Welcome, THB Class of 2011

For once the actual weather matched the spiritual forecast: A day after a thoroughly entertaining World Series that featured a Game 6 for the ages, the East Coast got walloped by a blast of snow, slush and mess. The mess is gone but it’s still cold, and on some essential level it will stay that way until mid-February or the beginning of March or Wednesday, April 4 or Thursday, April 5. By the end of 2011 I was tired, and it wasn’t so bad to have the Mets go away for a little while. It had been a tiring conclusion to the season, and I think we all sense it will be a tiring off-season, full of dispiriting talk about Jose Reyes and payrolls and most likely a slow-dawning acceptance that the Mets’ salvation will need to either come from within or await a change in ownership. Yet during the league championship series I found myself wrestling with a different cross for us to bear. I’m referring, of course, to the disfigurement of The Holy Books by horizontal baseba...