Benjamin Grimm

Neil Allen?

I was satisfied with it. They did justice to the characters, which was the most important thing. There were some plot holes that were rather silly, but I was willing to shrug them off. Some nice moments that appealed to the traces of fanboy in me. The Fantastic Four are my second-favorite team (after the Mets, natch) so if they get it right I'd be easy to please and if they get it wrong, I'd be hard to please. I was dissatisfied with the 2005 movie, couldn't bring myself to watch the 2015 movie, but was happy with the 2025 version. (What's next? 2035?)

I saw the Fantastic Four movie yesterday with my kids, who aren't really kids anymore. (Both in their twenties.) It was my first time in a first-run movie theater since before the pandemic! I had to come out of retirement for this one because I have an abiding affection for the characters that began when I was ten years old. And I apparently passed that on to at least one of my children.

"Josh Grosz" seems like it would be fun to pronounce.

I can remember what I had for breakfast this morning (Pop-Tarts!) but my short-term memory isn't what it used to be.

Neither of these names are familiar. So far, anyway, Stearns still has all of the Mets top prospects available to him. This deal is the type that we'd expect from him; getting someone who's a little bit good without really denting the farm system.

30 years old and eligible for free agency this winter. This year he has a 3.96 ERA in 45 games. 1 save. Left-handed. 18 walks, 44 strikeouts, 29 hits, 2 homers allowed in 36.1 innings.

When I first read that, I thought you were saying that you were behind the plate for two games. THAT would have been cool, and probably scary.

I was in Toronto on Sunday, and we were in the plaza just outside the stadium. The Blue Jays were playing the Giants, and the stadium roof was open, but I didn't hear any sounds at all coming from the ballpark. I had this conversation with Microsoft Copilot about it:

He had a very short tenure, but he did swing the Francisco Lindor trade, so that will forever be on the plus side of his ledger.

I'm reminded of this thread: https://phpbb3.ultimatemets.com/archives/29800/f1_t29877.shtml

Juan Soto has walked 72 times, and the Mets have played 92 games. He's on a pace to walk 126.78 times this season, although it's unlikely he'll finish with that exact amount. The club record for walks in a season is 125, by John Olerud in 1999. No one else has come close. The next highest total is 97, by Keith Hernandez in 1984 and Darryl Strawberry in 1997. Meanwhile, Pete Alonso is now only five home runs shy of Strawberry's all-time club record. Brandon Nimmo recently became the 14th Met to have 900 hits. (He's currently at 905.) And Francisco Lindor became the 12th Met to steal 100 bases. 1. Jose Reyes 408 2. Mookie Wilson 281 3. Howard Johnson 202 4. David Wright 196 5. Darryl Strawberry 191 6. Lee Mazzilli 152 7. Lenny Dykstra 116 8. Bud Harrelson 115 9. Wally Backman 106 10. Roger Cedeno 105 11. Carlos Beltran 100 11. Francisco Lindor 100

Do you want to reach out to Michael Douglas, or should I? He's still 23 years younger than his father was when he died.

I looked it up, and examples were Vic Morrow and Brandon Lee, who died of accidents. Actors on set who died of natural causes include John Ritter and Tyrone Power.

Michael Douglas, 80. Says he doesn't want to be one of those actors who drops dead on a set. Not baseball, I know, but he played Ant Man! That has to count for something.

I'm as enthusiastic about Tong as I used to be about Sproat.

So it's possible but very unlikely that he'll pitch again this year.

With his home run last night, Juan Soto now has 13 homers as a Met, putting him in a tie for 148th place with Dave Marshall, Ellis Valentine, Matt Franco, Roberto Alomar, Eric Valent, Moises Alou, and James McCann. Hmmmm... Maybe this isn't as interesting as I originally thought. But... Dave Marshall!

I'm guessing a swarm of bot activity came through. We have a lot of pages on this forum, and if a bot decides to index each and every page, it will definitely but a strain on the database.

Pete now only two home runs away from tying David Wright for second place.

METS HOME RUN LEADERS Francisco Lindor's next home run will knock Todd Hundley out of the Top Ten. And Lucas Duda's spot in the Top Ten is in jeopardy as well, with Brandon Nimmo coming on. Also, Pete Alonso is now only four behind David Wright for second place. 1. Darryl Strawberry 252 2. David Wright 242 3. Pete Alonso 238 4. Mike Piazza 220 5. Howard Johnson 192 6. Dave Kingman 154 7. Carlos Beltran 149 8. Michael Conforto 132 9. Lucas Duda 125 10. Todd Hundley 124 10. Francisco Lindor 124 12. Kevin McReynolds 122 13. Edgardo Alfonzo 120 14. Brandon Nimmo 119 15. Ed Kranepool 118 16. Jose Reyes 108 17. Carlos Delgado 104 18. George Foster 99 19. Bobby Bonilla 95 19. Curtis Granderson 9 METS HIT LEADERS There's a cluster of active Mets in the Top Twenty, all poised to knock Carlos Beltran down a few notches sometime this season. Lindor, with 664 hits, is currently in 26th place. 1. David Wright 1,777 2. Jose Reyes 1,534 3. Ed Kranepool 1,418 4. Cleon Jones 1,188 5. Edgardo Alfonzo 1,136 6. Mookie Wilson 1,112 7. Bud Harrelson 1,029 8. Mike Piazza 1,028 9. Darryl Strawberry 1,025 10. Howard Johnson 997 11. Jerry Grote 994 12. Daniel Murphy 967 13. Keith Hernandez 939 14. Carlos Beltran 878 15. Brandon Nimmo 867 16. Pete Alonso 844 17. Jeff McNeil 842 18. Lee Mazzilli 796 19. Kevin McReynolds 791 20. Felix Millan 743 METS SAVE LEADERS Edwin Diaz recently moved past Jay-or-Reese Familia to claim third place. Getting to second place this season is possible, but he'll have to pick up the pace. 1. John Franco 276 2. Armando Benitez 160 3. Edwin Diaz 129 4. Jeurys Familia 124 5. Jesse Orosco 107 6. Billy Wagner 101 7. Tug McGraw 85 8. Roger McDowell 84 9. Francisco Rodriguez 83 10. Neil Allen 69

I'm beginning to feel less optimistic about this guy.

I hope it doesn't mean that Russian hackers are trying to influence your Schaefer vote! If Brett Baty suddenly has a surge in Schaefer points, we'll know that the election has been rigged.

They pretty much don't want to spend much time supporting a site that doesn't use WordPress. They tell me I have to "optimize" the site, but don't tell me where it's not optimum. So here's what I did. (This is kind of like "inside baseball" isn't it?) I looked at log files to see what pages were getting the most activity in the UMDB and I disabled two features that the bots were murdering. There was a tab on the player page that looked at play-by-play data (the same data that is used to generate the scorecards) and allows a visitor to see how a player performed in different situations. Runners on first and third in the seventh inning against a left-handed pitcher, for example. The bots were rampaging through that page, "clicking" on all of the possibilities. So I got rid of that tab. It was probably used far more frequently by bots than by humans. The other feature was on pages like these: Ultimate Mets Database - Willie Stargell and Ultimate Mets Database - Juan Marichal In the section that shows how the player performed against different Mets pitchers or hitters, each of the columns were sortable. The bots were killing this page too, going through player after player, Mets players and opponents alike, sorting all of the columns. The automated abuse of these two features put quite a load on the server, and overloaded the so-called "unlimited" bandwidth. This should make things better, but how much better remains to be seen. There may be more features that I'll have to cull, but for now this is it. We'll see what happens.