Dispatches from the Blogosphere 2012

[Edgy MD]

Anybody else feeling the Wilponian cloud across the Mets blogosphere? So many blogs I read, the first response and too many afterward is always a fuck-you-Freddie.

Blog Theme: Tim Byrdak is capable of repeating his numbers or even improving them if he cuts his walk rate, but even if he backslides or falls apart, the Mets' investment in his arm is relatively modest.

First Response: I can't get overly excited about Tim Byrdak.

Wilpons should sell.

Blog Theme: It'll be interesting to see which number the new guy gets, considering the number he's worn throughout his career is unavailable.

First Response: The only numbers that matter are the time and date the Wilpon's sell the team.

Blog Theme: Tom Seaver has been taken hostage at a strip mall in Portland!

First Response: We're all hostages to Fred Wilpon. Sell the team, Fred!

Paraphrasing.

I certainly realize it's the story of our time, and bloggers are doing their best to discuss it (and in some cases, break parts of the story), but absent any other news, they try and look at the other angles of the team, and BAMMO! the Wilponian left hook from their readership.

[Ceetar]

• First Response: I can't get overly excited about Tim Byrdak.
  
  Wilpons should sell.

Blog Theme: It'll be interesting to see which number the new guy gets, considering the number he's worn throughout his career is unavailable.

• First Response: The only numbers that matter are the time and date the Wilpon's sell the team.

Blog Theme: Tom Seaver has been taken hostage at a strip mall in Portland!

Anybody else feeling the Wilponian cloud across the Mets blogosphere? So many blogs I read, the first response and too many afterward is always a fuck-you-Freddie. Blog Theme: Tim Byrdak is capable of repeating his numbers or even improving them if he cuts his walk rate, but even if he backslides or falls apart, the Mets' investment in his arm is relatively modest.

• First Response: We're all hostages to Fred Wilpon. Sell the team, Fred!

Paraphrasing.

I certainly realize it's the story of our time, and bloggers are doing their best to discuss it (and in some cases, break parts of the story), but absent any other news, they try and look at the other angles of the team, and BAMMO! the Wilponian left hook from their readership.


Move the fences in! Freddy Coupon! There's always something.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

The ongoing Wilpon story is like a virus that infects the team's biggest supporters the most, which is why it comes out in blogs and commenters.

If I'm honest with myself and all of mbtn's 5 readers, I got down on the Mets/Wilpon in September of '08 and haven't really recovered my old enthusiasms. I still want 'em to do good and win, but my faith in them getting anything right was badly damaged and events since then have only served to illustrate that further. I really do believe the Wilpons are irredeemable fuckups -- oftentimes well-meaning fuckups, but fuckups nonetheless -- who don't deserve the fans' faith anymore.

[Edgy MD]

What About Bob?

[Gwreck]

Edgy DC wrote: Anybody else feeling the Wilponian cloud across the Mets blogosphere?

When was the last time the Mets came into a season having given up before it started? Serious question.

There have been some bad years in the recent past, but they have mostly come about as a result of injuries/ill advised acquisitions that were expensive. Yet as annoying as those seasons are, the leadup to them in January/February/Spring Training -- before everything goes wrong -- is a lot more palatable.

Here, we've got ownership who has no money to spend on players, let the most exciting player in the league, who was a homegrown talent, walk without making an offer, owes money to everyone, is being sued for hundreds of millions more -- yet WON'T SELL under any circumstances.

I don't have a crystal ball but I can see clearly that the next few seasons are going to be BAD. I'm going to guess that other people can see that too.

[Edgy MD]

I'm kind of asking a more specific question than whether or not folks think the Mets will be good.

[G-Fafif]

There is a strain of blog reader who tends to cut through the esoterica and to the chase. I don't care what they wear/where they play/how the broadcasts sound as long as they win. It's kind of an all-purpose comment from people who can't wait long enough for the hardcore baseball posts, so they jump in at will. The Wilpon situation is the proxy for that right now, not without pretty good reason.

[Ceetar]

Edgy DC wrote: I'm kind of asking a more specific question than whether or not folks think the Mets will be good.

I feel like it was this way last offseason too, although fresher and we didn't have the hard evidence about the actual team's functioning and there were quotes about the payroll being like $30 million more than it is now. (Think about what you'd feel about the Mets chances if they still had Reyes, had redone the bullpen as they did, AND added say Kuroda)

But it sorta became background noise for most once the season started, and it will again. The limited major roster additions also make a lot of the normal offseason stuff, predicting lineups and production and how guys fit, a little redundant.

[Gwreck]

Edgy DC wrote: I'm kind of asking a more specific question than whether or not folks think the Mets will be good.

I think I answered your specific question. Why is there a Wilponian cloud over everything? See above

[Edgy MD]

That's not my question nor what I'm speaking of, though it's very certainly emblematic of what I'm speaking of --- that the rage against Wilpon and the demands he sell are un-necessarily hijacking almost every conversation, whether relevant or not.

[Gwreck]

Now I'm confused. So your question wasn't really a question, but more of a comment?

I still stand by my answer as a reasoned explanation, and object to any insinuations that it might be otherwise.

People have been upset at the Wilpons for this, that or the other thing for years. I'll bet many fanbases have the same problem with their owners. Things are coming to a head now because 2012 is the season where it can reasonably be argued (or, at the very least, reasonably perceived) that the Wilpons have given up on the team being successful.

[Edgy MD]

Gwreck wrote: Now I'm confused. So your question wasn't really a question, but more of a comment?

No, it was a question.

I still stand by my answer as a reasoned explanation, and object to any insinuations that it might be otherwise.

I object to your objection. And if you object to my objection of your objection, I object infinity. What?

I asked if people noticed this cloud, not why it exists. I went on to describe what I meant --- the cloud I speak of not being, as I tried to note, how Wilpon sucks and has ruined everything, or even why folks object to that, but how folks are hijacking conversations and injecting the sell-now agenda into everything, and are almost bitchily offended that anybody should talk about anything else. Which I'm trying to do now.

Ironically, relevant stuff, like the potential losses in the clawback suit being limited to the Mets withdrawals from their accounts beyond their principle, protecting $600+ million of their principle, and yesterday's ruling on the appeal, gets ignored.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Maybe it's just me, but I find myself wondering where all the Norms went in professional sports.

Really, though... the Wilpon thing hangs over everything because, well, the Wilpon thing hangs over everything; it's the story of the recent past, of the present, and the foreseeable future. If we are thinking about these time periods/anything in them, we are kindasorta gravitationally pulled to think of the Wilpons (even if these thoughts are not verbally expressed, suppressed with a deep breath and a pleasing placeholder-mental-image). Some people are better about being polite about it than others; for a lot of people, this is the mental arena to which they retreat when they don't feel like being polite, so... hijacking ensues.

[Vic Sage]

i understand the frustration over this type of "hijacking"; your trying to have a rational conversation about X and people keep interrupting with shouts of Y, Y, Y!

But i reject the comment that the Wilpon bashing is irrelevant. The Wilpon financial problems hang over any discussion of this year's team; they affect discussions about the roster, the minors, speculation about FAs, trades, the stadium... i can't think of a topic about the team that isn't relevant to its financial resources (or lack thereof) one way or another.

[Edgy MD]

Whether Tim Byrdak has a chance to pitch well.

What number Frank Francisco is going to wear.

Tom Seaver being held hostage.

I'm sure you and I can easily build a logical bridge from any of these topics to Wilpon's finances (who's going to pay the ransom?). But to immediately respond to these topics with brief and out-of-left-field (and extremely tired) attacks on Wilpon without bothering to build any such bridge is clearly just an exercise in being obnoxious.

[Ceetar]

Edgy DC wrote: Whether Tim Byrdak has a chance to pitch well. What number Frank Francisco is going to wear. Tom Seaver being held hostage. I'm sure you and I can easily build a logical bridge from any of these topics to Wilpon's finances (who's going to pay the ransom?). But to immediately respond to these topics with brief and out-of-left-field (and extremely tired) attacks on Wilpon without bothering to build any such bridge is clearly just an exercise in being obnoxious.

Pretty much. Shocking as it may seem, there are plenty of Mets fans that don't even want to discuss finances, particularly in a thread about Tim Byrdak.

Maybe I should start responding to all of them with "I think Duda will hit 30 home runs this year"

[metirish]

Great , if Duda hits 30 home runs then the Mets won't be able to keep him because of the Wilpon's finances.
Ugh.

[batmagadanleadoff]

And that rotunda. How insulting. You could fit over a dozen Mets Halls of Fame into just one of those rotundas for a Dodger.

But finish this analogy:
Fred Wilpon: New York Mets ����� Raoul Hirsch: _____________

[Fman99]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Fred Wilpon: New York Mets ����� Raoul Hirsch: Some Shitdick I Never Heard Of

[G-Fafif]

Someone with the Zeile of the Converted. Underwent a transformation as the MFYs were about to choke and never looked back.

Well, he looks back a lot, but you know what I mean.

I hadn�t seriously considered switching allegiances until I had the reaction I did during the ALCS in 2004. My favorite team had been the Yankees, but my second favorite team was the Mets. There was no point to hating the Mets, because the baseball fan in me just viewed it as that much more awesome that I had that much more baseball to root for in my city. I would root for the Yankees over the Mets, but outside of those games, I wanted the Mets to win just as much as I wanted the Yankees to win. One of the greatest baseball memories I have is watching the 15-inning classic against the Mets and the Braves, the game everybody now knows as Robin Ventura�s Grand Slam Single. I remember being extremely pissed off at Kenny Rogers (a f%∈ walk?) two nights later. In my study of baseball, I am extremely fascinated with the National League side of New York, even when I was a Die-hard Yankee fan. My cousin and uncle are Met fans, my grandfather was a Giants fan in Brooklyn, so when the transformation in 2004 happened in me, it only felt natural to join the die-hard Mets fandom mid-stream. Nobody thought I was genuine. The Met fans I had grown up with said, �You can�t be a flip-flopper, so don�t think you can go back.� And I said, �Of course not.� I had stopped identifying with the Yankees, and while the Yankees are a large part of baseball history and my personal baseball history, I feel much more a part of baseball being a Mets fan than I did as a Yankee fan in the latter years of that fandom. At first, my dad thought it was about him, and while he called me a traitor at the beginning, he eventually realized it wasn�t about him and only calls me a traitor jokingly now. He says he�s just happy that I love baseball and that he was a part of building up that passion.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Interesting, honest.

And deeply weird. He's weird. That's weird. And not, like, Gonzo weird, but, like, that-guy-on-the-train-won't-stop-staring-at-me-and-smiling weird.

[ashie62]

NY Times today "Mets on the Cheap." seems fair with the Sandy can't do much arguement..

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/sports/baseball/alderson-is-forced-to-remake-mets-on-the-cheap.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=sports

[Ceetar]

A disturbing end of this list. On the other hand, every NY team imaginable has made the playoffs within 6 years so this probably doesn't look so dismal outside of New York.

http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2012/02/08/playoffs-playoffs/

� Last New York Giants (NFL) playoff game: February 5, 2012 � Last New York Red Bulls (MLS) playoff game: November 3, 2011 � Last New York Yankees (MLB) playoff game: October 6, 2011 � Last New York Liberty (WNBA) playoff game: September 19, 2011 � Last New York Knicks (NBA) playoff game: April 24, 2011 � Last New York Rangers (NHL) playoff game: April 23, 2011 � Last New York Jets (NFL) playoff game: January 23, 2011 � Last Long Island Lizards (Major League Lacrosse) playoff game: August 21, 2010 � Last New Jersey Devils (NHL) playoff game: April 22, 2010 � Last New York Titans (National Lacrosse League) playoff game: May 15, 2009 � Last New York Dragons (Arena Football League) playoff game: July 5, 2008 � Last New Jersey Ironmen (Major Indoor Soccer League) playoff game: April 12, 2008 � Last New Jersey Nets (NBA) playoff game: May 18, 2007 � Last New York Islanders (NHL) playoff game: April 20, 2007 � Last New York Mets (MLB) playoff game: October 19, 2006

[ashie62]

Almost as bad as the WHA New York Raiders, remember John Sterling as a rookie announcer there??? Well, do ya!

[Ceetar]

Ashie62 wrote: Almost as bad as the WHA New York Raiders, remember John Sterling as a rookie announcer there??? Well, do ya!

no, JOhn Sterling has been the Yankee guy as long as I can remember.

[Edgy MD]

All Mets questions used on Jeopardy! since 1984, courtesy of Amazin' Avenue.

[HahnSolo]

I think I got all but this one: why weren't the Giants originally offered a ticker-tape parade? Was it because they were a "Jersey" team?

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

HahnSolo wrote: I think I got all but this one: why weren't the Giants originally offered a ticker-tape parade? Was it because they were a "Jersey" team?

Yes, Ed Koch called them a "foreign" team and would not permit a city-funded parade but some corporate sponsors stepped in to allow the parade to happen.

[Edgy MD]

Holy gosh, what a difference.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Edgy DC wrote: Holy gosh, what a difference.

Oh, you bet.

Perhaps it's mostly a function of the guy in the chair above him being who HE is, but Terry's been a fair-to-moderate surprise (Tejada "lateness" shtick notwithstanding) over his brief tenure.