Why, when they don't suck, the Mets are the most fun team in baseball

It's the Goofy Factor, and it all started with Banner Day, back in the early 1960's. But while being a Mets fan can often feel like being trapped in an abusive marriage, when the team is playing well and has interesting characters on the team, there is no more fun to be had in baseball. No one bonds with their favorite players the way Mets fans do, and no one comes up with goofier ways to do it.

Dwight Gooden's fans' K Korner has since been appropriated by fans of other teams, though few with the panache of the current crop of "K-dro" fans. And somehow the Coneheads just didn't work as well in Yankee Stadium as they did at Shea, for all that David Cone was a more consistent and mature pitcher by the time he donned the Enemy Uniform.

But now, in these heady days of 9-1/2 game leads and 47-year-old utility players (Julio Franco) making diving catches and stealing bases, and castoffs (Eli Marrero) traded in exchange for other castoffs (Kaz Matsui) exercising balletics in the field, the goofiness is back, in the form of fans of the latest Mets rookie phenom, a kid with Snoop Dogg-style cornrows, a checkered past as a bit of a bad boy, and talent and charisma to spare, who goes by the inimitable moniker of Lastings Milledge.

So what name has HIS particular contingent appropriated?

What else? "The Milledge People."

Now THIS ought to be good.