G-Fafif

Francisco back, Byrdak to DL (shoulder).

Out on a limb idea: make Olympic baseball a winter sport. Of course it would have to played in a different locale than the winter Olympics, such as Florida or Arizona. The players don't have a conflict (just like the NBA and European players don't have a conflict right now). It sounds crazy to have an event in a different location (and would the players want to give up a month of their off-season to train?), but it's better than shutting down MLB and certainly better than Bud's WBC which forces MLB players into a competitive environment after only a week or two of practice. Don't know enough about available venues, but if you had a big enough indoor stadium -- a SkyDome type of deal -- in the vicinity of all the skating, maybe winter baseball would work. Sochi, Russia, you have your assignment.

Scott Hairston, Chris Young and Sandy Alderson were all Friars in their day.

Not pictured: Braves, No. 47, muttering, Get off me! Get off me! I'm choking! And I plan to make a long-term habit of it after I'm gone from here!"

On the cover before becoming a Met in 1983. What?

Goin' to the San Diego Zoo on '80s night... Ruben Tejada - SS Andres Torres - CF David Wright - 3B Scott Hairston - RF Ike Davis - 1B Jason Bay - LF Ronny Cedeno - 2B Josh Thole - C R.A. Dickey - RHP

Whoops, wrong thread. Carry on.

Thole nicknamed Valdespin "El Hombre," affectionately from what I can discern, so when Valdy saw that scrawled on his shirt... Ah, overgrown adolescents with a skill we enjoy watching plied.

What's worse: A sitting Supreme Court justice going on a hunting trip with a sitting Vice President of the United States and not recusing himself from an upcoming case involving the VP -- Scalia and Cheney, circa 2004 -- or this shit with Sonia Sotomayor? I'd say it's a draw (though Scalia doesn't come off well here, either, MFYLDB-style). Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor joins Yankee Stadium Bleacher Creatures during first-inning Wednesday Bronx native Sotomayor lauds Yankee fans as the 'greatest' BY ROGER RUBIN / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor sat in judgment of the Bleacher Creatures Wednesday at the Stadium, and they got a very positive ruling. �I pay homage to the bleacher creatures,� Sotomayor said during a seventh-inning interview in the Stadium press box. "They are the greatest fans." Sotomayor, 58, came to the game and sat with �Bald Vinny� Milano in Section 203, where he leads the traditional �Roll Call� during the top of the first inning of every home game. She later moved to other seats, and saw her hometown Yankees pile up the runs against the Baltimore Orioles. Well-known for her fandom when it comes to the Yankees, Sotomayor was invited to sit in the bleachers and do the Roll Call earlier this season when the Yanks played the Nationals in Washington. She loved every minute of being at the park. �Having sat in the old Stadium bleachers anonymously, there is quite a chord that gets touched when you come back on a day like today and people are screaming out �Justice� or �Sonia� and it brings a little bit of a tear to my eye,� Sotomayor said. �I have changed so much, and we have a new Yankee Stadium, but the spirit of the Yankees is still in the house. It�s very moving to me and important to me that the comfort they gave me most of my life � watching most of the time win � continues.� Sotomayor said that even though she is known as a baseball fan, she cannot call herself the High Court�s biggest. �Justice (Antonin) Scalia is fond of reminding me that he was the first Yankees fan on the Court and he is still a very loyal Yankees fan,� she said. �I keep telling him the only difference is that I was born in the Bronx and he wasn�t.� The Creatures were thrilled to have her with them. �The first thing I said to her was, �I�m probably going to be the loudest guy you meet today, but I�m absolutely speechless,� � Milano told the Associated Press. �I don�t think she knew before she got here what she was in for.� Of the creatures, she said �To sit in sweltering heat when the sun is blazing, to sit out there in the rain, to sit out there on days when we�re losing and not to take it out on our players takes heart. They show it every game, every time they come out. I felt very proud to be with them.� Sotomayor took a moment to recount her favorite Yankee memory and didn�t hesitate to name the Bucky Dent home run from the one-game playoff with the Red Sox in 1978. �I was in law school, made a bet with my dearest friends in law school and Bucky hit that home run and all the guys in the room lost the bet,� Sotomayor said.

Jose triples to get his hitting streak up to 20. Arias, Pagan & Scutaro a combined 0-for-7. Albert Chen gives Carlos Beltran a Midwestern neck massage in the current SI. The statue is still there, standing on a patch of yellowing grass outside the St. Louis restaurant formerly known as Pujols 5. But there's no plaque or sign identifying the bronze ballplayer gazing up and pointing to the sky. Once a shrine to a local legend, the establishment is now a generic sports bar, with photos of still-beloved local heroes such as Schoendienst and Brock and Freese lining the walls. Many of the ex-eponym's jerseys, bats and signed baseballs are gone. It's as if Albert Pujols was just another Cardinal. Prince Albert is now an Angel, and the city of St. Louis has moved on. The Cardinals are still winning, the offense is still humming, and every game at Busch Stadium still feels like a college football Saturday. On a recent, sweltering Monday, 40,000 fans squeezed into the stadium dressed in red, and in the eighth inning, when rightfielder Carlos Beltran, the man signed last winter to replace Pujols's bat in the order, swatted a two-run home run against the Dodgers, his 22nd in an MVP-caliber season, it was yet another reminder of how and why St. Louis has gotten past the Pujols divorce. Even in light of the outfielder's July slump, it has been a perfect marriage, Beltran and St. Louis, the Most Underappreciated Player in Baseball and a city famous for its embrace of quiet, humble stars. He is rarely mentioned as one of the game's greats, yet the 35-year-old Beltran-one of eight players in major league history, and the only switch-hitter, with 300 homers and 300 stolen bases-has quietly put together a career that puts him in the Hall of Fame discussion. In Kansas City, where he began his career, Beltran was a dazzling but overlooked talent, his star dimmed by the AL Central cellar, where the Royals have slept for the better part of two decades. When he played with the Mets, from 2005 to '11, his profile rose-though not always for the better. Even though he put together two of the best seasons in franchise history and ranks in the Mets' top six alltime in home runs, OPS and RBIs, he became a symbol of failure. His signature New York moment was the called third strike he took to end Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS against the Cardinals. Perception of the seven-time All-Star (a career .366/.485/.817 hitter in the postseason) was so colored by the image of his frozen bat that Adam Wainwright, who unleashed the curveball that Beltran watched, avoided throwing breaking balls to his new teammate during batting practice this spring. Beltran, who wept the day he was traded from the Royals, never seemed at ease in the big city. "I have a personality where I don't show a lot of emotions on the field, and maybe some fans like to see players that show a lot and say crazy things," he says. He adds, "But in St. Louis, I'm comfortable. The fans are unbelievable. You can feel their appreciation for how hard you play." Maybe now, in his 15th season, Beltran will finally get his proper due. The case for Beltran as an alltime great only gets stronger the closer you look at his career. The advanced statistical analysts will tell you that over his career Beltran has a WAR above 60, which ranks him ninth alltime among centerfielders, the position he has played the most. They will tell you that for the bulk of his career, before knee injuries slowed him down, he has been one of the best defensive outfielders in the game, an effortless glide adding style to his substantive numbers. They will tell you that his stolen-base success rate (87.0%) is No. 1 among players with 300 or more steals. No one in St. Louis seems particularly interested in talking about how Beltran is outhitting Pujols this season, or how the Cardinals' signing Beltran to a two-year, $26 million deal now looks like a much smarter play by the front office than a Pujols megadeal. No one seems interested in making any comparisons-all they talk about is Beltran's golden swing, the splendid season he's having. Carlos Beltran is his own man, and in St. Louis, that is more than good enough.

METS ALL-TIME HIT LEADERS Through Games of 8/2/2012 1. Ed Kranepool 1,418 2. DAVID WRIGHT 1,374 COUNTDOWN: Krane Minus 44 2012 GAMES REMAINING: 56

Cedeno 4.0 Young 3.5 Murphy 2.0 Bay 0.5

"Confident, but not cocky." Good thing, too, lest his t-shirt be ripped to shreds.

METS ALL-TIME HIT LEADERS Through Games of 8/1/2012 1. Ed Kranepool 1,418 2. DAVID WRIGHT 1,373 COUNTDOWN: Krane Minus 45 2012 GAMES REMAINING: 57

Well, this is a stupid relief. A day after his teammates sent a message by doing uninvited alterations to Jordany Valdespin's white T-shirt, the rookie arrived at the ballpark in a more-businesslike collared shirt. Valdespin acknowledged he initially was upset when he returned to his locker after Wednesday's game and found the T-shirt's sleeves cut up with "EL HOMBRE" printed on the back and other markings. He had considerably calmed down by the time he left AT&T Park after that game. He actually wore the defaced T-shirt in the clubhouse again before today's game, showing a sense of humor. "At the time you get mad, but what can I do?" Valdespin said. "I'm not going to fight with anybody in here. We're a family in here. Sometimes they do it to be happy, have fun." Valdespin gave an interesting response when told that one day he could be a veteran and police the clubhouse, performing rituals such as cutting up unauthorized shirts. (Terry Collins has a dress code that includes no T-shirts.) Valdespin pointed to the locker of David Wright nearby, said Wright respects all of his teammates and added that he would follow that model and never do such things, even if some of his current teammates found it appropriate to destroy his clothing. "No, no, no, no. I'd never do that," Valdespin said. "You know why? You've got to respect everybody. The example here is this guy, David Wright. He's the captain of the team and he respects everybody. ... The respect is very important on this team." Collins appeared satisfied Valdespin's veteran teammates handled the issue -- or non-issue, in reality. "Especially when you're a rookie, once in a while you make an error in judgment," the manager said. Boys will be idiots, but the de facto Captain doesn't shred shirts. (Unauthorized shirts, at that.)

Jeter reportedly out for surgery.

pI_nk0L-cF4 Jordany get angry Jordany get mad Give unnamed veteran The biggest lecture he ever had

Bake Zito -- that's a standup triple right there. Cedeno, Johnson, even Young -- if you bat lower than Bay, you may want to think about a new line of work.

The Second Spitter wrote: G-Fafif wrote: I'd like to hear what Billy Wagner thinks. Billy was just trying to familarize Lastings with the rules of chess. Know your rook's place.

Via Rubin: In his past three games, Nimmo has gone 9-for-15 with seven runs scored, three doubles, one homer and three RBIs.

Jose up to 19 on a 2-for-4 night. And Arias 1-for-3.

I seem to recall a couple of months ago when all was Met sweetness and light that somebody (Wright, I think) was proudly explaining that we don't haze rookies here, we're all a family, helping new guys get acclimated (and instead of forcing newbies to don the sundresses, they wore Western wear and hockey sweaters). But, I guess, Valdespin must be testing somebody's patience.

Niese 4.0 Tejada 3.0 Parnell 1.0 Byrdak 0.5 Rauch 0.5 Wright 0.5 Davis 0.5

The Tragic Is Back.