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The new trail will move from Port Jefferson Station to Wading River, passing through where old Miller Place railroad tracks used to be. Photo by Desirée Keegan

Every project has its perks, and in the case of one large North Shore endeavor, the possibilities are endless.

U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley), along with other local officials, recently announced a 2018 completion year for the Port Jefferson Station to Wading River Rails to Trails project  — that has been more than 30 years in the making. With the plan, which involves paving a bike path where old railways existed to be used for cyclists, potential is everywhere.

While the project will provide a safe space for biking enthusiasts, skateboarders, roller-bladers and even those just looking to take a scenic stroll, there is also a huge chance for economic growth, with the path connecting so many Town of Brookhaven hamlets. Bikers, hikers and anyone in-between could stop at kiosks along the path to grab a bottle of water or an ice cream cone, or groups may stop in any hamlet along their travels to grab dinner or go shopping. The trail could also be a way to connect locals, and tourists too, to local beaches, museums and other landmarks.

It’s also just a great opportunity to explore the wonders of the North Shore. The plan helps preserve even more open space while stringing together breathtaking views that tend to get lost in all of the development on Long Island.

Further, the trails should serve as inspiration for cars to be left at home occasionally, which can only have a positive impact on the environment around us.

This project is attractive on multiple levels and across multiple layers of government. We applaud officials for being able to work together and across party lines to achieve a common goal with so many benefits.

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Each night, throughout this long stretch of intense heat and high humidity, we have been praying to the air-conditioning gods to stay strong and continue to keep us comfortable. Last Friday night I must have forgotten, in my euphoria at the start of the weekend, to say my prayers because Saturday afternoon there was a waterfall coming through the ceiling in one of our offices.

Fortunately a staff member had come in to prepare for the next editions and was horrified at the sight. The water was dripping through the Sheetrock and onto one of our newer computers, then splashing its way off the papers on the desk and the leather surface of the chair to land on the relatively new carpet. A unit in the attic had given up trying to wring moisture out of the room and had broken down, releasing its condensate. The ceiling had begun to sag in protest.

The staff member called me.

I was at home, sitting in my favorite living room chair, reading the sections of the Sunday Times that we somehow get delivered on Saturday morning. The dog lay beside me, snoring slightly, enjoying the peaceful companionship of a weekend afternoon. I could hear the birds chirping outside, even over the whoosh of the air conditioning. It was a bucolic high-summer scene — until the phone rang.

Then we went into a frenzy that has lasted until today, as the repairmen try to pinpoint the problem. One thing I can tell you. It sure is tough to be creative in the 90-degree-plus heat. But the staff has soldiered on, despite the sultry air. Yes, we have fans and, yes, we have air conditioning in the rest of the building, some of which in theory should waft into the stricken room. But it has been uncomfortable, and the staff has persevered. If your newspaper feels a little damp, I trust you’ll understand. And we are hoping the fix is in.

How did we manage before air conditioning? There are still people who do not have air conditioning today by choice. Apartments and stores weren’t air conditioned when I was in the first decade of my life — only movie theaters were, and that’s where we hung out for two features and a news short on Saturday afternoons. When we wanted to cool down on Sundays, we rode the subway out to Rockaway Beach in Brooklyn — the end of the line — then walked the blocks to the sand and the surf, marveling at the seaside breeze. We stayed there — my parents, my brother, my sister and I — until quite late before returning to our stuffy apartment, squeezing as much time as we could from our comfortable location. Sometimes it even got quite cool along the water’s edge at night. We never complained.

During the week, we took refuge in Central Park, sitting on a bench or a blanket that we might have carried through the streets. We would pass neighbors hanging over their ground-floor windowsills and youngsters lounging on the steps of their stoops. Once we reached the park, my dad would find a thicket of trees and spread the blanket for us. Stretched out, we deeply inhaled the sweet summer evening breezes that might come along. After my brother, who was almost 14 years older, purchased his car, he would take us for rides after work with the side windows rolled down and the wing windows directing the flow of air onto our faces. Once we cleared the downtown streets and reached the parkway, he could get up enough speed to make us rejoice in the stream of air.

Even when I was in my 20s and married, we didn’t have air conditioning in our car, although it was available as an expensive option. It wasn’t until we lived on the Texas air base and bought a station wagon from a local dealer for our growing family that we got air conditioning. It turned out that was standard in every car in the South. How perfectly wonderful, but we did take a bit of ribbing from our friends and family about being spendthrifts when we drove back north. That was in the late 1960s, in a world long gone.

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We have spent the better part of the last two weeks glued to the television watching extraordinary people perform incredible acts under unimaginable pressure. Maybe we should come up with an Olympic Games for the ordinary person. To enter these games, contestants will have to go through a speed round of sports clichés, to see who can come up with the most trite phrases for any circumstance.

“Yes, I just lost, but I learned a great deal and was proud to be here. I’m going to refocus and redouble my efforts, and come back that much stronger.”

“We just take it one game at a time.”

“I know I’m only 8, but this is what I wanted my whole entire life.”

We can add a contest for would-be reporters. Ordinary people can sit down with athletes and see who can ask either the most inane questions or share superlatives.

“You just won your 18th Olympic gold medal. What’s next? Oh, right, your 19th?”

“That was sensational, spectacular and unbelievable. I’m just wondering what it must be like to be you.”

How about a remote-control Olympics? Let’s see who can change from channel to channel — without switching to movie stations — the longest without hitting a commercial. I pride myself on my ability to watch three shows without seeing too many advertisements, but every so often I flip from one station that’s cut to a commercial to another that’s still in commercial. That’s a remote control error.

How about if we put teenagers in a room and push their endurance? We can have their parents talking to them while they are sending texts, updating their Instagram accounts and using Snapchat. In fact, not only will their parents be talking to them, but they also will have to answer questions about their days. The first one-word answer — “good” for example — disqualifies the contestant.

Teenagers might want to turn that contest around, requiring instead that they only answer in one syllable. The problem with that, though, is that the game might not end until they hit their 20s.

We could also bring in couples who have been together for more than 40 years. We can ask a question and see how long it takes before they finish each other’s sentences. Or, perhaps, we can ask them to tell a story about something that happened early in their relationship and see how long it takes before they argue about the details.

“No, I wasn’t wearing the blue dress. I was wearing the green dress and we weren’t in Philadelphia, we were in Boston; and we weren’t at a park, we were at a movie theater.”

We can invite a group of people who have made an art form out of noticing absolutely everything wrong with others around them. A person can stroll by and the contestants can try to one-up each other’s observations.

“Oh, seriously? She didn’t make eye contact with anyone.”

“Did you notice how she breathed with her mouth open?”

“She wore those shoes? What is she trying to sell, know what I’m saying?”

We could also set up a movie competition, where people quote the most lines from sports movies.

Borrowing from one of my favorite films, “Bull Durham”:

“You lollygag the ball around the infield. You lollygag your way down to first. You lollygag in and out of the dugout. You know what that makes you? Larry!”

“Lollygaggers!”

This 19th-century word has various meanings, including fooling around, wasting time, dawdling or dallying.

Yes, there’s exceptional speed and there are talented people pushing themselves to extreme levels to defy gravity, each other and the clock. And then there are the rest of  us and maybe, just maybe, there’s the

Lollygagger Olympics.

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Friends help make our lives special. They are fun to be with, we like the person we are when we are with them, they share activities with us, they offer an ear when we need to talk over important matters, they cheer us up when we are down, they lend a hand when we need help, they broaden our horizons with their intelligence, knowledge and experience — and, most critically, they are there for us in times of crisis. Those are typical answers when we ask people, “What is a friend?”

But what if our friend doesn’t like us as much as we like him or her?

According to an article in The New York Times and other media, recent research on the subject of friends would suggest that only about half of our friendships are mutual. Whoa! That means someone you think is a close friend might not feel the same way about you. Now that is a thought to make you feel instantly abandoned. And, according to the Times, through experts interviewed, “the authenticity of one’s relationships has an enormous impact on one’s health and well-being.”

Who are our friends? Where do they come from? How many real friends can we have? How do we judge whether they are true friends? And are we a true friend in return?

Certainly a true friend is more than someone on Facebook. Alexander Nehamas, a professor of philosophy at Princeton, told The Times that friendship is more like beauty or art, which kindles something deep within us and is “appreciated for its own sake.” It’s a lovely thought.

Ronald Sharp, a professor of English at Vassar College, edited a book, “The Norton Book of Friendship,” with his friend, Eudora Welty in 1991. Sharp is quoted in The Times as saying, “The notion of doing nothing but spending time in each other’s company has, in a way, become a lost art,” to be replaced by volleys of texts and tweets.

To have a friendship with someone has several requirements. First is time. It takes time to understand the other person and to trust that person enough to let him or her understand you. So trust is another requirement. Lucky are those who have friends from elementary school or college, for those have withstood the test of time. Additionally those friends are witnesses to our lives as we are to theirs. That is a relationship to be treasured and not replaced, and it may be resumed even after years have gone by with no contact. Honesty is another. You have to be able to respond honestly to a friend, even if it is not what he or she wants to hear, and to receive the same in return.

But there is more. A close friend is one with whom you interact almost daily because you would otherwise miss the contact. That person is one whose sentences you could reliably finish because, to some extent, you live within each other’s heads. That person is someone who, you absolutely know from prior evidence, has your back. And that is a person who knows and accepts your shortcomings even as you accept theirs because you protect each other’s vulnerabilities. I have only experienced that kind of friendship with one or two people because there isn’t enough time really to get to know that many people, however interesting they may seem.

Then there are perhaps four or six others with whom I maintain ongoing friendships. These are good friends whom I enjoy common ground with, and feel concern and affection for. These friends provide a support system and a social circle to which we all contribute. Others are more casual friends, dependent on circumstances, and they may move in and out of my world at any given time.

Friends and friendships are tested by crises. I have had my share, as have my friends, and we have been there for each other. We will be there again because we are best friends.

  

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Abraham Lincoln did it. So did Jon Stewart, Dave Letterman, Walter Cronkite and Lou Gehrig.

On July 4, 1939, as he announced that he considered himself “the luckiest man on the face of the earth,” the Yankees’ Gehrig, known as the Iron Horse, reached up to the bridge of his nose and wiped away tears.

The list of those who cry in public includes influential men with impressive pedigrees. Yet it is the exception rather than the rule for men to cry.

Recently, I attended a wedding where not only the groom cried as he read his vows, but the father of the bride also shed tears when he gave a speech during the reception. The groom was barely a few words into his vows when his voice cracked.

The audience waited, willing him to go on and all of them, except my son who was at his first wedding and was studying his image in the mirrored ceiling, appreciated the struggle to speak.

The man on the threshold of becoming a husband stopped several times, as he made fun of the tears and the mess he’d become, giving the audience a chance to laugh with him.

I have experienced larger moments, both positive and negative, when I felt such a strong flood of emotions that filled my eyes with tears and made it difficult to speak. Clearly, however, it’s not a regular occurrence because my son asked me when, or if, I cried. Part of that, I suppose, comes from my reflexive need to turn off the tears in public.

I grew up at a time when boys and men had to experience something extraordinary — either positively or negatively — to shed public tears. We had examples like the actor Alan Alda, who shed gut-wrenching tears in the final episode of “M*A*S*H.”

I recall being unable to say more than a few words to my mother when I called her from a pay phone to tell her that she had a granddaughter. Facing the corner of a phone booth, I shed tears of joy, especially when I said my daughter’s name for the first time. My mother must have heard my unsteady voice and asked, in the silence that followed, if I’d like her to come visit us in the hospital. Wiping away tears and nodding, I grunted something like “uh-huh.”

Men cry and, for the same physiological and psychological reasons as women, we benefit from that release, giving us an outlet for the literal flood of emotions.

At that recent wedding, the father of the bride knew when I spoke to him at the cocktail hour that he’d struggle to get through his speech. When the time came, he thanked everyone for coming and described the connection he felt with his daughter. He could barely finish a sentence before his lips turned down and the tears fell beneath his glasses.

He and his new son-in-law clearly started off this marital connection with something in common: tears at the wedding.

I was sure when his first daughter was born that he felt the same way at the beginning of her life, as he contemplated the excitement and terror at the responsibility that came from becoming a father.

As he considered the start of her married life he seemed, like Steve Martin in “Father of the Bride,” to have an awareness of these new steps which, some day, may include her coming to terms with a little life wrapped in her arms.

His voice broke at the end of his speech when he said his daughter would “always be my girl.”

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Bullies come in all shapes and sizes. And ages. I was reminded of that fact this past weekend, when a good friend and I went on our annual Tanglewood trip. Situated in the lush green Berkshire Hills in western Massachusetts, Tanglewood is a beautiful estate donated to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and since 1937 the BSO summers there and offers outdoor concerts to the public. As a result of their presence and the huge crowds that they draw, the greater area of Lenox, including Pittsfield, to Stockbridge and even to Williamstown has developed as a mecca of culture. There are many museums, theater, dance and of course good restaurants throughout the neighborhood, making for a fun-filled runaway weekend destination.

Thanks to the Port Jefferson ferry, Tanglewood is an easy two-and-a-half-hour drive from Bridgeport to one of the many motels that accommodate the thousands of visitors. We unloaded our suitcases on Friday night just in time to drive to our seats in the Shed to hear a Mozart piano concerto, followed by Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 9. Content, we navigated the exiting traffic, which is admirably directed by the local police, returned to our motel room and slept.

After a leisurely breakfast, we made the scenic drive to Williamstown and enjoyed a couple of hours in the Clark museum. Their current exhibit, Splendor, Myth, and Vision: Nudes from the Prado, includes works by Titian, Rubens, Tintoretto, Brueghel the Elder, Poussin and many of the other greats of the 16th- and 17th-centuries. These paintings would only have been seen at the time in what were called, “salas reservadas.” These were special, hidden rooms for select audiences, because to display nude bodies was considered sinful and contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church, also to the Spanish Inquisition. On the one hand, the monarchs were charged with upholding the decreed doctrines and moral values, and on the other, they were the primary collectors of these treasured works of art — especially Philip II and his grandson Philip IV.

We left the museum hurriedly to scoot down the road for the Williamstown Theater Festival premiere of “Romance Novels for Dummies” by Boo Killebrew. This delightful play, about two sisters, their relationship and their experiences dating in the big city, was worth the rush to get there. Well acted and staged in a beautiful theater, the play ended just in time for another rush down Route 7 to our seats at Tanglewood.

And this is when the bullying began. We were seated near the front, and I began chatting with the man to my right. He told us he was from Maryland and even tried to help me open a container. But his arm completely covered the narrow armrest between us. I laughingly asked him if he had siblings and therefore had learned to share. I suggested we each take half the armrest for our elbows and demonstrated. He had an empty seat next to him, which I assumed he had paid for since there were no other empty seats anywhere around us. He responded that I should have bought two seats. Then, when the music began, a violin concerto by Sibelius featuring spectacular soloist Augustin Hadelich, he actually pushed my arm off the armrest and jabbed me in the ribs with his elbow.

It’s hard to know what to do in such a situation. People around us were entranced by the magnificent music and I wanted to be, too. But I alternated between being absorbed and being discomforted by the man splayed out beside me. I strained to lose myself in the music, and when it ended I considered explaining my plight to the nearest usher. I didn’t want to cause a scene in one of my “happy places,” yet I clearly couldn’t handle the problem. How frustrating. Almost unwillingly, I approached a volunteer usher, who couldn’t help me directly, but he did bring me to a person in authority. That gentleman promptly changed our seats to what turned out to be an even better location, from which we thoroughly enjoyed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.

Beauty washes away ugly every time.

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The media coverage of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump misses the point. While the race for president is about each person, the process, the scandals, the outrage and the stories that have a life of their own are not about the people — they are about the “brand.”

The most passionate advocates for each candidate have defended and supported them, recognizing their shortcomings but urging us to believe each candidate will be better because they just are better — the way any brand with a loyal following just is.

Newspapers and advocates of each side shout at the top of their lungs about this historic election, offering evidence of Clinton’s inappropriate handling of emails and Trump’s personal attacks.

In the latest battle, Trump has taken to the airways to respond to Khizr Khan, the parents of a Muslim-American war hero.

The question isn’t whether this reveals something new about Trump, the person. It doesn’t. Surely anyone who has watched Trump over the last year or so realizes that his personal style, and the brand under which he is running for the highest office in the land, emanate from a scripted character. He doesn’t let anyone question him or his brand without counterattacking. He has become a talking head in touch with his irascible side.

That may be what attracts people to him. There is no political correctness, a term he utters with such disdain that he says it as if he is standing at a podium filled with soiled diapers. The Trump brand and playbook mandate that a best defense is a good offense.

If he’s offensive in the process, who cares? He doesn’t — and on the whole it appears many of his supporters don’t, either. He may have been right that he could shoot somebody in Times Square and not lose votes because outrageous words and actions are a part of his brand.

While I don’t agree with the slash-and-burn approach to the personal and political battles he fights, I recognize he’s probably not fighting for the little guy, the medium-sized guy or the big guy so much as he’s fighting for his brand. In a country where products and marketing are so inextricably intertwined, he is the best advocate for Brand Trump. Does being Trump prohibit him from saying “I’m sorry” or “I’m wrong”?

Those who hated him before have more ammunition in their battle with him. But what does he care? If they weren’t loyal to the brand and they weren’t his customers, he hasn’t lost anything.

What will cause voters loyal to Brand Trump — or, put another way, those who are angry, fearful or resentful of the Clinton brand — to change their minds? How far can he go before some of those who identify with him decide he shouldn’t become president?

Does this pitched battle with the Khans — parents of a slain and decorated war hero — do for the Trump brand what the attack on the U.S. Army did for Sen. Joseph McCarthy? His pursuit of communists damaged and destroyed lives and careers in the early 1950s until Joseph Welch, the chief counsel for the Army, asked McCarthy in 1954 if he had “no sense of decency.”

For Brand Trump, decency doesn’t seem to have been a priority up until now. The question, however, is whether those buying the product will care enough about what he says or thinks to force a change in the brand before they, themselves, choose the other brand.

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Drug busts are becoming more common in Suffolk County. Above, drugs and other items seized during one such bust. File photo

It is no secret that Suffolk County, New York State and the United States as a whole have a rapidly growing opioid, and especially, heroin problem on their hands. Suffolk County is frequently sited as one of the places in New York most susceptible to drug busts and overdoses. It is a complex problem that sometimes feels like plugging holes in a sinking ship with bubble gum to lawmakers and uniformed police officers charged with lessening the impact of drugs on the community.

To the Suffolk County Police Department’s credit, they haven’t shied away from trying some outside the box methods to combat heroin and opioid addiction. In April, Suffolk County Crime Stoppers launched an anonymous narcotics tip phone line to help enlist the community in rooting out drug users and sellers in their vicinity.

The tip line helped lead to the arrest, in June, of two brothers living in Mount Sinai who had a treasure trove of weaponry, bomb-making instructions, cash and drugs in their home. In July, 24 people were arrested in connection with a drug ring in Hauppauge that yielded four kilograms of heroin and fentanyl.

The success of the hotline, which has received more than 900 calls since its inception, proves that the onus is on all of us to do our part in alleviating our community’s drug problem.

The department hosted a benefit concert at The Emporium in Patchogue July 28 to raise money for rewards given to those who provide tips to the hotline that result in arrests, and it’s imperative that we continue to support this resource as it has already proven its worth. That’s not to say that without the reward money, you shouldn’t say something if you see something. Community members hold most of the power in their hands to help our officers in cleaning up our streets.

Until we as a community recognize that this is a problem for everyone, even if the overdosing teen down the street isn’t a family member, the bubble gum approach will not stop the ship from sinking.

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One hundred years ago this week, The New York Times has reported, the worst terrorist attack on the United States until 9/11 occurred in New York Harbor. Black Tom Island, supposedly named after an early African-American resident and owned by the Lehigh Valley Railroad, lay next to Liberty Island and was the site of three-quarters of the American-made ammunitions readied for shipment to Allied forces in World War I. Stored in warehouses, in railroad cars and on barges on the small island, the munitions were targeted with small fires shortly after midnight on July 30, 1916, and the first explosion had the force of about a 5.5 earthquake on the Richter scale. It blew out windows of buildings in lower Manhattan and Jersey City, damaged the skirt and torch of the Statue of Liberty, shattered the stained glass windows in St. Patrick’s Cathedral and windows in Times Square, shook and possibly damaged the Brooklyn Bridge, threw people out of their beds and was heard as far away as Philadelphia and Maryland.

On that fateful night, some 2 million pounds of small arms and artillery ammunition were on the island, along with 100,000 pounds of TNT on Johnson Barge No. 17. Initially small fires broke out along the mile-long pier, and while some of the guards fled, fearing explosions, others attempted to fight the fires and called the Jersey City Fire Department for help. The first and largest explosion, at 2:08 a.m, produced a rain of bullets and fragments, followed by mists of ash that made fighting the fires impossible; and the smaller fires burned for hours, causing explosions throughout the night.

While hundreds were hurt, surprisingly only a few people were killed, including a policeman in Jersey City, the railroad chief of police, the barge captain and an infant thrown from its crib a mile away. Two guards were quickly arrested for having triggered the disaster by lighting smudge pots on the pier to keep away the ever-present mosquitoes until it was realized that the pots were too far from the fires to have been the cause. Further investigation, which continued for years, identified the culprits as German agents who were trying to stop the shipments.

Until early 1915, the neutral United States was able to supply any nation with arms, but after the blockade of Germany by the British Royal Navy, only the Allied forces could purchase arms. Imperial Germany sent secret agents to the U.S. to obstruct production and delivery, and some of them caused havoc and civilian panic in the ensuing years. An effective weapon was the “cigar bomb” that was silently attached to the hulls of departing American munitions ships and only exploded after the vessels were well out to sea. Many ships, with their cargo and crew, were lost that way.

President Woodrow Wilson was desperately trying to cling to neutrality before the coming, tightly contested election against Charles Evans Hughes, chief justice of the Supreme Court and former New York governor. Wilson, as the president who had kept the nation out of war, initially refused to recognize the explosions as the work of the Germans. But after the election indisputable evidence forced his hand, and by early 1917 he prepared the country for war against Germany.

After the war, the railroad sought payment for damages under the U.S.-German Peace Treaty (1921) signed in Berlin and, at last in 1953, an agreement was reached for $50 million to be paid to the railroad. Dozens of railroad cars, six piers and 13 warehouses had simply disappeared into a huge crater filled with water and debris after the first explosion. For practical purposes the island, with its causeway to the mainland, had disappeared. Final payment was not made until 1979. In today’s currency, damages are estimated at $500 million.

Landfill projects through the years time have enabled what little was left to be incorporated into Liberty State Park. A single plaque there tells the tale of the largest terrorist attack until our time.

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A man walks into a doctor’s office and can only say two things: teepee and wigwam.

The doctor considers the curious case and decides he’s “too tents.”

While you may have heard the homophone joke, you may also know that the New York Yankees are in a similar position: dealing with two tenses.

They are stuck between trying to do what they can to win now and making trades and decisions that may help them for the future. While this is a baseball-specific problem for the Yankees, it’s an eminently relatable problem.

Should we go for it in the present, hoping to win, win, win now, or should we allow ourselves the opportunity to rebuild and move toward a better future by adding some education, by moving to a new house, getting a new job, or starting or ending a relationship?

We generally live in the present, because that’s what is wanted by our ids — the impulse-driven parts of our psyches. We’re hungry, we want food. We’re tired, we want sleep. We’re sick of hearing politicians who starred in reality shows turning the process into a reality show, we change the channel.

These Yankees, with their high-priced talent, glitz and glamor, and the endless celebration of their own history, have mastered the art of staring in the mirror and liking what they see. The team could easily change its name to “The Narcissi.”

Anyway, can, should, will the Yankees pull the trigger on a host of deals that may replenish a farm system, sacrificing the all-important present for a future that may not produce a better team than the mediocrity they’ve demonstrated?

I don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t rely on the position of the stars, the moon or the tides to make decisions for my favorite team or for my life. Early this week the flamethrowing rent-a-closer on a one-year deal with the Yankees, Aroldis Chapman, was traded to the Chicago Cubs for a four-player package headed by stud shortstop prospect, Gleyber Torres.

How much further they can, or should, go in swapping assets, repositioning the team or realigning their strategy is a favorite game of the endless sports pontificators in the New York area, who always seem to know so much better than everyone else until a player or a team proves them wrong.

From my perspective, the Yankees aren’t a contending team. They are, as the old saying goes, exactly what their record indicates. Early this week, they were a .500 team, which means they win as many games as they lose. In the incredibly competitive American League East, where talented teams like the Red Sox overcome their own pitching flaws with sensational hitting, a win-one, lose-one Yankees team isn’t inspiring confidence.

Of course, the fun of life — and all these games — are the many unpredictable parts. Would anyone have expected the Mets to become a World Series team last year? There are no guarantees, which is what makes any present sacrifice a leap of faith.

We, the fans and the team, might not get something better by making a change.

From my armchair, however, I would plant a “for sale” sign in front of this team with a declining A-Rod, a shadow-of-himself Mark Teixeira and a smoke-and-mirrors starting pitching staff. No one is going to buy Teixeira or A-Rod, but the scales seem to be leaning toward an investment in the future. Now, if the never-give-up Yankees can change course on a faltering season, maybe we can consider moves that might help us win in the future.

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