COHEN'S CORNER SPORTS

Spring Training is supposed to be a time for some good ole' team bonding and team chemistry. Players get reacquainted with each other, share old stories, share new stories, hang out and prepare for the monotony of 162 games in six long months. That is why players go down to Florida and Arizona in mid-February and stay there until April 1. It's all about preperation, timing and execution. If a team fails miserably during the regular season, or if the team appears divided in the clubhouse, many point to the strategies of the manager during spring training as the main culprit. For the New York Mets, they are a team out of excuses, yet they keep trying to make them. In this year's installment of the World Baseball Classic, the Mets are the most depleted team in camp this spring, having shiped off a league leading 16 players to the idiotic contest. Gone are Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado, Carlos Beltran, Pedro Feliciano, Francisco Rodriguez, J.J. Putz, Oliver Perez, Alex Cora and Da...

One of the most important concepts in building a winning team in any sport is chemistry. It is the one science that is the difference between winners and losers, and the New York Mets ought to know a lot about that. For the better part of the past two years, fans have heard rumors that the clubhouse had been divided among the players. For example, in 2007 Paul Lo Duca made an insulting comment about the Hispanic players in the room when he told the media that they, too, spoke English. Then last year, Billy Wagner wondered why the media kept interviewing him and proceeded to throw his Hispanic teammates, Carlos Delgado, Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes, under the bus, when he remarked, "Oh, gee, what a shock they are not here" in frustration that he had to answer for them. It is this divide that might have spelled doom for the Mets in both 2007 and 2008, and in 2009 Manager Jerry Manuel has to ... better yet ... must find a way to get these players to work together and develop c...