Benjamin Grimm

Everybody Loves Xavier, but what would the Mets do with him? He wouldn't displace Beltran or Church. He could displace Alou, I guess. Or he could be a frequently-used fourth outfielder, given that Alou is bound to miss more time. But it seems that the current plan is Alou to keep left field warm until Fernando Martinez is ready, which may be as early as next year. (Or even later this year, according to Darryl Strawberry yesterday.) I'm not saying that they shouldn't get Xavier (if he's really available) but I'm wondering what we should expect to see happen if they did get him.

VOTING FOR THIS GAME IS NOW CLOSED Totals for April 27, 2008 (11 votes) New York Mets 6, Atlanta Braves 3 NameTotal PointsPoints AwardedPlayer PerformanceCarlos Delgado30.162.742-2, 3 R, 2 HR, 2 RBI, 2 BB.Nelson Figueroa18.251.66(W) 5.1 IP, 7 H, 3 ER, 3 BB, 3 SO.Raul Casanova15.601.423-4, R, HR, 2 RBI.Luis Castillo10.330.943-5, R, 2B.Billy Wagner7.860.71(Sv) 1.0 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 1 SO.Jos� Reyes7.110.651-4, R, 2B, BB, 2 SO.Pedro Feliciano6.500.591.0 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 SO.Ryan Church5.500.500-4, SO.Scott Schoeneweis4.950.451.0 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 SO.Joe Smith2.490.230.2 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 SO.David Wright0.750.071-4, RBI, 2 SO.

VOTING FOR THIS GAME IS NOW CLOSED Totals for April 26, 2008 (13 votes) New York Mets 4, Atlanta Braves 3 NameTotal PointsPoints AwardedPlayer PerformanceJohn Maine32.852.53(W) 5.0 IP, 3 H, 2 ER, 3 BB, 7 SO.Carlos Beltran20.981.611-4, R, 2B, 2 RBI, 2 SO.Ryan Church18.511.421-3, R, 3B, RBI, BB, SO.Billy Wagner15.521.19(Sv) 1.0 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 1 SO.David Wright14.801.142-4, R, SO, SB.Duaner Sanchez9.740.750.2 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 SO.Scott Schoeneweis9.030.691.0 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 1 SO.Damion Easley3.000.232-4, 2B, SO.Angel Pagan1.760.141-1, 3B.Carlos Delgado1.250.100-4, RBI.Endy Chavez1.000.081-4, R.Gustavo Molina0.250.021-3, BB.Aaron Heilman0.200.021.0 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 1 SO.Pedro Feliciano0.100.010.1 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 1 SO.

VOTING FOR THIS GAME IS NOW CLOSED Totals for April 25, 2008 (13 votes) Atlanta Braves 6, New York Mets 3 NameTotal PointsPoints AwardedPlayer PerformanceRaul Casanova9.260.711-3, R, BB.Duaner Sanchez7.630.591.0 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 1 SO.Scott Schoeneweis5.270.410.2 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 1 SO.Carlos Beltran4.610.350-3, RBI, BB.Pedro Feliciano4.150.321.1 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 SO.Marlon Anderson3.390.261-2, R.David Wright3.130.240-3, RBI, BB.Ryan Church2.480.190-3, RBI, BB, 2 SO.Mike Pelfrey1.000.08(L) 5.1 IP, 9 H, 5 ER, 4 BB, 1 SO.Luis Castillo1.000.080-3, R, BB.Endy Chavez1.060.080-0, BB.

Santana 2 Church 2 Schoeneweis 0.5 Feliciano 0.5 Wagner 1.5 Sosa 1 Reyes 0.5 Wright 1.5 Chavez 0.5

Current Streak - 0 Longest Streak - 0 4/30 - David Wright

Schneider last played six days ago. If they were to retroactively DL him, they'd be committing to another nine days without him. I don't think I'd make that move, but it's worth considering. If we can get by with Casanova and Molina for the next nine days, then Alou can be activated in place of Schneider. If Schneider looks to be another three or four days away, it's probably worth DL-ing him. (If Alou is ready.)

I guess I mean that I wouldn't walk around in public wearing half a baseball uniform. Especially not one with somebody else's name on the back.

And nothing that's happened since then has caused me to change my mind about that. They thought Art Howe would be a better manager than Bobby Valentine? They thought that Willie Randolph would be a better manager than Art Howe? (Okay, he is, but he's still not nearly as good as Bobby Valentine was.)

="Wayne Coffey"]Davey Johnson tells of Mets days, steroids and Olympic dreams By WAYNE COFFEY DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER The manager of the U.S. Olympic baseball team is a familiar, craggy-faced man whose life has known soaring triumph and unspeakable tragedy and who, across five decades in locales ranging from Baltimore to Atlanta, Tokyo to Flushing, has had a diamond life like few others. At 65, Davey Johnson is 42 years removed from his time as a kid second baseman for the world-champion Orioles, and 22 years removed from 1986, when he piloted the greatest team in Mets history to 108 victories and the franchise's second World Series title. Now he takes on one of the greatest challenges of his career: leading a group of minor-leaguers against some heavyweight Olympic competition in Beijing, doing it four years after the U.S. failed to qualify for the Games and three years after the International Olympic Committee voted baseball off the Olympic menu. Johnson is the only man to hit behind both Henry Aaron and Sadaharu Oh. He got the last hit Sandy Koufax ever gave up. If Johnson - a college math major - didn't invent computer analysis in baseball, he surely was on the leading edge of it, presenting a bundle of spreadsheet printouts to his manager Earl Weaver in the late '60s, under the heading, "Optimization of the Orioles Lineup." http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2008/04/27/amd_davey-johnson-2008.jpg"Earl threw it in the garbage," Johnson says, smiling. Managing four big-league clubs across 14 big league seasons, Johnson went 1,148-888, compiling a winning percentage (.564) that places him above Miller Huggins, Joe Torre and Tony La Russa, to name a few. Along the way, he earned a reputation as a savvy strategist and a brutally honest guy who almost seemed to relish stirring the proverbial pot. "Davey wasn't a politician, and I admire that," says Keith Hernandez, captain of those '86 Mets and now an SNY analyst. "I don't think he gets enough credit. He came over to a very lousy Mets team and made it (into a winner)." Over a sidewalk lunch on Madison Ave. three days ago, Johnson wore a knit USA Baseball shirt, ate lobster salad and was his usual straight-shooting self as he spoke to the Daily News about everything from Dwight Gooden to George Mitchell; the true turning point in '86 to the reason he doesn't believe Roger Clemens; from the ruptured appendix and five stomach surgeries he has endured, to the greatest loss of his life: the death of his daughter, Andrea Lyn, 32, a professional surfer who succumbed to complications from her schizophrenia three years ago. *** Daily News: With the U.S. baseball team not qualifying for the 2004 Games, and the sport being eliminated from the Olympics, how much does that ratchet up the heat on you and your team in Beijing? Davey Johnson: There's going to be a lot of heat on us, but a lot of the guys revel in that. The game of baseball is a challenge. You either love the challenge or you don't. DN: Your U.S. team beat Cuba in the gold-medal game of the Olympic qualifying tournament in 2006, and won another gold in the World Cup last year, but you've also lost a bunch of the players from those teams because they've been called up to the majors. How well will you be able to compete? DJ: We're not going to be the favorite - it will probably be Japan, Cuba and the U.S., in that order. But I know our staff and we're going to put together a heck of a team, and I plan on winning. DN: Met fans who go back to the Jim Hickman Era remember you in a whole different context - as the Oriole who made the last out of the 1969 World Series, a fly ball to Cleon Jones. DJ: (Laughing) It was the Series we couldn't lose. We beat (Tom) Seaver in Game 1 and thought we were on our way, and then nothing went right the rest of the Series. I got one hit (in 16 at bats, .063) and I think I set a record for the worst hitting Series since Gil Hodges (went 0-for-21 in the 1952 Series). DN: The next time the Mets won you were in the home dugout. What comes to mind when you think about 1986? DJ: Everyone talks about the (Bill) Buckner deal (in Game 6), but the biggest play was the wild pitch (by Bob Stanley) that let the tying run score right before that. The game was over from that point on. It didn't matter whether it was the next at-bat. Coming back from two outs and two strikes down, we weren't going to lose. The mentality of that club was you don't take anything for granted. Nothing. They called us names, they hated us all around the league, called us arrogant. How can we be arrogant when we haven't won anything? DN: Well, didn't you fuel that name-calling when you said you didn't just want the Mets to win, you wanted them to dominate? DJ: Everytime you set a goal, you have to believe in every ounce of your being that you can achieve it. I wanted my guys to know they were good, because if I don't feel that way, how can they? I could care less if my comment (made us marked men). I wanted to take pressure off my guys. That's what a manager ought to do in a pennant race. It put the pressure on me. You can ask any of them - they didn't feel any pressure from that statement. DN: You managed one of the greatest young talents the game has ever seen in Dwight Gooden, who went 24-4 as a 20-year-old. How do you feel when you think about his career, and his life after baseball? DJ: Unbelievably sad. The biggest shock in my life in baseball was in the spring of 1987, when he came into my office and said, "Skip, I've got a problem. I've got to go to drug rehab." I said, "You've got to be kidding me." Doc was like a son to me. He was the first one to the ballpark every day. He was always happy. I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. The thing with Dwight is that he meant no harm, but he couldn't say no - to his guys from his hometown. He didn't want to feel bigger or better than anybody else. DN: He was a good pitcher after that 1985 season, but never the same pitcher. DJ: Never the same. I blame it on the drugs, and I also blame it on the delivery change they had him make. I don't even know where the orders came from, but they didn't come from me or Mel Stottlemyre. They wanted him to shorten his delivery, lower that big high leg kick and not turn as much. Sure, he could be run on, but they could run on (Greg) Maddux, too; did they change his delivery? To this day I regret even going along with it. DN: There has been much speculation that Roger Clemens might pitch for Team USA in the Olympics. Do you see that happening? DJ: No. No possibility. He's probably good enough to go out and throw BP and get people out, but for me, you've got to be competing. I want guys who are playing their best right now, in a league. I don't want some guy who has been off for three months. DN: Did you watch the Clemens-McNamee congressional hearing? Who did you believe? DJ: You know who I believed. Roger Clemens was a great pitcher. He pitched by intimidating. Try to get an edge, look at you. He'd hit his grandmother if he thought it would help him win a game. You've got to admire what he's done. But he's in that group where you've got to believe that anything he would do to make himself better, he's going to do. I just think the deal in those hearings - that's just his personality. He's going to try to intimidate: "I'm coming through here and you're not going to get in my way." DN: What did you think of the Mitchell Report in general? Did it surprise you? DJ: Not really, but I'll tell you how na�ve I was. When I came up, we were told never to lift a weight. You do the gripper, do pushups, do situps, but don't build new muscles, because it would hurt your swing. Then people started working out, everyone's got a trainer, taking vitamin supplements. I saw a lot of creatine. To this day I don't know what creatine is. I still couldn't tell you the difference between human growth hormone and testosterone. All of it, I thought, was just a way to bounce back from a hard workout. DN: Did you ever see a player taking performance-enhancing drugs? DJ: Never. I wouldn't even know what to look for. But I do know this about ballplayers: anything you can do to make yourself better, bigger, stronger, you are going to do, because that's how competitive it is. DN: You had Brady Anderson in Baltimore the year he went from hitting 16 home runs to 50. You didn't have suspicions? DJ: I don't know what Brady was before, because I wasn't there. I do know that I saw him working out, before and after games, and this guy was nuts. Brady would ride a bike to the ballpark from 10 miles away. I had no idea. I still don't know. I mean, obviously everybody thinks he's taking steroids, but I don't know. If you told me Raffy Palmeiro was even working out, I would've said you are crazy. He had that Brooks Robinson body, kind of soft, a sweet stroke and a good talent. But I never would've guessed he was juicing. When I was managing the Dodgers, we picked up Jim Leyritz and he was making this concoction in the clubhouse kitchen. I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "I'm making a little something to pep the club up." He had all these powders and cans and stuff. He gave me a shot of it. My heart started jumping out of my damn chest, and I didn't have but a thimbleful. I was taking medicine for arrhythmia. I asked him what it was, he said mostly Red Bull with some other kickers in there. DN: You had a huge power surge yourself when you went from Baltimore to Atlanta (in 1973), going from five home runs to 43. How did that happen? DJ: If you look at my record, I was just learning how to hit. The Oriole way was to hit like Brooks Robinson. That's what they taught. Brooks turned an inside fastball inside-out and hit the ball to right field. I kind of became a Punch-and-Judy hitter. Finally I just said, "What the heck, I'm going to get closer to the plate and I'm going to just hit the ball hard." I hit 18 homers (in 1971) and was starting to show the pop I had in my bat. Then I ran into (Red Sox catcher) Duane Josephson at home plate and hurt my left shoulder and wasn't the same (for a year and a half). DN: Your Orioles and Joe Torre's Yankees played for the AL pennant in 1996. What comes to mind when ... DJ: The 12-year-old kid. Jeffrey Maier. That was big. It was the eighth inning of Game 1, we got the lead, I got the pitching set up just the way we wanted. We were ready to roll. It's amazing. Jeter hits a fly ball to the wall and I am 340 feet away and I can see it plain as day. Richie Garcia, he's underneath it, and he can't see it, and he calls it a home run, even though to everybody in the world it's obvious the kid (interfered with the ball). Then Garcia has to run me, because he can't see it. DN: If you were starting a team and could choose from all the players you managed or played with/against, who would be your No. 1 pick? DJ: Henry Aaron. I loved Barry Larkin and Cal (Ripken), but Henry, he could do anything he wanted to do. He was just so powerful. Even at the end of his career, he could do things with such ease. I asked him once, "What do you look for when you go to home plate?" He said, "The breaking ball." I said, "Why?" He said, "Because I know they can't throw the fastball by me." One time late in his career we went into San Francisco. Henry was 40-something years old. Normally he would take off a day game after a night game. This time the Giants' pitcher, (John) Count Montefusco, said in the paper, "Why am I pitching against the lowly Braves? I want to pitch against a good team." Henry read it. He went to (manager Eddie) Mathews and said, "I'm playing." Now Montefusco had a nasty slider. Just wicked. Ralph Garr got on, Mike Lum got on. Henry got up and Montesfusco threw a slider, down and away, his best pitch, And Henry went boom, and hit it out of the ballpark. He got back to the dugout and said, "Maybe that'll teach this kid a little humility." DN: You've had a difficult stretch in your life by any measure over the last five years, first with the appendix ordeal, the surgeries, the loss of 65 pounds, and then losing your daughter not long afterward. How has that changed you? DJ: She was my little sweetheart surfer girl, the rebel who just wanted to surf. You lose any child, it's not right. It should be me. I'm supposed to go first. Everybody deals with it differently. Baseball, managing for Team USA, that really helped me because I know that's what my daughter would like me to do. She loved me managing baseball, just like I loved her surfing. Both my parents are gone. I'm on Medicare. Life moves on. You do what you can to make you happy. Then you try to do things, charitable things, to give back. It's something (my wife) Susan and I do a lot of. I love baseball and I love young talent, so this really hasn't been a job for me. Watching young, hungry players get after it, reach their potential, that's the greatest joy of all in managing. DN: Do you see yourself managing in the big leagues again? DJ: No. After a tough time in Cincy, and a tough time in Baltimore after winning, and then going out to L.A., where they already made all the player moves before I was hired and having no minor-league system, I was burned out. I didn't even have a good time in the dugout when we had a lead. Now I'm energized. I love what I'm doing. I get enough baseball to float my ship. DN: If you get the result you want in Beijing, where would it rank on your list of baseball thrills? DJ: Right at the top. I'd trade one of my World Series rings right now for a gold medal and I think anybody would feel that way. It's one thing when it says Mets or Orioles across your chest, and it's another when it says USA.

Every once in a while Filip Bondy writes something worth reading. ="Filip Bondy"] Jane Jarvis recalls the happy times and tunes at Shea Monday, April 28th 2008, 8:55 PM You whistle the tune she once played each time the Mets took the field, and Jane Jarvis giggles merrily. It is still a great pleasure for her to know that people out there remember. She wrote the song back in 1964, which she called "Let's Go Mets," and it is quite different than the other "Let's Go Mets" ditty the club still uses. http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2008/04/29/amd_jane-jarvis.jpgJane Jarvis, Shea Stadium's organ player for 15 years, regrets that baseball's signature sound is silenced. Everything is different, of course. The sound system at Shea Stadium is harsh and relentless, overpowering any attempts at conversation by spectators with tinny heavy metal or rap or silly scoreboard games. Organ music is a great pleasure lost at major league games, along with its expert practitioners. Jarvis, 92, grows very sad when she considers the fate of Shea, where she played the organ for 15 years, until an ownership change following the 1979 season. "I thought I was leaving on my own volition," says Jarvis, who can still play a mean jazz piano on her better days. "It turns out they would have let me go, because there was no organ anymore. The new owners didn't want it. They made it clear they didn't want the music." When it comes to music and the Mets, Jarvis once wrote the book. "I made all the decisions," she says. She had a song for when the Mets trotted to their positions, and a song for when they smacked a homer, and then there was the Mexican Hat Dance to get things going when the home team really needed it during the seventh-inning stretch. An entire generation of Met fans came to identify the team's championship run in 1969 with her lilting keyboard work. By the time she retired from such frivolities at age 63, Jarvis already had established herself long before as a child prodigy and then as a respected recording artist. Baseball and the Mets, however, were her primary passion. This was not always the case. Jarvis, from Gary, Ind., knew little of the game while hosting a television show in Milwaukee back in the 1950s called "Jivin' with Jarvis." When she took a job playing the organ for the Milwaukee Braves at County Stadium, Jarvis didn't know exactly when an inning began or ended. But she was a fast learner, and came to love the sport. She came to New York as an arranger for the Muzak Corp. and then was a natural hire by the Mets when their new stadium opened in Flushing. "I have a history of working for baseball and so they were trying to contact me, and I didn't even know it," Jarvis says. "I went to them to apply for the job. They handed me the music, and I played it real well. They realized I was a person who had the experience and knew the kind of music you play. It was a happy situation." The job required several talents. An organist needed to have a feel for the flow of the game, and required great durability to survive an 81-game home season. She played through storms and she played through the great blackout of 1977, keeping everyone calm in their seats. "I played hours and hours through the rain delays," Jarvis says. "But I tell you I loved the job. I had the opportunity to meet the most important people in the world." She remembers fondly the owners and players she met over the many seasons. She had several favorites, one of them being the Mets' outfield star, Tommy Agee. Jarvis never really became too close to any of the managers, however, as they came and went too quickly. "There really wasn't a lot of camaraderie with them," she says. "Their jobs were so perilous." Jarvis faced her own musical crisis, too, when the Mets purchased a new organ that she found to be terribly misfit for the task. "I knew I had to be very careful what I said," Jarvis says. "I was trying to play the organ that they bought. I was ready to play. I wound up playing it. And then just by chance, I happened to know the senior manager of the Thomas organ company. And he was at the ballpark, and I was waving at him, and I was crying. "He asked, 'Why are you crying?' And I said, 'Because of this organ.' I explained to him that people had thought they'd bought the best, but he said, 'I know you're the one who is going to have to play it, and I'm going to fight to get our organ in there.'" Within two days, a new Thomas organ was installed and ready to play. Jarvis would remain content at her keyboard until retirement, and until the Wilpon-Doubleday ownership went in a very different musical direction. When she inquired about the organ after her retirement, she was disappointed to discover it had disappeared without explanation. Jarvis recently endured a frightening experience when a construction crane collapsed on East 50th St., adjacent to her own apartment building, killing seven people. Jarvis moved out of her place temporarily, before returning after the dust settled. There is still a makeshift memorial and much recovery work going on next door. "I was shaken by it," Jarvis says. "It was a horrible, horrible thing to have happen, the most terrifying experience you can imagine. "But when you consider I'm 92, I'm in excellent health. I'm still invited and hired to play." Never again at Shea, it seems. "I can't bear to think about it," she says of the stadium's lame-duck status. "People were so nice to me. You caught me on my favorite subject."

I'm amazed that anyone would spend $300 or $400 for a shirt that you'd feel silly wearing in public. But maybe that's just me.

It looks like St. Lucie has won 2 of their last 3. Their record is now a robust 4 and 21. Ramon Castro has now seen game action for the St. Lucie Mets.

I think Gary would have just skipped to the second part.

I know nothing about country music. (If he wasn't Tug's son, I probably wouldn't know who Tim McGraw was.) But what about this Mindy McCready? How well known is she? Have any of us heard of her before this Clemens connection? Is she a star, or a fringe celebrity?

You know, I don't remember. When I think of the movie, though, I don't think of San Diego.

="batmagadanleadoff"]Wallace Matthews writes: "aside from the age of his alleged mistress at the time of their meeting, this is one big non-story," ? "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln..." Is there a statute of limitations on statutory rape? If he did have sex with her when she was 15, that was 17 years ago. Can he still be prosecuted? I seem to remember that there is a statute of limitations from the priest abuse scandals, wasn't there?

Tomorrow is another Wacky Wednesday, with three games closing. (The Mets weekend series at Shea against the Braves.) If you haven't voted yet for these games (and the voting has been rather light considering that the Mets won two of the games) then please do so today. Schaefer POTG 04/25/08 - Braves 6, Mets 3 Schaefer PotG 04/26/08; Mets 4, Braves 3 Schaefer POTG 04/27/08 Mets 6, Atlanta 3

VOTING FOR THIS GAME IS NOW CLOSED Totals for April 24, 2008 (10 votes) Washington Nationals 10, New York Mets 5 NameTotal PointsPoints AwardedPlayer PerformanceLuis Castillo24.442.443-5, R, RBI, SO, SB.Ryan Church12.001.202-4, R, 2B, RBI, BB, SB.Marlon Anderson8.730.871-1, R, HR, RBI.Carlos Beltran7.450.741-5, R, HR, RBI, 3 SO.Raul Casanova6.110.612-4, R.Pedro Feliciano4.720.471.0 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 1 SO.Oliver Perez2.800.28(L) 5.2 IP, 6 H, 5 ER, 4 BB, 3 SO.

Finally! A poll where I've seen both films. My vote goes to Mister Smith.

They're making the Pirates return to New York on August 11. They should just do a day/night doubleheader on Wednesday. In August, they may very well wish they had that off day.

Since the Mets opened on the road this year, will they be opening at home next year? (I hope so; I'd like the first game at Citi Field to be a season opener. And I'd like the last game at Shea to be World Series Game 7.)

Always available at http://potg.leaptoad.com/mets/

It's also a pot/kettle thing.

Namor's not part of the solution.