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Blue wall background = votes!

Original FANner (and MLBS) Steve Somers does his final regular shift Friday night 11 to 2, then a 1-hour farewell for the awake crowd this Monday at 1 PM. He's been nudged into retirement by a station that wishes to be less listenable than it already is.

Ed Lucas, longtime sportswriter and true inspiration, 82. Whenever he was asked about his life as a blind man, Ed Lucas would reply simply, “I consider it an inconvenience, not a handicap.'' It was his indomitable spirit that enabled him to realize his dreams and become an inspiration to thousands of people. A sports journalism pioneer, Lucas, a Jersey Journal columnist who also wrote for numerous publications, including Yankee Magazine, died Wednesday at St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston. He was 82. Born in Jersey City, Lucas, a Union resident, considered himself lucky he had full vision during his early childhood. “For one thing, how do you describe color to someone who's never seen?” he would ask. “It becomes a concept. The sky is blue. The grass is green.'' Lucas was 12 years old in the fall of 1951 when Bobby Thomson hit the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World'' in the bottom of the ninth inning to propel his beloved New York Giants to the National League pennant over the Brooklyn Dodgers. After the game, he and his friends went outside to play some ball. Lucas, a lefty pitcher, was struck between the eyes with a line drive. Four years later he was blind. His parents enrolled him at St. Joseph's School for the Blind in Jersey City, where he was taught to be self-sufficient. A grateful Lucas later worked for many years at the school, helping it to raise funds. One winter, his parents took him to a clothing store in Newark, where he met Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto, who was working there. In those days, most ballplayers didn't make a lot of money and supplemented their income with jobs during the winter. The two started a close friendship that lasted more than half a century until the Hall of Famer's death in 2007. It was while attending Seton Hall University in South Orange that Lucas began pursuing his dream of becoming a baseball writer. “People would ask how could a blind man cover a baseball game?” he recalled. “It was unheard of. I always say never, never, never give up.'' It was that perseverance that enabled him to achieve his goal. Friends who accompanied him to major league games as his guide and “eyes'' were amazed at how Lucas could tell where a ball was hit simply by listening to the crack of the bat. https://www.nj.com/hudson/2021/11/ed-lucas-blind-sports-journalist-and-inspiration-to-so-many-dies-at-82.htmlhttps://www.nj.com/hudson/2021/11/ed-lucas-blind-sports-journalist-and-inspiration-to-so-many-dies-at-82.html

News used a picture from 2018, before Matz realized he sucked. The lack of the Nike logo served as a tiebreaker for me.

Post's news judgment in putting deGrom on the front page was uncommonly wise.

Ed Alfonzo also with the November 8 birthday. Oh, and Educator bmfc1!

Passan reports Conforto says no to QO.

Orioles, if you're not particular about OF positions. C Wieters 1B Murray/Palmeiro 2B Johnson/Grich/Alomar SS Belanger/Hardy/Aparicio 3B Robinson/Machado OF Markakis, Blair, Jones P Mussina/Palmer

It's also far too soon to lose a Met who called Citi Field his professional home. Perpetual Pedro is the first Citi Field Met to leave us. Citi Field has been in operation for all of thirteen seasons. A decade hasn't gone by since Pedro Feliciano was retiring batters there. For a while, particularly in its infancy, you could be pretty certain that if you planned a day or night at the Mets' red-bricked crib, you would see Pedro Feliciano pitch. Maybe slightly before you clapped along to “Lazy Mary”; maybe a half-inning after. You knew you'd hear the song. You were fairly sure you'd see the southpaw. Was the game close? Did the other team have a dangerous lefty hitter looming? Pedro was available. The final game at Shea Stadium included among its festivities Pedro Feliciano pitching. The first game at Citi Field was no different. Coming and going and Pedro. All were constants of the era. http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2021/11/08/the-constant-of-our-times/http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2021/11/08/the-constant-of-our-times/

Stunner.

Lindor loses the GG to Crawford.

For the first time, a lot to enthusiastically choose from, reflecting big news and the coming of the season. ‘HERE WE GO, BABY!' has me excited for 2021 all over again. Kudos to the Post for the elbow and ball in progress shot, but yeesh on the strained LITTLE ‘BOW CHEAP! Went with the clever and of this language ARM ROBBERY. PAY HIM 400M! is specific, has both Alonso and Lindor in the shot and the St. Patrick's caps happen to speak to green.

QOs have been extended to Conforto and Syndergaard.

Nine former big league players and one manager comprise the 10-name Golden Days Era ballot to be reviewed and voted upon Dec. 5 at the Baseball Winter Meetings. Dick Allen, Ken Boyer, Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Roger Maris, Minnie Miñoso, Danny Murtaugh, Tony Oliva, Billy Pierce and Maury Wills are the candidates the Golden Days Era Committee will consider for Hall of Fame election for the Class of 2022. All candidates are former players except for Murtaugh, who was a manager with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Kaat, Oliva and Wills are living, while all other candidates are deceased. https://baseballhall.org/discover/golden-days-era-ballot-2022https://baseballhall.org/discover/golden-days-era-ballot-2022

The family of first Met-cultivated All-Star Ron Hunt seeks help for their dad. “I'll ask for forgiveness later. This is coming from me,” the Wentzville, Mo., resident said this week. “This is just me wanting my dad to have a quality of life for what he has left.” Hunt's dad is someone well-known to older Mets fans: fan favorite Ron Hunt, the first Met to start an All-Star Game, the 1964 Midsummer Classic, held at Shea Stadium of all places. As the Hunt family shared with The Post back in 2018, Ron is battling Parkinson's disease, an incurable neurodegenerative disorder that has taken its toll on him. Now 80, “Ron has good days and bad days, but every three days, he takes a good, nice fall,” his daughter said. “His kneecaps are destroyed. His body is destroyed.” There is a way to help him, though, Tracy Hunt believes, which is why she finds herself asking her dad's many admirers for help. The Hunt family, with the help of family friend Frank Santarpia, has set up a GoFundMe page in the hopes of completing an experimental protocol for Parkinson's that Ron began earlier this year. Such publicity won't play well with the stoic Ron Hunt, who takes great pride in the 243 times he got hit by a pitch, fourth all-time in modern baseball, including the single-season record of 50 in 1971 with the Expos. “This is me. This is my last resort,” Tracy Hunt said. “I don't have another bag of money.” Ken Davidoff, who's been chronicling Hunt's travails, picks up the story. https://nypost.com/2021/11/05/ron-hunts-daughter-raising-money-for-ex-mets-treatment/https://nypost.com/2021/11/05/ron-hunts-daughter-raising-money-for-ex-mets-treatment/

Adeiny Hechavarria is the Big Boss of bat flips for the Chiba Lotte Marines.

Chili Davis has had it with you people. ”That organization needs a big turnaround, they need to clean house,” Davis said. “Some of the people that have been there so long during those dismal years, they need to bring some fresh faces and baseball people in there. To be honest I don't think Zack Scott was a baseball person. He was the head of analytics in Boston. He was an analytical guy. That's where he belonged, in analytics.” Tongue unheld, Chili let's Mike Puma knows how he really feels. https://nypost.com/2021/11/05/chili-davis-goes-scorched-earth-on-broken-mets/https://nypost.com/2021/11/05/chili-davis-goes-scorched-earth-on-broken-mets/

Once I've gone El Mago I can't go backo

Mets just picked up a veteran second baseman.

They are the Fighters. Nippon Ham is the sponsor. And Shinjo is Big Boss.