A few weeks ago, Joe McDonald – who's doing a wonderful job running the Mets Online Fan Forum (and dare we say, its accompanying web enterprise?) since the legal issues with Major League Baseball – asked me to chip into this new MOFO Sports web site with a little bit of history; some insight into the way this whole thing got up and running all those years ago.

I'd be lying if I said that somewhere, deep in the mind of this high school freshman, I'd thought I was going to be typing away to you almost eight years later when the idea for an unofficial Mets website popped into my mind in April, 1996. (Heck, back then, I thought that by now, I'd be well on my way to becoming a New York State Trooper. But sometimes things work out under different plans.)

This is probably hard to believe for those of you who weren't around for those early days of the Internet, the clean and crisp days in which Javascript seemed like a funky new idea, pop-up ads were just a glimmer in the eye of some shut-in programmer and we gasped over the ideas of such revolutionary concepts as tables that actually stuck to the right side of the web page.

But back in those virgin days of the Web, Major League Baseball was not a force – there was no MLB.com as it exists today, with its independent reporting and instant score updates and the like. As I remember it, there were only two official team web sites at that time – the Mariners and the Yankees – and the Internet was a vast wasteland for anyone looking for Mets information, like young baseball fans from Suffern, New York.

Well, if the Mets weren't going to step up and deliver some worthwhile content (and they wouldn't until 1999), for some reason I felt a responsibility to do it myself. Don't ask why. Really, I have no answer for you.

On April 15, 1996, after a few weeks on the shelf, Mets Online made its Internet debut – a cheesy wood-grained web site featuring a '69 Topps Tom Seaver and a '94 Fleer Ultra Jeff Kent atop the screen to signify its allegiance to the Mets. Except, it wasn't Mets Online then – that name change would come a few months later, when a Wall Street Journal article spotlighted the site as one of the Internet's leading fan websites. We were on our way.

I'm sorry to say that I don't recall the exact timeline of events throughout the site's six-year run as the Internet's top Mets fan site (some even e-mailed saying they thought it was better than Mets.com – I always begged to differ), but I do have a few favorite memories from those days.

As many of you know, my main objective – much as it is now, as a sportswriter trying to make my name in the big New York picture – was to provide fans with a clear picture of what's going on with the Mets, and to have a little bit of fun with it at the same time.

Back in those MetsOnline days, I couldn't have accomplished that without the help of Staten Island's Jonathan S. Weissman, who was absolutely masterful in his work on the 'Mets Journal' series. Those dot-com diaries of Mets fandom really lit up the site from 1997 on and got it going full-steam. Without his in-depth, insider-esque work (essentially bringing thousands of Mets fans to Shea Stadium with him, and introducing them to some of the club's vibrant personalities), you might not be reading this right now. Seriously.

In addition to Jonathan's work, we had a lot of cool stuff going on at metsonline.net, which became the domain name sometime in the late 1990's (some of you probably still remember the old days at ICU.com, a local ISP up here in Rockland County). There were original feature articles and current news – especially the wildly popular 'Rumor Mill,' which seemed like it was ahead of its time (I believe it pre-dated the ESPN.com MLB version) – multimedia images and sound clips, because you can never get enough of Bob Murphy saying the word "damn," and lots, lots more.

Of course, there was always the MOFO, with its wild and eccentric band of characters – some of whom quarreled at times, sure, but it was mostly rooted in their deep and passionate affection for the Mets and for baseball. I mean, go check out the FAQ on that message board; the place was practically its own offshoot of Mets-world – remember Avi and the dot scandal; Baseball Mom and her 'Cookies'; Ms. Met and her 'Thoughts on the Game'? That was all (mostly) fun to read, and a few of those regulars are still on MOFO Sports today, which is great to see.

A few other moments, off of the top of my head – the Bobby Valentine at Wharton scandal, which consisted of a UPenn student filing a transcript of the manager's 'confidential' speech to the school of business in April 2000 and almost got Valentine fired a full two years before he finally (and unjustly, in my opinion) bit the bullet …

The two Mets Online days at Shea Stadium, one in the picnic area in left field in the sweltering heat of an August '01 afternoon, shouting down to Shinjo over hot dogs and lukewarm spring water, and the next in the mezzanine for a night game in '02. I still have the banner that got tacked up in the left-field picnic area, just begging for some TV time…

Breaking the news online a full 24 hours before any New York paper or media outlet had it: the Mets had acquired Mark Guthrie and Tyler Yates (whom Jim Duquette thinks may some day be a closer or top-flight starter!) from Oakland for David Justice … a small note, but at the time, that was big to me …

Peacefully co-existing for the 2000 season between my duties at MetsOnline, writing and reporting, and doing a similar task as an unpaid intern for Mets.com. That was just an amazing experience, and I really do think that all of the readers' support and kind words throughout the years helped me gain the confidence to hit that task head-on. …

And finally, the one I really remember, and will forever, was getting out of an early college class and coming back to work on some mundane task – I believe I was re-sizing a photograph of Kevin Appier – when I first heard that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. For the next several hours, I continually redid the main news page of the site with the latest information, urging people to evacuate Lower Manhattan and that the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania had also been hit by terrorism; reflecting the way our world had changed, and remains changed today. I thought if even one office worker in Manhattan had been alerted to the danger via MetsOnline, I felt like I'd be able to help sort out the confusion in some small, trifling way.

Unlikely, of course – or so I thought, until a man e-mailed me later that week to tell me he'd been locked in his office and the site was his only link to the outside world for 15 minutes. Scary stuff.

Those thoughts aside, I do have to say that throughout it all, the content was never better on Mets Online than its last day after MLB Properties requested the shutdown due to copyright concerns – July 30, 2002.

We may all have our own opinions about that incident (believe me – I received hundreds of e-mails, and I thank all of you for that), but the site just would not have been any better with a re-launch, at least not under my control. At that point, I was a credentialed writer covering the Mets, and had slowly added a team of unpaid freelancers who were hungrily looking to have their work read by a widespread and discerning audience: the usual 15,000-20,000 readers a day that MetsOnline.net was servicing at that point was a pretty good jumping board for those careers, including mine.

I really harbor no ill will toward that entire fiasco with MLB; they have their rules and copyrights to enforce, and heck, maybe it was just my time to move on to something bigger and better. I will tell you, however, that since leaving the site in Joe's very capable hands after a brief hiatus, I do sometimes think back to the way things were, and alternately a.) wish I had that kind of responsibility again, and b.) give a word of thanks that I don't have that kind of responsibility anymore.

It's all good. Keep on reading and enjoying, and above all else, Let's Go Mets!

Yours,

Bryan Hoch

Nov. 9, 2003