G-Fafif

is why Charlie Samuels needed to be thrown in prison. NO team dressed like that deserves to win. Bud Selig, too. Those white caps were the truly horrendous "Stars and Stripes" model that they made everyone wear for Independence Day weekend (among other occasions). You guys know the whole stars-n-stripes hats was a Fred Wilpon Thing. It is tied somehow to the veterans charity he was (is?) trying to get going with Seaver as the spokesman. Goes without saying that Fred Wilpon should be in prison too, charitable work for Veterans notwithstanding Where he can make these:

If he gets off to a bad start, let's hope he's capable of a reverse Cowgill.

"Inconsequential." We'd already gotten a taste of what R.A. Dickey was for two months, both with the pitching and the talking, but the night he passed from novelty into icon for me came in July 2010 after he had been outpitched (a little) by Tim Lincecum in San Francisco. It wasn't the game itself, but the media scrum afterwards wherein he was asked about the effect of the Phone Company Park winds on his knuckleball. R.A. paused, contemplated and pronounced the impact "inconsequential". It's not that amazing a word in real life, but to hear a ballplayer express it...to watch a ballplayer think...it was breathtaking in the context of these sorts of things. I was at Dickey's first Citi Field start, his last Citi Field start and 18 Dickey starts altogether. Even in the lousiest of Mets stretches, there was juice for every one of them. The last, of course, was the 20th win, and, not having been at Johan's no-hitter, I would call it easily the most electric atmosphere I've ever experienced in that generally dim bulb of a ballpark. With the possible exception of Pedro Martinez, there was no Met from 2005 to the present about whom I enjoyed writing more. If this trade really leads to us having a contending team, then that's a whole other level of blogging fun. But when you're sitting at your computer ruminating over another solid, unspectacular evening with Chris Young or Chris Capuano or whoever's not R.A. Dickey when the team you're committed to won't stop sucking, you really, really appreciate a pitcher who is both fascinating and effective. JCL's anti-R.A. backlash, whether it was sincere or performance art, was Really Awesome in its own right.

Frank Pastore, 55, teammate of Cincinnati Red pitcher Tom Seaver. Dug the Lord.

Such a nice boy. Such an ineffectual hitter in 2012. Such a not plate blocker in San Diego in August. OTOH, was great receiving the first ball from the pooch every year on Bark in the Park Day. Saw him hit a walkoff HR at the tail end of '10. Barajas and Blanco had done that earlier in the season. Then all Mets catchers stopped hitting altogether, it seemed. Strange that Josh and Nickeas get entombed with Pharaoh Dickey as he's mummified and shipped to Canada. They can keep him company in the afterlife.

Nickeas stunned McFadden's (where I watched an entire home game going on just steps away) with his first MLB home run, versus the Astros, the night Jason Bay came off the DL after whatever malady befell him in ST 2011. It was one of those rare unsung feelgood moments of this perhaps expiring era, everybody cheering, the Mets sticking it to somebody decidedly worse than them early in a season where they were the dregs. I had the pleasure of telling the third-rate, second-string Channel 4 sports guy on Twitter that he was pronouncing the man's name wrong. It's Nuh-Key-Us, not NICK-ee-us said with Dennis Miller inflections, babe. Did we do one of these for Thole yet?

bmfc1 wrote: Returned from the DL the day of the No-Hitter. Pretty sure that was the other terrific catcher.

R.A. Dickey was so much older then. He's younger than that now. Or something along those lines. I was actually surprisingly reasonable/charitable toward the endeavor in longer form, excerpted below. I know, I know�the Mets are yet again revealing themselves an unserious and possibly inept organization for not (or not yet) signing an impact free agent while instead laying in a supply of R.A. Dickeys for the hard winter ahead. It�s an easy enough charge to level. Still, can I say something in some combination of the Mets� and Dickey�s defense? There�s nothing wrong with signing R.A. Dickey.

YSUcFx0ZJGs Be the Jays! Be the Jays! Move up north and Be the Jays! Import Jose Sign R.A. They can have Thole That much I'll say! Because ex-Mets populate Ontario Their tax bills grow high As we groom d'Arnaud Up there, down here We will somehow get along The Jays have my two fav'rite Mets But not our song!

Ceetar wrote: The home run was fun. What home run?

Tyler Kepner, the anti-Davidoff in this piece. The title of R. A. Dickey�s memoir is �Wherever I Wind Up,� a nod to his dancing knuckleball and itinerant pitching career. He wrote the book before he won the National League Cy Young Award this year, a feat that should have answered the question of where his journey would lead. Leave it to the Mets to botch something easy, like Luis Castillo dropping a pop-up with two outs in the ninth. When the best pitcher in the National League wants to stay with you for three more years, at a steep discount, you let him stay. Why is this so complicated? By trading Dickey to the Toronto Blue Jays, pending the negotiation of a contract extension, the Mets essentially told their fans that they do not expect to contend for the next three years. The Mets have already staggered through four consecutive losing seasons, three shy of the franchise record. Now the wait to be relevant drags on. Say this for General Manager Sandy Alderson: he has guts and conviction. When Alderson came to the Mets in October 2010, with Commissioner Bud Selig�s encouragement, he was charged with reviving a team bleeding cash and saddled with overpaid, decaying players. He was bound not by sentiment, only by a duty to make the team better for the future. Along the way, Alderson got a gift in Dickey, a holdover from his predecessor, Omar Minaya. Alderson astutely signed Dickey to a two-year, $7.5 million contract, with a $5 million club option for 2013. Dickey, after winning the Cy Young, asked for two more years and $26 million, a bargain in the current market. The Mets traded him instead. The haul looks impressive. Catcher Travis d�Arnaud, 23, is considered the Blue Jays� top prospect, ranked 17th in the sport before last season by Baseball America. Pitcher Noah Syndergaard, 20, struck out 122 batters in 1032/3 innings, allowing just 3 home runs, in the Class A Midwest League last season. But Dickey has proved himself for three seasons, with a 2.95 earned run average as a Met, and as a knuckleballer, he should be viable for at least three more, even at age 38. If the Mets had any plans to contend in that window, a No. 1 starter would be a major asset. Maybe they have aces in waiting, with Matt Harvey and Zack Wheeler, the right-hander acquired from San Francisco for Carlos Beltran in 2011. Maybe Jon Niese will be their Andy Pettitte and Johan Santana can hold up for a full season. In Dickey, at least, they knew what they were getting. But that, incredibly, could be part of the problem. The New York Post reported last week that the Mets had concerns about Dickey�s off-the-field endeavors, and that the front office was displeased that Dickey criticized the team at its holiday party on Tuesday. That day, Dickey said he had been more than fair with his contract proposal, adding that without an extension, he would probably not return in 2014. �When people say, �It�s business, it�s not personal,� that just means it�s not personal for them,� he said. �It can be personal for me.� What, exactly, did the Mets expect Dickey to say? They knew reporters would ask about his contract status. They knew, presumably, that he was not happy with the team�s offer, and they know he is extremely candid when speaking in public. Yet they invited him anyway. Didn�t that invitation set up Dickey to say something the team might not like? Whether he was speaking from the heart or trying to create leverage, the Mets should have known better. To act offended is na�ve and absurd, and to malign Dickey for his off-field interests is worse. This is a pitcher who went 20-6 for a team that was 74-88, becoming the first Met to win the Cy Young Award since 1985. He was a beacon on a dreary team, and he has earned the right to be trusted that he will be prepared for the season. To the Mets, apparently, it is fine for David Wright, their new $138 million player, to visit David Letterman and Jon Stewart, as he has done in the past. Yet when Dickey appears on the same shows, as he has this off-season, he�s full of himself. Please. Dickey is unfailingly polite and respectful, the way we wish all players would be. His compelling back story, and willingness to share it, broadened the Mets� appeal. He has peeled off painful wounds from his past in an effort to help others deal with child sexual abuse, appearing on the cover of the latest Sports Illustrated in an article about it. Yet this is the man the Mets chose to malign. Trading him might make sense, if the prospects help the Mets start winning again, someday. Smearing him in the process was utterly classless. For all he gave the Mets, on the field and off, Dickey deserved better.

That stretch where he and Carlos Delgado both got it together in '08, coinciding with the last good Mets team and the last season at Shea, would be nice to remember him by. Pelf and Carlos D. both going deep, the Mets getting hot, things finally working as they were supposed to after approximately a calendar year of the team not getting out of its own way. But of course nothing lasted for anybody. Otherwise, Pelf worked a lot of high pitch counts, fell down on the mound in creative ways and licked his hands a lot. Always stopped a few inches shy of outright can't-standing him probably because he was from Wichita -- hometown of Mrs. FAFIF -- and probably because there always seemed to be something going on up there that was a little more interesting than his pitching would indicate. If not Dickey Lite, then a few more layers of intrigue than, say, Jonathon Niese, the epitome of whatcha see is whatcha get. Good luck, dude.

Davidoff with the good, old-fashioned hit job. I'll take the baseball doubts about age, track record, risk, et al as legitimate factors, but the dark personality stuff? To quote one of my favorite comics, "Who cares?" If that's what it takes to win, then let every Met get a little self-absorption going and direct it as Dickey has. All smoke and mirrors. They don't want to pay him. Yeah, get the best package you can for him if that's the ultimate outcome. But the "oh, you know, he was an awful human being" smear job to win people over to their side is wholly unnecessary. Dick Young wrote the same heaping pile about another Cy Young winner in 1977.

Just so ya know, this is what Cam does on a #funfriday, which apparently this is for him: nothing better than a kick-ass workout, a haircut and some good food....not to mention spending time with my fiancee all night!!

PMU: Past Met Underperformance. Alomar's PMU rating went unchallenged until the 2010-2012 tenure of Bay, which shattered even the Fosterian standard set in 1982.

glEiPXAYE-U Wiggy, Wiggy, Wiggy Can't you see? Sometimes the Redbirds Will hyptonize thee Which is to say Ken Rosenthal reports Ty Wigginton to the Cards for two years at $5 mil total.

Was just good enough to not suck as much as I was sure he did. Wasn't good enough to not wholly suck. A Met reliever of the usual order.

"The force that swept a 37-year-old scrap-heap knuckleballer to his 20th win that same summer on a day when Mets fans in New York City chanted his name, waved giant R's and A's and loved him in a way that people love a child or a monk or a dying man who had shed all his armor and come before them in his truth." Gary Smith is a Cy Young writer every year.

Swan Swan H wrote: themetfairy wrote: Despite that, I inexplicably disliked him. I swear to G-d I'd be channeling my grandfather and calling him all sorts of names, for reasons that I cannot put a finger on. Exactly. I have no idea why he rubbed me the wrong way, but rub he did.

Edgy MD wrote: Rickey Henderson? Nolan Ryan? Don Zimmer? "Duh," he said. Fixed to include those guys, except for Zimmer, who would've been No. 2 behind Torre had the character clause been considered, according to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver.

ESPN's Hall of 100 -- ranking players based strictly on performance, no character clauses -- rates Tom Seaver the No. 24 player of all-time, the No. 6 pitcher of all-time, the No. 5 RHP of all-time. Only righties better, they claim: some bat-throwing dick; some creep who pitched mostly for Atlanta and the Cubs; somebody who was said to be a large locomotive; and a fellow for whom a pitching award is named only because he predated Seaver and thus Seaver himself couldn't be the standard. Seeing as how it is established that Tom Seaver is the Greatest Everything Ever, this is shockingly low. But others would call it pretty darn high. Other Mets (or those who wore Mets uniform in competition): 93. T#m Gl@v!ne 86. Gary Carter 81. Duke Snider 78. Mike Piazza 73. Roberto Alomar 65. Eddie Murray 56. Yogi Berra 45. Warren Spahn 41. Pedro Martinez 35. Nolan Ryan 14. Rickey Henderson 2. Willie Mays

Kept thinking I was missing something with him. Then I realized, no, it's him, not me. Had a heckuva day when Dickey beat the Marlins on a Citi Field August afternoon when no Met was doing anything well at home all summer: three-quarters of a cycle, all the hard parts, too.

FGB: Full Game Blown For the pitch, misplay or plate appearance on which a loss can be pinned.

R.A. not so merry at holiday party.