A-P "So You Think You're A Sportswriter" Thread

[Willets Point]

That's because some people include sarcasm in their sarcasm meter.

[metirish]

[url=http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxMTQmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTY5OTU5NTUmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2]Valentine sends his love to the Mets[/url]

] Saturday, September 23, 2006 In the tidal wave of congratulatory e-mails that've flooded Omar Minaya's in-box this week, this one reached out from cyberspace and grabbed the Mets' general manager by his virtual collar. "I hope I am not the last one to say how happy I am for you and the entire organization. Please extend my congratulations to Fred, Jeff, Willie and all the members of the organization. You deserve it. Keep up the great work -- Bobby V." The note, short and obviously sweet, was dispatched from Japan, where Bobby Valentine has been living a successful post-Shea existence. He manages the Chiba Lotte Marines, the reigning Japanese League champions, and has long since overcome any homesickness. When asked if he intends to ever return to the major leagues, Valentine laughed and said, "What for?" Yet, a part of him still bonds with the Mets, the very team that dismissed him in 2002, only two years after winning the National League pennant. You'd think Valentine would be the last one to root for another renaissance in Flushing, but his e-mail, as well as his praise for Minaya and manager Willie Randolph in a telephone conversation this week, proved otherwise. "I tip my hat to Omar for speaking out and being bold and I tip my hat gladly and graciously to Willie for keeping it together," Valentine said. "It's one thing to put it together and another thing to keep it together. Willie has done a hell of a job keeping that team together. If there were any problems [in the clubhouse], I'm sure I would've heard about it one way or another. And I didn't hear a thing all year." Valentine's attachment to Minaya started with the Rangers in the '90s; his fondness for Randolph blossomed during their playing days with the Mets and Yankees, respectively, in the late '70s. But Valentine has two other reasons for endorsing the current administration at Shea. The first is his enjoyment at seeing the Braves -- and specifically, Bobby Cox, his arch rival -- finally humbled. To Valentine, Cox was old and mean and spiteful. To Cox, Valentine was precocious and ego-driven. Even from afar, Valentine considers the Braves' collapse in 2006 a moral victory, or as he put it, "a real feather in [the Mets'] caps. "It felt like it was never going to happen," he said of the Braves' sub-.500 record. "This was a fitting touch." Valentine's other rooting interest was to see Minaya succeed where Steve Phillips failed. It was Phillips who fired Valentine after sabotaging him with old players, bad contracts and an appalling lack of support. By 2003, the Mets were the worst team money could buy, spiraling into a dark age that resembled the one from the Jeff Torborg-Al Harazin era in the early '90s. It wasn't long before Phillips was canned, too, never again finding front office work (just like Harazin.). Valentine, on the other hand, has restored his reputation with unprecedented success in Japan, where he took the Marines to a championship in just his second year as manager. He still loves the idea of a global bragging rights match between the World Series winner and the Japanese champ, although he says his Marines, hobbled by injuries in the second half of the 2006 season, would be no match for the Mets this year. "That's some lineup," Valentine said. "I'm not able to watch them on an everyday basis; I guess once every 10 days or so I catch a game on TV. But what impresses me is that Omar has relied on his baseball people to make decisions. It's been an organizational commitment and that's usually the way you have success. It doesn't have to be one song that everyone marches to, but you need one voice." Stitched into that response is praise for the Wilpon family for writing the checks that turned the Mets into an NL superpower. As Valentine noted, the Mets' hierarchy finally has deferred to the baseball brain trust. Of course, it's natural to wonder how Valentine feels about missing out on the Wilpons' awakening. His career-path might've been different if, say, Phillips was dismissed sooner or if Fred Wilpon decided to take on Alex Rodriguez's contract (and his emotional baggage). But Valentine has no such regrets. He doesn't even think about managing the Mets or the Yankees or any other major league team again, not as long as he's happy in Japan (which he is) and the Marines want him there (seemingly forever). But Valentine does plan a trip home in October which, ironically, coincides with the middle games of the World Series. He's already crossing his fingers in hopes of watching a Subway Series, where his loyalties to the Mets would be resurrected. "If I were to look into a crystal ball, I would say there's going to be one little thing that will turn in the Mets' favor," Valentine said. "It just seems like it's their year." Would he show up at Shea to see the Mets finish what they started in 2000? Valentine's laugh was loud and crisp through the phone's transcontinental static. "Hopefully there are two tickets for me somewhere," is what he said.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Wally Matthews is good and wrong here.

Good and wrong.

I saw the headline and had hope that he had it correctly, but no.

Wallace Matthews: An idea that never gets old: Stockpile pitching

This is what happens when you hire old men to do young men's jobs.

You pitch 132 innings, little more than half a season, and for no discernible reason, things start to break down. Out of nowhere, your hip starts to ache, or one of your fingertips goes numb, or you blow out your rotator cuff.


Or, you're simply doing your routine between-start wind sprints and there's a grab in your calf that you know is not good news.

As of last night, Orlando Hernandez says he will give it a go in this afternoon's NLDS Game 1 against the Dodgers at Shea Stadium. We shall see if that is just an old man's bravado or the kind of October effort El Duque used to summon up with regularity in an earlier time with another New York baseball team.

Either way, the fate of this Mets dream season should never have come down to a game-day decision on the morning of their first playoff game in six years.

But this, too, is what happens when a team muscles up on the hitting and holds its breath on the pitching.

The injury to Hernandez, following closely on the heels of the rotator-cuff injury that ended Pedro Martinez's season and perhaps his Mets career, has the feel of a crushing bill finally coming due.

Now, if El Duque can't go, the season will be left in the right hand of John Maine, with 24 big-league starts to his credit, none in October.

You can curse the fates if you like for what will today be presented as a most sudden and unfortunate turn of events, but, just like the aging process, this did not happen overnight, nor did it happen by accident.

It happened because, in cooking up their $100-million roster, the Mets somehow left out the pitching.

General manager Omar Minaya has been rightfully praised for buying the Mets an American League lineup. Nobody liked to mention that he also bought them a Senior League rotation.

In building this team, the Mets ignored a century of baseball history and 45 years of their own. Shea Stadium is, has, and always will be a pitcher's park, and the groundbreaking for every successful Mets team has started on the mound, not in the batter's box. And layoff baseball is a showcase for the arms, not the bars. You need look no further than yesterday's curtain-raiser, won, 3-2, by the Athletics behind Barry Zito to be reminded of that.

Minaya's Mets were designed to win a ton of regular-season games, and they did. But clearly, they weren't built for October, not with a lineup of starters who are aging and infirm.

All season long, the Mets have played Russian Roulette with their starting pitchers. The fact that they hit as well as they did, that they ran as well as they did and that they manufactured as many runs as they did obscured the fact that the pitching was running on Geritol.

Somehow, we all chose to forget Martinez was rarely healthy once August rolled around, let alone October. Or that in his first two seasons as a Met, Tom Glavine was pitching older than his years, which would be a compliment only if applied to Maine. Trachsel was a No. 4 or 5 starter disguised as a No. 3, and the Mets never did find a satisfactory fourth starter among Maine, Brian Bannister, Aaron Heilman, Jose Lima, Alay Soler and Oliver Perez.

Throughout the season, Minaya and Willie Randolph preferred to talk about the quantity in their rotation rather than the quality, but it soon became apparent that having so many starters really meant the Mets didn't have enough good ones.

Now, it has all come home to roost, and all the little errors in judgment obscured by the haze of a winning summer stand out in sharp relief in the crisp light of fall.

At the trading deadline, Zito, a free agent next season, probably could have been had. Perhaps, too, Dontrelle Willis. We know Greg Maddux was available, because the Cubs moved him to the Dodgers.

But at the time, the Mets were still clinging to the fiction that Lastings Milledge was a blue-chip prospect not to be parted with. Now, throughout the league, the word is out on Milledge, and the Mets will be lucky to get a pine-tar rag for him.

Besides, the Mets were going to hit their way out of any trouble their pitching staff got them into, weren't they?

Now, they may have no other choice. They head into October unarmed.

[Willets Point]

]We know Greg Maddux was available, because the Cubs moved him to the Dodgers.

Doesn't this contradict his criticism of having old guys on the pitching staff? Or is it irrelevant to him since Maddux is currently not injured?

[Guest Edgy DC]

Yup. Very wrong.

[metsmarathon]

never let a fact get in the way of a good article, i guess.

]We know Greg Maddux was available, because the Cubs moved him to the Dodgers.

addressed already. he's old. doesn't that make him NOT the kind of pitcher the mets hsould have gotten?

]At the trading deadline, Zito, a free agent next season, probably could have been had.

since he didnt move, tho, doesn't that mean that he probably wasn't available? and it ignores the fact that the A's were a contending team, and so why would they have traded him, their best pitcher, midseason?

]Perhaps, too, Dontrelle Willis.

um, yeah. same thing

and what, no mention of jamie moyer or cory lidle?

]Throughout the season, Minaya and Willie Randolph preferred to talk about the quantity in their rotation rather than the quality, but it soon became apparent that having so many starters really meant the Mets didn't have enough good ones.

i guess that's what happens when you stockpile pitchers, right? wait.. what was the point of this article again?

aren't good starters usually older starters, too, and by definition more prone to injury?

and aren't young starters more prone to inconsistency? i'm confused as to what we're reading about here...

i think wally's complaint is that we haven't had enough good starters for the season. i wish he'd just come out and say it.

of course, in games 1 and 2, the met starters have lower ERA's than the dodger starters.

it doesnt make me very confident, but it helps.

[Elster88]

Yancy Street Gang wrote: The words in the sentence should be sufficient to convey the point that the writer is trying to make.

This statement is not even close to being true. It is very difficult to convey sarcasm with words on the screen.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

I stand by my statement. People have been writing for years without using smiley faces and sarcasm meters.

A good writer can and should get his or her point across without using those "tools."

[metirish]

Wally's back....

] Manage to win despite Randolph October 5, 2006 Going into their first playoff game in six years, the Mets had plenty to worry about. They had a rotation as thin as Chris Woodward's hair, an emergency starter on the mound and two eager but callow kids, Jose Reyes and David Wright, who knew everything about playing in-season games and nothing about playing in October, anchoring their lineup. They had the world's oldest playoff virgin in Carlos Delgado and a closer who had yet to close out a playoff game in five previous appearances. But it turned out the one Met they really had to worry about was the one with the seven championship rings and the blas� attitude of a man who had been everywhere before. The one Met who was supposed to steady the troops proved to be the shakiest of them all. It took Willie Randolph 12 years to manage his first playoff game, and a little over two hours to nearly manage his team out of it. In his first postseason game as a manager after 47 as a player, Randolph seemed as geeked up as any of his players. Vying for Micromanager of the Year, an award thought to have been retired around here with the departure of Bobby Valentine, Randolph yanked one pitcher too soon and stayed with another too long. He played it safe when he should have gambled, and gambled when he should have played it safe. Working with a shortage of quality starters for the playoff run, Randolph found a way to use half his staff in Game 1. Somehow, he managed to get outmanaged by Grady Little. In spite of it all, the Mets held on to beat the Dodgers, 6-5, thanks to Reyes, Wright, Delgado and Dodgers third- base coach Rich Donnelly, who fortunately was only directing baserunners at Shea and not jetliners at LaGuardia. "I've always managed by my instinct and by my gut," Randolph said. "I never second-guess myself. I do what I think is right for the team." Before the game, Randolph had said he wanted five or six quality innings out of John Maine, the late substitute for Orlando Hernandez, who tore a calf muscle running in the outfield on Tuesday. And he would have gotten the innings, if not quite the quality, if he hadn't chosen to pull Maine after just 4 1/3 innings despite the Mets holding a 2-1 lead. At the time, the Dodgers had runners on first and second and one out, and Kenny Lofton, who had looked sick striking out in his first two at-bats, coming up. Randolph instead went to Pedro Feliciano, who also struck out Lofton, then yanked Feliciano for Chad Bradford, who got Nomar Garicaparra, also hitless against Maine, to ground out. "I wasn't surprised," Maine said. "I figured they had a quick trigger, a short leash on me." He also said it was the right decision. But he had thrown just 80 pitches and instead of getting the Mets through the fifth and conceivably the sixth without dipping into the pen, Randolph had now used three pitchers to get through five innings. Perhaps in compensation, Randolph next asked Guillermo Mota to do something he had done only once as a Met, and not at all since Aug. 26 - pitch more than one inning. Mota looked sharp in the sixth, and Randolph, feeling good about the three-run lead the Mets had opened in the bottom of the inning on Wright's two-run double, sent Mota up to hit for himself with the bases loaded and two outs. It was a perfect opportunity to bust the game open - the Mets had righthanded hitters Woodward, Julio Franco and Ramon Castro on the bench to face lefty reliever Mark Hendrickson - but Randolph chose to settle, and Mota flied out to end the inning. "I always like to get the runs," Randolph said. "But in that situation, I just felt like we had our best pitcher out there at the time and I felt like we could hold the lead. Didn't work out that way." Not only did Mota not extend the lead, he gave it back in the seventh on Garciaparra's two-run double. But Reyes, Delgado and Wright bailed out Mota, and the manager, in the bottom of the inning. Wagner did his customary cardiac arrest job in the ninth to escape with the save. Of course, the biggest play of the game was one the Mets had little to do with, the bizarre single-off-the-wall-into-a-double-play in the second inning when first Jeff Kent, then J.D. Drew were tagged out at home on the same Jose Valentin peg to Lo Duca. That, of course, Randolph had seen before, having borne witness to Carlton Fisk slapping a tag first on Bobby Meacham, then Dale Berra in a similar play at Yankee Stadium in 1985. "I remember how funny that play was when I first saw it," Randolph said. "This one was even more humorous to me." Against all odds, the Mets pulled out a key victory yesterday. With floodwaters rising around them, they steadied their ship. Now, all they have to do is steady the skipper.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

Meanwhile, Irish, I share your disdain for Lupica. (I don't share your sexual attraction for him, though. That really should have been in the Confessions thread.)

Anyway, here's another instance where he recycles the same old paragraph for the 900th time:

]Now there is Delgado, who waited a whole baseball life to get some swings in the postseason. When he finally got some, he made the most of them. The Dodgers couldn't hold him and Game 1 couldn't hold him and neither could Shea.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Does Chris Woodward have thin hair? He's shaved it close as long as I remember.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Oh, and the Mets did have plenty to do with that double putout, even if it was a Dodger kerfuffle, and Mota did not give back that lead. The Mets lost it as a team.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

That Matthews column is worse than a steaming pile of shit. It's a bucket of liquid feces.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I like how he rakes the Mets over the coals for pulling Maine the day after he rakes them over the coals for not having anyone better to start than Maine.

[MFS62]

From Tom Verducci at SI.com;

]Postseason chatter It's hard to take the Twins seriously as a big-time postseason team when Rondell White, who can't throw a lick, is your left fielder and Jason Tyner, who is tied with me for lifetime career home runs, is your DH. As brain cramps go, Torii Hunter and Jeff Kent earned their places in playoff infamy on the same day. Hunter's game-blowing dive for Mark Kotsay's line drive was incredibly ill-advised for any player, but especially one of his experience -- and that's even accounting for the ball tailing on him. Kent's failure to score from second base on a ball off the wall that right fielder Shawn Green had zero chance of ever catching was a profoundly awful read made worse by J.D. Drew's Little League baserunning behind him. Somewhere Lonnie Smith was smiling.... The Mets won Game 1 with what's been their style all season and what worked for the 2002 Angels: decent enough starting pitching not to let the game get away, then turning it into a bullpen game while a relentless offense keeps hammering away.

Later

[MFS62]

And Mr. Wagner tries his hand at writing. He apparently took Cliche 101 in school.

]BULLPEN ANSWERS DOUBTERS -- Billy Wagner, the Mets' fire-balling lefty closer, offers his exclusive insights to Post readers throughout the Amazin's post-season run. Yesterday's game had all the drama of a well-crafted play. John Maine, as I predicted, rose to the challenge. My former teammate and friend, Jeff Kent, was thrown out at home, a huge momentum builder for us. Then Carlos Delgado and Cliff Floyd homered for us in dramatic fashion to tie the game and give us the 2-1 lead, much deserving since they are such good teammates and joys to be around in the clubhouse. After much talk-radio mocking and questioning of our pitching - one show host calling us "in crumbles" - we answered back with a great bullpen performance and more heroics from Delgado, who had a day that will live fondly in Mets history. I came on in the ninth, tempering the nerves. Wilson Betemit hit a pitch that kind of got away. I thought it was a pop-up and he ended up with a double. I was able to collect myself, and make some big pitches. I told David Wright at third base after the throw from Carlos Beltran almost got the runner, "How in the world did he hit that ball?" It's just like my papa said, "Calm yourself down. Don't worry about runners, just worry about getting the three outs and winning the game." The lesson paid off. Game 1, the must win, is ours! That was the end result, but it was a roller-coaster ride to get there. The day started off in typical electric New York fashion. I drove to the park early, amid the sad news of Orlando Hernandez's injury. I knew, however, that Maine was up to the challenge even before I reached the player's parking lot. My son Will's class even presented him with a poster when he left school to give to me: "Good Luck Mr. Wagner." Talk about pressure. I knew his class would be watching and I didn't want to let them down. The ride to Shea was filled with nerves and anticipation, but the moment I stepped out of my car the atmosphere rang out that Shea Stadium was "the" place. The energy was positive. Our fans hadn't listened to the critics who had counted us out for dead. What everyone forgot about was we were, and are, a clubhouse of 25 guys, one cab! We have heart and we intended to show the fans that we were wearing our true-blue Mets hearts on our sleeves. Everyone who was anyone was on hand to be seen and heard at the ballpark. I felt like a kid in a candy store. As luck would have it, one of my favorite television characters was in attendance, only as an accomplished adult. Nestled inside that crowded field was a personal favorite of mine - Ron Howard. Opie had come to New York. It took me back to my Mayberry days of signing the contract with Houston in Tannersville, where we had to have the receptionist at the hotel ring us up because there wasn't a direct phone line in the place. The Astros thought I'd sign at the first chance once they looked at Tannersville. But my uncle and Coach Naff were shrewd folk, and we countered. They accepted our counteroffer and the rest is history. Comforted in the pre-game drama, I thought back to my home roots, that there are no such things as pity parties. I grew up at the foothills of the mountains and whenever I felt pity coming on, my papa gave me a shovel and had me dig at the edge of that mountain. The lesson was learned. Work with what you've got and do your best! If you're good enough, you'll persevere in life. It's the same in baseball. I told the younger guys that we win as a team and that we can do it. They didn't need to be pumped up, but I knew that my grandfather's advice rang true today as much as it did when I was a kid.

Later

[Gwreck]

FWIW, that column has the byline "As told to Burton Rocks" in the post.

I believe I read somewhere that Rocks is the ghostwriter for the book Billy's working on.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Opie is one of his favorite television characters?

That's no clich�.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

Wags column is hilarious. I actually parted with 25 U.S. cents for a copy of the Post this morning because the cover featured a closeup of LoDuca post-tag and the 10 billion point headline AMAZIN'

Looked great.

[metirish]

Bill Simmons can be funny.

] Note: For the first time in five years, I get to kick back and watch the baseball playoffs. In October 2002, I was switching jobs and moving from Boston to L.A. In October 2003, I was working 14 hours a day for Kimmel's show. In October 2004, the Red Sox overpowered everything else. In October 2005, I was traveling around the country on two book tours. This year? I'm home. The Red Sox are out. And I get to immerse myself in playoff baseball for four straight weeks. After posting three on Tuesday, here's the final Game 1 diary: Los Angeles at New York. 1:00 p.m. (PST) -- Game 2 of the Twins series runs long enough that Mets-Dodgers gets bumped to ESPN2. Get ready for a disclaimer that starts "We apologize for everyone hoping to see the quarterfinals of the Massengill Women's Nine-Ball Open ... " 1:04 -- Remember when I questioned the ad people working for Holiday Inn? Well, they just ran an ad featuring Joe Buck. In your lifetime, will anyone ever say to his family while pulling off a highway exit: "Apparently Joe Buck likes Holiday Inn ... let's just stay there?" I say no. 1:04 -- Today's announcers: Gary Thorne, Steve Phillips and Joe Morgan, who will leave after the game with a police escort so he can announce Game 2 of tonight's Yankee series. If you ask me, that's a lot of Joe Morgan. I mean, a LOT of Joe Morgan. But you didn't ask me. 1:08 -- On the downside, the Mets' pitching rotation (and postseason chances) have been decimated by injuries. On the upside, that led to today's pitching matchup being Lowe-Maine. Get it? Lowe-Maine. Nearly 200 people e-mailed me this joke today. Don't blame me. 1:10 -- Every time I hear Gary Thorne do a game, I think of him jumping the gun when the Rangers beat the Devils in '94 and making it seem like their curse was over when, in fact, they still had to play the Canucks. And every Rangers fan hated him for the next two weeks until they won the Cup. Then they forgave him. I can't help it. 1:13 -- With two outs, Nomar lifts a foul ball toward the 1B stands and some dopey Mets fan pulls a Bartman on Carlos Delgado. How could that ever happen again after what happened with Bartman? I'm continually amazed. Fortunately, Nomar grounds out to end the top of the first. And yes, there are six ex-Red Sox involved in this game -- Cliff Floyd, D-Lowe, Nomar, Chad Bradford, Grady Little and Pedro (in spirit) -- under MLB's controversial new "at least six people with Boston connections must be involved in every 2006 playoff game" rule. 1:15 -- After the A's beat the Twins, Gary Thorne moves the audience to ESPN by telling us, "For those of you on ESPN2, we're gonna take you to poker ... " Wait, they're showing poker on TV now? When did this happen? 1:18 -- Derek Lowe (sporting a hideous beard) gives up a walk to Beltran and a single to Carlos Delgado. I can't say enough about that beard -- it's right out of the George Lucas Collection. We're going to remember the 2006 Playoffs for the bad facial hair over everything else. 1:22 -- Lowe gets a Wright grounder to end the threat. Hey, if you were a Dodgers fan, would you rather have starting this game, Derek Lowe ... or Matt Clement? Yeah, I thought so. 1:26 -- First shot of a depressed El Duque in the dugout self-consciously feeling his injured calf. In his defense, he's 54 years-old. Old people get hurt. If the Mets lose this month, it will be because they didn't move Lastings Milledge for Barry Zito. As any smart owner in a fantasy keeper league knows, you always, always ALWAYS sell high with your prospects ... hell, even if Zito left after the season, they would have gotten two No. 1 picks for him. That was just dumb. Sure, it wasn't as dumb as 10-12 dumb moves Boston made over the past 24 months, but still, it was dumb. 1:31 -- Now this was incredible: First and second, no outs, Russ Martin slams a potential double off the wall, Jeff Kent (is he wearing gravity boots?) takes so long to chug around third that the Mets gun him down ... only JD Drew is coming right behind him, and HE GETS THROWN OUT, TOO! Who tagged those guys out, Tom Berenger? Unbelievable. All that play was missing was some Benny Hill music. 1:37 -- Wilson Betemit pushes a double down the line (1-0, Dodgers), followed by Maine striking out Lowe to get out of the inning. I still can't get over that last play. All bets are off when Grady Little's involved. Remember the scene in "The Naked Gun" when the cougar ran onto the field and mauled the second baseman? Even that's possible. I'm not ruling any scenario out. 1:42 -- Interesting e-mail from Jackie in New York: "Did you happen to catch the shot of El Duque in the dugout? It was one of the rare times when I hate having HD. Hernandez's nails were freakishly long. The image was both absurd and intriguing. There's no way he clips those things between starts. Unless he's trying out some costume ideas for Halloween?" (See, female readers can bring something to the table! Now I'm dying for another El Duque closeup.) "Aftah the game we'll hop on ah bikes and cruise the Daniel Webstah Highway!" 1:44 -- I'm out of sarcastic things to say about these never-ending Manning commercials. I'm tapped. But here's something good: My old college buddy Kurt Sanger points out that Vito Spatafore probably attended last night's Yankee game because he thought his old chef boyfriend in New Hampshire was now the Tigers closer. Seriously, look at Todd Jones' baseball card. That's the guy, right? 1:50 -- Kenny Lofton strikes out on three pitches and looks overmatched. Morgan credits Maine's "live fastball." Yeah, that was it. See, this is why I should never be allowed near a broadcast booth, I would have made a joke like, "Lofton hasn't looked this overwhelmed since Satchel Paige struck him out six times in a row in 1932." 1:54 -- Paul LoDuca's at-bat music: "Boogie Shoes" by KC and the Sunshine Band. Let's hope this is a veiled "Boogie Nights" homage. 1:57 -- The Mets go out meekly in the third. Jose Reyes is 0-for-2. Which reminds me, one of the most interesting, under-the-radar baseball developments was Reyes quietly seizing the reins from David Wright as "The Cool Young Met That Every Mets Fan Is Wildly Excited About." Vaguely reminiscent of Gooden blowing Straw out of the water in '85 -- nobody saw it coming, and then BOOM! 2:00 -- Mets fans are dreading every Maine closeup. It's one thing to talk yourself into the whole "so what if he's a rookie, he's got ice water in his veins" mind-set, but when they keep showing these HD closeups of him, and he looks like a scared 10th grader who just got dropped off at boarding school by his parents ... well, it's a little disarming. 2:01 -- Now here's a guy who just doesn't give a crap: JD Drew. He carries himself with the intensity of a grocery bagger. It's amazing. He couldn't care less. Or, he could care less. Whatever's grammatically correct. 2:03 -- All right, where is ESPN finding these random sideline reporters for the playoffs? Who's David Amber? Did they launch another season of "Dream Job" this week and not tell us? Instead of using police escorts to make sure Joe Morgan can do two games in one day, shouldn't they be using their resources for Erin Andrews? She couldn't have rode in the car with him? I'm outraged right now. 2:04 -- Actual quote from Joe Morgan: "I always thought Grady Little did a great job, even with Boston, with the exception of the Pedro incident." That's like saying, "I always thought Britney Spears had pretty good taste in men, with the exception of K-Fed." 2:08 -- Time for an in-game interview with Willie Randolph! He had to hold the record for "oldest guy who still gets carded in a bar." He's looked like he was 13 since 1976. 2:09 -- The real-life Pedro Cerrano (Carlos Delgado) homers to dead-center in the fourth. We're tied at one! In your shoe, Joe Boo! By the way, reason No. 2,498 why it's more fun to be a sports fan in the year 2006: Super Slow-Mo. 2:13 -- Home run for former Red Sox player Cliff Floyd. And ... and ... and ... and ... THERE IT IS! It's the Derek Lowe Face! Good times! It's like seeing an old roommate from college or something. Forgot how much I missed the Derek Lowe Face. And yes, I'd still take him over Matt Clement every day and twice on Sunday. 2-1, Mets. 2:16 -- Screw it, let's recycle a joke from yesterday: ESPN should cut to commercial before every two-out Shawn Green at-bat. We could shave some time off the game. 2:19 -- Morgan: "The most important inning in a game is the inning after you take the lead." You know what? I'm still going with the ninth inning is the most important inning of the game. Thanks, though. 2:26 -- Two guys on, one out in the fifth ... and Willie pulls Maine so Pedro Feliciano can pitch to Cool Papa Lofton. That's followed by the obligatory post-commercial shot of Maine being consoled in the dugout with one of those, " ... but Dad said I could pitch at least five innings!" pouts on his face, then Feliciano easily striking out Lofton. Enjoyable sequence. Well-played by Willie. He's my favorite manager of the playoffs so far. Plus, I'm almost positive that he played Dudley on "Different Strokes." 2:29 -- Chad Bradford gets a Nomar grounder to end the fifth. This ex-Red Sox thing isn't even funny anymore. Meanwhile, Joe Morgan says goodbye to Thorne and Phillips -- he's headed to Yankee Stadium for tonight's game. I wait for Joe to point out, "If you have a police escort, that means you get to Yankee Stadium faster" or "the big difference between Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium is that the Yankees play in Yankee Stadium." Doesn't happen. 2:33 -- Either Grady Little didn't want to be interviewed, or ESPN decided against interviewing him because he sounds too much like Forrest Gump. Whatever the reason, they're using pitching coach Rick Honeycutt for their in-game interview right now. Probably a good move. 2:36 -- Time for the obligatory "Greg Maddux's experience and savvy has really helped this team on and off the field," as mandated by MLB's contract with ESPN. 2:37 -- Buck Showalter ... out with the Rangers! Why even play the 2007 season now? I'm already excited for Vicente Padilla sulking his way through the champagne celebration next October. Meanwhile, Lowe gets the Mets 1-2-3 to end the fifth. 2:40 -- Nice job by ESPN running the famous 1985 play when Carlton Fisk tagged out two Yankees (Bobby Meacham and Dale Berra) on the same play. Although that play wasn't nearly as impressive as today's play because Berra was probably coked out of his mind at the time. 2:44 -- Thorne and Phillips gush about Paul LoDuca's various positive effects on the Mets. Paul DePodesta rises from his sofa to make a mixed drink. 2:45 -- Guillermo Mota throws a 1-2-3 sixth inning. Put it this way: If you're a failed AL pitcher, and your agent doesn't tell you, "Don't give up, I'm gonna find you a NL team," you need to fire that guy, pronto. 2:52 -- Sixth inning, two on, one out for the Mets, Lowe at 86 pitches, Penny and Hendrickson warming up for the Dodgers, Wright at the plate, and Phillips just called Lowe the "most significant groundball pitcher in the game today" as Brandon Webb whipped a remote at his TV. Just a lot going on right now. 2:54 -- A two-run double for Wright, followed by his signature right-hand punch and another glimpse of the Derek Lowe Face. Mets lead, 4-1. You could feel that one coming. Hey, did I mention Ron Howard, John McEnroe and Ray Romano are in the stands? 2:57 -- Lowe gives way to a former Tampa pitcher with a 6-15 record (Mark Hendrickson) ... and of course, the guy promptly strikes out Shawn Green. Classic. Green should just put on a Rudi Stein wig and be done with it. Somehow, Hendrickson gets out of the inning. Diary Corrections/Updates Corrections/updates from Tuesday's diaries: 1. Orel Hershiser isn't from Utah. Neither is Danny Ainge. Although it feels like they should be. 2. Apparently the guy who plays Vito Spatafore attends both Yankees and Mets games. He's a sports bigamist. 3. FYI: I intentionally wrote "Brandon" Arroyo. Remember? McCarver kept calling him this in the 2004 playoffs? 4. Mike Piazza doesn't have a fu manchu, he has a van dyke. 5. According to multiple readers with Taiwanese roots, Chien-Ming Wang really IS the pride of Taiwan. 6. Remember McCarver's comment about Nate Robertson retaliating for Jeter for timing his warmup pitches last night? Robertson was teammates with Ben Christensen at Witchita State -- the guy who famously beaned a batter for doing just that. No wonder he didn't do anything. 3:05 -- Tim Robbins makes a cameo in the booth. He's a Mets fan. Does this mean that Andy Dufresne was a Mets fan then? I want to throw up. 3:09 -- Jose Valentin (an awful second baseman) botches Anderson's bunt single (tough play, but still), then throws away Betemit's potential force at second when he could have just gotten the out at first. You knew he'd rear his ugly head in this series. By the way, instead of Tim Robbins making a cameo, they should have just thrown some chicken blood on the field. 3:12 -- Late-season fantasy murderer Julio Lugo strikes out looking. Of course, he did. Meanwhile, Sam from L.A. writes, "two of my favorite things growing up: the Mets and Pearl Jam. Please don't let Tim Robbins ruin both in the same year." 3:14 -- Furcal strokes an RBI-single to center. 4-2, Dodgers. No big surprise: He has been their best player for about two months. That's followed by a Lofton flyout, Nomar coming to the plate with two outs and Gary Thorne asking Robbins questions about his new movie as every Mets fan freaks out. Um, it's the seventh inning, Gary! It's the playoffs! I'm not even a Mets fan, and I'm violated by this. 3:18 -- Nomar rips a 1-2 pitch down the line for a double and two RBI. No-mahhhhhhh! How was Wright not playing the line on that one? More importantly, what chain of events needs to happen for Robbins to gracefully exit the ESPN booth for the sake of the Mets? "You know what I'm thinking?" Robbins says. "It's all my fault." No, that's what everyone's thinking, Tim. I guarantee there won't be a single Mets fan heading to the theater for "Catch a Fire" on Oct. 27. Thankfully, Kent whiffs to end the seventh. 3:20 -- Lyndon from New York writes, "It's only Game One of the AAAA-DS and Nomar already has more big hits in the playoffs with the Dodgers than he ever had with the Red Sox." Knew that was coming. By the way, is there an overload of fertility ads and hair loss ads during these games, or is it just me? Are they trying to tell us something? 3:34 -- Tough inning for Brad Penny, who's inexplicably pitching right now even though he started the All-Star Game three months ago: Walk to Reyes, out, walk to Beltran, RBI single for Cerrano, RBI double for Wright. 6-4, Mets. Shea is rocking. Grady Little is involved and doing inexplicable things. I'm getting flashbacks. This isn't good. I feel sick. 3:37 -- Shawn Green ends another inning. I think he worked harder on Yom Kippur. 3:41 -- JD Drew kicks off the eighth with a lazy flyball out off Aaron Heilman. We might need to get him a venti soy latte or something. Meanwhile, Karl Ravech breaks into the broadcast to tell us that Joe Morgan has, indeed, arrived at Yankee Stadium. Dammit! (Um ... I mean ... what a relief!) 2:47 -- Easy eighth inning for Aaron Heilman. He's good. Hold on, Ruby Tuesday is about to change our perception of what a burger should be. (Waiting.) Nope. Didn't happen. 2:51 -- Grady brings in the guy who SHOULD have pitched the previous inning: Flamethrower Jonathan Broxton, who struck out 39 guys in 29.1 innings in August/September and had a 1.55 ERA. I'm beginning to think Grady might be a bad playoff manager. 3:00 -- Wow, this hurts. I'm a few minutes behind the game on my TiVo right now, but the TiVo was manually set to record NESN for Red Sox games even though the season ended two days ago ... that's right, I'm suddenly watching bass fishing with Charlie Moore and special guest Ed Marinaro. What a disaster. Hold on. (Fast-forwarding ... ) (Fast-forwarding ... ) 3:04 -- Still 6-4, bottom of the ninth, Billy Wagner pitching, and he yields a leadoff double to Betemit. Shea just got superduperquiet. They don't trust Wagner. At all. You can tell. I'm reeling from my TiVo screwup. I'm supposed to be a professional. Seriously, they pay me and everything. Bad job by me. 3:10 -- Two outs, guy on third, Nomar on deck, Ramon Martinez pinch-hitting ... and he doubles into the right-center gap. 6-5, Mets. What a game! Quadruple-A, everybody! Who knew? 3:14 -- Nomar chases a fastball in the dirt for strike three. Ballgame. Can't decide how to react to that one -- I feel strangely indifferent. Anyway, Andy Dufresne is off the hook. Grady Little is not. Our final score: Mets 6, Dodgers 5. (And yes, that was the same score of Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. I need to have a drink.)

[MFS62]

Sorry, Mike.
Some of us still do:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10082006/sports/hold_on_to_your_hate_sports_mike_vaccaro.htm

and more....

Later

[metsmarathon]

would now be a good time to mention that new york has its own share of poached teams? [cough]yankees[cough]

[stevejrogers]

I actually hate the Dodgers more passionatly than I hate the Yankees.

And with the Yankees, its more the fan base, though the Dodger fan base (arrive late and leave early) is part of my hatred for the Dodgers

[stevejrogers]

Of course by the same token, if many of the heartbroken Dodger fans had actually gone to the games, and had the City not called O'Malley's bluff, we'd be talking about the Brooklyn Dodgers starting Game 1 of the NLCS in O'Malley Stadium over there in Flushing, Queens on Wednesday, and hearing a lament on why they still have the old borough name on the team the way its still New York Jets and Giants!

[stevejrogers]

metsmarathon wrote: would now be a good time to mention that new york has its own share of poached teams? [cough]yankees[cough]

Yeah but I'd hardly put the 1901-1902 Baltimore Orioles on the same level as the Dodgers, Giants, A's, or even the the Colts-Ravens-Browns fiascos

I'll give you that it was a poor imitation of the old NL O's and a damn shame Baltimore didn't get another franchise untill poaching the Browns from St Louis

[MFS62]

]The team, the time By Josh Peter, Yahoo! Sports October 7, 2006 LOS ANGELES � Ladies and gentlemen, introducing your 2006 world champions, the New York Mets. Fit them for the rings. Order the confetti. Schedule the ticker-tape parade. What about the National League Championship Series and the World Series, you ask? Mere formalities. On Saturday night, the Mets not only completed a three-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Division Series but also showed why they�re on their way to winning their first world championship since 1986. So much for that Subway Series. The New York Yankees collapsed. And the Minnesota Twins crumpled. And now the Mets can motor on. Fans of the Oakland A�s, Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Cardinals and San Diego Padres, go ahead and fire away with the vicious emails. I�m just trying to save you the pain and anguish that will come with thinking your teams have a chance to derail the Mets. Their lineup might not be a Murderer�s Row, but it�s capable of manslaughter. Carlos Delgado, Paul Lo Duca, David Wright and Carlos Beltran � watch them pound out hits and soon enough you�ll forget about the team�s suspect starting pitching. The Mets were everybody�s darling when they were running away with the National League East. But just before the playoffs, when Pedro Martinez and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez went down with injuries, and the panic began. Forget about the World Series, naysayers said, the Mets are going to have trouble getting past the streaking Dodgers. But more than exposing anything about the Mets, the loss of Martinez and El Duque revealed something. This team has heart, and it was on display again Saturday night. Oh, sure. New York�s 9-5 victory over the Dodgers was no Picasso. At times it looked downright ugly. Chris Berman in drag ugly. But world champs win ugly. They win pretty. They win in every way imaginable. What they do is win, and in a three-game sweep the Mets showed why they�re not about to stop. Game 1. Delgado, the team�s star first baseman, makes his postseason debut. It�s the kind of pressure that has rattled even the most skilled players, including Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds. But Delgado pounds out four hits, including a home run, and leads the Mets to a 6-5 victory. Oh, and that's with rookie pitcher John Maine starting on the mound. Game 2. With Martinez and El Duque on the shelf, the Mets still need an ace. They look no further than Tom Glavine, who pitches six innings of shutout ball in a 4-1 victory. But it was Game 3 that told us all we need to know about the Mets. They were facing Greg Maddux, the future Hall of Farmer who in six starts this season at Dodger Stadium had a 1.76 ERA. He entered the game with a lifetime record of 35-18 against the Mets. And contemplating retirement at age 40, Maddux looked like a man determined to burnish his Cooperstown credentials with a playoff gem. "Greg's the kind of guy you�ve got to get to early," said catcher Lo Duca. And that's exactly what New York did. The Mets ambushed Maddux for three runs in the top of the first, stringing together five consecutive hits and showing the discipline needed to beat the four-time Cy Young Award winner. Noted for his efficiency, Maddux needed 23 pitches and two sterling defensive plays to get out of the inning. He made it only four innings � his second shortest outing of the year � before being lifted for a pinch hitter with the Dodgers down 4-0. Then came the big Dodgers rally. With Tommy Lasorda pumping his fists. With a sellout crowd of 56,293 stomping its feet. With James Loney delivering a two-run single in the fourth, with Jeff Kent belting a two-run homer in the fifth, with the Dodgers taking a 5-4 lead in that same inning on a bases-loaded walk. "When we got ahead of them, it looked like we had a chance." Lasorda said. Fat chance. It would�ve been easy for a visiting team to succumb to the momentum, get sucked up in the vortex of a sellout crowd, ease up and regroup for Game 4 Sunday and, if necessary, close out the series with Game 5 in New York. Not these Mets. "Put them away," Mets manager Willie Randolph said. "No mercy. You know all the clich�s. But we really believe it." We do, too. The Mets scored three runs in the sixth and began to pound the Dodgers' bullpen into submission and its sellout crowd into silence. After the Dodgers had crept out of their coffin, the Mets bullpen shoved them back in and nailed it shut. "I think it�s just a microcosm of our year," Wright, the Mets' third baseman, said of the victory. "We fell behind in the middle of the game, and to be able to claw back and to be able to fight the way that we did, it just shows the heart and the character of this team. We�ve been doing it all year. It doesn�t matter how many we�re down. It doesn�t matter what�s the situation in the game. We�re confident that we�re going to win." With Guillermo Mota and Aaron Heilman setting up closer Billy Wagner like picadors and banderillos set up a matador, it�s no wonder the Mets are now 75-4 when leading after six innings. The key for the Mets is getting to the seventh inning, and Saturday they did it with the likes of journeyman starter Steve Trachsel and Darren Oliver, Chad Bradford and Pedro Feliciano. Who are they? Beats me, but by the time Mota took over in the sixth it was almost easy to forget that neither Martinez nor El Duque was available to pitch. "There�s a lot of guys that want to prove something," said Lo Duca. "We were the second best pitching team in the National League, and they keep hearing about [the injured pitchers]. I think the guys on the pitching staff take it personally, and they�ve gone out all year and showed they can do it." After the game, Randolph said he was starting to feel something � and it had nothing to do with the champagne spraying overhead. "All year long, we�ve been pushing and battling and preaching to these kids what it takes to play winning baseball," the manager said. "We�re starting to feel it right now." I�m starting to feel something, too. So here�s my prediction: The St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers. Those are the next two victims as the Mets march and mug their way toward baseball�s crown.

Later

[metirish]

This guy reads like he's Lupica...that's something I have noticed ,a bunch of these writers for local papers seem a lot like him.

] Mets bring fun to NY baseball 1 of 1 New York Mets outfielder Endy Chavez makes a diving catch for an out on a ball hit by St. Louis Cardinals batter Ronnie Belliard during the fifth inning of Game 1 of baseball's National League Championship Series, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2006, at Shea Stadium in New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)APOctober 13, 2006 New York � They have the town to themselves, finally, which means New York becomes a little less arrogant, a lot more loveable to the rest of the baseball world. There they were all over Shea Stadium last night, the bubbly, bouncy Mets commanding center stage, knocking the bloated Bronx Bombers from the spotlight � and, more importantly, taking Game 1 of the NLCS from the Cardinals, 2-0. With the Mets the only game in town and around the league last night, the rest of the country could see what we have all these months in New York: A team that gains fans seemingly by the play, that celebrates each teammate as much as it does any win. A team that is just flat-out fun. So the folks used to tuning into another edition of the Yankees soap opera in October saw something quite different from their neighbors over in Queens. Instead of seeing one more shot of Alex Rodriguez's frown, they saw David Wright laugh. "I love it, I love it," Wright said, his eyes growing wide, when he finally let his game-face guard down for a moment after the cameras left. "This is what you dream of. You can't be scared of this. Can't shy away from it." No, the Mets embrace all of this now and with them you see fun replace work, teamwork erase tension. The Mets finally take over for the Yankees now, take over all of New York for the first time since 1986. But this is so unlike that year, when a cocky band of players prompted their fans to love them, but everyone else to hate them. Eventually, that team would sink into the abyss of turmoil off the field, unmet expectations on it and an overall sense of dread and disappointment that left fans disillusioned. This is so unlike that year, these Mets so confident in the brightness of their present � of this puppy dog-cuddly team � they could finally ignore the darkness of their past. Darryl Strawberry was free to savor a big spot with the Mets after years of unspoken separation, sending the crowd off to the right start by throwing out the first pitch. So the celebration began, a 20-year wait to take the town back taking a few extra days, thanks first to the Joe Torre chaos, then the sobering news of Cory Lidle's death. These Mets are the perfect team for this time as they have promised all season, a marketing gimmick becoming more true than even the person who dreamt it up could imagine. So now they took their spot in the middle of everything and the folks who have learned to hate New York for its boldness might have started weakening along with all those teeny-boppers' hearts at the sight of Wright. "This team is fun, man!" one out-of-town writer said, a rare touch of enthusiasm in a field known more for robotic observation. They all could see that last night. They saw it in Willie Randolph nodding his head to the cheers at his introduction, savoring a moment in the stadium of the team he rooted for as he grew up. They saw Cliff Floyd grimace his way around first, then limp his way out of the game � later lamenting his choice to stay on the roster, wondering if he had hurt his team. They saw Floyd's replacement in left, Endy Chavez, come racing in to make a diving catch � his uninhibited joy almost as exciting to watch as the play itself. They saw Carlos Beltran � who would only win the game with a home run � come running over to shake his teammate's hand. "He's been doing it all year," Wright said. "Endy, (Chris) Woodward, the guys on the bench, they want to be a part of this. It elevates their game." These Mets were making more and more people want to be a part of it now, taking over the town from the Yankees, showing how fun and light a game can be when it's not played with a series of soap opera subplots. And across a baseball nation, the folks who had tired of the same old storylines from the Yankees, were surely glad to meet these Mets. Dave Buscema's column appears regularly. Contact him at buscema@hotmail.com.

http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061013/SPORTS/610130334

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

As if one Lupica isn't bad enough.

[MFS62]

From Filip Bondy in today's NY Daily News. BTW- the Bondy bio next to the article on the website explains that the spelling of his first name is from his Czech heritage, not an affectation, as I had thought. The bio also says Bondy has covered special events for the paper as well as basketball and hockey. I know him best from his writing about the Knicks, but I really wouldn't call that basketball.

Nothing really special about the article, other than the phrases I've highlighted. They caught my eye.

] Deck shuffles in Mets' favor Willie and Co. play Cards right Carlos Delgado has had a monster postseason so far. ST. LOUIS - Carlos Delgado took a well-timed swat at a 2-0 pitch out over the plate in the fifth inning, went deep the opposite way, and suddenly you could feel the whole series change again, like the weather here in eastern Missouri. The homer was a three-run job off Brad Thompson, the wrong righthanded reliever courtesy of the genius, Tony La Russa. It was the start of a 12-5 romp for the Mets in Game 4 and a 2-2 tie in the series. The meteorological shift, meanwhile, was a looming low-pressure front, expected to bring enough precipitation this evening to postpone Game 5, to give Tom Glavine his extra day of rest, after all. Baseball is a game of inches. One or two of those inches figure to fall today from the sky, perhaps changing the whole pitching equation, giving the Mets a big break. And there you have it, another playoff series spun on its axis, turned on its head. Ronnie Belliard bungles the grounder by Paul Lo Duca to start the fifth. Carlos Beltran singles. Delgado smashes his third homer of the NLCS. A blooper and a blast. A different ballgame, once more. It is a new, soggy day in St. Louis, because the Mets squeeze 5-2/3 innings of five-run, cliffhanger pitching out of Oliver Perez and because the bats wake up at last from their dangerous slumber. The Mets slam four homers at Busch Stadium, unloose all those pent-up line drives and towering flies. "You create your own momentum," Delgado said afterward. "I played 12-1/2 years and never sniffed the playoffs. It's a blast." That first blast wasn't enough for Delgado, who knocked in two more runs in the sixth with a ground-rule double against another woeful St. Louis reliever, Josh Hancock. That made it five RBI in two innings for the guy, and nine RBI for the series - the most ever for a Met in the NLCS. Delgado is becoming Reggie Jackson before our eyes, only without all the theater. The pitching wasn't quite as amazin', but you knew that would be the case. It figured that neither starter was going to last too long in Game 4, that this would be a race to score more runs early. "Let's get one more than them," Delgado said, explaining the strategy. The Mets got seven more. Perez was much more effective and direct than Anthony Reyes. By the second inning, Reyes had thrown 52 pitches and already was living on borrowed time. He looked scared stiff and wouldn't throw strikes. Then in the third, he gave up homers to Carlos Beltran and David Wright. That meant La Russa eventually would need five innings from the St. Louis bullpen, which finally played down to its reputation. Perez fared a bit better. He settled down after giving up five hits over the first three innings and basically getting away with murder, with just two runs. He didn't tire until the sixth, when the Mets already held an eight-run lead. For a couple of days, it didn't look as if the Mets had this reversal of fortune left inside them. They wore a stale and bewildered look, and the rotation was not the material of smiley-face columns. And really, truly, they had not been tested this way before, not during a comfortable season cushioned by that double-digit lead. But the Mets kept insisting they'd been in tougher spots than this one last night, that they'd battled their way back all season, and maybe we should have listened. They pulled another rabbit from the curlicue cap, and then Willie Randolph insisted his team didn't need a day off tonight, that Glavine would be fine either way, with John Maine on call for Game 6. "We'd prefer to just play," Randolph said. "Tommy is ready to go. He's champing at the bit and we're all ready to play, so I'm hoping we get a game (tonight)." Surely, Willie and his guys won't be too sad if Game 5 is tomorrow night instead, if the predictions are correct. But the forecasters haven't been very accurate about this NLCS, which has zigged and zagged all over the place. The Mets are overachievers, underachievers, overachievers again. The very unpredictability of their run is what makes this season so crazy, fresh and enjoyable. "When you do something unexpectedly, there's a different sense of satisfaction and pride and fun that's associated with that," Glavine said last night. He was talking about the Tigers this season and the Braves back in 1991, but he might have been speaking about these Mets, too. The Mets rediscovered their way and their pluck in Game 4. Glavine and Maine, two days of rain. Sounds like a plan.

Later

[metirish]

Bobdy is a bollox and an avid MFY fan,he writes those stupid "bleacher creature" articles during MFY home games.