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METS ALL-TIME HIT LEADERS Through Games of 6/27/2012 1. Ed Kranepool 1,418 2. DAVID WRIGHT 1,342 COUNTDOWN: Krane Minus 76

Mets live!

If Cobb, Musial and Aaron were so great, why weren't they Yankees?

Frayed Knot wrote: themetfairy wrote: Rottino always made me crave pasta. Maybe somewhere Kramer made a Rotini Rottino to go along with his Fusilli Jerry Rotisserie Rottino not much of a compiler.

Was voted a half playoff share by Mets teammates in 2012.

Nobody's better at having birthdays than Derek Jeter, who is better at having everything than everybody, per usual. round 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, two Yankee Stadium kitchen employees walked through the tunnel pushing a cart with a birthday cake on it almost the size of the jersey it was designed to replicate. The cake was for Derek Jeter, who turned 38 on Tuesday but did not exactly embrace his advancing age with much warmness or acknowledgment. It was business as usual, Jeter preparing to bat leadoff and play shortstop as he has done almost every game this season � save for the eight he has served as the designated hitter � with the same verve as when he first arrived as a 20-year-old rookie in May 1995. �I never took anything for granted,� Jeter said. �I never assumed that just because I�m 30, that I�d be back playing the next year. I�ve just never had that mind-set. I�ve always had the mind-set that you have to prove yourself and do your job. That�s what I�ve had since I came up.� One assume he had the kitchen employees reassigned.

If Aaron Sorkin takes a break from repeatedly re-creating the same Important television series, he can write under the name Jeff MacGregor, as this "commentary" on ESPN.com feels, like The Newsroom, very Important and not altogether inaccurate in some of its broader assessments, yet irritatingly off and come-down-from-the-mountain pompous as hell. As with Sorkin, there are some neat turns of phrase here, but I've bolded the parts that I believe undermine the main point of the article, which is simply, Terry Collins has been good for the Mets. Terry Collins will have to succeed in New York before he can fail in New York. It's late and he's tired and he just lost to the Yankees, but his expression is incisive, as keen as a blade. Sharp eyes in a sharp face, he looks straight at you when he answers your questions. Terry Collins is the manager of the New York Mets. And there's been a sense this season of optimism and high new purpose out at Willets Point, of things going right and of bright days ahead. This despite stars lost to free agency, and nagging injuries to the stars left behind, and intermittent hitting and inconstant relieving. The Mets aren't bad. They might even be good. For which Terry Collins, not yet famous in New York City, deserves much of the credit. Happy clubhouses are all alike; every unhappy clubhouse is unhappy in its own way. The 2012 Mets will tell you that the 2012 Mets are loose and focused, relaxed and competitive and all pointing in the same direction. A happy clubhouse. Until the Mets hired him in November 2010, Mr. Collins hadn't managed in the big leagues since 1999. The knock on him all those years ago was his intensity, described even by friends as "seething." He bore down so hard and so hot that the Angels staged a clubhouse mutiny and Collins resigned with a month left to play in '99. Before that, it was the unhappy Astros. But people change. As is the case with prophets set loose to wander the wilderness -- or the Nippon Professional Baseball League -- letting go of ambition and fear and anger and appetite is the only way to get to what matters. Success often arrives only after the desire for success is erased. As it is with a knuckleball, the hardest part is learning how to let go. Thus the Mets and Terry Collins are a perfect wedding of timing, necessity, opportunity and disposition. "The team needed more intensity," says Mets general manager Sandy Alderson, "and Terry's learned to mitigate it, to harness it. It's laudable that he's learned from past mistakes." Collins knew Mets management and the Mets player development system and had a strong advocate in vice president of player development Paul DePodesta, too, with whom he'd worked for the Dodgers. "I think his energy and his positivity -- to go along with his experience and knowledge base -- makes him a really attractive candidate," DePodesta says today. "It's an enormous job. I think people underestimate how much goes into these jobs, and just how all-consuming they can be." Still, it was possible on the night of his hiring to find message board posts slugged: "Terry Collins, Destroyer of Worlds." So Terry Collins has changed. Or, if he hasn't, maybe in New York the immense weight of the fans and the tabloids and the expectations bearing down will match what he feels in his head and in his heart, and the external pressure will at last equal the internal pressure and he'll find balance and happiness and success. Either way, Alderson understood as a practical matter that he had to let ticket buyers know the Mets are as serious about winning as the fans are. Matching ardor to ardor wasn't always the case in Flushing. "We needed to change the perception of the team," he says. And so they have. The Mets are riding a wave of fresh hope and new attitude, despite a won-lost record that looks a lot like those of the half-dozen years just passed. As of the morning of June 27, the Mets are 39-36 and in third place in the NL East. On the same date in 2011, Collins' first season with the Mets, they were 39-39 and in fourth place. They finished the season 77-85, in fourth place. In 2010: 43-32, second place; finished 79-83, fourth place. In 2009: 37-36, second place; finished 70-92, fourth place. In 2008: 39-39, third place; finished 89-73, second place. In 2007: 43-33, first place; finished 88-74, second place. In 2006: 47-29, first place; finished 97-65, first place. Much of this optimism untethered to results can be accounted to R.A. Dickey and his year of magical knuckleballing. When R.A. Dickey is right, when Dickey pitches well, Terry Collins looks like a genius. Any manager would. More than 40 innings without an earned run; first pitcher to throw consecutive one-hitters since Dave Stieb in 1988; first National League pitcher to do it since 1944. The first pitcher since 1900 with back-to-back, complete-game one-hitters with more than 10 strikeouts, and the first in history with five straight starts of no earned runs and eight-plus strikeouts. For as long as that magic holds, "Why Terry Collins?" is a question no one is going to ask. Collins has also juggled and patched together an unstable lineup of short-timers with good results. Less cynically, fans seem to sense Collins' friendly energy and his honesty and his love of the game. He bounds from the dugout like a terrier. Loving the Mets is the patient work of a long lifetime, but patience is more than waiting. Patience is knowing what you're waiting for. Collins and Alderson understand that. "We're trying to build something long term and sustainable here," says DePodesta. They're also trying to mend team finances and repair an ownership image problem. They need highlights and signature moments like Johan Santana's no-hitter and Dickey's one-hitters and Ike Davis' grand slam. They need wins and a recognizable cast of lovable grinders and more wins and a pennant. And when he's ready, they'll need Terry Collins to become a more public figure. He's a charming, smart, funny, voluble man who isn't doing one-on-one interviews for pieces like this yet, as is his right, and the team's. But to find out if and how he's changed might go a long way to cementing his rapport with Mets fans. Like Dickey, he's going good, and therefore reluctant to reveal anything about how the trick works. And the only thing more superstitious than a ballplayer is his manager. The Mets are the second-best baseball team in their own hometown, and have been since the moment of their founding. In 1962, the year the Mets were born from the ghosts of the Dodgers and the Giants, the Yankees won their 20th World Series. In the 50 years since, the Yankees have won seven more. The Mets have won two. All things equal and those trends holding, it will take the Mets another 625 years to catch up -- if the Yankees never win another championship. In this diamond anniversary season of the New York Mets, visiting managers come and go in every shape and size and state of mind. The Phillies' Charlie Manuel, as cheerful and pink-cheeked as Father Christmas; Mike Matheny of the Cards, young and sleek as a Hollywood leading man; Buck Showalter of Baltimore, wearing the look of an amused contract killer; Terry Francona, retired, tanned as an Islamorada fishing guide; Joe Girardi of the Yankees, so pale and gaunt he looks carved from the bones of other managers. To a man, they share a central thought: A manager's job is to create an environment in which his players can thrive. "A fan can make out a lineup card or figure out a pitching change," says Showalter. "That's only part of it. What you're trying to do here is to create your own reality." The potential metaphysics of which are perhaps simpler than they sound. "Winning fixes everything," says Mets third baseman David Wright, just before extending his hitting streak to 14 games. This is Sunday at Citi Field. Watching the ground crew paint fresh baselines, then water and smooth the mound by hand like clay on a potter's wheel, is a tutorial on the importance of what's at stake here tonight. On the last afternoon of the interleague homestand, the Mets clubhouse is a low-key rave, a pool party, music pouring out of Justin Turner's locker and 40 reporters telling their front page chicken stories and the players laughing and loose and ready. Down the hall, the Yankees clubhouse is your boss's last presentation on declining quarterly sales. No laughs and all business, a roomful of people looking politely down at their shoes. Focus is where you find it. That's "The Yankee Way." Corporate. Self-serious. Winners going back a thousand years. "The Met Way" is still a project in development. Attendance sets a new Citi Field record: 42,364. Two great pitchers, Dickey and Sabathia, and two good teams. This is the best of the best of these Subway Series, an interborough rivalry that's never been as close as Mets fans would like to believe it has. In all things but devotion, history favors the Yankees. Dickey sits Jeter on one pitch. Granderson grounds out and A-Rod fans. Eight pitches to retire the side in the top of the first and the stands roar in the sunset and that's as good as it ever gets. But Robert Allen Dickey does not have his stuff tonight. He does not, as they say, command the knuckleball. It's all in how you let go, and the ball tumbles and spins and hangs and flies, and the rest of the night goes sideways for the Mets and for Dickey and they lose 6-5. Nearing midnight, Terry Collins, his expression sharp, arms folded tightly in front of him, answers questions from the press. The reporters are respectful, but they do not treat him like a genius. He takes full responsibility for every move he did or didn't make, for his patchwork bullpen and for the splitter Miguel Batista hung in front of Robinson Cano for the game-winning home run. However the spheres turned tonight, Terry Collins is a man in command of Terry Collins. The Mets fly out of town in the middle of the night and lose two in a row to the Chicago Cubs. Change everything, change nothing. Let go. Create your own reality. It is the morning of June 27, 2012. The New York Mets are 39-36.

Cam's Sally League 16-game hitting streak (tied for second best of the year in Sally League, recently snapped) helped boost his average to .299, best on the Gnats and in the Top 10 organizationally.

With his next walk, David Wright will amble by Darryl Strawberry for most bases on balls in a Met career.

When you're a top prospect on Coney Island, the New York Times cares what you're up to and about where you came from. The Nimmos took their children to church once a week and taught them humility and respect; that was just how it was out West, Ron Nimmo said. Here in the East, meanwhile, children are raised to worship false idols and hock loogies at passing strangers.

Andres Torres: "We must save the republic." Ruben Tejada: "Is the situation that grave?" David Wright: "We have lost four in a row. We haven't much time." Lucas Duda: "Aren't there like 90 more games?" Ike Davis: "Urgency! Urgency!" Scott Hairston: "The kid whose valley fever manifests itself in umpire-touching is right. Our journey to make things right begins now." Daniel Murphy: "I'm confused. I thought it was just a game." Josh Thole: "The mission has changed. Our dignity is on the line. Plus we're like four back of the stupid Nationals." Jonathon Niese: "Where's that ball? I must throw it past small, annoying bearlike creatures at once."

Toyota chick conducting polygraph thinks a little too highly of herself at expense of Patton Oswalt type's dignity.

NYM, with PIT, 1 behind ATL and STL for last WC spot, 4.5 out of first in East. SFG, with first WC in hand, suddenly 1 behind LAD for West lead. CIN lead over STL is 2.

Thole 1.0 Hefner 0.5

Ed, with nothing controversial about David, to Brian Costa in WSJ: "If anybody's going to do it, I'm glad it's David Wright, because he's a real gentleman and a class act," Kranepool, 67, said by phone Tuesday. "He's the marquee player of the Mets. He's their Derek Jeter." Well, that last part is kind of revolting.

Deja June all over again: Just like 13 years ago this month, Bob Apodaca takes the fall, this time for the Rockies' woes.

I don't think I'll be able to crack this lineup either.

I fear I'm setting up Fman here, but...

Kirk Nieuwenhuis � CF Ruben Tejada � SS David Wright � 3B Lucas Duda � RF Ike Davis � 1B Scott Hairston � LF Daniel Murphy � 2B Josh Thole � C Dillon Gee � RHP

In the summer of '76, after Wayne Garrett had been traded, the Post (Maury Allen, I think) mused about where each of the five final '69 Mets still on the roster would be in five years. Tom Seaver would be broadcasting, Jerry Koosman would be farming in Minnesota, Bud Harrelson would be baseball coach at the University of San Francisco, Jerry Grote would be a rancher in Texas and Ed Kranepool would be the designated hitter for the Kansas City Royals. I was a little surprised come 1980 that the Krane wasn't given a long look by some AL team. He was only 35 and he was lefthanded. But there were probably business reasons for Ed to stay in New York and it wasn't like he hadn't put a lot into playing ball already. Mets did indirectly slap him in the 1986 postseason when he appeared in a commercial for the re-election of Al D'Amato to the senate while wearing what was presumably his last Mets uniform top (with the blue and orange collars and cuffs). Mets swiftly let the D'Amato people know they didn't want their trademark in a political advertisement and the spot was pulled.

Ed Kranepool is not to be subjected to pedestrian metrics. He is Ed Kranepool.

7 PM tonight (Tuesday), Mets Yearbook: 1983 debuts...as does Darryl Strawberry and, for our purposes, Keith Hernandez.

METS ALL-TIME HIT LEADERS Through Games of 6/25/2012 1. Ed Kranepool 1,418 2. DAVID WRIGHT 1,340 COUNTDOWN: Krane Minus 78

NL EAST WSH -- ATL 3.5 (.001 ahead of NYM) NYM 3.5 NL WCs SFG -- (2 GA PIT/ATL/NYM/STL) --- PIT -- ATL -- NYM -- (.001 behind PIT/ATL) STL -- ARI 1.0 PHI 4.5 MIA 4.5 MIL 5.5

Santana 3.0