G-Fafif

Might the Mets be stablemates to the Devils and Sixers? https://variety.com/2020/sports/sports-stars/josh-harris-mets-bid-1234627896/https://variety.com/2020/sports/sports-stars/josh-harris-mets-bid-1234627896/ The owners of the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils are looking to expand their sports empire to baseball. Josh Harris, the billionaire co-founder of Apollo Global Management, and David Blitzer, an executive at private equity firm Blackstone, are among the suitors for the New York Mets, according to people familiar with the matter. The Mets have retained Steve Greenberg at Allen & Co. to oversee the sale process.

When Cleon Jones first heard about George Floyd's killing by police, he was transported back to Mobile, Alabama, in 1977. The former Mets outfielder was driving home while his wife, Angela, was doing so in another car. She made it home safely. Jones was stopped by a white police officer who claimed his turn signal was broken. “Thank you officer, but I didn't know it wasn't working,” Jones said. “Where's your license?” the officer asked. “In the other car,” Jones told him. “OK. Hold on a minute,” the officer said. “I waited and waited and waited until finally I asked, ‘What's going on? How long do you want me to wait?' A couple of seconds later, more police vehicles showed up and another officer approached me,” Jones said. “We're going to whoop your ass,” the officer said. Moments later, a brawl ensued. Jones, a year after he retired from baseball, wrestled with police officers on the ground in his own neighborhood when suddenly, he was hit with a club. “Finally, my mind said get away from here,” Jones recalled in a phone conversation with the Daily News. “I was right in front of my place of business at that time, so I ran around the block.” Except, that didn't work. The police trailed Jones and soon, began beating him up again. His neighbors came out of their homes and started shouting Jones' name. Eventually, the officers stopped. “They didn't realize who I was at the time,” Jones said. “When people started calling my name, the white officers realized they picked the wrong individual. And this happened in 1977! God knows what happened before then, because I know for a fact it happened to other folks.” https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/ny-cleon-jones-interview-george-floyd-20200607-325gkvewybbjpoheep2vls33hq-story.htmlhttps://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/ny-cleon-jones-interview-george-floyd-20200607-325gkvewybbjpoheep2vls33hq-story.html

The Post retraces the Matt Harvey phenomenon on the tenth anniversary of the Mets drafting him. https://nypost.com/2020/06/06/mets-rise-and-fall-of-matt-harvey-an-oral-history/https://nypost.com/2020/06/06/mets-rise-and-fall-of-matt-harvey-an-oral-history/

What befell Seaver in 1970 also got the best of Scherzer in 2018 and Ryu in 2019. He had the Cy Young in his grasp deep into the season, and he couldn't hang onto it. Of course in 2018 and 2019, it worked to deGrom's benefit, so you lose some, you win some, though we'd prefer to win all. The dynamic didn't work for Seaver in 1981. One can only wonder what might have transpired had the season's middle third been pitched.

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=37915 time=1591285808 user_id=68]But no NL pitcher was better than Seaver in '76. It's just that wins were like everything back then.

=Ceetar post_id=37903 time=1591279551 user_id=102] shoutout to '70/'71.

However many or few games are played, count only those the Mets win.

“I'd hear it every year,” says Ben Walker of the Associated Press. “Don't those guys have jobs?” Yes. But they never let those jobs impose on their softball careers. Fred Lief, who pitched wire-to-wire in the Press League—which is to say that he played every season between 1976 and 2018 for one of the two wire services, the AP or UPI—says, “There is no other institution in my life, not a job, not my marriage, that endured as long.” From SI, a deep, deep dive into the history of the Press League — serious softball in Central Park. https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/06/02/new-york-press-league-softball?suid=5cc1cb2c3f92a475c02227e0&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=SI%20Extra%20060220&utm_term=SI%20Extra%20-%20USE%20THIS%20-%20Listhttps://www.si.com/mlb/2020/06/02/new-york-press-league-softball?suid=5cc1cb2c3f92a475c02227e0&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=SI%20Extra%20060220&utm_term=SI%20Extra%20-%20USE%20THIS%20-%20List

Art's daughter reports her dad is now virus-free.

A few thoughts http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2020/06/01/a-bit-of-a-miracle-on-33rd-street/here.

The latest...

FS1 seems to have abandoned its moral obligation to air “TWIB” now that it can fill its weekend with car reading and German soccer, but this makes for a nice coda to the show's revival.

Murph and Gary from 2021 via 1999... https://youtu.be/oSCqwd5zTMghttps://youtu.be/oSCqwd5zTMg

The Zoom call of the year, the year being 1977: Howie Rose gets the inside dope on how things were going down at this time 43 late Mays ago from newly named player-manager Joe Torre and restless Cincinnati Red backup infielder Doug Flynn. https://youtu.be/O3_NT720ypIhttps://youtu.be/O3_NT720ypI Bonus content, featuring John Stearns as skipper and Jerry Koosman as avenging angel of an advanced age. https://youtu.be/1cflGZi28mkhttps://youtu.be/1cflGZi28mk

New York's great baseball gathering spot is closing.

The Mets set their single-game home run record at CBP with 7 in 2005 as they scored 16...and broke it at CBP with 8 in 2015 as they scored another 16. And the franchise record for runs in a game? That's 24, set at CBP in 2018. So the band box reputation is kind of deserved. You might not have wanted to see Greg Luzinski come to bat in his heyday, but the Bull's BBQ stand is always http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2018/08/18/the-happy-reschlep/a welcome sight. Bonus track: Sojourns to and from Citizens Bank Park eventually http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2011/07/24/the-soundtrack-of-your-life/put me in mind of Amy Winehouse, and not only because so many Phillies fans would be well-served by a trip to rehab.

Drew Shea, grandson of Bill Shea, 54. https://myrye.com/my_weblog/2020/05/in-memory-drew-shea-age-54.htmlhttps://myrye.com/my_weblog/2020/05/in-memory-drew-shea-age-54.html

Biff Pocoroba, 1970s Braves catcher and possessor of one of the decade's Top Ten baseball names, 66.

One more from the balm for a lousy season file: Frank Tanana carries a no-hit bid into the seventh on a Saturday afternoon in 1993. Mrs F. and I had just left the Met — they had a baseball card exhibit — and my Walkman carried the exciting news. Just as I decided this was the PERFECT way for a no-hitter to happen, it was broken up. But the Mets hung on and we had a nice dinner.

Doc at Candlestick in 1985 also conjures for me a Marty Noble story about then SF veteran Vida Blue watching the Gooden phenomenon warily as one of the few pitchers active who could understand what it was like to have survived such a frenzy. Three more pitching quick hits: 1975: Ed Halicki's no-hitter, in the untelevised half of a Sunday doubleheader. 1987: David Cone breaks a finger trying to bunt. More good news. 1992: Doc homers while Mrs. Fafif and I are returning from a concert at Jones Beach (New York Rock & Soul Revue), and for one August night it doesn't feel like the Mets suck.

Beyond being told on every single trip how unfathomably cold it was, these three spring to mind... The very last game the Mets played at Candlestick or 3Com or whatever it was called had the Mets beating Livàn Hernandez for a fifth time in 1999, a function of the Giants trading for Hernandez from the Marlins and the Mets spanking him on both coasts. That game (Candle)sticks out for Tom Seaver telling Gary Thorne that it's Sunday, and Sunday's a good day for a quiz and he quizzed Thorne on all the Hall of Famers the Giants featured in the ‘60s. Fourteen years earlier, on August 31, Doc's 14-game winning streak snapped to a normally terrible Giants team. The next day Keith Hernandez emerged from his late-summer slump and delivered a pitch-homer to beat lefty Mark Davis, signaling what a September the 1985 Mets were gonna give us. In 1977, the Mets had a protest upheld regarding a game in which they were getting blown out in the seventh inning; Retrosheet's explanation follows: game halted by rain at this point; the Mets protested the game because the umpires did not wait at least 30 minutes after suspending play; NL President Chub Feeney upheld the protest and ordered that the game be resumed on July 26; on July 13, the Mets withdrew their protest after Feeney had ruled in their favor So they were sore they couldn't finish a 10-0 loss, then they were told they could, then they said never mind. 64-98 in the standings, 1-0 on principle.

Joel Sherman revisits the fate of phenom Gregg Jefferies. His teammates sound kinda sorry they were jerkish in his direction. https://nypost.com/2020/05/23/gregg-jefferies-complicated-mets-failure-looks-different-now/amp/https://nypost.com/2020/05/23/gregg-jefferies-complicated-mets-failure-looks-different-now/amp/

Once I was done with my interviews, the PR guy in charge of handling me brought me back downtown for lunch. When I told him I had much time to kill before returning to the airport, he told me I could go to Busch Stadium and take a tour. It had nothing to do with my being a guest of the company that would, for one more season, own the Cardinals. They offered tours all the time to anybody. It would kill the requisite time and perhaps give me an insight or two that I missed amid my own miasma in 1992. I took him up on his suggestion. Walked over from the restaurant to the ticket window at Busch, bought one admission and got myself attached to a group. These people were total strangers, but they were supposed to be, so that was cool. The tour itself was incredibly cool. They took us everywhere inside Busch Stadium. With the season a couple of weeks away, there was lots of activity, so it felt we were getting a sneak preview of sorts for 1995. I noticed a much darker, less deathly carpet had been put down on the field (a year later, new owners would rip up the rug altogether and install good ol' grass). We got to visit the press box. I had never sat in a stadium press box before. As part of my high school journalism tour group, I got to glimpse Shea's, but I didn't get to sit there. Still in a coat and tie from my interview, I asked somebody to take a picture of me sitting where the man from the Post-Dispatch sat. The man from the Post-Dispatch presumably never asked to be photographed where the guy from the beverage magazine usually sat, but so be it. I tried to furtively write LET'S GO METS on the workspace while our tour guide spoke, but the surface was unkind to such sentiments. The tour ended on the turf. It was my first time on a major league field. Even though it was carpet, it was thrilling. We stood in foul territory on the first base side and were told to not step over the line lest we incur the wrath of the grounds crew. It was just turf, but who wanted to make trouble? As the guide wound down his remarks, my eye wandered to right field. On October 3, 1985, Gary Carter hit a fly ball over there with one man on and two men out in the ninth inning, the Mets down a run. When he connected, I was convinced it was going out, that the Mets were going to pull ahead of the Cardinals in the game and tie them in the standings and that everything would be great. Instead, the ball was routine and the outcome — 9-unassisted, caught by Andy Van Slyke — was predictable. Still, for a moment, I reveled in standing feet away from bittersweet Met history. We won those first two games in St. Louis that first week of October. They could call us pond scum, they could spill their beer on Lenny, but we went to the ninth inning of the third game with a genuine chance. Keith had singled for his fifth hit of the night, and Gary, on fire for a month, was up against Jeff Lahti. That was 1985. This was 1995. Baseball had been gone since the previous August. Now it was so close, I could taste its lingering heartache. Three seasons after having had quite enough of it, I would exit Busch Stadium the second time not particularly wanting to leave. http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2010/05/14/take-me-out-to-old-busch-stadium/http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2010/05/14/take-me-out-to-old-busch-stadium/