't win a road series until June in 2010 so this is a pretty nice change from what the team put their fans through last season.

Good signs abounded during the set with the Marlins. R.A. Dickey was terrific on Sunday, which puts some of the fears that he couldn't repeat last year's heroics to bed.

Willie Harris, so long a thorn in the side of the Mets, hit well throughout the series and showed the kind of hustle that has been missing from the team far too often. Josh Thole and Ike Davis, two players whose promise is a big part of any rosy projection for the season, hit well and showed some growth from last season.

Even when things went wrong, they wound up working out pretty well for the Mets. Francisco Rodriguez blew a save on Saturday, but the Mets won and K-Rod didn't finish the game which meant he moved no closer to guaranteeing his contract for next season.

Here comes the part where we have to take a step back and point out that this is just three games of a very long season and that there will be bumps in the road. That's all true, but skip over that part and get back to feeling happy.

It was a long, awful off-season and people would be piling on like crazy if the Marlins had skewered the Mets in three straight games. That means you have the right to overreact a little bit and treat these three games like they matter a lot more than they will in the long run.

And if the good fortune holds through the trip to Philly, then you're free to throw all reservations to the wind.

Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.

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