Things as critical as this, the selection of a favored baseball team, are not, as some suspect, a matter of choice; one does not choose a team as one does not select his own genes. They are confirmed upon you more than we know an act of heredity. -- David Halberstam I am reasonably certain the Mets will win the pennant in 2010. Truth be told, I’ve believed that same thing every year since 1965. That was the year my father first took me to Shea Stadium and “confirmed my favored team upon me”. We still had black and white television so I had never seen a game in color before. Like so many kids of that era I was struck by the green grass, the brown dirt and the bright colors of the uniforms before a pitch was even thrown. I was, however, dumbfounded, by my first in-person look at my favorite Met; a third baseman named Charley Smith. Twenty-seven-years old in 1965, he was already a journeyman having played for the Dodgers, Phillies and White Sox before coming to Shea. He went on to play fo...