G-Fafif

Bullet Bob Turley, 82, from when guys with nicknames like that were identified so readily that you assumed "Bob" was his middle name. Ruined the 1958 World Series by pitching the MFYs to victory in it.

ESPN says the season starts tonight, with a matchup of those old American League foes the Texas Rangers and the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park. (I hope the forced relocation of the Astros bothers their fans as much as it bothers me.) Matt Harrison versus Bud Norris. Astros will remain in mathematical contention after tonight no matter what.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: G-Fafif wrote: Emma Rossum will sing the national anthem. You mean Emmy Rossum of Showtime's Shameless? Her close friends call her Emma, but whatever.

Manager has announced the lineup that will be taking on Headleyless Padres in Topless Park: Collin Cowgill, cf Daniel Murphy, 2b David Wright, 3b Ike Davis, 1b Marlon Byrd, rf Lucas Duda, lf John Buck, c Ruben Tejada, ss Jonathon Niese, lhp Rusty will throw out the first pitch. Emma Rossum will sing the national anthem. The cast of Hands On A Hardbody will sing "God Bless America". "Heroes and volunteers" who aided in Sandy relief efforts (and I don't mean Brandon Lyon) will be honored. The New York Mets will play baseball again. LET'S!

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Are they certain they couldn't have found room for him somewhere? He's so wee! If only there was a 25 1/2 man roster.

Not terrible during a terrible month. Everything else relates to his size. Surely he posed with Chris Young, Jon Rauch and or Mike Pelfrey.

4th Place 73-89 I don't believe there are playoffs for that. I've been all over the win-total map (below the equator, anyway) in my head since this question was posed, going as low as 67 and rising up toward .500. This is more or less splitting the difference. If the Mets go 73-89, we can be told: a) "the Mets won one fewer game than in 2012 but, really, they were a much better team and their future looks even brighter based on what we saw in the second half"; "on the 40th anniversary of '73, the Mets celebrated by winning 73 games"; c) and "they finished with the same record as they did in 1968...a harbinger of things to come? Manager Tim Teufel, who took over for Terry Collins in August, certainly thinks it could be." I also imagine not losing 90 games will be hailed as a great Aldersonian success. Someone will have to wake him with the good news. My gut also told me the Mets would either surpass the Phillies (who I think are going to suck) or fall behind the Marlins (who have Stanton), but the thinness of the starting rotation at season's beginning cooled my high hopes some, so the difference gets split again. Precedent can be suffocating, but I really do believe there will be a touch of 1983 to their arc: two horrible thirds, an encouraging final third on which to build. And 2014...well, who knows, but you never know.

SteveJRogers wrote: LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: You don't think the only no-hitter in Met history and the meniscus game gets him into our HoF? If the only no-hitter was done by Mike Draper, would be advocating him for Mets HOF status? You mean parallel universe Mets Hall of Famer Mike Draper whose sole claim to fame was halting the Mets' franchise no-hitter draught at 32 seasons when he shocked the world by no-hitting the Pirates in 1993? Man, that was so great that they called an immediate induction ceremony on the field the minute he got the last out. I'll always love parallel universe Mets Hall of Famer Mike Draper for that.

Here's one I nailed: I don't know about no 3.60 ERA but I'm expecting more of the 8.27 Santana ERA. Ordinarily, I'd add that I hope I'm dead wrong, me being a Met fan and all, but this year, I think that I could care less about Santana. In my eyes, I've written him off. I think he's done. Fork done. I actually think it's comical the way many fans were hoping that he could pitch Opening Day. Hope I'm dead wrong, though, what with me being a Met fan and all. The guy's had more surgeries than body parts ferchrissakes. Joe Namath never threw again in Flushing after looking in December 1976 how Johan did in August 2012. Can't claim precise prescience, but I had a feeling, I guess, that we might have seen the last of a great arm.

Johan going in for more surgery, out for season, done as a Met, presumably.

Lukas says red, white and blue caps will be back for the Fourth of July. This is Memorial Day's salute (MLB overlooking that Memorial Day isn't exactly the same thing as Veterans Day).

Not retiring, Timmy says. Just leaving Fox. A few MLBN gigs a la Costas would seem a good fit.

Was warming up in pen as Johan Santana prepared to pitch the 9th on June 1, 2012. Would've been his MLB debut. Glad he had to wait.

Uni Watch made what I thought was a great proposal four years ago, suggesting MLB teams wear throwbacks evoking military baseball teams of yore. Paul Lukas also pointed out camo is something you wear so the enemy can't see you, not exactly lined up with the idea of a uniform worn out in the open in front of 30,000 people. Decent gesture and fundraising tool, though something about civilians/non-veterans putting on camo (as opposed to a fan putting on a team cap) seems...I dunno, creepy. Like playing military dressup.

McCarver in the 1980s was Madden before Madden became a caricature (though Madden remained pretty good all the way through), except Tim was basically just for us and on almost every day or night for almost six months. If the Original Three taught me what baseball was, McCarver taught me how baseball is played. Mostly intolerable for the past two decades, but brilliant when he emerged.

SI will remember Mets prospect Brian Cole in a big way in its baseball preview issue. Sarasota Herald-Tribune explains how the story came to be. Reputable people � Duquette, Sabathia, Engle, Tim Foli, Al Leiter, Mookie Wilson, Heath Bell, Albert Pujols. They all could not wait to talk about what they had witnessed. �It was the middle of last season,� McKnight said, �and these guys called me right back, which doesn't ever happen. They were like, �Hey, first of all, absolutely I'll do an interview with you about Brian Cole.' � �Secondly, how the hell did you find out about him?' They were almost protective of this secret and they also wanted to make sure that I did it all right.� Sabathia told McKnight about the time in the minors in 1999 when Cole turned on a 96-mph fastball and blasted a home run. �This kid was a bottle-rocket,� Sabathia said. �I've never seen anybody with that much power and so small in size, with crazy bat speed and hand-eye coordination that you couldn't get anything by him. �Each of them,� McKnight said, �to a man, said you have to understand that this is not us making this stuff up because he died tragically. We would be talking about him like this if he were playing in his 12th All-Star Game. This kid was amazing.�

Via Bronx Banter, classic MFY Circus/DB action: Tony Kornheiser on the Boss in full flower -- very much an a-hole then as later. George Steinbrenner is charming, generous, philanthropic, well-connected, wealthy, energetic and a delight to be with. He is also imperious, tyrannical, impatient, tough, nasty and almost impossible to work for. If he has to pick a label to hang his psyche on, he picks none of the above. He picks misunderstood. �No one has been able to capture the real me, how I feel,� he says. �But I guess it�s tough. It�s hard for me to convey what I really feel. It�s not something I can easily say.� He lists among his friends such people as Senator Edward Kennedy; Thomas P. O�Neill, better known as Tip, the Speaker of the House of Representatives; Cary Grant, the legend, and Barbara Walters, a close personal friend of Anwar el-Sadat. He lists among his prominent positions, spots on the boards of trustees at the University of Tampa. the Culver Educational Foundation, the University of South Florida Foundation. He is the Florida state chairman of the American Cancer Society. He lists among his accomplishments, assistant varsity football coach at both Northwestern and Purdue, chairman of the Democratic Party fund raising effort in 1969 and 1970, all sorts of charitable work for poverty foundations and sports-for-youth federations and co-producer of such award-winning Broadway shows as �Seesaw� and �Applause.� Oh, and he brought the Yankees back from comatose to champions in five years. Yet what people remember him for most are his felony conviction for election-campaign fraud in the time of Watergate, and the weekly reports of his threats to fire Billy Martin, the manager of the Yankees, a 49-year-old Fonzie who has been described by John Schulian of The Chicago Sun-Times as �a mouse studying to be a rat.� George Steinbrenner, who very much would like to be a man of the people, a working-class hero, hasn�t a shot. He takes his satisfactions privately; he gets his beatings publicly. �I�m the heavy,� he says. �I don�t like it, but I don�t know how to change it.� �TWO THINGS ARE important to George,� says a close friend who believes he needs anonymity on this one to stay close. �Two things�winning and power.� Steinbrenner does not dispute the former; he pleads guilty, with an explanation, to the latter. �Only if I can use it for good, to help those less fortunate than me,� he says. He is sitting in the restaurant in his Tampa hotel, the Bay Harbor Inn. He puts his elbows on the table and leans forward: This one is coming from the heart. �I�ll tell you when I really bristle,� he says. �I�ll be sitting at some board meeting, and I�ll hear some big shot say��Look at those people.� And you�ll know exactly which people he�s talking about. �All they want is their unemployment checks.� Well, let me tell you something. I�ve been to the South Bronx; how many of those big shots have been to the South Bronx? You gonna tell me that�s all that guy wants in life? No way. . . . If he had the opportunity that I had, God knows he might be a better man than all of us. �Now look, I�m no crusader, I don�t want it to sound like that. I�m no Robin Hood. I just like to help people, that�s my bag. They call me a flaming liberal; guess I am.� The little guy, Steinbrenner claims kinship with the little guy. The cabby who has to fight the traffic every day, the bartender, the hotel worker, that�s his cast of characters; he talks about them so often you�d think he did his senior thesis at Williams College on Damon Runyon instead of on the heroines in Thomas Hardy�s novels. His favorite little guy is the one who stops him on the street and thanks him for bringing the Yankees back. He makes it seem there are a legion of little guys out there on the streets of New York, patrolling every comer just waiting to spot him and shake his hand. �Class,� he says. �What class they have.� He shrugs. �I wish I had class like that,� he says. �I wish I had the class to go up to a stranger and thank him for something. I don�t.� Now it may be a bit hard to swallow that, to fully swallow how a man who likes the feel of a chauffeured limousine can claim this spiritual tie to the little guy. Especially since he�s so hard with his own little people, his secretaries and his office personnel. Especially since he stays at the Hotel Carlyle and wears $40 shirts and sits fifth-row center at the theater, house seats. But down deep, even if he knows it isn�t readily visible, George Steinbrenner feels like one of the guys. Down deep, he�s at a fraternity party. All his life, through military school and through board meetings, he acted one way and coveted another, and down deep, he wants to be one of the common people, if only for a handshake. Of course his hero is the cabby. The common denominator in New York City is the traffic; Steinbrenner sees it even through the window of his chauffeured limo, he feels it, he sits in it. When you�re stuck on 37th Street, it doesn�t matter if you�re stuck in a cab, or a bus or a limo. You�re all alike. For maybe the only time in his life, he�s down with the people. �I�ve always kept my emotions inside me,� he says. �They tell me I don�t let myself go, and that�s true. It�s a mark of strength among Germans, you know. . . . it isn�t that frequent that I really enjoy myself. It�s hard to explain, but the feeling I got after winning a World Series wasn�t what I thought it�d be. I remember saying to myself�I wonder why I�m not more excited? But then I saw the happiness I got was seeing happiness in others, and when that cabby comes up to me and says, �Thanks for bringing the Yankees back,� even if it�s just �Thanks for spending your money,� it�s unreal. I feel so good about winning one for New York. This is the greatest city in the world and its people are the greatest people in the world. And I just hope they like me.�

Swan Swan H wrote: Diamondbacks release Rod Barajas. Rod may no longer be a Diamondback, but he's sure as shootin' an American citizen, Arizona authorities be damned. This spring, the union sent an advisory to players, in English and Spanish, about SB 1070. Lino Diaz, who until last year was Cleveland's cultural development coordinator, says the Indians once brought in Phoenix police officers to explain the law. "We felt like it had more weight that way," Diaz says. "The players were overwhelmed with the things that could get them in trouble, which are obviously a little different than the things in their countries." Players who once pummeled SB 1070 sound resigned. "There's really not much we can do about it," Gallardo says after throwing four innings against the Diamondbacks. "The law is the law." "It's the government," says Torrealba. "You follow the rules, I guess." "Tell those ballplayers, don't worry, I always have an open door," says Sheriff Joe. Late one afternoon, I find Barajas sitting in the Diamondbacks clubhouse in Scottsdale. Barajas is a big, burly catcher who looks like he could smite a base stealer with his eyes. "You said you couldn't imagine your grandparents being asked for their papers," he tells me. "Well, I wouldn't want to see my parents in that situation, either." To a police officer, Barajas could arouse the same "reasonable suspicion" as Elian Herrera. Barajas's parents are Mexican immigrants; his skin is olive-colored. But he was born in Ontario, California. He's as American as Mike Trout. I ask Barajas if he is ever worried about being asked for his papers. "I don't know if I should carry my birth certificate or passport. I never thought about it," he says. "I'm sure it could happen." Then Barajas's eyes narrow. "I think of myself as an American citizen. There's no reason whatsoever for me to have to carry that around."

Red Sox are doing it, too. Perhaps the successor to Dave Howard's Ass will follow. Among the cuts in concessions: A 12-ounce cup of beer drops from $7.50-$8.50 to $5; Fenway franks are buy one, get one free; hot chocolate is nearly half price ($2, compared with $4.25 last season) and kids will eat for free (hot dog, snack and juice carton) as long as they pick up their meal before the third inning. Tickets for all 17 games at Fenway in April are still available online, including the home opener on April 8. Eleven of those games will start before 7 p.m. in another nod to the fans. Night games in April are usually chilly. "We're looking for ways to fill the ballpark, and hopefully this will help," Kennedy told the Globe. "But more importantly, that it be received as a thank you given everything we've been through the last nine, 10 years together. We thought it was an appropriate gesture."

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: He did do something nice for a new dad once. Wait, are you implying somebody is neither all bad even if he's not necessarily all good? I'm not sure the Internet can tolerate that sort of perspective. Based on first-hand observation and interaction plus the input of those who might know more intimately, his heart was sometimes in the right place. Take that as you will.

Film profiling R.A. Dickey's pitch the subject of a Faith and Fear contest. Win the DVD of Knuckleball by answering a few questions.

Virgil "Fire" Trucks, 95. Pitch a pair of no-no's for the '52 Tigers. Won 177 games in 17 seasons plus one in the 1945 World Series -- and started against the Cubs in the last WS game they won, 68 years ago.

Howie! From the Big Lead (h/t bmfc1). 7. Are there events you would still like to call in your career? Yes. The one where I get to proclaim that the New York Mets are world champions.

Phil Griffin, who (accidentally, if this New Republic profile is accurate) set MSNBC on track, has a favorite team that doesn't include Rachel Maddow. Griffin�s corner office overlooks Rockefeller Plaza, and the wall space that isn�t covered by televisions is devoted to photographs of his children and his beloved New York Mets.

Brian Costa takes a slightly worn topic -- Jay Horwitz's propensity to "butt dial" an odd assortment of cell phone contacts -- and weaves late Spring Training magic. During a 2010 game against the Rockies in Denver, Horwitz accidentally called ex-Met Livan Hernandez from the Coors Field press box. Hernandez, who was then pitching for the Nationals, returned the call from his locker in Washington a short while later. The ensuing conversation played out like an Abbott and Costello skit. "Jay?" "Livo?" "You called me?" "You called me." To this day, Horwitz accidentally calls Hernandez once a month, for reasons unknown to both men. No Met, past or present, is immune, regardless of stature. A few years ago, while doubling as the Mets' assistant traveling secretary, Horwitz would often try to email players' flight itineraries to an administrative assistant in the general manager's office. The assistant was a woman named Dianne, but when Horwitz typed in the D, he would inadvertently email third baseman David Wright instead. Wright was too polite to tell Horwitz, so he became a sort of liaison between Horwitz and the woman. "I would just forward the emails to her and say, 'Hey, here's another one from Jay,'" Wright said. "The whole thing's been going on for years. People are just now starting to learn about how, uh, different he is."