G-Fafif

Edgy MD wrote: G-Fafif wrote: The Braves? Please forgive me. I typed this just as I was running out to a memorial mass for a colleague. But I've been generally sloppy lately. I also failed to check "L" next to the Nats. Forgiven, even if you were just running out for a sandwich. Condolences.

The Braves?

NEW YORK -- Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred declared an end to the designated hitter rule Sunday, explaining, "Jacob deGrom homered. It was fucking great. What else do you need to know?"

I know you're gonna wanna top off your Father's Day by tuning into WFAN tonight at 11:25 to hear me talk Piazza with Lori Rubinson. Go ahead and set your DVR for the last five minutes of John Oliver. Was recently on with Pete McCarthy over WOR following the Mets. You can hear that here if you're so inclined.

Turner leads off with a homer. I can see why nobody cared to start a thread.

Them: Turner SS Rendon 3B Harper RF Murphy 2B Zimmerman 1B Lind LF Taylor CF Lobaton C Strasburg P

Us: Conforto CF Cespedes LF Bruce RF Flores 3B Duda 1B T. Rivera 2B Reyes SS R. Rivera C Lugo P

Can't hide from the 4:10 start, Lugo vs. Strasburg.

Whereas last night there was gonna be a thumbbreak.

The Lamabe-Moock campaign still has Montreal talking in two languages.

Mets Willets Point wrote: Can't remember a lot of details, but I recall seeing the Mets beat the Phillies at Shea on a Sunday in September 1999. The Mets were hot and going into a series against the Braves. I was visiting my family in Virginia and changed my plans so that on my way back home I could stop in Philadelphia to see the Mets play the Phillies again on the following Sunday. After being so pumped after the first game, it was dreadful being in the nearly empty Veterans Stadium witnessing the Mets 6th consecutive loss and their playoff hopes seemingly going down the tubes. I don't think it was a particularly bad game in of itself but the circumstances of how far the Mets had fallen in one week was a killer. I was at both those games, the latter being what felt like the season-killer. Rickey Henderson didn't run as if the season depended on it on the game-ending double play. What I remember most is the plethora of thousand-yard stares amongst everybody in a Mets cap at the NJ Turnpike rest stop my friend and I stopped at on the way back.

Mike Vaccaro plumbs the tabloid archives deeply. Be reminded all over again how much you hated Dick Young, not to mention his son-in-law's patron.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: There was a double header vs Arizona August of 2002, I want to say. John Thomson pitched one of the games. Another awful midseason acquiree, Mark Little (?) hit into a force play that completely encapsulated how ineffectual all those Steve Phillips moves were. This the long home losing streak that cost Bobby V his job but should have cost Phillips his job. That was the tipping-point doubleheader. The Mets were within conceivable striking distance of the Wild Card as July was ending, 4 games over. Some 50,000 on hand that Saturday afternoon (it rained the night before). Alfonzo homers to put the Mets ahead in the eighth. Armando gives it back on a homer to Counsell in the ninth. Though it goes to a tenth, it was not unlike Game Five in the 2015 WS: once they couldn't nail it down in top of the ninth, you sensed it was a matter of time. Sure enough, the Diamondbacks strafe Strickland, we lose 8-5, and there are maybe, no exaggeration, 5,000 in the park for Game Two. As noted, Thomson sucked, the sweep was on, the life was sucked out of Shea (my friend who never wants to leave early suggested we leave in the sixth) and that was pretty much that for good competitive times until 2005. Game Two highlight: I'd wandered over to the Mezzanine concessions behind home plate and, as I stood staring at all the exotic food choices, I heard a clanking sound. Rey Ordonez had fouled back a pitch that somehow squirted through one of the entry portals and banged off a trash can. I could've picked it up off the ground had I been standing where I was standing a half-minute before, but alas, another human being was closer to it and grabbed it.

One more bump: I'll be at Bergino Baseball Clubhouse (67 W. 11th St.), Thursday night at 7 PM, discussing Piazza, Seaver, Metsiness and so forth with proprietor Jay Goldberg and a live podcast audience that could include you. Books for sale, but the talk is not only cheap, it's absolutely free. Come by if you're in the neighborhood. Jay'll surely put the game on when we're done recording.

Josh Smoker, 10-day DL, left shoulder strain.

Smoker to the DL, shoulder strain. Picking up for Wheeler will do that to a fella.

Although I limited my parameters to home games, a special place in hell is reserved for June 10, 2000, at MFYS II: MFYs 13 Mets 5, the game that sent Bobby J. Jones in search of the Norfolk Miracle Cure. Lasting memory: some MFY a-hole (I know, redundant) barks at Jason Tyner, "HEY, TYNER, TIME FOR YOU TO MAKE AN ERROR!" Tyner made an error.

Sewald's appearance on that card is his 2017 highlight. Thank you Grimm.

Centerfield wrote: Tom Glavine's debut. Enough said. http://www.leaptoad.com/mets/gamedetail.php?gameno=6576&tabno=A Yup. 4-0 before you even sit down. Suck. Well, it wasn't like everybody had been waiting all winter...oh, right.

Ceetar wrote: G-Fafif wrote: climbing over us in Loge to lower themselves down in to Field Level. I'd forgotten about this 'secret' section upgrade. You had to be pretty close to where orange met blue. Maybe if a stray miscreant tried it, that person might have been apprehended, but this was a stream of shall we say music lovers. The ushers were on an extended smoke break.

When I think of a bad game experience, these are the factors that spring to mind: --Arriving late to seats that weren't as good as I thought they'd be to discover the Mets have fallen way behind early. --Empty stadium in lousy weather in a lousy season watching lousy baseball unfold. --Being with somebody who'd clearly rather be somewhere else. --A sizable plurality not rooting for the Mets, if not necessarily rooting against the Mets. --A blown lead when there's something to play for. On a macro scale, it's hard to beat September 30, 2007, the day Tom Glavine was certified T#m Gl@v!ne, but even then, even with the 7-0 hole and the fucking Marlins being fucking assholes and the Phillies winning on the scoreboard and the collapse of collapses going final...well, it was fucking awful, but I still remember a certain doomed camaraderie leavening the fucking awfulness a little where I was in the Upper Deck. Several days before, I watched the Mets give up a large lead to the fucking Nationals when they totally sucked and fall out of first place and you knew the slide was irreversible and everything was wrong, yet that was my first game with Dana Brand and though we cursed it for as long as knew each other, it was a fun night to a point. This one, though... http://leaptoad.com/mets/gamedetail.php?gameno=5826 This one can totally go fuck itself. It had the Mets in the Wild Card race but endlessly tripping over every opportunity to move up (the weekend before was when Angel Hernandez and Turner Field both became Angel Hernandez and Turner Field; the weekend before that was the first Subway Series at Shea, featuring the Mel Rojas-Paul O'Neill debacle). The night before, right after the All-Star Break, the Mets lost 9-8 in eleven. So you're already on edge about every game being the difference between making the playoffs for the first time in ten years and not making the playoffs. It had me there with a certain buddy of mine who, for his many wonderful qualities as a person and as a Mets fan, can zone out to utter obliviousness and leave me feeling utterly alone when he's sitting right next to me. It had fucking Merengue Night, which on July 10, 1998, meant hordes of people coming out of nowhere in the late innings (because the Mets would sell tickets that way), climbing over us in Loge to lower themselves down in to Field Level. While the game was in progress. While the Mets clung to a precarious 6-5 lead in the ninth. While John Fucking Franco loaded the bases and Shane Andrews tripled to unload them and the Mets fell behind 8-6 and were quelled in the bottom of the ninth. Just loads of Merengue fans either not paying attention as they helped themselves to seat upgrades or some actively rooting for the Expos because of Felipe Alou and Vladimir Guerrero (and always a sprinkling of MFY dicks from every culture), and my pal being pissed off but being pissed off differently, which somehow annoyed me as much, and Jesus did we just lose another one of these goddamn things? Out in the concourse as we made our getaway before the Merengue beat could captivate us, I found an open, mostly fully 20-ounce bottle of Pepsi and smashed it against the nearest wall. Cola exploded in all directions. That got my friend's attention. To this day, he asks me if I need to throw a bottle of soda when Met things go wrong. The Mets, you might recall, missed a shot at a Wild Card play-in by one game in 1998. Might've been that game that did them in. Might've been any number of them. I'm gonna say it was that one. I'm not sure this was the worst of the worst, but damn, it sucked.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Same thumb injury from last month? Yup.

As we speak, the Three Amigos from last season's playoff drive -- Cespedes, Reyes and Cabrera -- are tied for 7th with 20 Citi Field HRs apiece. Gosh, those guys do everything together.

So many places to mention Cabrera's thumb has him back on the DL.

Cabrera to DL (thumb). T. Rivera returns to roster.