I’m not a Jets fan, but Rex Ryan has everyone in this city so inspired and pumped up, even I’d run through a wall for him. In fact, I tried to do just that. Unfortunately, I slipped on a bag of Funyuns and flew through the plate-glass window in my living room. Now I have cuts and bruises all over my face and body, one of my ears was sliced off, my wife is furious at me and it’s really, really cold in our living room. Ryan’s infectious motivating style is being packaged into a new self-help, confidence-building program, with books and DVDS – The Rex Ryan Method: Swaggering, Boasting and Eating Your Way to a Newer, More Confident You. Here are his three top keys to turning yourself into a more successful person:

       1. Declare yourself the favorite in any situation; and then make yourself a nice, big sandwich.

       2. Declare that you will be invited to the White House and meet the President; he will …

Confidence. The Jets have it. In fact, the Jets are so confident after whooping Cincinnati’s butt on Saturday, that Rex Ryan feels his team should not only be the favorite in the Super Bowl but also in the NBA playoffs. The first-year coach has his players believing that they can accomplish anything. He’s dispatched Dustin Keller to solve the Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien conundrum. The offensive line is drafting a health-care bill that will make everyone happy. And Bart Scott will be stepping in to replace Simon Cowell on American Idol. To paraphrase Yogi Berra: Sports are 90% mental, the other half is physical. And the Jets are not having any problems with the mental aspect of the game right now (nor the physical side either). Some feel there may be a little too much braggadocio in Jet land, but so far it’s working. Sitting at the other end of the confidence meter is the Nets. They do nothing but lose, and can’t even sniff a victory. Do …

The calendar says it’s 2010, but for the Mets 2009 keeps on rolling along. To the surprise of the Mets (or maybe not), Carlos Beltran had knee surgery yesterday. He may not be able to resume baseball activities for up to 12 weeks. I’m no math whiz, but 12 weeks is about three months, which puts us into April. And only then can he start running, hitting and not sliding, so it looks like his return to the lineup wouldn’t be until May. But like last season, I’ll believe he’ll be back when I actually see him on the field.

And since this is the Mets we’re talking about, this news comes with controversy. Beltran’s agent, the always honest Scott Boras, claims, “This was necessary surgery, necessary surgery to work.” But the Mets feel it was done without their permission, though they were kept abreast of the center fielder’s condition since the end of last season, and they are even threatening to take some sort of action with …

The great David Wright power outage of aught-nine has a precedent in New York baseball history. From 1969 to 1973, Bobby Murcer hit 26, 23, 25, 33 and 22 home runs. The next season, the Yankees temporarily moved to Shea Stadium while Yankee Stadium was being renovated, and the 28-year-old sunk to 10 homers. In the four seasons before 2009, Wright blasted 27, 26, 30 and 33 long balls. In ’09, the Mets moved into shiny new Citi Field, and the 26-year-old could also only muster 10 dingers for the season. Both players were in their prime. Neither were/are considered home run bashers in the true sense of the word, with both being more all-around hitters who also happen to hit for power. But both players saw their home run totals drop dramatically after moving into a new stadium.

Murcer tailored his swing to old original Yankee Stadium and that inviting short right-field porch, and was one of the best outfielders in the American League in the first …

We’re only one week into 2010 and I’m already dropping the ball on my resolutions. In the past I’ve been more successful, such as the year I resolved to quit smoking cigarettes. I used one of those quit-smoking programs, with the patches and the gum and the whole nine yards. Unfortunately, the side effects included nausea, dizziness, vomiting, disorientation, hallucinations, agitation, hostility, amnesia, blindness, a hacking cough, lung cancer, throat cancer, the sudden loss of one’s extremities, and addiction to cigarettes, chewing tobacco and cigars. Sure, now I can’t see, I’m always falling down, I have no idea who I am, I have a hole in my throat and I’m constantly having hallucinations that Art Howe is standing beside me trying to sell me a time-share, but at least I don’t smoke anymore. This year I decided to stop being so humble, demur and shy and to play up my strengths, which means wearing more tank top shirts to show off my impressive shoulder and back hair and to stop hiding my disgustingly smelly feet, …

Jason Bay is officially a Met. He passed his physical, had his press conference and is now the new left fielder for the Amazin’s. He’ll essentially replace Carlos Delgado in the middle of the order (or will he? Please tell me Delgado will not be back; he needs to make his “clubhouse presence” present in another clubhouse). The Mets need all the infusion of new blood they can get – in the clubhouse and on the field. And they need a home run hitter in the middle of the order, and Bay hits home runs. So what’s not to like?

It took awhile to finally dot the i’s and cross the t’s, but Omar Minaya waited out Bay’s nonexistent bidding war and the “mystery” teams that were never really out there and signed the outfielder to a pretty reasonable contract. Boston was the only team that had an offer on the table, so Minaya had to better that one, but he didn’t blow it out of …

Christmas is all about comebacks and overcoming adversity against all odds. Ok, it’s really nothing about comebacks and overcoming adversity against all odds but is about love, peace on earth, goodwill toward men, opening presents, then drinking all day long and passing out underneath the tree as an ornament falls and pierces one of your eyeballs, sending you screaming down the street bloody, naked and in horrifying pain. Ah, Christmas. One of the brightest, heartwarming stories of the week, though, is Jonathan Bender’s return to the world of basketball after not playing a game in four years. And on top of it all, he’s been productive. The Knicks, too, are on the comeback trail after starting out at 1-9. Bender’s return after a long absence brings to mind other great comebacks. So, without further ado, here’s a random list of notable returns over the decades (and even centuries).

Gordie Howe retired after the 1971 season, then came back in 1973-’74 to play with his sons, Mark and Marty, lasting …

On Saturday night I was flipping between another Rangers loss and the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Of course you can’t help but wonder, “What if George Bailey’s situation happened to me?” What if I were able to see the consequences of never being born? That thought lasted about a minute and a half, because everybody’s life would surely be better. My wife would have been able to marry a more successful, rich, interesting, well-rounded man instead of someone who has nothing but a monkey shooting a slap shot, a couple of empty beer cans and some old Rusty Staub highlights filling up his head. My daughter would have a normal father, one who doesn’t constantly quiz her on the proper French Canadian–accented way of saying the names Guy Lafleur and Gilbert Perrault. And nobody else’s life would be affected one way or the other.

But on that subject, what if, more importantly, James Dolan had never been born? The Isiah Thomas era would never have happened. …

I’ve come out of the woodwork for a brand new blog, because I’ve come across some interesting data, and I think it’d be just plain selfish of me not to share it with my Mets brethren.

While the media is busy debating whether or not the Mets less-than-aggressive move for Jason Bay is purely a PR ploy, of greater interest to me personally is the assertion that Mets brass might actually prefer Bay over free agent Matt Holliday.  It seems that the Mets are – gasp – using statistics to evaluate how each hitter might fair in their cavernous ballpark.  This, meanwhile, from a team that has apparently made upgrading the defense and signal-calling from the catchers position their number one offseason priority, despite, as ESPN’s Keith Law pointed out, the fact that statistical analysis largely debunks the notion that a pitcher’s battery mate impacts his ERA on any detectable level.  So imagine my surprise to hear various reports that the Mets …

Here are some of the highlights, lowlights, scandals, trades and car accidents of the past week in the New York sports world.

Nate-Gate: The surging Knicks have won three games in a row, they’re spreading the ball around on offense and playing solid team defense – yes, defense (somewhere Dave DeBusschere is smiling). They’re moving up in the standings, but Nate-Gate is in full bloom, with chants of “We want Nate” raining down from the Garden faithful while Nate Robinson is tethered to the bench. Whenever he doesn’t play, the Knicks win, so the erratic guard may never see action again. Shooting at the wrong basket, too much goofing around and breezily fraternizing with the enemy have done him in. After realizing that he’s getting paid $4 million to watch NBA games a few times a week and is getting front row seats to boot, he’s not complaining, and is settling into his role as the Knicks’ Little Bit o’ Luck guy. He’s starting to make …

Thanksgiving is the best of all holidays. There’s football all day long, eating all day long and drinking all day long (actually that sounds like most Sundays during football season). I think there’s something in there about Pilgrims and Indians, too, but I can’t remember what it is. A Chiefs-Patriots game maybe? Did they have muskets and kill turkeys in the old AFL? Or was it Redskins-Cowboys? The Knicks won a game this week, but it was against the Nets so I’m not sure if that really counts (those teams are a combined 3-27 so far this season), the hockey teams all won some and lost some, the Jets were trounced by the hated Patriots, the Giants went 1-1, and the Mets and Yankees started looking at possible free agents and trades, but they all have something to be thankful for during the holiday season. So here we go:

The Knicks are thankful that the Nets are worse than they are.

The Knicks are also thankful for 1970 and 1973 because that may be it for another 30 years or …

In 2006, the Mets were one game away from the World Series. And that’s been their biggest problem the last three years. They still think they’re one game away from the World Series. But they’re not. And they’re not even close. 2006 was their year. It was their chance. Their opportunity. And they blew it. And they’ve been a step behind, plugging holes, sticking their finger in the dike, fixing last year’s problems, or even the problems from the year before that, ever since. Unfortunately, the big problems who go by the names of Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel (is Wally Backman waiting in the wings now that he’s been hired to manage Brooklyn? God, I hope so) are still here, so we’ll have to live with them at least through the beginning of the 2010 season.
The Mets’ failings are more than the bullpen issues of ’07 and ’08, and more than the power outage and injuries of ’09. The team needs more than Matt Holliday and John Lackey (though they definitely need …