G-Fafif

Latin player over 30 who's accomplished and hasn't been under fire for PEDs: Proud. African-American player over 35: Great in the clubhouse.

Box. Wheeler 4.0 Byrd 1.5 Buck 1.5 Murphy 1.5 Young 1.0 Quintanilla 0.5

After realizing shining a spotlight on the concerns of Native Americans might cause some discomfort to the Braves, the Mets are also postponing next weekend's Scholars Day so as not to offend those fans coming up from Philadelphia to see their favorite team.

Box. Gee 3.0 Byrd 2.5 Quintanilla 2.0 Recker 1.5 Murphy 0.5 Brown 0.5

Terrific choice to throw out first pitch at ASG, continuing to recover from effects of Lyme Disease, reports Bill Madden. It has been a slow but steady road back � Seaver still takes a bunch of pills, most of them vitamins, every day, has changed his diet and no longer drinks his beloved wine, not even the highly rated Cabernet he produces in his GTS (for George Thomas Seaver) Vineyard � but Seaver, who was grateful a few months ago for feeling good for two to three straight days, now has mostly good days. The other day, when I caught up with him by phone in his vineyard atop Diamond Mountain in Calistoga, was definitely one of them. �Ohhhh, how could you ask me that?� he shrieked in response to my question about whether he was feeling any pressure about bouncing that first pitch at the All-Star Game. �That was like a knife to my heart! Pressure, hah! My winemaker and I have been throwing back and forth in the vineyard every day. Thirty-five minutes. He�s a lefthander and, God, does he throw hard. You have no idea the bodily pain he�s inflicted on me.� OK, so the arm�s gradually rounding into form. What about the pressure of being the grand marshal in the All-Star parade? �That�s no pressure,� Seaver said with a laugh. �Where�s the pressure of riding in an old 1945 Ford with fans on the sidewalk booing you?� As for his favorite All-Star memory... �I remember walking into the National League clubhouse and looking around and seeing Aaron, Mays, Banks, Gibson, Clemente and thinking �What am I doing here?"� Seaver said. �Then Lou Brock broke my thoughts by walking up to me and saying: �Hey kid, mind fetching me a Coke?� I looked at him, stunned at first. Then, after realizing he wasn�t kidding, I had to tell him I was really a player, not the clubhouse kid. To this day, I�ve never let Lou forget that and every time I see him at Cooperstown or wherever, I�ll yell at him to fetch me a Coke!�

He pitched well enough at times to justify claims of he wasn't really that bad. But he kind of was. Yeoman work in the first two marathons. Kind of a snot toward inquiries after his well-being toward the end. Good luck, pal.

Hope you didn't get used to Shaun Marcum, 'cause Shaun is gaun, says Rubin. New York Mets right-hander Shaun Marcum will miss the remainder of the season, a source told ESPNNewYork.com. Marcum continued to experience numbness and tingling in his cold right hand during a start Saturday against the Milwaukee Brewers. He was examined Monday by specialist Robert Thompson at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. Dr. Barnes had performed surgery to repair a clot and damaged artery in teammate Dillon Gee's shoulder last July that caused hand numbness. Marcum had a $4 million base salary. He had a 1-10 record. Right-hander Carlos Torres is likely to move into Marcum's rotation spot, at least until left-hander Jonathon Niese returns from the disabled list. Niese was cleared Monday to begin throwing after a shoulder injury was deemed not serious by team doctor David Altchek.

Box. Harvey 2.0 Young 1.5 Byrd 1.0 Buck 1.0 Torres 1.0 Burke 1.0 Edgin 1.0 Wright 0.5 Parnell 0.5 Murphy 0.5

Rivera blowing Sunday's save only lends credence to how deserving he is to start the All-Star Game for the American League and then play an inning at each position thereafter. He'll throw the game's final pitch from right field and strike out David Wright, allowing the gods to weep soft rain tears of joy. Rivera will treat the feat as if it is nothing, known he has taller mountains to climb October -- taller certainly that the best player his crosstown rivals have to offer...for even the Mets' best is but a speck on the legend that is Mariano Rivera.

Ceetar wrote: (side note, who the hell is Tony Borland?) Borland and Ricardo Jordan were the bounty obtained from the Phillies in the Rico Brogna trade. That it's not known as the Toby Borland/Ricardo Jordan trade tells you what you need to know about its success in fortifying the Mets bullpen. Borland's sole save was Jackie Robinson Night. Armando Reynoso went four, the game was put on pause for the "42" ceremonies and since they went so long (and the night was so cold), Bobby V sent Borland out in Reynoso's stead. The two combined on a shutout, with Toby getting the rare four-inning save. And that was really it where he was concerned.

Ken Levine is an Emmy winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer. In a career that has spanned over 30 years Ken has worked on MASH, CHEERS, FRASIER, THE SIMPSONS, WINGS, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, BECKER, DHARMA & GREG, and has co-created his own series including ALMOST PERFECT starring Nancy Travis. He and his partner wrote the feature VOLUNTEERS. Ken has also been the radio/TV play-by-play voice of the Baltimore Orioles, Seattle Mariners, San Diego Padres and has hosted Dodger Talk on the Dodger Radio Network. Levine brings a West Coast bias to his Puigcentric view of the forthcoming festivities. I'd rather see Puig or Freeman or Pence than any American League setup guy. Then again, last year all I wanted to see was Dickey and Wright start. With David at third and Matt most likely on the mound, they can do anything they like with the rest of the game. Baseball can be beautifully provincial that way.

Hefner 4.0 Satin 2.0 Byrd 1.0 Brown 1.0 Edgin 1.0 Parnell 1.0

All-Star Ron Hunt reminisces in the Daily News. Ron Hunt calls it �alley ball� and it�s how he first started learning baseball from his grandfather. From the time Hunt learned to walk, he and his grandpa, Walter Gronemeyer, found places to play the game on the streets of St. Louis, all part of the education of a future big leaguer. So on the eve of the 1964 All-Star game, Hunt delivered a special treat to the man who had given him so much. Hunt, the first Met ever elected to start the Midsummer Classic, brought his grandfather for a grandson-guided tour of Shea Stadium, where Hunt and the rest of the game�s best would play the next day, July 7. Hunt�s pals among the grounds crew �turned the lights on for Grandpa,� Hunt recalls. �Oh, I thought that was outstanding. I had learned so much from him. It was hard to tell when Grandpa was thrilled, but he was thrilled to no end.� It�s one of the most vivid memories the now-72-year-old Hunt has of the last time the Mets hosted an All-Star game � and the only time it was at Shea � nearly 50 years before they host this year�s version at Citi Field July 16. Hunt, who started at second base, went 1-for-3 in the game and can still recite the pitch he hit for a third-inning single off AL starter Dean Chance. �3-1 slider, high and inside,� he says. Hunt and his wife, Jackie, will be at Citi Field this year, but it will be hard to top his experience in 1964, an electrifying 7-4 National League victory that came on a walk-off homer by Philadelphia�s Johnny Callison off Boston�s Dick Radatz. Hunt, who was in his second season in the majors, still recalls the surge of awe he felt sharing a clubhouse with the likes of Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron, and seeing stars such as Mickey Mantle and Harmon Killebrew across the field. The Mets, who were in their third season when they hosted the game, had had All-Stars the previous two years, but Richie Ashburn, a reserve in 1962, and Duke Snider, a sub in �63, had been stars with other franchises. The 23-year-old Hunt, however, belonged to the Mets, which meant something in another lost season (the Mets were 23-58 at the All-Star break, halfway to a last-place finish with 53-109 record). As Norm Miller wrote in the Daily News when Hunt was elected by his fellow players, who had the vote back then: �Hunt is the first Met to be elected strictly on his exceptional merit. It�s almost like putting a man on the moon.� Hunt, who was batting .311 at the break, got 172 votes, easily topping runner-up Bill Mazeroski, who had 52. Hunt and his wife were going out to shop for an air conditioner when they got the news. There were 270 votes cast by NL players who could not pick their teammates, which means the rest of the league appreciated Hunt�s talents, including the toughness that would later lead to Hunt becoming one of the all-time leaders in getting hit by pitches. �He had no power and choked up a lot, but he was a good little hitter,� All-Star teammate Joe Torre says. �He was a guy you�d want on your side � he�d do anything to win. He never gave in at second base. He was a gashouse-type guy,� a reference to the rugged Cardinals teams of the 1930s. To this day, Hunt credits Casey Stengel with helping him get elected because the garrulous, crafty Met manager stumped for Hunt during a mid-June trip to Pittsburgh. �He told the writers if I wasn�t starting in the All-Star game, there was something wrong,� Hunt remembers. �I was having a helluva year. I guess Casey rang a bell or two.� And made Met fans happy. Torre recalls the applause Hunt got from the 50,850 fans at Shea as �huge. It was a proud moment for the newly minted Met fan, who were basically (Brooklyn) Dodger and (New York) Giant fans rolled into one,� Torre says. �He got a tremendous ovation in the introductions.� In the game, the American League took a 4-3 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning and Radatz, an imposing, 6-foot-6 reliever nicknamed �The Monster,� stayed in for a third inning. Orlando Cepeda knocked in the tying run with a no-out single, and Callison homered with two men on and two out. Just before the Callison homer, Hunt was pinch-hit for by one of the game�s immortals. Hunt, who went on to a lengthy career running a youth baseball program, would tell his kids, �Guy by the name of Hank Aaron pinch-hit for me.� Aaron struck out, but Callison clinched the victory with a deep drive to right, prompting a celebration at the plate. �It wasn�t that beat him in the head stuff, or hit him in the gut, like now,� Hunt says. �It was shaking hands. �We played for the fans back then,� Hunt adds. �I don�t know what they play for now. I appreciated the fans of New York. I was glad to be able to show them my appreciation, playing the All-Star Game at home in front of them. That was a terrific feeling.� Jackie Hunt still has the ticket stub from her front-row seat, right behind home plate. The price? About eight bucks. Hunt also has a sterling silver punch bowl, the player gift Jackie chose. �We still have it in a trophy case,� Jackie says. �It�s in what I call, �Ron�s room� that has all his memorabilia. He has a bat with all the guys� signatures from that All-Star game and a picture of him and Mickey Mantle that says, �New York�s Finest.� I�ve got a picture of him in the on-deck circle, getting ready to go up to hit, too.� Hunt had a career average of .273 and a career on-base percentage of .368 in his 12 years in the majors, including 1963-66 with the Mets. He made the All-Star team in 1966, too, and is sixth all-time with 243 HBPs. �I wish I could�ve spent more time in New York,� Hunt says. �I never got into the postseason. I would�ve loved to do it for Mets fans, but it didn�t happen.� Hunt was stunned when he got a call from a sportswriter in November of 1966, telling him he�d been traded to the Dodgers along with Jim Hickman for Tommy Davis and Derrell Griffith. He still says, �I can�t understand why I was traded. I was broken hearted.� When he saw Mets owner Joan Payson in the stands one year later, he says, �I took my hat off and went over to her and told her I thought it was pretty poor that a writer had to tell me about the trade. She said she wasn�t aware of that, but I did also tell her that I appreciated everything the Mets had done for me.� After one season with the Dodgers, Hunt played mostly for the Giants and Expos and even says he thought the 1969 Giants could�ve perhaps won the NL pennant instead of the Miracle Mets if San Francisco had retained Herman Franks as manager. He appeared in 12 games for his hometown Cardinals in 1974 � he names the number of days he was on their roster, 28 � but when they wanted to cut his salary in spring training the next year, �I went home and I never did regret it,� Hunt says. �We were raising our kids. We did our thing as a family.� Nowadays, Hunt has a 110-acre farm with cattle and hay in Wentzville, Mo. Because of a back operation, he says he�s not as mobile as he used to be. �What used to take me a few hours to do takes me all day now,� Hunt says. �I�m glad I�m self-employed and have good friends.� After 18 years of running his youth baseball program the Ron Hunt Eagles Baseball Association, Inc., he stopped in 2003, though he still does an occasional clinic. Not bad for a coaching career that started years ago with a batting tee fashioned out of radiator hose by his father-in-law. It�s clear he�s still proud of coaching. �We put 98% of our kids in college with some kind of scholarship help,� he says. �We played 150-200 games a summer, everybody played and for 18 years I never (hurt) an arm because we had a pitch count. I walked off the field in the sixth or seventh or eighth inning if we didn�t have any more pitchers.� Sometimes, he says, kids would ask him about the big leagues. New Yorkers who went west to spend a summer playing for Hunt asked about the All-Star game at Shea. �I�d tell them about my career, how I got started, how I got help,� Hunt says. �I was an open book. Coaching helped me pay back some of my IOUs in the game.�

Ken Levine has this All-Star Game business all figured out. Major League Baseball just doesn�t get it. They never have. This is why Les Moonves needs to be the commissioner. MLB spends so much time arguing minutia that they miss the big picture. The latest raging controversy-over-nothing is this: Should Yasiel Puig play in the All-Star Game later this month? Yes, I know. Most of you are saying who�s Yasiel Puig? And how do you even pronounce his name? (It�s �Pweeg�) You will be among the majority of people not watching the All-Star Game, despite it�s claim that �that this time it means something.� So who is Yasiel Puig? He�s a young Cuban defector who joined the Los Angeles Dodgers in early June and turned in one the greatest single months any player has done over the last 140 years. That�s all. Record-breaking number of hits, monster home runs, spectacular catches, unbelievable throws, lightening speed. He has almost single-handedly turned the Dodgers� fortunes around. The only thing he hasn�t done is sung the national anthem. But many managers, and coaches, and executives don�t feel he should be in the All-Star Game because he�s only been on the scene for a month of the three-month season. His inclusion would tarnish the �integrity� of what it means to be an All-Star. Here�s the point they�re all missing: THIS IS JUST A FRIGGIN� TELEVISION SHOW. Nothing more. It's a spectacle. The Ice Capades with cleats. Who does the audience want to see? That's the ONLY question. Period. End of discussion. Statistics are meaningless. Time-of-service is meaningless. The game is meaningless! Hollywood understands this. When actors break out in movies or series they become All-Stars overnight. You think ABC told the producers of HAPPY DAYS to not use the Fonz so much because he�s taking too much screen time away from star Ronny Howard? You think Top 40 radio stations refused to play Justin Bieber because he was only 16 and hadn�t paid his dues? Or Neil Patrick Harris was forbidden from hosting the Tony Awards because he wasn�t on Broadway last season? GET REAL. My partner and I wrote a pilot for Fox once and we got the following note: "Add a hot babe. Make her a series regular." I asked: �To do what?� And they said, �We don�t care.� You gotta applaud their honesty. They knew why people watched Fox. Had we said, "But a hot babe will just destroy the integrity of our concept" they'd have laughed at us. For many baseball fans, Yasiel Puig is the ONLY reason they�d want to watch the All-Star Game. You think they�re tuning in to hear Tim McCarver prattle on incessantly about nothing? Or to see the big rivalry between the American and National League? Now that there�s so much interleague play the leagues have been blurred to the point where there no longer is any real novelty of seeing the AL and NL compete. In a desperate attempt to fool the fans into thinking the game actually means something (after it ended one year in a tie when they embarrassingly ran out of players), the winning league gets home field advantage in the World Series. No one gives a shit. Not even the players. Do you think the buried-in-last-place Houston Astros care if the American League gets home field advantage? Half of the team doesn�t even know they�re now in the American League. Fans get to vote for the players, but they get to stuff the ballot boxes. Karl Rove would like to replace the Electoral College with this system. You can vote up to 35 times on line or as many actual ballots as you want. As a result, guys with .200 averages have made All-Star squads. But again, so what? The fans vote for the players they want to see. Maybe one out of 100,000 checks the Sabermetrics before making his selections. One year Steve Garvey of the Dodgers took home reams of ballots and he and his (then) wife filled in enough write-in votes to actually get him selected. And then he wound up winning the MVP award of that year�s All-Star Game. So who are we kidding with the integrity of the Mid-Summer Classic? It�s a fun television show. For hardcore baseball fans like me I wouldn�t miss it for the world. But I don�t give a rat�s ass who wins. I want a 9-8 game. I want the home run derby to be part of the game itself. I want a manager to be ejected for arguing. I want to see incompetent umpire Angel Hernandez call a ball foul that sails over the centerfield wall. Yasiel Puig will be selected to the All-Star squad. How come? Because the fans get to vote one final reserve and he�s on the ballot. He�s up against Ian Desmond, Freddie Freeman, Adrian Gonzalez and Hunter Pence. Who do you think Fox would prefer � Yasiel Puig or Ian Desmond? Now, in the American League, these are the five household names vying for the last spot: Steve Delabar, David Robertson, Koji Uehara, Tanner Scheppers, and Joaquin Benoit. Do you know who any of these potential All-Stars are? (I do and vote for Steve Delebar.) Oh, and by the way, this is not the first time Major League Baseball has wrestled with this dilemma over whether a rookie who broke in mid-season should qualify for the All-Star squad. It happened JUST LAST YEAR. And Bryce Harper did make the team. So what are we arguing about? JUST ADD THE HOT BABE.

Buck 3.0 Byrd 1.5 Murphy 1.5 Quintanilla 1.0 Burke 0.5

All kinds of ex-Met intrigue on tap as Twins face Jays today. Pelfrey vs. Dickey, featuring Thole and Reyes at Rogers Centre.

Good KTE'ing, Monk (won't hold against you your implication that the Brewers are a major league-caliber team; they might prove they are in the remaining two games of the series). Jonah Keri goes Brew deep at Grantland. Two years removed from a 96-win season that was their best ever and ended just two games short of the World Series, they're now hanging with the likes of the Marlins, looking up at the Cubs and Mets. Riding a five-year attendance streak in which they've averaged just less than 3 million fans a season but also dealing with gaping holes both on the major league roster and throughout the farm system, the Brewers need to decide what to do next: write off this season as terrible luck and stick with what they've got, make a few tweaks but keep the core intact, or blow it all up and rebuild, with the hope of fielding a winning team a few years down the road. Thing is, no one's quite sure how to proceed. Also, if you can get your hands on the July 1 SI, with LeBron James on the cover, there's an excellent profile of Mr. Baseball, Bob Uecker, written by Luke Winn, a Brewers fan who probably gets Uke better than anybody not from the Wisconsin Dells (I like when the magazine has its reporters who have sentimental ties to a team write about that team from that perspective). No link available at the moment, but an excerpt: ��� INNING 1 ��� Understand this about the Bob Uecker Experience: Even if you're observing him in his natural habitat, matching his radio voice with his vantage point, you're not sharing the same view. Here he is in the bottom of the first inning of the 53rd game of his 43rd season calling the Brewers on WTMJ, sitting in the visitors' booth at Citizens Bank Park, peering out into a hot haze at dusk. "Looking out at downtown Philadelphia here in the background," Uecker says to listeners on 36 stations in Wisconsin and one on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, as well as on MLB.com and Sirius XM. "Looking alllll the way up the shoreline. Atlantic City, people in the water up there. Boy, what a sight." Uecker's pitch recognition skills were such that he batted .200 in six seasons as a major league catcher, but at 78 he apparently is telescopic, able to spot details more than 60 miles away-or decades back in time. "500 Club in the background," Uecker says, name-checking the classic A.C. nightspot that burned down in 1973. "Boats. Sailfish.... Octopus." Gonna have to take your word for it, Uke. "The pitch, swing and a bouncer hit to first. There's Betancourt. Yuni B. takes care of Ben Revere." I can confirm, from over Uecker's shoulder, that Milwaukee's Yuniesky Betancourt, undistracted by mollusks, logs the out 3-unassisted. "Amazing," Uecker says, "what you can see when you want to." Sometimes Uke makes you see things you'd prefer not to, such as on April 2, shortly after Rockies catcher Yorvit Torrealba required a repair tool for his busted mitt: "I think it's called an awl. It's a pointed tool with a hole at the top. And you can stick the leather thong in there. I wear a thong once in a while. Leather kinda gets-swing and a fly ball, foul-little testy sometimes." Uke can also pretend not to see what displeases him. On April 19, when shortstop Jean Segura committed one of the greater baserunning gaffes of all time-he went backward to first base in a rundown after thinking he had been picked off second, then was thrown out trying to steal the base he had just been occupying-Uecker, who does not as a rule make jokes at the expense of his employer's ballplayers, sighed and said, "And this one will be talked about for a long time. Not by me." It's a shame that you can't see him talk, can't watch the ripple effect words have on his face, the creases and folds and that bulbous schnozz, the whole cartoony lot of it framed by a swept-back, polar-white mane. In the Philly booth Uecker is a festival of facial animation, while the rest of him is placid. His head stays level. His back and disproportionately broad shoulders stay tilted toward his tabletop microphone. He taps his black loafers slowly, soundlessly, as he speaks. Uecker wears an earpiece in his right ear, attached to a clear cord that curlicues behind his neck. He sits on the right side of the booth, with highlighted game notes and a scorebook. His 36-year-old broadcast partner, Joe Block, is on the left, a modern straight man juxtaposed with an irreverent treasure. Block wears headphones with a wraparound mike, and the screen on his laptop rotates between Microsoft OneNote, a Twitter interface and browser windows with MLB GameCast, FanGraphs and Baseball Reference. Fact-checking is an occasional requirement of his job. Uecker has remarkable recall, particularly about the peculiarities of great ballparks, but will concoct alternate histories if he desires. On April 30, 2012, in Block's first regular-season month on the job, Brewers slugger Ryan Braun hit three home runs at the Padres' Petco Park, the second one reaching the upper balcony of the Western Metal Supply Co. warehouse beyond the leftfield wall. Uecker served listeners this backstory: "They used to furnish rifles to the Union Army back in the 1800s. And automobile rims to the Henry Ford company for the first automobiles that were ever made. Western Metal Supply. None of that is true." As odd as his on-air material can be, Uecker's off-air material is a source of greater intrigue, in part due to a story comedian Artie Lange spilled in 2009 on Letterman about a visit he and Norm Macdonald made to the Brewers' booth during spring training. With deep reverence, Lange described Uecker as a "jazz musician" alternating between game commentary and, with his cough button (a muting device for his mike) depressed, fantastically dirty subcommentary. Uecker, a staunch believer in the separation of public fun and private filth, was not pleased that it leaked. Block says that at least 10 broadcasters have prodded him for cough-button stories, assuming that a Dirtier Harry Doyle-the loutish Indians announcer Uecker played in the Major League movies-lurks beneath the surface. "There's a lot of Uke in Harry Doyle, but that's clearly a character," Block says. "If Uke is being playful about something, Harry Doyle is bombastic about it. If Uke enjoys one Miller Lite, say six times a year before a game, Harry Doyle is drinking an entire bottle of Jack Daniels. Is Uke an everyman? Absolutely, but is he this crass drunk like Harry Doyle? Not from what I've seen." I don't receive the Artie Lange treatment either, but Uecker also knows I'm there to write about him. I do hear him, between innings, express genuine excitement over Milwaukee bullpen catcher Marcus Hanel's having eaten seven cheesesteaks that day. ("The record," Uke says to Block, "is 15 for a three-game trip.") Uecker messes with his producer of 28 years, Kent Sommerfeld, by no-look chucking advertising script cards in his direction. Suspecting that he's been excluded from a pregame ice cream run, Uecker stands up and yells, in the loving way that men who've been working in close quarters together for decades are wont to address each other, "Kent, you had some, didn't you, you c---------!" Uke then stomps out of the booth, returns with his own cup of ice cream and sits eating it while Block finishes a pregame spiel of lineups and out-of-town scores, building up to his big handoff: "Once again with you on the call, HERE'S BOB UECKER!" ��� INNING 2 ��� Lately, I listen to get lost. It's preferable to just listening to the losing, something my Brewers, 31-43 through Sunday and tied for last place in the National League Central, have done often enough to make Uecker turn water-park ads into suicidal ramblings. "Enjoy Mt. Olympus in Wisconsin Dells," he says on April 14, while Milwaukee is in the midst of a 32-inning scoreless streak. "That's where I'm going-to jump off." This is my 33rd year of existence and 27th of Uecker immersion, so I am familiar with his primary law of broadcasting: If the game merits locking in, he locks in. You hear every bender down low for ball one and bouncer wide of third and fastball right down Wisconsin Avenue. You get a golden-age baseball call with a few dollops of nonsense-an aside, perhaps, about sunscreen's potential as a condiment (on June 10: "It's good on chicken sausage-use the 30") or guidance on Mother's Day (May 4: "Give mom a gift that's brewed for her-a 24-pack of Miller"). If the cause is lost, Uke tries to get you lost in something else. Sometimes he starts early, such as on July 4, 2007, after Uecker stumbled upon a convention of animal-costume fetishists at the Pittsburgh Westin, where the Brewers were staying. Uecker, his then partner Jim Powell recalls, "was like a kid on Christmas morning." The game had barely begun when they went on a 15-minute digression: "Furrier Society, I believe it is," Uecker said. After putting the topic on hold to call a Braun home run, he resumed: "That's no big deal, that's what they feel. They wear animal costumes because they feel a little animalish. And I've felt that way myself a couple of times. I haven't dressed up for it. I've worn a fig leaf or two." Later Uecker emitted a sort of bird whoop and directed Powell to provide listeners with a website for more information on the Furry movement. Presumably this is the first time "alt dot lifestyle dot furry" was said during a major league broadcast. In the fifth inning on May 5 against St. Louis, the occasion of the Brewers' wearing throwback uniforms to honor their 1913 American Association predecessors led to a deep exploration of farm clubs in the Cream City: how Uecker, who grew up near the old Milwaukee Zoo in the '40s, would hound a first baseman named Heinz Becker for autographs, hanging on the bumper of his car, and how those Double A Brewers had a manager, Nick Cullop, who was known as Tomato Face, even in the newspapers. Then Uke was off to the Hollywood Stars and the Pacific Coast League in the '40s. He informed Block: "They wore shorts, did you know that? They did. They wore like Bermuda shorts, knee-high. One ball, two strikes. Check 'em out. Some guys with some decent-looking legs." (Block: "I'll work on that.") "Yeah, take care of that, will ya?" In the ninth, as part of the "Ask Uke" segment for which listeners submit questions, he told a story about rooming with Eddie Mathews on the Milwaukee Braves in the 1950s. He then dipped into the Uecker Self-Deprecation Collection, which accounts for about 75% of his shtick: "I think we led all roommates, in the National League only, in home runs. As a room. [Mathews] had like 430, and I had two." When the Ukeship landed and listeners were reacquainted with inning, score and reality, the Cardinals were up 10-1, about to complete a four-game sweep. It was rock bottom for the Brewers. It was my favorite Uecker game of the season.

Nieuwenhuis 4.0 Davis 2.5 Wheeler 1.5 Lagares 0.5 Young 0.5 Aardsma 0.5 Edgin 0.5

Great carding. I hope Matt Harvey is player of the decade -- the 1970s and the 2010s -- before all is said and done. And thanks for keeping his uniform on him.

Kobel in 1975 warming up in a stadium he didn't play in in 1974. Seconded on Goossen. Picked that card up from a friend in 1975, while Kevin Kobel was wandering the five boroughs, because I grew re-fascinated with the Pilots and the 1970 set. I was 12 and already experiencing nostalgia for baseball as it was when I was 6 and 7. Nice archival work as always.

If he never returns, Brandon Lyon joins Fernando Tatis (2010) as the only Mets to play their final game on the Fourth of July.

Box. Gee 3.0 Recker 1.5 Byrd 1.5 Nieuwenhuis 1.5 Torres 1.5

Box. Harvey 2.0 Wright 1.5 Murphy 1.5 Satin 1.5 Aardsma 1.0 Edgin 0.5 Quintanilla 0.5 Parnell 0.5

Hefner 2.5 Recker 2.0 Satin 1.5 Quintanilla 1.5 Byrd 1.5 Young 1.0

Ceetar wrote: Forever young, i want to be forever young Do you really want to live forever, forever forever Forever young, i want to be forever young Do you really want to live forever Forever young EY doesn't mind being on the nose as he steps to the plate. mAsqZTwp1lQ