You’re just going to have to indulge me as I get this out of my system. I know you know damn well that the Mets are doing baseball stuff in Port St. Lucie, and I promise there’ll be more substantive posts to come in the near future.

But for today: Baseball!

The Mets dissipate after morning stretches, and I am Homer Simpson at the Knowledgeum. On Field 2, Jose Reyes and Luis Castillo throw to each other, Castillo hobbling a step back after catching each of Reyes’ bullets, Reyes firing away, his familiar short windup reeling off liners at any distance.

A horn blows, then the Mets — all the Mets, or damn near — shag flies sprayed all over the field by a Juggs gun at home plate. They practice calling each other off, voices adjusting back to shouting after so many quiet winter workouts, repeating in guttural baritone: “I got it! I got it!” Ike Davis chides Daniel Murphy for calling him off on a blooper in short right. There are a bunch of guys taking turns in the middle infield, but Davis is alone at first. David Wright is alone at third.

Next the outfielders go someplace else. The infielders, catchers and pitchers stay on to practice rundowns while coaches run the bases. From 30 yards away, you can hear Terry Collins boasting about his footspeed after a giggling Reyes chases him down and tags him out. Davis, with no backup, seems to be running as much as the rest of the infielders combined, and a coach sends Murphy to first for a spell to replace him. Murphy takes one pickoff and chases down Ricky Bones, then Davis shoos him away.

Moments later, over on Field 5, catchers in shin guards take high pop flies from another gun. Each catcher takes a turn: Three or four balls are in the air before the first one comes down, and the backstops are charged with tracking and handling all of them. A group of fans gather behind the backstop to watch, and they cheer whenever a catcher successfully shags all the pop-ups in his turn. Josh Thole needs a quick move to get to his fourth and final pop, and the crowd gasps in approval. “The dolphin show starts in 25 minutes,” Jon Debus says to the crowd as the catchers pack up.

There is more, then: Pedro Beato, Jenrry Mejia, Dillon Gee and Pat Misch pitching, with Beltran, Murphy, Davis, Reyes and Wright, among others, standing in the cage tracking pitches. Other stuff on other fields. Baseball everywhere you look.

This is right about the time when, this time of year, the sun breaks between the buildings at 40 and 30 Rockefeller Center, beaming into the window at my desk and making staring at my computer a brutal exercise. That is normally my  main concern at 1:17 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon. So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m a bit overstimulated today.

Twitterer @bjr54 needs your help. He has an Omar Minaya autographed baseball and he wants to know what to do with it. He, like most of us, doesn’t have the money to blast it into space, which was my first suggestion. (Full disclosure: This is my first suggestion whenever anyone asks me for advice on anything. “My sandwich is a little dry, what should I do?” Blast it into space. “My car is making a weird rattling noise near the left front wheel-well, any idea what it could be?” No. Blast it into space. “I’m thinking about breaking up with my boyfriend, but I can’t find the words.” You don’t need to; blast him into space.)

Anyway, he’s considering selling it on ebay or burning it, but I figure we can put our heads together and come up with something. If we have enough ideas I’ll run a poll sometime next week. For what it’s worth, a bunch of Omar Minaya autographed balls are selling on ebay and it doesn’t seem like they’re exactly inspiring bidding wars.

Me, I’d probably just use the thing. I mean, no use burning a good baseball, right? Of course, the whole autograph thing has always been weird to me.

Any better ideas?

Every minor signing the Mets have made this offseason – and they’ve all been minor signings — I’ve liked. I see the upside. But do I like new guys because I think they’re good . . . or do I like them because the new front office brought them in, and I’m just happily drinking the sabermetric Kool-Aid?

– Patrick Flood, PatrickFloodBlog.com.

Patrick, who is smart and has a great blog that you should read daily, has grown concerned that his optimism about the Mets’ offseason is unwarranted, the product more of the men responsible — the sabermetricians hired to run the front office — than the actual roster moves. Specifically, he is worried, as I have been, that he is “drinking the Kool-Aid.”

Drinking the Kool-Aid. That phrase has echoed through Twitter and blogs and talk-radio this offseason. Whenever a Mets fan expresses any tiny shred of positivity about the Mets’ 2011 campaign, he is accused of drinking the Kool-Aid. Always like that.

The term, if you are not familiar, stems from the Jonestown massacre, the largest mass suicide in modern history. Cult members drank Kool Aid* spiked with cyanide, per the instructions of leader Jim Jones.

Yes: If you think people with knowledge of sabermetrics can help a team win with a limited budget, lace up the blue-and-white Nikes, bro, because you’re a brainwashed member of a suicide cult. If you even so much as suggest that the Mets might not implode and lose 120 games in 2011, you are just another mindless victim of a vast and evil conspiracy.

F@#$. That.

It is 65 degrees and sunny in New York, and 51st street smells like pizza and industry. Baseball teams are doing baseball stuff in Florida, I just ate delicious tacos, and I want to look forward to the Mets’ season without feeling like I’m some sort of chump and/or sucker.

Last I checked, these Ivory-tower nerds that have inspired so much snark are the same dudes I’ve wished could be running the Mets since I started reading Rob Neyer’s ESPN SportsZone column in the mid-90s. And this so-called sabermetric Kool-Aid I’ve been accused of drinking, that actually… that actually works, right? Isn’t that the point?

The Mets’ 2011 lineup will start with Jose Reyes, Angel Pagan, David Wright, Carlos Beltran, Jason Bay and Ike Davis. That’s good. Assuming Josh Thole and Ronny Paulino combine to make for a capable-hitting (or, hell, more than capable-hitting) catcher and the team can find someone who’s not Luis Castillo to man second base, the Mets are going to score a lot of runs this year. And for the first time in recent memory, they’ve actually got viable Major League-ready contingency plans at most positions.

Of course the pitching staff is a big dice-roll, and will be at best just OK. We know this. Jon Niese will have to improve and R.A. Dickey will have to avoid regressing and Mike Pelfrey will have to try to once and for all show he can be more than a league-average innings-eater. And whoever winds up in the back end of the rotation will have to stay healthy and effective enough to keep the team in games and the bullpen out of games until, fingers crossed, Johan Santana returns (if he ever does).

So pitching is not the Mets’ strong point. But here’s the fun thing: No team is perfect. Did you know that the Phillies had a league-average offense last year and that the now-departed Jayson Werth was their best hitter? Do you know that the Braves may actually start the season with Nate McLouth in their lineup?

Look: Would I bet money on the Mets winning the NL East in 2011? No, of course not. But the pitiful fatalism among the Mets fans and media certain that the team will be terrible (and sure that anyone who says otherwise has been brainwashed) is downright stupid. It’s baseball. There are still 162 games to play. That’s the whole damn point.

Is it such a terrible thing to enjoy optimism unbridled, even if it’s just for now? Is it foolish to think the Mets, for the first time in decades, might actually be in the hands of a capable front office, and that saying so is not tacitly approving of messy lawsuits or corporate espionage or Ponzi schemes or lord knows what else?

Now you may point out that I work here at SNY, and I am indirectly employed by Mets ownership, so perhaps I am being told to serve up a heaping helping of optimism in these otherwise tumultuous times. To that I say this: Piss off. Honestly. If you don’t believe that the thoughts and opinions contained in this blog are 100 percent my own, just go away. I don’t want to waste any more time than I already have couching for conspiracy theorists.

I am a Mets fan. Like, I presume, fans of the 29 other Major League teams, I am seeing all silver linings and no storm clouds these days. Baseball stuff is happening, and this is my last day at my desk before I head to Port St. Lucie on Tuesday to watch it happen. The Mets have not been good for a couple of years, they did not spend much money this offseason, and their owners are embroiled in a public legal nightmare. But even despite all that these are good and hopeful times, and I want to enjoy them without having to excuse myself.

*- It was actually a knock-off brand called Flavor-Aid, but this detail has been mostly lost in time.