G-Fafif

Edgy MD wrote: Where's Brad Emaus? I was just having lunch with him and Captain Tuttle.

Beltran is already the best manager the Mets have had since Terry Collins.

DiComo and Rosenthal have confirmed. That's official enough for a Friday afternoon.

The New Mets, indeed.

Rosenthal on it, too. Looks real. Carlos Beltran, manager, New York Mets.

DiComo is now reporting Beltran is the choice.

The murmurs are coalescing around Beltran as manager, Collins as bench coach. No shouts yet.

Mark Feinsand of mlb.com says it's down to Pérez and Beltran.

When Alonso makes another splash in Atlanta, we'll see if any back page is jazzed enough to call him PETE FOUNTAIN.

Free agency has arrived for Luis Avilan, Brad Brach, Rajai Davis, Todd Frazier, Rene Rivera and Zack Wheeler. Monday is the deadline for a QO for Wheeler (we'll see) and whether the Mets will pick up their option on Juan Lagares ($9.5 million, so probably not).

Mike Matheny's the next catcher to run the Royals.

Sherman reports Bogar is out.

I'd recommend anything Bryan Curtis writes about anything to anybody, but this, on what becomes of media when it's gobbled up by those who don't care for it, serves as outstanding explanation. https://www.theringer.com/2019/10/31/20942249/deadspin-g-o-media-fired-quit-sports-illustrated-maven-sports-mediahttps://www.theringer.com/2019/10/31/20942249/deadspin-g-o-media-fired-quit-sports-illustrated-maven-sports-media Whether non-sportswriting attracts readers, as former acting editor Barry Petchesky argued, is almost beside the point. Mavened publications want traffic but not thoughts. The “incredibly broad mandate” G/O Media's owners claimed to have granted Deadspin's staff is illusory. For them, the worst thing a website could generate is a mild headache—mild and major headaches being pretty much the point of journalism.

New Republic weighs in... https://newrepublic.com/article/155565/deadspinhttps://newrepublic.com/article/155565/deadspin Over more than a decade, Deadspin has built an audience with hilarious and incisive coverage that is focused on sports but drifts into a number of other areas—politics, film, dogs. Its coverage of President Trump has been particularly excellent (and consistently well-read), but the site has also featured a number of other popular non-sports features, from its pop culture coverage in The Concourse to Drew Magary's annual hate-reading of the Williams-Sonoma catalog. G/O responded to the success of Deadspin's non-sports pieces by ... telling it to stick to sports. In a memo sent to staff on Monday, its editorial director Paul Maidment wrote, “To create as much great sports journalism as we can requires a 100 percent focus of our resources on sports. And it will be the sole focus. Deadspin will write only about sports and that which is relevant to sports in some way.” The brilliant thinking behind the memo: Take the stuff that made Deadspin unique and indispensable and profitable and throw it in the trash.

During the World Series prior to his prospective free agency kicking in, Edgardo Alfonzo made an appearance at the Mets flagship clubhouse store on 42nd St. The lines were not prohibitive, but management tried to enforce a limit on how much signing he would do of any one person's stuff. When one among us in the group of three I came with dared to return to his table for a second signature despite the rules saying it was a no-no, that person used a highly apologetic tone for daring to flout boundaries. “I don't work for them,” Fonzie declared as he signed away. He may have been referring to the retailer, but I had the sense he was talking about his soon to be former employer.

There was a pre-Turner Field period of Mets-Braves relations when, on a board I frequented in those early Internet days, we told one another sure, the Braves are a perennial World Series contender and the Mets are going nowhere, but they sure have trouble with us. Sure enough, as I look it up, the Mets were 18-17 vs ATL in the first three years of divisional realignment, 1994-1996. Take that, Braves!

Name one event to which it wouldn't!

From SI, Gerrit Cole channeling Dennis Miller signing off for Weekend Update (“I am outta here!”) Twenty-two of the men on the World Series roster are under contract for next season, but that number does not include Cole, who warmed up in the sixth inning but never entered the game. He already seems emotionally uprooted from Houston; when media relations head Gene Dias asked him to speak to the assembled press after the game, he hesitated. “I have to do it?” Cole said. “I'm not an employee of the team.” Eventually he acquiesced. “As a representative of myself …” he said. He appeared for the interview wearing not Astros gear but a cap bearing the logo of the agency that represents him, Boras Corporation.

=bmfc1 post_id=25569 time=1572493985 user_id=73] One person got this exactly right.

NL wins the decade, six World Series championships to four.

Now to instigate the World Series hangover...

SEAVER STEPS AWAY is not only reportorial and dignified, the photo is from Spring Training for a story that broke during Spring Training. Coincidental, I imagine, but it adds to the poignancy. By contrast, the Post characteristically presents emotionally manipulative crap.

Rendon and Kendrick decided to make this a game.

Neither side's radio crew expends an iota of emotion on calling opposition home runs. They're just long fly balls that go uncaught.

Revered in life, punned in death.