RA Deserves His Own Thread

[Ceetar]

Edgy DC wrote: I tell you though. By lobbying for this, we're almost kinda setting ourselves and Dickey up for egg on the face if he comes up poorly. He's gonna get to pitch one way or another, so we should probably root for success in whatever role he gets rather than demand greater honors up front.

Cain's not going to have egg on his face if he gives up 2 runs in the first. By anyone but us anyway. But it's that unfairness/bias that is the reason they should've chosen Dickey in the first place. You'll always be able to start a fireballing starter having a good first half, Dickeyesque stories are quite rare, and rarer still that they're arguably the best pitcher in baseball. And I know MLB and half the sarcastic world trumpets "this time it counts" but what it's really about is celebrating baseball.

[G-Fafif]

I've been lobbying for the Mets to win a World Series every year. That would explain those 25 consecutive eggs on my face.

[Edgy MD]

Ceetar wrote: Cain's not going to have egg on his face if he gives up 2 runs in the first.

He might if he was given the honor in response to a populist campaign centered around the partisans of his team.

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

I'd rather see Dickey starting the first game of the World Series.

[Lefty Specialist]

Mets � Willets Point wrote: I'd rather see Dickey starting the first game of the World Series.

And the third, fifth and seventh (if necessary).

[Frayed Knot]

TransMonk wrote: Edgy DC wrote: He's gonna get to pitch one way or another... Now that YFMolina isn't going to be there, I wouldn't be surprised if LaRussa uses it as an excuse not to get Dickey into the game at all.

That kind of jerkery is usually only reserved for the likes of (Yanqui icon) Billy Martin.

In 1982 Cleveland 3Bman Toby Harrah was leading the league in hitting and was having the season of his career [.332/.438/.548 w/17 HRs at the break] when he was naturally picked for the ASG.
Martin went on to use every player on his bench that game except Harrah. Martin and Harrah had crossed paths briefly when both were with Texas several years earlier and the thought was that Billy didn't like Harrah for some reason (real or imagined) so used the chance to embarrass him by letting the league's leading hitter at that point sit on the bench.

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

Frayed Knot wrote: Billy didn't like [fill in name] for some reason (real or imagined).

I've made this into an all-purpose boilerplate.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Edgy DC wrote: I tell you though. By lobbying for this, we're almost kinda setting ourselves and Dickey up for egg on the face if he comes up poorly. He's gonna get to pitch one way or another, so we should probably root for success in whatever role he gets rather than demand greater honors up front.

You're right. It's a good thing for Mets fans that Dickey won't start. Even though Dickey could get bombed pitching the fifth inning, just the same. I'm so confused.

[Edgy MD]

That's OK.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I guess it's also good that Sandoval overtook Wright in the 3B voting. Now I don't have to worry about Wright tripping over the foul line while trotting out for the starters' intros. That's Sandoval's problem.

[Edgy MD]

That's OK.

[Fman99]

What bullshit. Tony LaRussa should die in a grease fire.

[bmfc1]

Fman99--you're being too kind... why limit it to a grease fire? Any kind of fire would do.

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

Oh yeah, because we needed one more Giant starting. I thought for sure Dickey would get it in part as a make-up call for the David Wright/Panda debacle.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

bmfc1 wrote: Fman99--you're being too kind... why limit it to a grease fire? Any kind of fire would do.

A flaming automobile, or one of those gimmicky tropical drinks they set aflame, seems much more likely.

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

Geeze, I thought Wright might start as DH, and he doesn't even get that. BOOOOOOOOOOO

[Frayed Knot]

Back to actual Dickey news: Letterman on Wednesday.

[Met Hunter]

No matter how you slice it, Dickey, Wright and the Mets in general get hosed again. At least Collins got some love.

[G-Fafif]

One of TLR's reasons for starting Cain was he lives in SF area, gets to see him pitch, thinks he's good.

So there ya go.

[batmagadanleadoff]

From Jayson Stark's mid-season awards:



http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/8134086/handing-baseball-midseason-awards

[G-Fafif]

All-Star starter in life, I tell you what. I'd heard this story off-the-record a few months ago and am glad it's now coming to light.

KANSAS CITY � Four stories above 44th St. in Sunnyside, Queens Tuesday night, a 43-year-old social worker will celebrate her birthday by rooting for a 37-year-old knuckleball pitcher. It will be R.A. Dickey�s first All-Star Game and it will be Eileen Lopez�s first time sharing him with the whole country. So it will be new to both of them, the journeyman-turned-star and the wife-and-mother-turned widow, a woman who is sure that Dickey�s knuckleball will befuddle the American Leaguers, and equally sure that her emotions will be as untrackable as his pitch. How else could it be, when the man on the mound gave her husband, the late Mike Gitelson, one of the sweetest and purest thrills of his life? When a man from baseball�s discard pile found a way to connect with her husband so profoundly that it made a staunchly unsentimental contrarian turn weepy with joy? �I�ll probably be crying during the All-Star Game,� Eileen Lopez says. �It�ll be the best birthday present in a year that has been incredibly challenging. It will be very bittersweet.� Eileen Lopez pauses and sighs. �R.A. made Mike so happy at a time when he was so unhappy,� she says. R.A. Dickey is 12-1 and has a 2.40 ERA and is doing things no knuckleball pitcher has ever done, even with a couple of recent wobbles against the Yankees and Phillies, all of it making him as sudden a baseball star as we have ever had around here. Dickey was ABC's Person of the Week last week. He was all over CNN Monday and will be on Letterman Wednesday, and has a memoir (this writer assisted him with it) on the New York Times best- sellers list, a �narrative of hope and redemption,� as Dickey calls it. Eileen Lopez knows all about Dickey�s journey, how he survived sexual abuse and dysfunction and thoughts of suicide, and of course knows about his dominance this year, though she�ll tell you the most enduring impact of R.A. Dickey has nothing to do with his WHIP or his shocking record or his All-Star appearance, but his regular-guy humility that is as much a part of him as the knuckler. It�s not a public face, or a device to move books. It is at the core of who the man is, living his faith and holding the conviction that if you have a chance to help somebody, you sure better take it. �He is an incredibly giving human being,� Eileen Lopez says. A social worker himself who tried to help kids stay out of foster care, Mike Gitelson saw his connection with Dickey begin in January 2011. Gitelson had struggled for years with Crohn�s Disease, and now word came that he had acute myeloid leukemia. Megadoses of chemotherapy began forthwith. Alex Belth, a writer and baseball blogger who had been a childhood friend of Gitelson�s in Croton-on-Hudson, connected with Lopez on Facebook, and they talked about how to try to boost Mike�s spirits. Gitelson was never any sort of athlete, and had an awkward splay-footed stride when he walked. He rejected convention and railed against injustice and organized protests against Nike for its Southeast Asian sweatshops, and had no use for sports or baseball at all, until he met Lopez, a New York Met fanatic. And then, before you could say Jane Jarvis, Gitelson was drinking the Choo Choo Coleman Kool-Aid. He and Lopez went to games all the time. They moved to Sunnyside for its easy access to the No. 7 train. In 2002, Gitelson proposed marriage to Lopez at Shea Stadium. They paid $400 to have Mr. Met make an appearance at their wedding reception, and had tables named Grote and Throneberry and Charles, and even one named for Mo Vaughn. �Why not see if I can get a Met to call him?� Belth thought. He had connections with the team. Calls were made. One winter day Gitelson�s cell phone rang. �Hi Mike, this is R.A. Dickey of the New York Mets,� the caller said, in a voice coated with Tennessee. They talked some baseball and Dickey asked about his health and Mike told him all about the treatments and the whole mess. �He was the nicest man. I felt so calm talking to him,� Gitelson told his wife. Dickey invited Mike, Eileen and their daughter, Isabella, to a game, a visit that happened on June 3, 2011, weeks before Mike was due to have a bone-marrow transplant. A Mets community-relations official walked them down a tunnel, past the clubhouse, down a flight of steps and a batting cage, into the Mets dugout. �Oh my God, they are taking us to the field,� Gitelson told Lopez, his eyes moistening. They met Dickey between home plate and the dugout. Dickey and Gitelson had a long talk, focusing particularly on Cuba, where they�d both traveled. Gitelson knew he was in the presence of the ultimate underdog, and he liked that. Dickey said he�d pray for him, and even though Gitelson was not at all religious, he was open to people praying for him. �I remember he was having some trouble, and I just tried to engage with him,� Dickey says. �I just wanted to be in the moment with him.� The Gitelson/Lopez family had a new favorite pitcher, and he wore No. 43. They loved that he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to help raise money to fight human trafficking, loved his honesty about himself and the Mets. Last winter Mike Gitelson began to experience serious complications from the bone-marrow transplant. He was hospitalized three times. His immune system was already compromised from the Crohn�s. No medication or treatment could reverse his decline. At 6:18 p.m. on March 19, with the �Mets Yearbook� program playing on SNY, Mike Gitelson died in Room 243 of the bone-marrow transplant unit of Weill Cornell Medical Center. Two days later, he was laid to rest in Mt. Zion Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens. He was 40 years old and went into the earth wearing a gray R.A. Dickey T-shirt. �R.A. brought him so much joy, there was no question that�s what he wanted to wear,� Eileen Lopez says. Dickey�s plan is to bring back some All-Star trinkets and keepsakes for Eileen and Isabella. �You think they would like that?� he asks. It will be one more beautiful, grief-laden moment for Eileen Lopez. �It�s mind-blowing, thinking that the man whose shirt Mike is wearing is doing so incredibly,� she says. �You can�t make this up.� Eileen Lopez isn�t happy that Tony La Russa isn�t starting Dickey, but she is ecstatic that he is an All-Star, and can't wait to watch him with Isabella four flights above 44th St. in Sunnyside, even though it will be hard. It will be very hard. �Every time R.A. pitches, I want to watch, and then I wind up in tears,� Eileen Lopez says. �I wish Mike were here so he could see this, but in some ways I really feel that he is. That�s the best part. It�s almost like Mike is a part of this.�

[G-Fafif]

Alex Belth with more on the guy who R.A. befriended in his last months -- a study in menschdom.

I was surprised, then, when he reached out to me about five or six years ago. We exchanged e-mails and whatever hard feelings that might have existed were gone. We didn�t see each other but touched base every now and then. Mike had become a baseball fan through his wife who was�and is�nuts for the Mets. I thought that was amusing coming from a guy who loved to ridicule overpaid, conceited jocks. Mike suffered with Crohn�s and he died too young. Go figure that baseball would provide distraction and comfort for him. His encounter with R.A. Dickey was moving. You know, when we were kids, Getty laughed in the movie theater at the end of Terms of Endearment when everyone else sobbed. During The Breakfast Club when the kids bared their souls and the theater was quiet, Getty cackled. He was allergic to sentiment. But after R.A. Dickey called him on the phone, Mike cried. And I think he�d very much appreciate Coffey�s article. Yet another reason to pull for Mr. Dickey who sounds like some kind of mensch.

[G-Fafif]

And, oh yeah, Dickey's been something close to Terrific in the first half, per Mark Simon.

[metirish]

G-Fafif wrote: I tell you what. I'd heard this story off-the-record a few months ago and am glad it's now coming to light.

that's really cool.....lumps I tell ya

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

All this needs is a beckoning Scarlett Johannson and a rare, dry-aged porterhouse to be the best great-things photograph ever.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Good to see Roaring-for Attention Dickey is taking it easy during the break so as to gear up for the second half and not Hollywooding it too much.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Good to see Roaring-for Attention Dickey is taking it easy during the break so as to gear up for the second half and not Hollywooding it too much.

With the Gee business, we'll need you cracking the whip now more than ever, brother.

[Farmer Ted]

Did Mr. Dickey sign off on this?

http://lookatmeshirts.com/lookatme/ra-dickey-shirt-knuckle-deep.html

[Ceetar]

Did Mr. Dickey sign off on this? http://lookatmeshirts.com/lookatme/ra-dickey-shirt-knuckle-deep.html

Probably not. That's why I bought this one

[Edgy MD]

Couldn't there have been a little more wordplay in an R.A. Star Wars shirt?