G-Fafif

Bobby Jones could have wandered in here, and John Franco could have followed him in eight innings later, and I doubt I would have come up with them. Long live long-tenured Mets of the post-complete game era!

David, on earlier with Francesa, repeated a line he's used a lot lately, that the Mets will be OK if everyone plays up to the back of their baseball cards. So all the Mets have to do is blow bubbles, play bridge and work for the team in the offseason?

Who was Greinke guarding -- Mike Vail?

metirish wrote: G-Fafif wrote: Dr. Burkhardt sounds pessimistic. Is he in consultation with Dr. Flood? It's on one those multi-doctor practices.

Dr. Burkhardt sounds pessimistic.

Here is another statement from Carlos Beltran: Help! I am being held prisoner in a fortune cookie factory!

metirish wrote: G-Fafif wrote: Does the Captain insist on riding the bus both ways so he can Lead his teammates By Example? You probably missed this because it appeared in the print edition. "Jeter seeing that the bus driver was making one such trip for the fourth day running excused him and jumped in to the drivers seat. It gave his teammates pause; Texeria vowed to be a better person after witnessing this, and Cano blessed himself and was heard to whisper thank God for Derek Jeter in Spanish." Rodriguez, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen, the selfish prick.

Does the Captain insist on riding the bus both ways so he can Lead his teammates By Example?

Ben Shpigel on high-profile MFYs being put out by having to ride a bus and play in a game. Every spring training, gray pants are issued to Mariano Rivera. And every spring training, they go unworn, hanging in his locker like a painting in a museum. Rivera, perhaps the greatest closer in history, does not do trips. If that rule is sacrosanct, then what happened over a 30-hour stretch Sunday and Monday is rarer than a $2 steak: the Yankees� $78.5 million infield, with its 28 All-Star selections and 12 Gold Gloves, was asked on consecutive days to leave the cozy confines of Steinbrenner Field. On Sunday, that group � Robinson Cano, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira � boarded a bus at 8:45 a.m. for the 80-mile ride to Kissimmee, for a game against the Houston Astros. The next afternoon, as half the team was rolling to a 7-1 victory against Philadelphia, the four traveled 55 miles down the coast to Sarasota to face Baltimore. It was not some cruel joke by Manager Joe Girardi. For the sake of continuity, he prefers playing his starting infielders together and his starting outfielders together � but not all seven players in the same game. With three games in two days, one unit had no choice but to travel twice. �None of us are above making road trips, not at all,� Teixeira said Monday. �Every now and then, it�s all right. It�s just that usually the next game�s at home.� Players like Teixeira have earned the right to stay home. It is an unwritten rule of spring training for managers to limit long hauls for their veterans, especially during the early stages of the exhibition season, when there are plenty of players in camp. Rodriguez, when asked when he last rode the bus two straight days, furrowed his brow and pursed his lips. �I don�t keep that stat,� he said. As Teixeira remembers, his last back-to-back experience came in 2003, when he was fighting to win a spot on the Texas Rangers� opening day roster. He said his manager at the time, Buck Showalter, started him in every Cactus League game, no matter where it was, to see how he responded. �There were lots of Mesa-Tucson-type things,� Teixeira said. �Every day was live or die back then. I didn�t mind it.� Much of the early-morning commotion in the Yankees� clubhouse centers on a piece of paper taped to a bank of lockers near the entrance. There, the day before a trip, the traveling squad is always posted. Minor leaguers and nonroster players huddle around first, and then a stray veteran or two wander over. If your name is highlighted, always in red or green, off you go. While walking to his locker Saturday morning, Jeter, still dressed in his civilian clothes, glanced at the list for Sunday�s game and did a double take, his eyes widening. Asked if he was surprised, Jeter chuckled and shook his head. The captain never, ever finds out that way. About two weeks ago, Girardi told his regulars his plan for spreading playing time. They understood, and at no time, he said, have they pushed back, even playfully, about the potential of seeing more of the Grapefruit League�s finest hamlets. �The thing is, we have so many players with experience,� Girardi said. �You try to be somewhat fair with what you�re doing.� If nothing else, the last two days have delighted fans hoping to see their favorite stars. Ostensibly the Astros� park, Osceola County Stadium was packed with pinstripes. Two fans sitting behind the plate, wearing Jeter T-shirts, exchanged high-fives, their mouths agape, when Teixeira, then Rodriguez, then Cano were announced before the game. As usual, they played four innings in the field, batting three times, before departing � the game and the premises. Clubhouse attendants or family members usually drive players� cars to visiting ballparks, providing a tradeoff for their journey there. As luck would have it, the Yankees have another scheduling conundrum this week: split-squad games Friday afternoon at home against Atlanta and in Dunedin against Toronto, then a 260-mile round trip Saturday to Viera, to face Washington. This time, Jeter, Rodriguez, et al. may be exempt from the double dip, but Girardi said he was not certain. �They�ll just have to see,� Girardi said.

Space Coast Stadium should be shaped like Jeannie's bottle. You'd have to bunt a lot, though.

OK, he heard me and stopped putting on Nationals.

Meanwhile, at St. Lucie, Capuano having many chances to test his awesome pickoff move.

Shitty it is not. Great work uncovering and producing.

11. One-Game Playoff for AL East title, 1978. Played at Fenway Park. Result not instantly recalled.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: "Sore in a good way," as per David Lennon. That's what she said. #opennet

To reach 2 million in attendance over 81 home dates, a team has to average about 24,700. Opening Day plus the three Subway Series games (presumably) equals about 168,000. That leaves 1,832,000 for 77 other dates, or about 23,800 (pending makeup, single-admission doubleheaders). Excepting a makeup night portion of a day-night doubleheader (which turned out to be Jon Niese's one-hitter over the Padres), the Mets never reported attendance less than 24,384 in 2010. September/October was almost uniformly a ghost town at Citi Field and the numbers seemed like fiction (fictional numbers seem to be at the root of all these problems). Yet as bleak as things are, to not draw 2 million, the Mets would have to average across an entire season something worse than their worst individual gate from 2010. Doesn't seem likely. Put another way, 77 Mets-Pirates games from September 13, 2010 (24,384), plus the four likely sellouts, gets you about 45,000 over 2 million for 2011. OTOH, the Mets would have to lose 21.9% percent of their attendance to dip below 2 million. It's happened before when things really went bad. Most dramatic single-season dip (non-strike) in Shea history was 23.7% from 2002 to 2003. Notorious 1979 represented a 21.7% decline from 1978. 1992 was off 22.1% from 1991.

I wanna know what Ken Griffey, Jr., says about Tom Seaver. "I was tearing around the Reds clubhouse when I was nine and Seaver gave me such a look because I interrupted his concentration on the Cincinnati Enquirer crossword -- which only took him three minutes anyway"?

Doug Glanville on what new RF Carlos Beltran might expect. So Beltran has to be careful. He will feel like a caged beast, now knowing that right field is his position, that this may not be a temporary New York Met state of mind while he gets healthy. He will feel like everything is too close to him, that he should overrule the misguided positioning of someone with less experience as the captain. I played a lot of corner outfield as I faded away from the game. I made a point to always be in position before the center fielder even thought to move me, sometimes helping young guns like Marlon Byrd with some tricks. No matter what you do, there will always come a day when you know that you have lost a step. You will deny it, you will fight it, but objective evaluators will know right away. As my mentor and legendary Phillies center fielder Garry Maddox told me: "I knew I was done when a ball was hit in the gap, and everything in my soul told me to do what I do best -- react, sprint to the landing spot, cut it off at the gap. The only problem was my body hadn't moved." Beltran isn't there yet, but he knows this is Step 1 of the 10-step program that pushes you out of the game, and like any good center fielder, he will not accept it lying down.

Greg Goossen's interest would probably be waning by now, but New Amsterdam was home to the first Jewish community in America.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: You can't be Dutch and Jewish? Wasn't that the tag line from those Levy's Rye ads Ronald Reagan did before entering politics?

NYT jumps on the Goossen train, here. Not as Jewish as those of us who take naches in such trivia have been led to believe. Goossen earned a niche or two in baseball history. As a Met, he caught Nolan Ryan�s first big league game in 1966 and broke up a perfect game by Larry Jaster of the Cardinals with a two-out eighth-inning single in 1968. But as a lifelong Roman Catholic he was perplexed in 2009 when Howard Megdal, in his book �The Baseball Talmud,� called Goossen the seventh-greatest Jewish first basemen ever. (When asked about the choice, Mr. Megdal said he was an expert on baseball, not Judaism.) In 2003, Goossen was featured in the same Jewish Major Leaguers set with Shamsky, Green, Koufax, Greenberg...the whole mishpacha. The familial connection, a little thin, is laid out here. It is, then, kind of quirky that Greg Goossen, who played at the Catholic boys' school Notre Dame High in Sherman Oaks, is considered a Jewish candidate for mention in this book. Goossen's dad, Al, was born Jewish (and later converted to Catholicism); his mom was Catholic. When it came to education, she was the decision maker. Still Dutch though...right?

SNY's special in which David "went home" to Virginia revealed David is wildly enthusiastic about his high school, his high school teachers, the Norfolk Tides, his brother, the trophy case at his high school, the assistant principal from when he was in high school, the fact that the assistant principal is now principal, that his dad's law enforcement connections got him access to Tide autographs and foul balls when he was a kid... And that was the first three minutes.

If Marge Schott emerges as a candidate to own our favorite baseball team, then we're all quite literally going to hell.

I admire someone who can write quickly and a lot -- not to mention well -- but Pearlman might want to not treat every idea that hits him as gold (no relation to Ann Gold). Also, Doc was 19 when he was a rookie, not 20 as is written in the article. I'd not pick that nit except a) teenage stardom is intrinsic to the Doc mythology and Jeff's speed to market tends to leave a lot of little mistakes in his wake. Thus, Tom Seaver being traded in 1978 and Billy Hatcher's home run hitting the right field pole in the first edition of TBGW.

More One Hears About An Owner = Worse An Owner Probably Is Bill Neukom, David Montgomery, Arte Moreno ... a few of the other kind seem to exist.