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Apple TV+ is a streaming service à la Netflix. It is best known as the home of Ted Lasso. Like those YouTube or Facebook Live games of recent vintage, this indeed projects as an annoyance. Thank goodness for good ol' radio.

Mookie was presented with the Thurman Munson Award last night.

You may now drop what you're doing and drive the Tom Seaver Highway. Hometown baseball hero Tom Seaver was honored Friday with the naming of a section of Highway 41 between Jensen and Ventura avenues in Fresno as “Tom Seaver Memorial Highway.” The official signage was unveiled during a ceremony at Chukchansi Park, attended by friends, fans and former teammates of Seaver, a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame who died on Aug. 31, 2020 at age 75. A unanimous Baseball Hall of Fame selection in 1992, Seaver first played the game at Fresno High and Fresno City College. Len Bourdet, 95, Seaver's coach at Fresno City College, was on hand Friday. In his big-league career, Seaver compiled 311 wins and won three NL Cy Young Awards as the league's best pitcher. He's also regarded as the leader of the New York “Miracle” Mets' World Series championship team in 1969, when he won a major league-leading 25 games during the regular season. “I think of Tom Seaver as one of the greatest pitchers, maybe the greatest pitcher,” said Larry Woods, a childhood friend. “Being a Fresno representative, this is quite an honor — not only for the city, but also for the region because Tom was a Valley boy. “He was a Fresno kid, and we need to always remember his heritage and the job he did as a commensurate athlete, and one who showed us how to really play the game, but to live the life.” https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article259056548.htmlhttps://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article259056548.html

From Slate: https://slate.com/culture/2022/03/mlb-lockout-rob-manfred-commissioner-baseball-owners-cynical.htmlThe Lords of Baseball Think You're Stupid The lockout is Manfred and the owners' concoction. It is right there in the word: The league locked out its players when the last Basic Agreement expired. MLB did not have to do that, players were not poised to walk out on strike, and the 2022 season could've gone ahead while the parties worked on a new one. The “defensive lockout” wasn't one. But Manfred, whether he believed himself or not, was playing with fire. He said it would be “disastrous” if the league needed to cancel games, which it had never done in a lockout. And when it happened, on Tuesday, he told reporters that fans were “at the very top of our consideration list.” In yet another open letter, Manfred reiterated that MLB would not lift the lockout, pointing out that players went on strike in a CBA-less 1994 season. “We cannot risk such an outcome again for our fans and our sport,” he wrote. See? He's doing this for you. Manfred is an arsonist who wants you to think he is a firefighter. Even if you take him at his word that the lockout was necessary (you should not), his actions since imposing it have been farcical. Manfred's side did not issue a collective bargaining proposal to the MLB Players Association for 43 whole days after the Commissioner of Baseball said in his first letter that the lockout was meant to “jumpstart” things. The stalling was plain to see as it was happening. Players don't get paid in the offseason. They get paid during the season, and Manfred wanted them up against a wall. So the league waited, then moved inch by inch (and sometimes not at all) on the issues the union cared most about. Many of them centered around pay for young players, who get less than their peers in other sports while representing a higher share of the rosters. Manfred slapped an artificial deadline on the process he engineered, saying the sides needed a deal by Monday to preserve the full regular season. He moved it back to Tuesday, then pulled the trigger on cancellations when the union didn't close the gap. Manfred then told the press that MLB hadn't “used the phrase ‘last, best, and final offer' with the union.” That is a legal term. It is management's right to make a last offer for the players to take or leave. But the MLBPA's lead negotiator was clear with reporters that MLB had used exactly those words. Someone is lying or at least severely stretching the truth. Maybe it's the guy who invented both this entire situation and every conceivable justification for it. Either way, Manfred has his leverage, as a delayed season could cost players a lot of money. The thing he claimed to be committed to avoiding—using the threat of it as the foundation for his lockout—is happening. None of this has been a cunning display of Machiavellian proportions on either his or his bosses' part. They have bumbled in front of both the players and the media. Colorado Rockies owner Dick Monfort, who chairs the owners' labor committee, reportedly whined to the union across the table about the difficult costs of owning a team. (He then disappeared from negotiations for a bit.) Manfred got in front of microphones and said that buying and owning a team was less profitable than investing in the stock market. Manfred provided no evidence and didn't engage with follow-up questions. But it's a preposterous claim on the valuations, even before considering the regular cash flows ownership can generate. Manfred could only say it because he thought his target audience, the baseball-loving public, would buy it. Such obfuscation is part of the plan. Manfred and the owners did not show up to this self-created crisis without a strategy. The commissioner has spent almost his whole professional life as a management-side labor lawyer, helping companies fight unions. He has been in bureaucratic combat with the MLBPA since the 1980s, first as outside counsel and then as one of the league's top lawyers. That experience is why the owners picked him to succeed Bud Selig in 2014. His career has built toward this moment of hardball with baseball's best players. What does Manfred really like about his job, aside from the good pay? https://slate.com/culture/2022/03/mlb-lockout-rob-manfred-commissioner-baseball-owners-cynical.htmlhttps://slate.com/culture/2022/03/mlb-lockout-rob-manfred-commissioner-baseball-owners-cynical.html

Nelson Figueroa is fixing to coach in the borough of Richmond.

Former Super Bowl QB Cam Newton certainly dresses the part.

Josh has been doing the club-sanctioned “Mets in the Morning” podcast since July. You can tell it's official because he dances around the names of locked-out players.

[media=youtube]Y-bqQfSU4ws[/media] Your newly RSVP'd Old-Timers include a 30-30 man, a 300-save notcher and, most impressively, a pitcher who went 5-4 for a club that went 40-120. Zoom along with HoJo, Wags and the Original K-Mac.

https://twitter.com/cst_soxvan/status/1496560884021436419

Julio Cruz, Mariners and White Sox infielder from 1977 to 1986, 67. https://twitter.com/morenojosea/status/1496325953471012870

George Altman, a month from his 89th birthday, has gotten around, as Anthony Castrovince notes. Though this cannot be proven, it can be reasonably proposed that Altman, who turns 89 on March 20, played baseball in more organized leagues than anybody in history. The back of Altman's baseball card will show the 991 games he played for the Cubs, Cardinals and Mets from 1959-67. He hit .269 with 101 home runs and 403 RBIs and was selected as a National League All-Star three times (twice in 1961, when two games were held, and once in 1962). That's a very good career, worthy of remembrance. But what makes Altman truly special is all that surrounded those nine seasons in the NL. Altman is one of only 87 people to have played in both the Negro Leagues and the AL or NL. And he is one of only three people -- along with Don Newcombe and Larry Doby -- to have played in the Negro Leagues, AL/NL and Japan's NPB. Add in his collegiate experience at Tennessee A&I (the historically Black school that became Tennessee State), his time playing baseball in the Army and his time in the Panamanian and Cuban winter leagues, and Altman's baseball career is uniquely diverse. And what a career it was. Altman joined the legendary Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron in manning right field in one of those 1961 All-Star Games. He is one of only three players (along with Ernie Banks and Felipe Alou) to have homered off Sandy Koufax twice in the same game. He made a leaping catch in the ninth inning to preserve Don Cardwell's 1960 no-hitter. And in Japan, he played through a bout with colon cancer and had a double-digit home run total at the ripe old age of 42. https://www.mlb.com/news/george-altman-played-in-the-majors-negro-leagues-and-japanhttps://www.mlb.com/news/george-altman-played-in-the-majors-negro-leagues-and-japan

Ron Mazzola, 61. Heckuva Mets fan I had the pleasure of meeting up with at Citi Field over the years. Well-loved in his community. Very sad to hear about this. You need something, ask Ron. That's all. Ron Mazzola was the man with the answers, with the connections, with the willingness to help any way he could. Always and unselfishly. That's Ron. Need someone to make a phone call, no problem. Texts and emails – they got answered within minutes. He was an institution for decades, first in Old Bridge from Little League up to the high school teams. Then, he got involved on the region and state levels with NJSIAA wrestling and gymnastics, running tricky tournaments and seeding meetings to optimal clockwork. Everybody knew Ron. Now, there'll be a void in New Jersey high school sports. Mazzola died Monday, according to a Facebook post from his sister. She noted that information about the services will be released. He was 61. https://www.mycentraljersey.com/story/sports/high-school/2022/02/21/old-bridge-nj-ron-mazzola-dies-61/6885795001/https://www.mycentraljersey.com/story/sports/high-school/2022/02/21/old-bridge-nj-ron-mazzola-dies-61/6885795001/

Ollie Perez has announced this coming Mexican League season will be his last. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/02/oliver-perez-announces-plans-to-retire-after-playing-2022-season-in-mexican-league.htmlhttps://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/02/oliver-perez-announces-plans-to-retire-after-playing-2022-season-in-mexican-league.html

Upper Deck was the title sponsor at Shea in 1992 and 1993. Equitable had it through at least 1990.

Having maintained objectivity as the most straitlaced of ESPN anchors for 40 years, Bob Ley has in recent times come out as a diehard MLBS. I heard him wax nostalgic for Shea on the (highly recommended) Lost Ballparks podcast and found his further testimony in an interview mostly about another sport with ace soccer writer Grant Wahl. I'm a huge Mets fan. And I love their TV booth. I think it's the best in the business. https://grantwahl.substack.com/p/q-and-a-bob-leyhttps://grantwahl.substack.com/p/q-and-a-bob-ley

Andy Strasberg, a longtime Padres front office employee, shares one great inside story after another on the Vintage Baseball Photos page on Facebook, this one in particular about the evolution of Old-Timers Day and how it rose and fell as a club promotion throughout MLB in the 1980s. In 1986 the Equitable Finance Company agreed to be the national MLB sponsor of each team's Old-Timers' games. This arrangement was unprecedented. Prior to that, not every team even held Old-Timers' games. And to my knowledge, none of the handful of teams that did salute their former players with an Old-Timers' game had a title sponsor. For those few teams with a rich history, it was decidedly easier to put together two rosters of former popular players for an entertaining three-inning game prior to a regularly scheduled game during the season. Make no mistake about it: Those old-timer's games were largely done for business reasons rather than simple nostalgia. Those games needed to show a profit after expenses, based solely on increased ticket sales for the regularly scheduled game. The Old-Timers' game was always a favorite of mine. Producing the annual event for the Padres was an honor, privilege, and a pleasure. My focus, however, never wavered from keeping costs down – including players round-trip travel, hotel accommodations, player gifts, uniforms, and receptions. Beginning with the Padres' 1978 Old-Timers' game, I was entrusted with selecting those players who would be invited. Inviting former players was not as easy as it may appear. It was a precarious balancing act because we needed to make sure that both team rosters had a willing and capable player for each position. Except in very rare cases, retired players who were not physically able to play in the game were not worth the investment that would result in them being introduced and just giving the crowd a wave. Another part of the invitation formula was inviting recognizable and popular players. They would add to the “draw” along with a few marquee names to help with the sizzle and promotion of the pre-game event. Once Equitable became involved, in addition to their financial underwriting of costs, the majority of my responsibilities for the game were taken on by Capital Sports, an independent event firm hired by Equitable to manage each team's game. My role was reduced to a team contact coordinator rather than the hands-on implementer-in-charge and overseeing everything related to the game. Since Equitable was staging games around the country, they had a roster of players to select from. Their roster of 547 former players included 41 Hall of Famers. Their list of players kept growing because Equitable, at the urging of Joe Garagiola, who was a driving force behind the sponsored concept, began paying appearance fees to each participating player. Prior to that, when teams staged these games a player would not be financially compensated but rather receive airfare, hotel accommodations and a gift. Joe rationalized that it was a payday with real money that many former players needed. He was correct. However, as cruel as it may sound, I thought that was a bad precedent. Sure, in the beginning it would work, but eventually, it would be the downfall of the Old-Timers' games for most teams. In my opinion, paying players for Old-Timers' games presented two problems. The first was how to deal with the appearance fee paid to a superstar Hall of Famer as compared to an everyday, popular player. Players' ego and pride might lead them to believe their presence was worth more than another player. Historically, this wasn't an issue – because each player received the same modest thank-you gift. The second problem was forecasting the future of the event. What happens when Equitable no longer agrees to be title sponsor and another sponsor isn't found? That's when the event would fall back to each team along with associated expenses, some of which (led by player appearance fees) were non-existent before. Under that formula, retired players would expect appearance fees, which would substantially add to the cost of producing the game. For many teams, that would turn a previously profitable event into a deal buster. At the MLB business meetings in Phoenix in the fall of 1986 I voiced my concern in front of every team's representative and those MLB personnel who attended. The result was that I found myself in a shouting match with Joe Garagiola, who was upset by my remarks. For the record, Joe did the shouting; I did the respectful listening. (After the meeting, Joe apologized to me in private. That evening, friends once again, we had a photo taken as I accepted an award that the team won for attendance). As I had predicted, the Old-Timers' game eventually faded from most teams' schedules because of cost concerns once Equitable was no longer sponsoring the event.

The pageantry of the TCD reveal remains unmatched on a global scale.

https://twitter.com/mets/status/1495106157110870017

The Simpsons' softball episode “Homer at the Bat” is turning thirty, a good opportunity for then-Dodger but eternal Met Darryl Strawberry to reflect on his participation among Mr. Burns's beloved ringers. Strawberry has some of the best lines — not to mention the biggest part — among the major-league guest stars. His first scene, his introduction to Homer, was once voted by The Toronto Star as the “greatest conversation of all-time involving the word ‘yes.'” Homer: You're Darryl Strawberry. Strawberry: Yes. Homer: You play right field. Strawberry: Yes. Homer: I play right field, too. Strawberry: So? Homer: Well, are you better than me? Strawberry: Well, I never met you … but … yes. Most scouts would agree that Strawberry had a slight edge over Homer. He was the National League rookie of the year with the New York Mets in 1983, led the league in home runs and slugging in 1988 and was among the youngest players ever to 200 career home runs. By the time he visited “The Simpsons” for his voiceover, Strawberry was en route to his eighth consecutive All-Star Game, his first as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers. As if Strawberry's talent wasn't enough to crack the lineup for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, he also emerged as the Babe Ruth of butt-kissers — the Sultan of Smooch. Whenever he was around Mr. Burns, Strawberry was such a sycophant that he made Mr. Smithers look like a rebel. In the best gag — the crying — Strawberry says nothing at all. He trots out to his right field spot and gets ready to play defense. But Bart and Lisa, annoyed that Strawberry has taken their father's spot, began to taunt him with the classic sing-song chant of Daaaar-ryl, Daaaar-ryl. The joke concludes with a sorrowful Strawberry lifting a left hand to wipe away the tear. Because the scene was added without Strawberry knowing, Jean jokes on the commentary that it was “by far the most unfair thing we've ever done to a guest star.” No hard feelings, Strawberry said: “It amazes me how big that show still is, and it's such an honor to be a part of.” The (paywalled) article in The Athletic collects reminiscences from each of the major leaguers who visited Springfield. The quotes, the author explains, go back a dozen or more years, but that's repeats for ya. https://theathletic.com/3136278/2022/02/19/homer-at-the-bat-turns-30-a-collection-of-memories-from-all-nine-all-stars-in-the-simpsons-classic/https://theathletic.com/3136278/2022/02/19/homer-at-the-bat-turns-30-a-collection-of-memories-from-all-nine-all-stars-in-the-simpsons-classic/

Logan Verrett signs a minor league deal — the only variety available at present — with the Nationals. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/02/nationals-sign-logan-verrett.htmlhttps://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/02/nationals-sign-logan-verrett.html

That's Long Island's Own Danny Barnes (LIODB) if you're looking to fill your Matzless, Stroless void. PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- The Mets have made a late addition to their coaching staff, hiring Long Island native and former Blue Jays pitcher Danny Barnes to be an assistant Major League coach. Barnes had been pursuing a graduate degree at Columbia University, but he paused those plans to accept the Mets' offer. According to manager Buck Showalter, Barnes will be able to continue his degree work in the future. A native of Manhasset, N.Y., Barnes attended Princeton University before spending a decade in the Blue Jays organization. That run included three years in the Majors, from 2016-18, when Barnes produced a 4.33 ERA over 119 relief appearances. He briefly resurfaced last summer for the independent Long Island Ducks, on a roster that included 17 former big leaguers. In announcing the hire, Showalter was vague about Barnes' actual duties, calling him a “utility infielder” who “can do a little bit of everything” and “has got a great skill set.” As someone boasting both top-level playing experience and Ivy League acumen, Barnes presumably can communicate organizational ideas to players, much as former manager Luis Rojas did when he served as quality control coach. The Mets eliminated the position of quality control coach last season. “He understands a lot of things that we have to do, and he's played in the big leagues,” Showalter said. “He knows his way around a Major League locker room, and he'll help everybody.” Barnes joins a staff that also includes bench coach Glenn Sherlock, pitching coach Jeremy Hefner, hitting coach Eric Chavez, assistant hitting coach Jeremy Barnes, bullpen coach Craig Bjornson, first-base coach Wayne Kirby and third-base coach Joey Cora. All are already on-site in Port St. Lucie, preparing for the end of the Major League lockout. https://www.mlb.com/news/danny-barnes-joins-mets-coaching-staffhttps://www.mlb.com/news/danny-barnes-joins-mets-coaching-staff