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Box

Appreciate the on-the-scene research.

Bruce Bochy's nightmare: Angel Pagan - CF Justin Turner - 2B Carlos Beltran - RF Daniel Murphy - 3B Jason Bay - LF Lucas Duda - 1B Josh Thole - C Ruben Tejada - SS R.A. Dickey - RHP

Kent McCord's show had only been off the air four years when he was invited to romp around Shea. But that's what syndication is for.

Mets go where Mets generally didn't in this Happiest Recap. 082 -- 1968: Tom Seaver goes to the bullpen and comes out to get his only regular-season save. 083 -- 1996: Alex Ochoa goes on a tear that crests with a cycle in Philadelphia. 084 -- 1980: Mets go, at last, to .500 as Lee Mazzilli goes for Al Hrabosky's throat. On the undercard... 082 -- 1986: Gary Carter slams David Palmer, rest of team joins in, Sid Fernandez cruises from there. 083 -- 1991: David Cone strikes out 13 Padres, extends Mets winning streak to 10, keeps alive illusion of perpetual contention. 084 -- 2010: Johan Santana takes two balls, fouls off nine pitches, belts his first home run and joins Pete Falcone in a very exclusive club. Welcome to the Falcone-Santana Club. May I see your membership card?

Edgy DC wrote: There was nothing second-rate about the celebrity of the Fonz. If anything, what was lame about that game was that the Met wives lost 10-0, despite having ringers like Joe Pignatano and (I think) Ron Swoboda playing for them. This wasn't the Fonz year. That was 1978. This was the year of Kevin Dobson, Robert Walden and Kent McCord. Though Carl Weathers made a nice running catch.

Revisiting that season via this film, there wasn't a goddamn thing about the 1979 Mets that wasn't dirt cheap. They had second-rate celebrity softball players, they made the Old-Timers borrow the current team's uniforms, they didn't give the players' kids baseball pants and even that mule looked undernourished. Oh, and a Chevette was parked in the visitors' bullpen all year.

Batting average tracker suspended until Jose is again batting.

Jose vs. One Dog suspended until Jose's hammy quits barking.

Thanks TMF.

Isringhausen 1.0 Murphy 0.5 Tejada 0.5 Pagan 0.5

Dillon vs. Feet of Clayton. Let's Go!

Jose Bautista and his hours as a Met, per Mike Sielski of WSJ. On that day in 2004, though, Bautista was just a means to an end for the Mets. Trying to use the trade deadline to vault themselves back into playoff contention, they acquired him from the Kansas City Royals for minor-league catcher Justin Huber, doing so for the sole purpose of sending him to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Bautista's temporary presence on the Mets' roster allowed them to consummate a trade for the player they most coveted at the time: pitcher Kris Benson. "I kind of got blindsided by everything," Bautista told a reporter from the Providence Journal on Wednesday. "They called me into the office. The three-way trade was already worked out. You have to go through some paperwork, so [the Royals] pulled me off the field and told me to go home and that I was going to be going back to Pittsburgh...I didn't really know about the Mets being part of the deal until the next day." On the day of the three-team deal, the Mets were 49-52 and six games behind the first-place Atlanta Braves in the NL East, and Jim Duquette, then the team's general manager, had targeted Benson to improve their starting rotation. Despite his team's losing record, Duquette wasn't ready to write off the postseason. "We felt, 'We're this close. We're going to go for it,'" he said. Already that day, Duquette had traded Scott Kazmir, the organization's top pitching prospect, to Tampa Bay for veteran right-hander Victor Zambrano, who, because of elbow injuries, would start only three games in '04 for the Mets. Duquette wanted Benson, too, but Pirates general manager Dave Littlefield had insisted that Pittsburgh had to get a third baseman in return. "Every time I called him and asked him, 'Are you ready to move Benson?' he'd say, 'Are you ready to move David Wright?' And we'd kind of laugh and chuckle," Duquette said. "I'd say, 'I can't do that.'" (Littlefield is now a scout for the Chicago Cubs. Attempts to reach him through the team's media-relations department were unsuccessful.) Bautista, meanwhile, had been a 20th-round draft pick of the Pirates in 2000 before his troubadour-like 2004 season. The Orioles had selected him in the Rule 5 draft, and he ricocheted from Baltimore to Tampa Bay to Kansas City before Pittsburgh saw a chance to get him back. And because the Mets believed Huber's growth as a hitter had stalled, they considered him expendable. "He was nobody at the time," Huber said. "So was I." The organization's scouting reports on Bautista were skeletal at best, according to Duquette, and since the Mets didn't know much about him, they never considered keeping him. "No one saw this coming," Duquette said. "If they did, they're lying." So the Mets didn't hesitate to send Bautista, infielder Ty Wigginton and minor-league pitcher Matt Peterson to Pittsburgh for Benson and second baseman Jeff Keppinger. "I finally had some peace of mind knowing that I was at least going to finish that season with a team," Bautista said.

How one imagines the song was received in the early days... �Hey Mabel!� �What is it, Harry?� �Let�s go to the ballgame!� �What ballgame? You haven�t been to a ballgame since 1957.� �I know, but I have the strangest yen to go to one.� �Since when?� �Since I got this invitation.� �Invitation, Harry?� �Yeah, Mabel. Says we should meet the Mets.� �We, Harry?� �It�s very specific. Says I gotta bring ya. And the kids.� �Freddie and Frieda don�t care about baseball, Harry.� �That�s just because they�ve never had the chance to do this before.� �To do what, Harry?� �To meet the Mets!� �Meet the Mets?� �Meet the Mets!� �The invitation give ya any more details than that, Harry?� �Uh�somethin� about steppin� up to greet the Mets. Guess maybe they�re tellin� us we�re all gonna be in the nosebleeds.� �Doesn�t sound that great, Harry.� �Nah, Mabel, it�ll be swell. Says right here we�re guaranteed to have the time of our life!� �I find that hard to believe, Harry.� The rest of the conversation, imagined here.

Dodger-Lovin' Big Shot Kareem Abdul-Jabbar calls out one of baseball's Horrible Bosses, Frank McCourt. Entertaining rant, though for a kid whose team abandoned him when he was 10 years old -- and for a kid who got a new team in his neighborhood as a fifteenth birthday present -- too bad he never made the switch to MLBS. In any event, he and Fred must have a lot to talk about. I often wonder how this would have played out if the Dodgers were still in the borough of Brooklyn. My guess is Brooklynites would have thrown the perpetrators of this type of farce out on their ears. I wondered the same thing, actually, when the Steve Bartman incident happened in Wrigley Field a few years back. You'll recall that he interfered with a foul ball that the Cubs' left fielder was trying to catch for a crucial out, an incident that very well might have changed the outcome of that 2003 playoff game. Would Bartman have made it out of the stands alive if that had happened in Ebbets Field? Brooklyn fans could be tough.

Gold Glove porn.

BEST SINGLE-SEASON BATTING AVERAGE IN METS HISTORY Through 87 NYM Games 2011: REYES -- .354 1969: Jones -- .345 1998: Olerud -- .328 In case you're beginning to wonder, Jose has enough plate appearances right now to keep him eligible for the batting title through 122 games. (Biting my tongue even as we speak.)

METS HITS IN A SEASON Through 87 NYM Games REYES 2011: 124 Johnson 1996: 121 One Dog covering lots of ground for a 48-year-old.

Niese 3.0 Beltran 2.0 Tejada 1.0 Parnell 1.0 Duda 1.0 Rodriguez 1.0 Turner 1.0

Sorry to hear of Billy Baldwin's passing. Passing along some research I did last September when I became obsessed (via the brief presence of Mike Hessman) by Mets who hit only one home run as Mets: On September 24, he came up as a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the ninth and ended what had been a 3-3 game between the Mets and Cubs by homering to beat former two-time 20-game winner Joe Coleman. It would be Baldwin�s only Met homer (earlier that same month, Coleman surrendered the only Met homer ever struck by Leo Foster; he must have liked being a two-timer). OK, Baldwin is hot, so Joe Frazier inserts him in the lineup on September 25. What does he do? He triples in his first at-bat, doubles in his second at-bat and singles in his third at-bat. Billy Baldwin thus accomplished the Two-Day Reverse Natural Cycle: homer, triple, double, single. When all was said and done for Baldwin in the Bicentennial year, he had finished his Met career with exactly one of each kind of extra-base hit.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: How fucking low is that Citibank commercial that asks us Met fans to believe that the hardworking immigrant parents who achieved their American dream and retired to Isreal were ever real Met fans to begin with, when real Met fans already know their Shea seats can't be ordered specifically by row, and that this thoughtful, expensive "gift" by their douchy son wouldn't even exist had Citi not participated in selling us the other big lie that we needed a douchy new building with its name atop in the first place. Hey, fuck off, Citibank. Profit off one stadium at a time, you corporate assholes, and leave the real fans alone. (rant over) I'm totally with you in spirit as I can't believe how much I hate a commercial that refers to "my beloved New York Mets," but the dad was transferred to Istanbul -- not retired to Israel. Douche factor, however, is off the charts.

Most beloved Met opponent ever to appear with most beloved Met first base coach ever in Curb Your Enthusiasm.

One team his entire career, led them to the postseason with stunning regularity, did anything he could to help the club, 3,000 hits. That's Biggio right there. Forever an Astro, in the playoffs six times in ten years, switched positions as needed and reached his big milestone with little fanfare. He's no Jeter.

Ceetar wrote: Niese, with a win, would tie Jason Isringhausen for 50th on the all-time Mets list with 19. If Izzy blows Niese's win tonight, we'll know something's up.

bmfc1 wrote: Despite the above Jeter-propaganda programming, Michael Kay actually said today that the media is "sharpening its claws"to get Jeter because the media loves to build up its heroes to knock them down." Those aren't exact quotes because I was momentarily stunned at the stupidity of Kay--stupid comments even by his standards. Johnette Howard offers a similar "everybody wants to knock him" premise and then proceeds to gush like, well, everybody. So Derek Jeter ain't what he used to be. What athlete at 37 is? For the past few years some of Jeter's big league peers have continually voted him among baseball's most overrated players in Sports Illustrated's annual poll -- something they won't say to his face. But to read back over a ton of Jeter stories as he nears 3,000 hits is to be struck by how the details of how good Jeter was are forgotten. The contention that Jeter has been very, very good has been repeated so much as accepted wisdom, it's as if that has created this big contourless slab called Jeter's Great Career, a notion that has come under increasing attack as he's slipped a bit with age. With Jeter on the threshold of a historic milestone only 27 other big leaguers have reached, this would be a good time to revisit the easily forgotten particulars of how Jeter got here. And why he's headed to the Hall of Fame ... It's as if you don't get to maintain your BBWAA membership unless you pledge allegiance to this twit.