G-Fafif

What IS Jan going to do with her scrap metal?

Rob Johnson has a swollen hand. Again, probably an Fman joke in there somewhere, but I'm not sure how, exactly.

The rest of Murph's scorecard: Solano 4 Ruggiano 8 Reyes 6 Lee 3 Stanton 9 Kearns 7 Green 5 Buck 2 LeBlanc 1

Murph's scorecard: Tejada 6 Murphy 3 Wright 5 Hairston 9 Bay 7 Cedeno 4 Torres 8 Thole 2 Niese 1

You can no longer call the Phillies a bunch of sellouts at home. The Phillies' crowd halted the club's consecutive sellout streak, which is the longest ever in the NL and third-longest in MLB history according to the club. The streak started on July 7, 2009. "You kind of know it's going to happen," Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins said. "You would hope that it wouldn't. You would hope that one bad season wouldn't break it up. But that's the way it goes. "People aren't going to spend money and come to the game if they don't feel they're getting their money's worth. And this year we've been a little short."

Goddamn, that's a solid line drive of a KTE if ever one was struck. Nice job.

Quiz through which you can win No-Han DVD at FAFIF. Give it a shot!

H/T to bmfc1 for finding this passage from the 2012 novel, The World Without You by Joshua Henkin. "If we weren't running late," Lily says, "I'd take you kids to Fenway Park. I could show you the Green Monster." "Are you a Red Sox fan?" Akiva asks. "Only when they play the Yankees." "Why" "Because I'm a Mets fan." In 1986, the year the Mets won the World Series, Lily accompanied Leo, who was fourteen at the time, on the subway to Flushing, to watch Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry play at Shea Stadium. Everyone in the family was a Mets fan, and in the bleachers at Shea even Lily and Noelle got along. Lily has no patience for Yankees fans, especially the newly minted New Yorkers, the arrivistes. She knows suffering: she's witnessed the Mets endure hundred-loss seasons. So when Akiva announces he's a Yankees fan, she says, "Too bad for you. I guess we'll have to eat at separate tables." Akiva is silent. "I'm only kidding," she says.

Jim Harper watched the Mets-Phillies game on his laptop (or was just checking the score, he claimed) in �5/1� episode of The Newsroom, about the night Bin Laden was killed.

That's the most personality Jon Niese has ever shown anywhere, and it took Grimm to pull it out of him. I get the sense the other winners pulled back their high-fiving arms from the rook (Edgin going along with veteran peer pressure) to continue to teach Jordany some lesson in conformity. Aside from being incredibly attractive, the '74 Valdespin is considered valuable in collecting circles for its misspelling of his first name. (And, oh, how the Johan had fallen in July of 2012!)

Cedeno 2.0 Davis 1.0 Tejada 1.0 Acosta 0.5

Reyes, like Tejada, continues his hitting streak. Jose's is 24. Fish lose anyway. Darren O'Day, Luis Ayala and Omar Quintanilla lead O's to 1-0 win over Jeff Keppinger's Rays.

Hot Hitter SS El Hombre CF Captainesque 3B His Kingdom for a Matzoh Ball 1B Other Hot Hitter 2B Large Contract LF Gets Places by Walking RF Guy Whose Name is an Fman Joke Waiting to Happen C Hard Throwing Young Righty Who Wore 41 in Another Lifetime P

Last time a Met walked five times, it took sixteen innings: Vince Coleman, August 10, 1992, against the Pirates...whose bullpen coach was Terry Collins...who said after last night's game in San Diego that he didn't think he'd ever seen anybody walk five times in one game before.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: OE -- There's some truth to what you wrote. I'm not dismissing it outright. But there's also, I think, a lot of urban legend to your post, and it doesn't account for the level of vacancy you see in those choice sections at CF, game after game after game. Even when Dickey pitches. By contrast, ticket prices for seats in the section behind home plate underneath the netting at Shea Stadium reached prohibitively expensive levels by the late 1990's. And those sections were never as empty as the choice sections at CF. Not even during the Art Howe years. Reminds me of an episode Bob Costas recalled in Loose Balls, Terry Pluto's enormously entertaining oral history of the ABA. He challenged the PR guy from the Miami Floridians on inflated attendance figures. Whatever the number he was given dwarfed the actual fannies in the seats, which Costas could count for himself during the game. The PR guy insisted all those folks were here, they're just up buying refreshments or using the washroom. Costas finished his reminiscence with some crack about how the plumbing would burst (or something like that) if this was true. Anyway, I often think of that passage when I see the Mets report an attendance of 30,000.

Mookie Wilson received only one tenth-place selection in MVP voting through his entire career -- and it was for the last two months of 1989 that he spent as a Blue Jay.

Hefner 3.5 Murphy 2.0 Baxter 1.5 Valdespin 1.5 Edgin 1.0 Francisco 0.5

My reasonable request was 5-6 after 0-6 homestand. They are 6-4 with one to go. Well done (but don't head for the airport early).

Erstwhile Met 3B Ty Wigginton goes 1-for-1 as Phillies top Diamondbacks. Erstwhile Met IF Wilson Valdez goes 0-for-3 as Reds top Pirates. And erstwhile Met SS Jose Reyes goes 3-for-4, scores 4 runs, extends hitting streak to 23 games and raises average to .288 as Marlins fall to erstwhile MGR Davey Johnson's Nationals, 10-7. Non-erstwhile Mets clinch a winning trip, meanwhile.

Spitter will have to post again as his international IGT-dating technique is sure to touch off a winning streak. Last Met to Homer (No, Really) - SS T-Shirt Vandalism Victim - LF Krane Chaser - 3B Powerful in Spurts, Otherwise Futile - 1B He's Irish, According to his Walkup Music - 2B Shoulder-Sacrificer for Greater Historic Good - RF "Huh? What? Hey, look at that!" - CF It Goes From One Hand into the Other, then...Whoops! - C I <3 the Lord & Chicken Sandwiches - RHP

Doubleheader boosts Marlins' Jose Reyes's hit streak to 22. Ron Gardenhire's Twins beat Bobby Valentine's Red Sox in 10. Robin Ventura's White Sox stick the Angels' Hisanori Takahashi with his 3rd loss against zero wins.

Not so angry, but, per Brian Costa, oh so cocky! SAN FRANCISCO�On the surface, it was a simple violation of a team dress code. Rookie Jordany Valdespin wore a white T-shirt on the Mets' team bus Wednesday, rather than a collared shirt. And what happened next is well-known by now: Teammates cut up the shirt and wrote on it with marker. Valdespin fumed. Then he calmed down and laughed it off. But there is also little doubt that Valdespin's overall demeanor and reputation played into the episode. Simply put, he is the kind of player that some older players view as needing to be taught a lesson, and not just on how to dress. That is partly a reflection of Valdespin, who has the swagger of a superstar at age 24. But it is also indicative of baseball's unwritten rules for rookies. First-year players are expected to act with a certain outward deference to veterans. They are generally expected to be seen and not heard. Things like cranking his own music in the clubhouse, as Valdespin did a few days ago, though seemingly harmless in other contexts, is frowned upon within the fraternity of major-league players. "Personally, I don't have a problem with Valdy," Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey said. "I think he plays hard. At the same time, there's a learning curve on his part." That is true with all rookies, but because he has been labeled cocky and immature dating to his minor-league days, Valdespin doesn't get the same benefit of the doubt. "I think he has to work hard to do it cleaner and better than everybody else, because for whatever reason, it seems he's got a label that has come with him," Dickey said. "In my mind, if I'm him, I'm trying to do it better and cleaner than everybody else." On the field, Valdespin has shown flashes of great potential. He entered Friday with five pinch-hit home runs, the most in a single season in team history. Overall, he was batting .265 with seven home runs and 23 RBI. Though Valdespin came up as an infielder, he also has played all three outfield positions this season. He doesn't lack confidence. Generally, rookies are praised for "acting like they belong." But that is true only to a point. And even Valdespin acknowledged he is still learning how to carry himself. "When you come here, you have to respect everybody in here," Valdespin said. "They can do whatever they want. I can't do whatever I want to do. I'm a rookie, and I have to respect them." At times, the way rookies are treated seems less than professional. Dickey wrote about the issue in his memoir, in which he recalled an older teammate kicking his shoes across the clubhouse simply because he didn't like how close they were to his locker. When rookies have no voice or sense of ownership, Dickey said, it is bad for the clubhouse culture. But by all accounts, the Mets are a pretty lax bunch. Young players are still encouraged to be themselves. They're just expected to adhere to team protocol and, around the clubhouse, be more observant than outspoken. Some conform willingly. Rookie pitcher Matt Harvey said when he was in the minors, he might put his own music on the clubhouse stereo and dance around a bit. "Up here," he said, "I'm watching and learning and seeing how the older guys do everything." But for others, the unwritten rules of the majors take time to learn. It can take weeks of silent observation, a lecture from a veteran teammate or, in some cases, a T-shirt shredded and markered. "We've all had times like that," reliever Tim Byrdak said. "When you get up to this level, you don't really know what to expect. There's no book that can tell you exactly what to do here and what to wear."

Jeremy Hefner: Give me chicken and my version of Christianity but don't give me grief! With 11 words, Mets pitcher Jeremy Hefner upset some of his fans on Twitter after Wednesday�s game. Those 11 words: "By the way I am a Christian and absolutely love Chick-fil-A!" What followed was a cascade of negative feedback. By Thursday morning, Hefner decided to delete his account. "I don�t need that distraction," Hefner told The Record. "Whether I was right or they were right or whoever was right, it�s just unnecessary." Chick-fil-A, a national restaurant chain, angered people who support gay rights when one of its executives recently made comments in support of "the biblical definition of a family." The comments have led to protests and appreciation days. After his tweet, Hefner said people were "sending hateful messages to me. It wasn�t worth it." "They can have their beliefs and their opinions," Hefner said. "It�s fine. But I�m very aware that my opinion probably wasn�t popular. You know what I mean? "But I have the right to have my beliefs as well."

Dickey 3.5 Cedeno 2.0 Tejada 0.5 Rauch 0.5

Substitute snowballs for baseballs, bam!