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Jeff's non-pronouncement pronouncement brings to mind that Joe McDonald, in his first winter as GM, explicitly referred to only three Mets as "untouchable" -- Seaver, Matlack and Koosman. Then he traded approximately a third of the team. Dickey took some heat over talking contract at a party geared to helping children affected by Sandy. Yet Jeff Wilpon gets a pass as he gabs about business at a Boys & Girls Club event intended to help victims of the storm. Clearly he's Teflon in the eyes of the fawning Wilponian press.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I admire the Angels for consistently beating up on the MFYs in playoff series. They fell down on the job in 2009, sadly. The '02 champs won with a very homegrown core. Then they went back to being Playas and the returns diminished. Only team to step up when Vlad was just standing there waiting to be scooped up.

Ken Rosenthal invokes the Mets' greatest (fielding) shortstop ever by way of saluting Tim McCarver. Tim is the only baseball analyst who has worked for all four major networks. What astonished me about him in his later years � when I worked with him � is that he lost none of his passion, none of his curiosity, none of his love for the game or even its language. I can�t tell you how many times I heard him tell a player or manager before a game, �I have never heard that term before.� And then he would use that term on the broadcast, drawing sheer delight out of what he had learned. I don�t see Joe and Tim often � really, only at the games we work together. But I would relish the stories Tim would tell, stories about Bob Gibson, about Tom Seaver, about how the Red Sox�s Carl Yastrzemski stunned the Cardinals by taking extra hitting after the Sox lost Game 1 of the 1967 World Series. So many media companies lack institutional memory. Not Fox for the past 18 years. Not with Tim McCarver. We would talk while walking between clubhouses, going one from one meeting with a manager to another. During one such conversation in the middle of the ALCS, Tim told me that the Tigers shortstop Jose Iglesias reminded him of another defensive wizard from Cuba, former Mets shortstop Rey Ordonez. I agreed, then said, �Wonder if they know each other. I�ll ask him.� It turned out Iglesias did know Ordonez, had met him, was aware that he had won three Gold Gloves. I relayed the information to Tim, and he mentioned it on the broadcast. Stuff like that happened all the time. And it was such fun. I�m sure Fox will replace Tim with someone younger, but good luck to that analyst trying to match Tim�s work ethic.

Dave Wallace, the only pitching to coach Met pitchers into two consecutive postseasons hopes to coach Orioles pitchers into their second playoffs in three years in the same post he held here long ago.

Angell, Game Five. Big Papi continued to astound, with a run-scoring double on his first pitch of the evening, two singles, and a line-drive out. He is batting .733 for the series�as against a cumulative .151 for the rest of the Boston hitters�and now sometimes gives the impression that he is stopping by to play in these little entertainments, in the manner of a dad joining his daughter�s fifth-grade softball game. When he came up to bat once again in the sixth, Cardinals� starter Adam Wainwright essayed some uncharacteristic little pauses and stutter steps on the mound, trying to throw off that implacable swing. It was like trying to disconcert winter.

And Angell on Game One: World Series opening games can feel like a sunny day at Camp 6, a deserved picnic where we enjoy the fabulous views we�ve attained and contemplate the last push to the summit, but all images of the sort flew away quickly last night, when the inept Cardinals gave up five runs in the first two innings at Fenway Park, in the course of an 8�1 pasting by the Red Sox. Jon Lester, the lefty Boston starter, struck out eight Cards over seven and two thirds innings, and David Ortiz knocked a home run and a single and a sac, driving in three runs: thrilling star material on a better night, but only satisfactory here. The Cards, the best defensive team in the National League, were stinko, with three infield errors, two of them by shortstop Pete Kozma. The pattern of the game became clear when the veteran Cardinal starter Adam Wainwright could only smile wanly after allowing a feeble pop by Stephen Drew to drop like a thrombosed dove at his feet, to begin the Sox� second. One never knows, do one, as Fats Waller said. [...] The Never Before moment arrived early, when Ortiz, the fourth Boston batter of the evening, hit a soft grounder to the right, where second baseman Matt Carpenter flipped to Kozma to begin a potential double play. When the ball came loose out there, second base umpire Dana DeMuth signalled that Kozma had held it long enough for the force, even though everyone in the northern hemisphere, including my watching fox terrier and I, could plainly see that Kozma had barely touched the toss with the tip of his glove. The out stood up, stare decisis�or would have in an earlier era of umpiric reasoning. Here, though, and to my amazement, five neighboring umps came circling in, like crows or undertakers, and, after consultation, DeMuthed the call�safe on an error, the out cancelled. Justice and common sense had prevailed (along with a snub to the possibility of instant electronic replay to decide such calls next year), but a part of me felt a twinge of loss. Umps should always be right, even when they aren�t. In their hearts, as Bill Klem said, they never missed a call.

Angell on Game Two. Good game last night, a certificate of the high-end excitement we demand in October. The imposing starters�sour-faced Boston veteran John Lackey and the Cardinals� tall, twenty-two-year-old righty Michael Wacha�scooted us through a quick five innings, with most of the fans� attention, I think, going to Wacha�s fastball, which comes out of his hand like an escaping barn swallow and slips, barely noticed, into the upper level of the strike zone. With a Sox runner aboard in the sixth, he chose a change-up, to David Ortiz, however, who deposited the ball just over the sill of the Green Monster, in left, for a shocking, reversing 2�1 Boston lead. The night�s main news was just ahead, an unravelling little run of Cardinals �lan and Sox mistakes in the top of the seventh: a one-out walk, a single, and�with a fresh pitcher, Craig Breslow, now dealing to the bottom of the order, shortstop Daniel Descalso�an astounding, scenario-changing double steal. Descalso walked, and when Matt Carpenter knocked a sacrifice, game-tying fly ball to left, the Bosox, on the instant, came apart. Jonny Gomes�s peg home, wide to the right, was misplayed by catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia, allowing the ball to skip into foul ground, where it was snatched up by Breslow and flung wildly past third and into a left-field photographers� booth. Three�two, St. Louis, now�and 4�2 when the next batter, Carlos Beltr�n, hit a single. This was almost all, it turned out, but there was time for me to award some multiple medals and cheek kissings in the manner of a French Mar�chal. The daring front man in that Cardinals double steal was a pinch-runner, Pete Kozma, who had committed two errors while playing shortstop the night before: now he was back from Fort Ougadou. Beltr�n, it will be remembered, had banged up his ribs in that same game when he smacked hard into the bullpen wall: taped up and unexpectedly back, he delivered two hits and the extra run. Croix de guerres, also, please, for Carlos Martinez, an excitable twenty-three-year- old Cardinals reliever, who struck out two batters in the eighth, and to the Cards� manager, Mike Matheny, who left him in there to pitch to Ortiz, with a man aboard; Ortiz singled but to no avail. Everything in this spirited Series is now changed�unless it isn�t. When play resumes on Saturday, the Cards will be on home ground, with the better pitching and no designated hitters. The teams are tied, but the Cardinals� opportunism and the numbers of their kiddy participants�their closer, twenty-three-year-old Trevor Rosenthal, struck out the side in the ninth�make you feel as if they�re ahead.

Angell on Game Three: A line-drive double in the bottom of the ninth, whacked by pinch hitter Allen Craig on the first pitch from the previously impregnable Sox closer Koji Uehara, set up the last scene of the opera. With Craig on second and Yadier Molina, who had singled, on third, John Jay hit a ground ball to second�not deep enough to deliver the slow-footed Molina, who was tagged out at the plate by Jarrod Saltalamacchia. The catcher, finding Craig approaching third base�he was slowed by an old ankle injury�fired there, perhaps in time to nail the runner, except that the ball went past the diving third baseman, Will Middlebrooks, and out into left field. Craig, scrambling to his feet again to head home, half-stumbled over the recumbent Middlebrooks before he could resume his gimping trip, and was out there, on the return peg�only he was not. Home-plate ump Dana DeMuth signalled �safe,� then pointed meaningfully to his colleague Jim Joyce, out at third, who had properly called the tangle an obstruction by Middlebrooks. Shock. Rejoicing. Horror-struck Sox pleading. Game over. Sorry, guys, but the obstruction rule, as entrenched as Marbury v. Madison, does not require evil intent by the obstructionist. Craig, who had reinjured his ankle while sliding and believed himself out, can be forgiven for not quite understanding all the excitement around him. Not quite believing it remains true for us all. I could not recall a game ever ending this way, and neither could Tim McCarver or Joe Buck, up in the booth. Another First Ever, then, right to the gizzard for all of New England. The Red Sox, returning to the field Sunday evening, might expect to find crime-scene tape surrounding home plate, third base, and much of left field.

Roger Angell is blogging the 2013 World Series, for goodness sake. Beards are kudzu. Jonny Gomes�s beard�a brown frigate bird�s nest�is among the uglier sported by the hairy Sox this year, and when numbers of his teammates began grabbing it and ritually tugging on it upon his return to the dugout after his blast I was among a minority in the land who were hoping they�d pull it off. Gomes, a nice guy from Petaluma, California, has broad sloping shoulders and a pleasant, or O.K.-ish, everyday expression, but he�s shaved his head now, too, which doesn�t help, unless you�re eager to join the crowding recent hordes of the undead. C�mon, Jonny. Gomes�s isn�t the worst Sox beard�the title goes to backup catcher David Ross, whose unkempt cabbage includes a clashing streak of white that cascades over his chin�perhaps relic of a childhood moment when he ran into his grandfather in the narrow back hall outside the bathroom. The other catcher, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, has a raggedy garden-border growth, in keeping with the encircling back-yard shrubbery of his hair. Mike Napoli�s beard is thickest; Dustin Pedroia�s the weirdest, since it comes with his desert-saint stare and that repeated on-deck or between-pitch mannerism of opening and stretching his mouth into a silent O: a screech owl with laryngitis. I�m a gentle fellow, and intend no lasting hurts here. I admire Big Papi�s plunging mid-cheek parenthesis, which has been there for many seasons, of course, and now feels as familiar and locally reassuring as a statue by Daniel Chester French. I also offer praise for the angle-iron jawline wool sported by tonight�s Boston starter, Jon Lester: an aesthetic so clearly modelled on Gunnar Bj�rnstrand�s trimmed-down growth while he portrayed Fredrik Egerman in Bergman�s �Smiles of a Summer Night.� Can I ask a question? Where are the Red Sox wives or sweetie pies in all this? Have none of them spoken up�privately or in the Globe or in a thousand tweets�to protest this office fad? How does it feel to wake up, night after night, in immediate proximity to a crazed Pomeranian or a Malamute or an Old English sheepdog stubbornly adhering to the once caressable jaw of the guy on the nearest pillow? Doesn�t it scratch? Doesn�t it itch? Doesn�t it smell, however faintly, of tonight�s boeuf en daube or yesterday�s last pinch of Red Man? And what about the kids�how long can you keep putting them off with another recital of �The Three Little Pigs� or Edward Lear? Who does your husband/significant other think he is, anyway�Dostoyevsky? Brigham Young? Darwin? An Allman brother? Alexander Cartwright? Come on, guys, think this over. Time to grow up. And what if you lose in the end this week, beards and all? Is this a lifetime commitment? Hmmm. (Rubs chin.) Sweetie pies!

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I haven't heard Francesa in years, but that was really good. (I loved the part about the Underground Railroad.) What's with the white gloves? Dressed like a proper Confederate officer. Barstool Sports, with which this guy is now affiliated, provides a handy cheat sheet for those who might not catch every nuance.

For the question, click here: [youtube:1mktdmyu]t7isyklX2Jk[/youtube:1mktdmyu]

On the air for WFAN when the story broke: first-year Mets announcer Gary Cohen, hosting World Series talk.

Times salutes people watching WS games in daytime from when that used to be necessary. This one stretches the boundaries of the concept just a bit, back to the climax of the previous round, but we'll take it.

Ashie62 wrote: Sports Extra with Lee Leonard.. With essays by Jerry Izenberg. An unimaginably classy show for local TV.

I imagine Fox would be fine with people tuning in just for the commercials tonight.

Boswell's column is great stuff for convincing people who are going to watch the World Series that they're making a wise choice. Can't imagine it (or others in the genre) would sway people who don't already care. Due respect to Boswell, I find these sorts of pieces a depressing reminder that baseball's grip on the national imagination ain't what it used to be. You don't see similar columns urging you to check out the ol' Super Bowl.

Amazin' indeed. The progenitor of the modern sports talk host (but only the good kind, I'd like to think). And very nice to me when I called to ask why Buzz Capra was farmed out ("for more seasoning," he told me). Was Channel 5 when that meant something in New York. Worth another listen... [youtube:1piz01ap]FYuWIu-awvU[/youtube:1piz01ap]

Brent Strom is your 2014 Houston Astros pitching coach. Perhaps somebody down there remembered Strom gave up four runs to the 'Stros on September 2, 1972, departing in the third inning of his fourth major league start, setting the stage (as it were) for the greatest comeback in Mets history. Strom and Bob Rauch buried the Mets at 0-8 on that Saturday night at the Astrodome yet Yogi's yoinkers yoinked it back to win it, 11-8. The Astros are in an something akin to an 0-8 hole right now, so to speak. Good luck Brent.

One point in the Cardinals' favor, I've decided (though they need lots of points to gain my favor): Bill DeWitt really sweats the things an owner should sweat, as Paul Lukas found out over the past offseason. Uni Watch: How big a role did you personally have in the development of this new alternate uniform design? Bill DeWitt III: A big one. I led the whole effort. UW: What sorts of things did you consider along the way that ended up on the cutting room floor, so to speak? BD: Going back a bit, when we redesigned our logos in 1998, at that time we�d been using a circular primary logo with a cartoon bird. I always thought it was crazy that we had a cartoon bird for our primary logo and a different kind of bird on our uniform. That led to a redesign of the bird, which we then used on our uniforms and for a new logo and for some other things. It was a good refresh of our brand at that time. In the 14 years since then, there have always been little things about that 1998 redesign that bugged me, but none of them bugged me enough to go through the effort of changing them. Along the way, though, I gathered ideas of things I�d like to see. I love that [placket] piping on old retro jerseys, I love the old �St. Louis� script we had back in �32, I love off-white cream jerseys that teams like the Giants, Phillies, and Indians have used. And I thought, rather than messing with perfection by altering our home and road jerseys, let�s have an alternate jersey that incorporates some of these older, archival elements that go well together. So what didn�t we do? At one point there was some thought about doing a black bat, instead of yellow, because that�s what we used to have. We considered doing the really thick piping on the shoulders, we could have done belt piping, those types of things. But you don�t want to overload the Christmas tree. UW: In the announcements and press releases and so on about the new uniform, there were these quotes from you, and I could almost feel the tension between your desire to be thought of as one of the old-school franchises that don�t dabble in alternate uniforms, like the Yankees and Dodgers and Tigers, while also wanting to do something new. Was that a difficult internal conflict for you? BD: There�s no question about it. You nailed it. We proudly consider ourselves to be among those elite few who don�t change just for change. So that tension was clearly there. For part of me, it was almost like my wedding day � like, �Are we really unveiling a third jersey today?� UW: I�m sure your wife will be happy to hear that comparison. BD: I should be okay as long as she doesn�t read Uni Watch. But to get back to your point, yes, there�s some tension there. But the announcement �Cardinals Do Third Jersey� � that�s not the whole story. Once people see the jersey, they�ll see that this is still in keeping with who we are and what we�re about. UW: I�ll tell you one aspect of the design that disappoints me: Although the overall design is very retro, the birds on the bat are the exact same birds, in the exact same poses, as the ones on your home and road jerseys. Since the inspiration for the jersey comes from the early 1930s, why not go back to the version of the birds on the bat that was used in that era? BD: You�re referring to the tails-up birds, as we call them. And it�s funny you say that, because we gave that a little thought. But remember, this isn�t a throwback � it�s a modern uniform, and it�s part of our portfolio of modern uniforms. The guys are gonna be wearing it every Saturday. So for that reason, I thought the birds had to be modern. Also, we have this enhanced stitching technology that allows for better detailing of the birds themselves, and we think the modern birds showcase that better than the tails-up birds. And then finally, those older birds are much smaller, and that causes problems with the proportion of the birds compared to the script and the bat. So you�d either have to enlarge the birds, in order to fit the modern size of our bat and script, or you�d have to shrink the bat and script. So it�s a good thought, but it has a bit of a Pandora�s Box element to it. Try to picture certain other club owners in the National League a) giving such matters any thought; being able to articulate it; or c) not just leaving the whole thing to the discretion of the crooked equipment manager for a generation.

MEMO FROM: Will Carafello, Dir. Social Media TO: All Concerned RE: Whistling Night & Other Promotions My early research indicates our potential customer base shows an outsize interest in the craft/art form of whistling. Should institute whistling contests & concerts ASAP to take advantage! Suggestions: � "Sanford & Son Theme Night" -- Will SA be signing more junk? � "Bark in the Park Day" -- Do we already do this? Include dog-whistles, but not the kind only dogs can hear. � "Referee Thursdays" -- Hand out whistles to all fans who Tweet they'll be showing up in striped shirts. When umpire makes bad call, have "refs in stands" overrule them with a shrill blast. Jay -- can one of the coaches blow a whistle in Justin Turner's ear the instant he picks up a pie?

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[youtube:17kz1wdc]HnI4_yUKqi8[/youtube:17kz1wdc] TV pitchman, indeed.

Howard Johnson and Mickey Lolich have glumly removed their respective 1984 and 1968 World Series rings and are dutifully leading their Detroit Tigers into the 2013 non-championship parade (which is currently darkened by the shadow of the preening Shane Victorino Blimp floating overhead). The Tigers were eliminated from championship consideration a tick past the stroke of midnight on October 20. Even the presence of guaranteed crowd-pleaser Frank "The MFY Killer" Lary can't put a smile on the faces of those lining the route as the festivities take their 29th annual turn at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. But better to march late in this procession than be at its head. Just ask the Astros' representative, who has been marching since August 28.

Hello, I am a time traveler who has just arrived from stops in Octobers 1946, 1967 and 2004. Anything new? Your incipient World Series appears to be just like the ones I came from.

Mets � Willets Point wrote: Is Darryl bringing his A game to the parade? Totally dressed for anything but a ballgame.