Are you having fun?

[Gwreck]

I could use a Pancake Triple Play right about now.

[roger_that]

Frayed Knot wrote: So if you want the extra teams/games/dollars that expanded playoffs bring, do understand the downsides as well. I certainly didn't want these expanded playoffs and plenty of others didn't want them either. And were on record about that long ago.

I thought and think they were a great idea. I love the idea of disadvantaging teams that fail to win to win their divisions outright. I believe that if you don't win your division, you should play a series (I'd favor a single game) that puts your entire season on the line, and THEN if you win that series, you have to play a well-rested division winner on the road. Make the 162-game season mean a lot, virtually give the division winners a foot-on-the-throat advantage in the post-season, because if you can't win your division, you don't really deserve to play in the post-season at all.



That's what I believe. These wild card series ought to be a killer, using up your best pitchers, exhausting your tired regulars who need a BYE, putting you at a terrible advantage if you win it and have to face a strong, rested opponent, and sending you home in disgrace if you lose it.



My idea of fun baseball is what LA has now, sitting back, resting up, making their intense plans for dealing with the Pets or Madres who they're watching on TV, and coming out next week feeling confident that they're playing against a beatup opponent who've used their bullpen to death and whose starting pitchers have just used up everything they've got. That's fun.

[Frayed Knot]

Hey, if you want to make the case for larger and larger playoff pools then have at it. My point is that I believe expanding the pool leads fans of upper tier playoff teams to Expect that early round games are supposed to be sure wins which in turn tends to lead to the type of anger with which you started this thread when a playoff ouster, or even a one game stumble, occurs.



Can't tell you how often I've heard hoops and/or hockey fans in particular say, with a significant amount of dread in their voice, that their team's second round playoff matchup "isn't going to be easy". Yeah, it's not supposed to be.

[roger_that]

Frayed Knot wrote: Hey, if you want to make the case for larger and larger playoff pools then have at it.

The idea, as I see it, is to keep a larger number of teams in the chase for the post-season as long as you can, eliminating the boring outcome of many teams being totally out of the competition by late August BUT to have those lesser teams know that if they do get into the post-season they will face an almost insurmountable slog, facing in the second round well-rested division winners and in the winners' home park. It's a consolation prize, and hardly worth having but worth having because it's (barely) better than the alternative which is no playoffs at all.



If the Mets advance at this point, it will be because they've overcome steep odds, beating superior competition with loads of advantages against them. If they do that, by my lights, then they'll deserve to advance, but the odds are against them, as they should be.



I would much rather be the Braves at this point, and that's as it should be. The Braves won the division, played tough when they needed to, and hats off to them.

[Edgy MD]

My idea of fun involves lots of ziplines.

[Ceetar]

I think all Mets relievers should zip line in from the Shea Bridge to the mound.

[roger_that]

I actually came up with a system far more radical than the current playoff system, in which you fix the number of teams eligible for the playoffs in August, essentially every team above .500 or reasonably close to it, and have the bottom-most of those two teams try to eliminate its opponent in a 3-game series, the winner going on to face the next-higher ranked opponent in another 3-game elimination tournament (while the rest of the league finishes out the regular season), and so on, meaning that by the time you reach the teams that would be in the playoffs under the current setup, the wild card survivor would have won a goodly number of three-games series against pretty good teams.

[smg58]

Willets Point wrote: The "fans" who have this kind of attitude are something I can never comprehend. Baseball is fun. It's supposed to be fun, as are all spectator sports. If it causes one to feel misery and anger, then for one's own mental health, it's time to pursue another hobby.

This, this, this, and this again.

[kcmets]

I think all Mets relievers should zip line in from the Shea Bridge to the mound.

NOW we're talking!



Puts a whole new slant on, "get me the bullpen on the wire."

[roger_that]

I think all Mets relievers should zip line in from the Shea Bridge to the mound. NOW we're talking! Puts a whole new slant on, "get me the bullpen on the wire."

How about parachuting into the game like that dude did in the '86 Series?

[roger_that]

The fuck. The one thing you tell any player going into a pressure situation is, go out there and have fun. Do you really, truly want him to say, ”holy shit were all worried. Literally shitting literal bricks. I'm going to go to the plat tomorrow with such a tight grip on my bat that I'll squeeze it into diamonds. We're fucked we know it and we're gonna play like it. Lfgm” Is that the sound bite you'd prefer?

My personal preference? Something like you'd imagine Michael Jordan saying with his team facing elimination following a brutal loss. Or Bob Gibson. Or Lawrence Taylor. The word "fun" is nowhere near their ultra-competitive, angry mouths. In fact, no word or person is near their mouths in that situation because it would get bitten off and chewed up and spat out.



There is a HUGE difference btw between a manager saying to his team in private "Go out and there and have fun" and a player telling a reporter "This is fun baseball." It's so huge I can't conclude we understand the same language if you really think they're the same.





P.S. After I posted the above, Howie Rose tweeted that tonight is John Lennon's birthday and Jerry Grote's--two of my alltime favorites. I was trying to think of the Met whose competitiveness was on a near-toxic level of Jordan or Gibson or Taylor, and I forgot about Grote, the most pissed-off, angriest, most competitive Met ever.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I'm certain that Pete Alonso is playing as hard, as intense and as cutthroat as you would like him to play, no matter what the hell he said about having fun. Which doesn't matter anyways because pretty much everything they say is carefully calculated for effect rather than honesty. But go ahead and knock yourself out parsing to the infinite degree, the six or eleven words Alonso uttered -- uttered probably without a speck of a half a molecule of the thought that you're putting into his insignificant and throwaway comment that isn't worth half a second of analysis.

[Edgy MD]

My personal preference is for Pete Alonso to go out and hit his first post-season homerun for the game-winning RBI. And that preference has been granted. That's one post-season homer more than Jordan, Taylor, and Grote put together, but still one behind Gibson.



I hope Alonso has twice as much fun today.

[Ceetar]

I have to say though, Alonso could've done a bat flip or something. was a little lacking.

[Frayed Knot]

Not a whole lot of ballplayers more competitive than Pete Rose and there's a story about him in game six 1975, aka: what would become known as the Carlton Fisk game.



That game was already a wild back and forth arrair long before Fisk entered into the body English olympics. So a Boston player, forget which one, gets on 1st at some point in the late innings and is greeted by Rose asking him, "Is this a great game or what?".



iow, depending on how one wants to micro-define 'fun', I don't think it and competitiveness are mutually exclusive concepts.

[roger_that]

I'm objecting very specifically to the wording "This is fun baseball." I don't think I'd have nearly as much problem with Pete Alonso saying "This was a great game," although it wasn't, not in the sense that Rose meant. BTW, I doubt very much, without checking, that Rose was playing 1b on the 1975 Series. I remember that anecdote as Rose reaching first, though that could be wrong as well.

[kcmets]

Frayed Knot wrote: forget which one, gets on 1st at some point in the late innings and is greeted by Rose asking him, "Is this a great game or what?".

Well, I don't know if Charlie Hustle is the best example. He may of just had

big money on the game and was pumped that he was 'winning.'

[ashie62]

This will all be a distant memory after a Mets win tonight

[Edgy MD]

Fun, nasty fun.

[batmagadanleadoff]

This will all be a distant memory after a Mets win tonight

The over the top dramarama and angst here is just mind-boggling. Who gives a flying fuck how Alonso "feels" and what "he said? It doesn't even matter. So long as Alonso's giving it his all, I couldn't care less if he's wearing diapers beneath his uni.

[bmfc1]

Pete's locker room quotes are amusing because they are akin to the vapid ones that Crash Davis taught to Nuke in "Bull Durham". He's trying to politely respond without saying anything that could make headlines.

[roger_that]

=bmfc1 post_id=110780 time=1665358318 user_id=73]
He's trying to politely respond without saying anything that could make headlines.

[ashie62]

Why put a mike in his face there?

[roger_that]

=ashie62 post_id=110832 time=1665361119 user_id=90]
Why put a mike in his face there?

[Ceetar]

oh, the reporters are trash too, but that's not the point.

[roger_that]

Yes, the point is that the Mets are celebrating such a fun performance at the crucial part of their season, and how we're all having such a jolly time today, celebrating their magnificent job of rising to the occasion when the season was on the line.



I understand.

[Benjamin Grimm]

It's just a game. They had a great season, but fell short. It happens. Every year it happens to multiple teams. This year it happened to the Mets. We can either choose to wallow in angst or to get on with our lives. I know that there are those who prefer the first option, but I'll never understand why.

[kcmets]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: We can either choose to wallow in angst or to get on with our lives. I know that there are those who prefer the first option, but I'll never understand why.

I understand it. At different times in my life I've been emotionally married to

the Mets (and to a lesser extent, the Knicks and Jets) but I'm just not there today.

I have fifteen worries right now, some macro worries and some micro. The Mets

blowing a double digit division lead and crapping the bed down the stretch is just

history now. Put it in the books. They're over there in that dumpster fire.



#lgm #ygb #ymdyf

[Edgy MD]

I'm ready to start my winter with a few extra hours in my day.



It would have been really cool if they won. Somebody else winning? That's alright also.

[A Boy Named Seo]

Last night I said farewell to having another season of Mets baseball as a daily companion to a personal year that's alternated between wonderful, challenging and painful. Having a New York Mets baseball game on every day is a comfortable and nostalgic soundtrack to my life. And sometimes they're good. This year they were really damn good. These brief playoffs were nerve-wracking, ultimately disappointing, but absolutely fun. I would take these playoffs over no playoffs 100 times out of 100 because baseball is fucking FUN.



And like kc said, most people have so many other stressors or worries in their lives that a baseball team losing has to compete really hard for those emotions. My $.02 - if they're causing you this much angst, then cheers, your life's pretty rad otherwise, enjoy it.