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Gee 4.0 Lagares 3.0 Byrd 0.5 Murphy 0.5 Quintanilla 0.5 Young 0.5 Brown 0.5 Flores 0.5

Random Monday afternoon game in random city against random opponent made all the more random by the presence of a designated hitter in the Metropolitan lineup.

Harvey 3.0 Byrd 1.5 Turner 1.0 Brown 1.0 Quintanilla 0.5 Lagares 0.5

What a lineup: Eric Young, Jr. - LF Justin Turner - 2B Marlon Byrd - RF Josh Satin - 1B Wilmer Flores - 3B Juan Lagares - CF Travis d'Arnaud - C Omar Quintanilla - SS Matt Harvey - RHP But what a starter! [youtube:1pkv5iy3]Veqju8fjeUw[/youtube:1pkv5iy3]

Young 2.0

All in the name of replacing PB - Thole.

Batterymate: m'Ejia.

Edgy MD wrote: To be fair to Mazz, the fabric and cut of the times made for a lot of guys wearing pants that looked like superhero tights. Willie Mona�ez looks like circus strongman in those pants. They should have a turn-back-the-clock-night with those uniforms, just for Recker. Please forward that suggestion to the promotions department of the Las Vegas 51s by Tuesday.

Niese 2.5 Byrd 1.5 Murphy 1.5 Davis 1.5 Recker 1.5 Torres 1.0 Hawkins 0.5

Selig flips America the Byrd.

Any of you Mid-Atlantic types planning a lovely Sunday afternoon at Nationals Park to see your Mets make their final trip to DC on September 1? Not so fast there... ESPN announced today three September game selections for Sunday Night Baseball presented by Taco Bell � Major League Baseball�s exclusive national game of the week. The September slate is highlighted by several of MLB�s biggest stars competing on baseball�s biggest stage, including David Ortiz, Yasiel Puig, Bryce Harper and Robinson Cano. On the September 1 edition of Sunday Night Baseball, the New York Mets and Marlon Byrd will visit the Washington Nationals and Bryce Harper in a National League East showdown, airing on ESPN2. On September 8, the red-hot National League West-leading Los Angeles Dodgers � led by Yasiel Puig � will visit the Cincinnati Reds and Joey Votto. On September 15, the American League East-leading Boston Red Sox and David Ortiz will host the New York Yankees and Robinson Cano. Quite the inconvenience for you and the Mets (who are flying south thereafter for a Labor Day matinee at Atlanta), but how can American be expected to be deprived of starry, starry Byrd?

Mets baseball is the perfect way to enjoy Schaefer Beer, but not the other way around, according to Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner.

Steve Albert: the proto-Josh Lewin.

Sandberg reportedly his successor.

1 1/2 commercials show up around 1:30. And then there's a jump in the action, so if you were looking forward to seeing the Mets score runs, you might instead want to focus your anticipation on the First Chevy of the '80s.

Joe Pignatano is coaching first in this game.

Multiple Twitter sources confirming -- or confirming they've read each other's Tweets. Under Manuel, Phillies won five consecutive NL East titles, the first of them in stunning fashion (ahem), after missing the playoffs for 14 years. In 2008, they won their first WS in 28 years, the second in their sorry history. Last year he wrangled them into the Wild Card race despite being presumed dead at midseason. Yeah, he deserves to go.

Murph really did love analyzing the weather, as a trained meteorologist might. Puffy cumulus clouds were merely the tip of the cold front with him.

Mazz brought out the lineup card, just as he had done almost every day of the season to date. It couldn't have been for luck. Are players trusted to do that regularly anymore?

The difference between cordial and chummy? Bob Murphy. Not an ounce of pretension to his presentation. Makes Vin Scully sound like an unconscionable self-promoter.

"Jackie" Clark. Murph liked to extend certain guys who preferred one syllable and one syllable only: Bucky Showalter and Buzzy Capra come to mind, too.

wNLIsPXFUjI Mets Taveras SS Trevino 3B Mazzilli CF Henderson LF Montanez 1B Youngblood RF Stearns C Flynn 2B Swan P Giants North CF Whitfield LF Clark RF Evans 3B Ivie 1B Tamargo C Metzger SS Andrews 2B Nastu P

Don Shula not getting around much these days but coaching his head off in his mind. Good profile by Jenny Vrenta for Peter King's site. Time slows down and weakens people, but it�s had the opposite effect on Shula�s legacy, strengthening and preserving it. His 347 career wins and his 1972 undefeated season with the Dolphins seem all the more remarkable with each passing autumn. In this way Shula stands alone in NFL history. But where does that place him in the pantheon of coaches? Shula lets out a genuine, hearty chuckle when presented with this premise. You get the sense that this living legend�a man who coached in six Super Bowls, who was a contemporary of Vince Lombardi, who was the one-time boss of Chuck Noll�could still hold his own in a postgame press conference. His pale eyes twinkle, and he asks, �You want me to say that I�m the greatest coach of all time?� There was a time when Shula never wanted to entertain this sort of question. He wanted a clean break when he walked away from the game following the 1995 season. He saw no worth in preserving his meticulous library of game plans, all 33 seasons� worth, some handwritten and others computer-generated depending on the decade. �Just throw it away,� he told Mary Anne. �I don�t want any of it.� She made sure he didn�t part with his life�s work and filed the papers away in Shula�s home office�except for the 17 game plans from 1972 that are kept in a safe. But Shula couldn�t stay away from football. He still writes notes on a yellow pad of paper during Panthers games to share with his son, Mike, who was promoted to the team�s offensive coordinator this year. He advises his son to find a balance between using all of quarterback Cam Newton�s distinctive abilities, but not asking him to run too much to minimize the risk of injury. He knows the Panthers� roster by number, and as he did so well during his career, suggests tactics to create favorable matchups. �He�s into a lot more trick plays now,� Mike says, laughing. �But trust me, there is a reason for everything he says, so I always listen and try to make it fit.� This father-son bond isn�t Shula�s only connection to the NFL. Until Mike Westhoff retired at the end of last season, Shula would call the special teams guru to talk strategy any time the Jets blocked a punt. �He loves that kind of stuff,� Westhoff says. �I can�t think of a part of the game that he wasn�t an expert in.� Shula has also been sought out by current Dolphins coach Joe Philbin, who asked him to address the coaching staff and the scouting department this spring at team headquarters in Davie, Fla. This was a meaningful gesture to Shula, whose legend in the franchise wasn�t always embraced by his successors. Jimmy Johnson, who made his name at the University of Miami and was waiting in the wings to replace Shula when he retired, made no secret that he cared only about the present and not the past. Johnson only lasted four years with the Dolphins, never finishing better than 10-6. Feeling distanced from his beloved team, Shula slyly recalls that �it wasn�t hard to watch� the Dolphins struggle under Johnson. By the way, his wife calls him Coach.

Marty Adler, Brookyn Dodgers flamekeeper, 76. Marty Adler, Brooklyn�s Enduring Dodger Fan, Dies at 76 By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN Thirty years after Jackie Robinson broke the modern major league color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers, his legacy was honored in classrooms only a home run shot or so away from the housing development where Ebbets Field once stood. Marty Adler, the assistant principal at Jackie Robinson Intermediate School 320, bordering what had been the Dodgers� third-base stands, organized projects in which the predominantly minority student body learned of Robinson�s baseball exploits and his pioneering role in the civil rights struggle. That anniversary tribute in 1977 inspired Mr. Adler to keep memories of the Dodgers alive in Brooklyn long after their departure for Los Angeles and the demolition of Ebbets Field. When he died of a stroke on Tuesday in Bethpage, N.Y., at 76, Mr. Adler was remembered as the founder of the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame. It never had a permanent home � it was essentially a personal journey down his baseball memory lane � but it enabled him to share his passion for the Dodgers with his fellow Brooklynites. Mr. Adler saluted the heroes of his youth by bringing them back to Brooklyn for annual induction ceremonies at Grand Army Plaza. He donated memorabilia to the Brooklyn Historical Society and the Brooklyn baseball gallery at the minor league ballpark in Coney Island where the Mets� Brooklyn Cyclones play. �I�m reliving my childhood,� Mr. Adler once said. �The Dodgers lived in the neighborhood,� he recalled. �Their kids went to the schools. Their wives shopped in the shopping places. They were an integral fabric of the pattern of the whole community, and we loved the guys. �You could walk down the street and put a radio on � a black person or a white person. �How�re the Bums doing?� It was one common denominator that tied everybody up together.� Martin Norman Adler was born in Brooklyn on July 11, 1937, and grew up in the Borough Park neighborhood. He received a bachelor�s degree from Brooklyn College and a master�s in education from St. John�s University. When Jackie Robinson died in 1972, Mr. Adler campaigned to have his school, then known as Crown Heights Intermediate School 320, named for him. �The parents wanted it to be named after somebody in the civil rights movement,� Mr. Adler told The New York Times on the 50th anniversary of Robinson�s debut with the Dodgers, �but I reminded them Jackie walked with Dr. Martin Luther King. Jackie gave impetus to all the other movements that developed in the 1960s.� And so the school bore Robinson�s name and graced its lobby with an oil painting of him. Mr. Adler gave annual talks over the school�s public-address system about Robinson, saying, as he recalled it, �This is what took place here, this is American history.� In the late 1970s, Mr. Adler began sending letters to former Brooklyn Dodger players explaining his idea for a memorial to the team, and as word of his mission got around, memorabilia began to flow in. His early collection, stored in his school custodian�s office, included seats from Ebbets Field, which was torn down in 1960, two years after the Dodgers departed for Los Angeles; a uniform worn by Casey Stengel when he managed the Dodgers in the 1930s; and jars of Ebbets Field soil used as landfill at Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn. In June 1984, Mr. Adler helped create a Dodgers exhibit at the central Brooklyn Public Library on Grand Army Plaza and held his first Hall of Fame induction ceremony outside the building. His first three inductees were figures from the 1950s teams that came to be known as the Boys of Summer: pitcher Carl Erskine, right fielder Carl Furillo and first baseman Gil Hodges, who died in 1972 while managing the Mets and was represented by his widow, Joan. None of the three have been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Mr. Adler remained assistant principal at the Jackie Robinson school until his retirement in 1992, and he continued his induction ceremonies for a few years after that. Tommy Lasorda, who pitched in a total of eight games for Brooklyn in the 1954 and 1955 seasons before bleeding Dodger blue as their longtime manager in Los Angeles, was inducted into Mr. Adler�s Hall of Fame in August 2009 in a special ceremony at the Cyclones� ballpark celebrating his 60 years in the Dodger organization. Mr. Adler, whose death was announced by his family, lived in Plainview on Long Island. He is survived by his wife, Linda; his sons, Eric and Jeff; his brothers, Richard and Stephen; and two grandchildren. Although he rallied Brooklynites of a certain age around their heroes of years past, Mr. Adler left one goal unaccomplished: He was never able to help propel Hodges to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He sent bumper stickers to the 5,000 subscribers to his quarterly newsletter in 1999 that read �Cooperstown Needs Gil Hodges.� He organized a letter-writing campaign to the Hall of Fame�s committee on veterans calling for Hodges�s admission. �It�s total disappointment for the Brooklyn Dodgers community,� he said at the time, �but we�re never going to give up. We�re from Brooklyn.�

15% and counting after Wheeler K'd 12 and Germen 3 on 8/16. I took advantage of a previous offer: 50% off for Baseline Box (106) in gratitude for my having availed myself of the ASG franchise 35 times. Each ticket was $45 + "convenience fee" of $5.50. Putting aside the convenience, I thought "not bad for field level. The Mets-approved price of $90 for the same seat...well, no wonder they were otherwise going empty.