Benjamin Grimm

I brought my resume, and a copy of the article that was written about me in Baseball Hobby News showing what an extreme Mets fan I was. Jay said, "Our interns come in seven days a week, twelve hours a day, eight months a year, and do not get any form of payment." Are all internships that sucky? I told Jay that my religion would not allow me to come in on Friday nights and Saturdays, and what my college professor in charge of internships for a long time said was the most classless act by an interviewer she's heard of, Jay got up, said goodbye and refused to talk to me anymore. Jay does sound charming in this account.

Wow. 20 pitches, 20 swings. 12 misses, and 8 fair balls. Makes for a fast-moving game.

Is the negativity focused on MLB for lending the money? Or on the Mets for needing the loan? My impression is that it's tilted towards the latter.

Sounds like what you called Flipya10cardlarries, we called "Ten Larries". (I never found out who "Larry" was.) We did scaling, too. I had forgotten about that. It was, as I recall, third in popularity behind the standard color-matching game and the match/dematch single-card game.

I would think that if the minority stake up for sale becomes a majority stake, the field of interested buyers will multiply.

I remember flipping where the second person would have to match or "dematch" the first flip. Here's how it would work: I'd walk up to you and say, "Flip ya Larries!" Since I called Larries, you'd have to go first. So you'd flip the card and it would spin to the ground, landing either face up or face down. You'd then say "Match" or "Dematch." If it's Match, my card has to land the same way yours did. If Dematch, the opposite. If I succeed, I keep both cards. If not, you do. We'd also play Five Larries or Ten Larries, where each player would have a stack of five or ten cards. We'd then alternate putting a card down face up (like playing War) and if I placed a card down that had a color match to yours, I'd take the discard pile and put it at the bottom of my hand. First player to have all cards in his hands gets to keep them all. (Unless you called no keepsies.) Once again, whoever calls Larries gets the "home field advantage." If you don't have Larries, you have to go first in every round.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I'm having a baseball card chuck-up there too. I remember those!

Watched it again last night. It was, I think, the third time I've seen it, perhaps the fourth. I suppose that it's one of those movies that get better with subsequent viewings, because I enjoyed it more this time than I have in the past. You're right about them overplaying the ballad, but boy, what a terrific movie it was. It looked especially beautiful in HD. Gary Cooper was probably never better.

The trustee would sell the reorganized assets to the highest bidder (Selig has zero say who) at what would likely be a discount to valuations seen now. The "Selig has zero say" thing could be interesting, if it's true. Baseball hasn't worked that way in a very long time. What if a casino company, like Harrah's, was the highest bidder?

30 starts, 13 wins, 3.98 ERA. I have a pretty good feeling about him this year. He'll become only the fifth Mets player with a surname beginning with the letter Y.

Maybe the Mets can borrow another $90 million and give Jose a new contract.

Edgy DC wrote: Under either circumstance, I don't see it languisihing as a neglected asset. Baseball is a much bigger and more competitive business in today's world. That's a good point. Under that scenario, there would probably be more turmoil than there was between Payson and Doubleday, but it probably wouldn't drag on indefinitely.

Edgy DC wrote: I doubt that the team is entering a second Grant's Tomb era. There may be trimming on the payroll expenses, and there frankly ought to be. But the post-Joan Payson period featured one heir who didn't want the team and another who didn't really know what to do with it other than let her daughters play with it and was afraid of losing money on it, while the guy managing the show had an axe to grind about the old days. Jeff Wilpon wants the team, and it's valuable. If they lose control, somebody else who wants it will get it. It's not an exact parallel to the situation in the late 70's, but the result could be much the same. If the Wilpons decide to stubbornly hang on, even after it's clear that they can't do the club justice, we'll have a lean period that will end only when inevitability catches up to Fred and Jeff. And that's why I'm saying that if they're going to go, let's do it now and not after that painful three-year (or whatever) period. They've had more than 30 years running a big league baseball team, they won a World Series, and had four other playoff teams, and they fulfilled their dream of rebuilding Ebbets Field. If this is the end of the road, then they need to come to accept it. I'm not saying we've reached that point... I honestly have no idea. I also don't know if that point will ever, in fact, be reached. This is just what I see as the worst-case scenario, and I'm hoping it doesn't come to pass.

I haven't been getting mired in the details of this. All I know is that if the Wilpons can no longer afford to run the team, they have to sell. My biggest fear around all this is that we're going to go through another period like the interregnum between the death of Joan Payson and the arrival of Nelson Doubleday. If the final outcome is going to be a full sale, then let's have it sooner rather than later.

I voted Beltran. I figure that even if he only plays in 40 per cent of the games, he'll end up with more than anybody else.

I think his audition is real. More David Cone 2003* than Howard Johnson 1997. *But hopefully a better ending.

He'll be part of the solution, not part of the problem. 30 homers, 110 rbi, 40 doubles, .290.

Nobody's saying that Duke Snider was the last living Brooklyn Dodger, but he was the biggest of their remaining stars. Bob Aspromonte yet lives!

Saw it again just a year or two ago. Still very enjoyable. I gave it 3.5, but I could have gone 4. I remember seeing it the day it opened. It was the last day of school, and we got out early. (I still remember the date, because I was looking forward to it so much: June 20, 1975.) I was twelve years old, and my friends and I rode our bikes to the Hauppauge Movie Theater to see the first showing. When I watched it most recently, I got a kick out of seeing Roy Scheider say, "That's some bad hat, Harry!" Until then, I had no idea that the little cartoon that appears after each episode of House originated in Jaws.

Undermining Mike Pelfrey's confidence. (Everywhere but on the baseball field.) This was revealed during a chat on Mets Hot Stove last week with Kevin Burkhardt.

Is it a J sound or an H sound? It could be Hordney, or Hor-Danny.

Frayed Knot wrote: With all the 2Bmen and potential 2Bmen in front of him, I don't think we'll be seeing someone who has barely played above A+ ball in a ML uni this year. I was thinking the same thing. Even if Castillo is released and Emaus returned to Toronto, there's still Turner and Tejada above him if there's any need for an in-season DL callup. Valdespin's best chance at playing for the Mets would probably be after September 1, but I don't think that even that is likely. My guess is that he'll start at either Binghamton or Buffalo, and that he'll finish the year in Buffalo.

The second-oldest living Met, and the first one to die from the Top Twenty since I inaugurated this page. (Joe Hicks moves into the Top Twenty, and Joe Ginsburg advances to the number 2 slot.) I shook his hand once at a baseball card show in Atlantic City. It was somewhere around 1990. I told him my mom was a big fan of his when he played for the Dodgers, and he said, "Say hello to your mom for me." When I passed along the message, she got a big kick out of it. My sister later reported that she heard my mother muttering, "Duke Snider said hello to me!" I only chatted with him for a few minutes, but he seemed like a really nice guy.

I do think it will get there. It might get up to 100 per cent... or more!

Debuted a bit of a new look today.