G-Fafif

Hope it doesn't work, but admiring Tracy's call to take out ineffective Street.

HAIRSTON LIVES! I mean GREAT SCOTT!

metirish wrote: Last licks Is that anything like a slurp job?

I was feeding the cats when Jose homered. I may have to cram 9 or more Lives down their throats if we're gonna come all the way back. (Not that I'm superstitious or anything.)

bmfc1 wrote: Note to SNY staff: when an opposing player is almost-single handled crushing/destroying the Mets, it's a bad idea to have Guys! immediately do a slurp job on that player. "Slurp job: brought to you by your local 7-Eleven. Guys?"

Tulowitzki 184.0

bmfc1 wrote: He blanked out on Tulowitzki's name? It's on his back and also on multiple pieces of paper on the desk and it's the 3d game of the series and he's a big star. Yet Wayne Hagin cannot be denied.

Edgy DC wrote: Welcome to the Mets, Scott Hairston. Welcome to right field, too.

TransMonk wrote: Let's take two today! ciFqFkpv3Fg Play 'em one at a time...but yeah.

Part of the growing process for a pitcher is learning how to manage situations that aren't necessarily going to be solved by going mano-a-mano. Niese could have conceivably learned a lot by working around Tulowitzki, pitching to Lopez and getting out of that inning. Or it could have blown up grand slam style. Ah, baseball...

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I remember having this same discussion about, I think it was Jorge Julio, and Ryan Howard in April 2007. I wanted Julio (or whoever) to pitch to Howard, to test his mettle under fire. Ryan ended up hitting a three-run homer (or maybe a grand slam). Namor, I recall, said that games in April cound as much as games in September, and I said that you can't manage every game with your back to the wall. Of course, the Mets ended up losing the division by one game. Four years later, I still remember. Sheesh. It was Good Citizen of the Year candidate Ambiorix Burgos and it didn't work out. BUT the Mets won that game. It was the Home Opener when the Mets scored a truckload of runs (a Jimmy Rollins error was instrumental) and broke it open. The Mets found that one game in other places, however.

METS COME UP HUGE IN LINEUP POSTING Rockies somehow seem small, insignificant

Pagan 2.5 Beltran 2.0 Murphy 1.5 Reyes 1.0 Carrasco 0.5 Buchholz 0.5 Beato 0.5

Best Mets news from Wednesday: Jennry Mejia, only 22, still has not been scored upon in two starts for the Buffalo Bisons this season. The New York Mets' prospect tacked another 6-2/3 innings of shutout pitching to the six from last week's no-decision in the Herd's 4-0 victory over the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees on Wednesday night at PNC Field. Mejia, a 6-foot, 205-pound right-hander from the Dominican Republic, allowed only three hits and three walks while striking out five as he earned his first victory of the season. Relievers Michael O'Connor, Jose De La Torre and Manny Acosta completed the shutout.

The honeymoon (or Terrymoon) is over, by the reckoning of Metstradamus. The honeymoon lasted ten games.? Granted, when you think of honeymoons, you think of exotic locales like the Bahamas, Hawaii, maybe a cruise through Greece. A honeymoon in Flushing is more like a honeymoon in ... well, Flushing. But it's over. When you call a team meeting, I think that's a good indication that the honeymoon is over. The cruise ship has docked, and it's time for Terry Collins to do the chores. And he's already screwed up his first one. You've got second and third with two outs in the fifth. You have Troy Tulowitzki, who you witnessed murder you the night before with a long home run up at the plate with first base open, who you saw hit a long double the other way just one inning before, and Jose Lopez on deck. Well, that seems like an obvious spot for an intentional walk, no? Instead, it was apparently time for somebody's testosterone level to shoot up and think "we can get this guy out!" No, you can't. You can't get Troy Tulowitzki out. Nobody can.

metirish wrote: Don Juan Carrasco gets the ball, it's been confirmed. Ironically, Don Juan Carrasco could have been a great 10 PM-2 AM DJ name in Miami circa 1982.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I forget the deets but Marty Noble described Delgado intercepting Reyes on his way to do some outwardly fan-friendly or organizational-friendly thing, and reminding him he didn't have to do that stuff. And so he didn't. Noble didn't believe Delgado had the right kind of influence as a leader. I think Delgado must've really hated Willie. He wasn't thrilled with his turn off/on the caring either. Not that he didn't think he didn't try, just that he seemed to make a conscious decision not to care more than he had to.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: When he was on, he could carry the team all by himself. Other than Piazza, I can't think of any Met more powerful than Delgado. For only a few stretches -- Kingman in 1976, Strawberry in 1990, Piazza in 2000 -- the Mets have had that "put the team on my back" guy. Never did I see anybody fill that role the way Delgado did for approximately half a season in 2008. It was thrilling to watch.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: I liked that he could convey excitement without raising his voice pitch, and put him on the tier just below the Scullys, Bucks and Murphs. The Murphs. The Scullys. The Cohens. The Kalases. The Harwells. The like. Every other professional baseball radio announcer. The Waldmans. The Sterlings.

Bobby V not always in sync with Hamiltons. I hear he doesn't even like to carry $10 bills. July 1, 2001 Mets Decide to Cut Ties to Hamilton By TYLER KEPNER ATLANTA, June 30 � The acrimony that flared between Mets Manager Bobby Valentine and outfielder Darryl Hamilton on Friday continued today when Hamilton was designated for assignment. Valentine is offended because he believes Hamilton got his wish. Hamilton is hurt by the way his Mets career ended. The Mets have 10 days to trade or release Hamilton. They will assume the rest of his $3 million salary unless they can trade him. They offered Hamilton to the Baltimore Orioles for Delino DeShields, another unproductive left-handed-hitting outfielder who was designated for assignment last Monday. The Orioles would save money on the deal because DeShields makes more than Hamilton, but the Orioles do not perceive Hamilton as a fit and are unlikely to make the trade. Hamilton, 36, said he met with Valentine on Friday to discuss where he stood in the Mets' outfield rotation. ''I wasn't going in there demanding to be an everyday player,'' Hamilton said today by telephone from his home in Houston. ''At this point, I can't do that. That's fine with me.'' Valentine said he told Hamilton, a 13-year major league veteran, what he thought of him as a player, an assessment that surprised Hamilton. ''I never was derogatory; I was factual,'' Valentine said today. ''I said players ran on him in the outfield a lot, that his hits were not sharp and his outs were weak, and I didn't think he was an everyday player.'' Hamilton said he told Valentine in the meeting, ''You don't believe in me, I don't believe in you.'' Hamilton asked for his release, and Valentine suggested he quit. Later, when the argument moved from the manager's office to a hallway at Turner Field, Valentine asked Hamilton if he wanted to stay in the lineup that night. Hamilton, feeling belittled by Valentine's sarcasm, declined. ''If you don't like what you can do at work, you quit,'' Valentine said. ''Or you come to work and you get paid every day and you do whatever you're supposed to do. That's what it's all about. It's not either, 'I do what I want to do or pay me.' I hate that. And it's happened here too many times.'' Hamilton said that he took offense to the Mets' portrayal that he did not want to play and that his agent and brother, John Hamilton, had asked four times for the team to release or trade him. Hamilton, traded to the Mets in July 1999 by the Colorado Rockies, said he felt as if he was a scapegoat for the Mets' disappointing season. He is the latest player whose Mets career has ended in turmoil. ''You can't say I was in the clubhouse playing cards; you can't say I was out all night; you can't say I quit on the field,'' Hamilton said, referring to incidents that helped end the Mets careers of Bobby Bonilla, Todd Hundley and Rickey Henderson in recent seasons. ''You can do that with guys in the past, but you can't do that with me.'' Hamilton, in the last year of his contract, carried a .293 career average into this season but is hitting .214. His teammates spoke positively of him today. ''I think he handled it totally professionally,'' first baseman Todd Zeile said. ''I don't think he was a distraction and he was a quality teammate, a good guy.''

I can't read that name without hearing it in Harry Kalas's voice.

It was pointed out by a FAFIF reader that 34 years after the Wednesday Night Massacre, the Mets' two most effective pitchers early this season have been Dickey and Young.

This may belong in The Sons of Institutions Named for Mets befitting those establishments no longer operating, but there was Mickey Lolich's Donut Shop in Lake Orion, Mich. Ira Berkow, called up the old Met in 1989 on the subject of big-boned baseball players like Kevin McReynolds: From his business establishment, Mickey Lolich's Donut Shop, appropriately enough, in Lake Orion, Mich., the one-time Tiger, Met and Padre hurler said: ''Throughout my 16 years in the major leagues, whenever things weren't going right, people always looked for reasons. For some, it was 'Maybe they're staying out too late at night,' 'Maybe too many outside interests,' 'Maybe their head's not screwed on right.' For me, it was 'He's too fat.' ''But when I was pitching good, they'd say, 'He's strong as a bull.' ''

Forget about Lenny Dykstra. R.A. Dickey is the new Nails, according to the Wall Street Journal. "My feel was definitely tainted. [...] But it's very rudimentary. There's nothing incredibly technical about it. It's just a file, you know?"

Though we've often been treated to veteran stars on the definite downside of great careers, I've enjoyed in recent years getting a glimpse (or more) of what made them great to begin with (when it wasn't painfully obvious we were overpaying for past achievements on somebody else's behalf): Pedro, Gl@v!ne, Sheffield and certainly Delgado in that category. "Oh, so that's what the big deal was all those years in Toronto."