G-Fafif

Sidd Finch threw 168 MPH. It was unbelievable.

Henry Blanco headed to the D'Backs. He and Takahashi now officially in the One-Year Wonders division of Metsdom.

R.I.P. Rapid Robert. The Posnanski remembrance is a keeper. Also worth revisiting this Frank Deford piece from 2005. Bob Feller came to Shea Stadium to help honor Ralph Kiner on Ralph's night in 2007. The honor was all ours.

Documentary on Bing and the Pirates on right NOW!!! Ralph included. Game 7 to follow. Watch, whydon'tcha?

Full writeup (mole and all), here

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Joel Oppeheimer's "The Wrong Season" was a stream of conscousness, unusual prose book about the 72 Mets. I believe that RChuck wrote that it was his favorite baseball book. joel oppenheimer's the wrong season was one of my influences in writing faith and fear in flushing, except i used upper-case letters.

The one that intrigued me more than any other was the Tigers-A's game from 1972. Good call, but I barely remember it. Shows somebody did some homework. Mostly forgotten classic series. There is probably a book to be written about the 1972 postseason. Twenty-five year anniversary of Jackie's first world series, he's there for game 1, and talks about the need for a black manager. Within weeks of the WS, Jackie is gone. Three years later the first African-American manager would happen. And for pure baseball? Wow. All three series went the distance. Of the 19 games, 11 were decided by one run. There were four walk-off wins, in which the home team trailed when they came up to bat, including the decisive game 5 of the NLCS. Then think of all the great personalities: Billy Martin, Reggie getting hurt, Catfish, Fingers, Rose, Bench, Sparky, Clemente, Pops. Toss in the Campy/Lerrin Legrow bat-throwing incident and the fact that a WS berth was decided on a wild pitch. An argument can easily be made that it was the best postseason ever. Interesting thought. Read a book on the 1921 season this summer that asserted every season from the past fifty years had gotten a book of its own, but I don't remember one specific to 1972 -- though the Tigers recently got one. Joe Rudi made one of the great catches in WS history. Gene Tenace hit two home runs in his first two WS at-bats. Night WS games became the (midweek) rule. Hahn may be onto something.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: I'd forgotten just what an ever-lovin', Denny-Martinez-sized pain in the rear Mario Soto could be. Dennis Martinez vs. the Mets, 1987: 4 starts 4 wins 0.64 ERA 0.964 WHIP If he stays off the wagon and Doc Gooden stayed on, the Mets' wagon would have rolled down Lower Broadway a second consecutive year (quite possibly).

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: G-Fafif wrote: Benjamin Grimm wrote: So they can have that Lee-Harvey-Oswalt rotation? Sounds like a conspiracy to me. Great Googly Moogly-- we've had this comedy pyramid before, haven't we? Oh, shoot...

Benjamin Grimm wrote: So they can have that Lee-Harvey-Oswalt rotation? Sounds like a conspiracy to me.

attgig wrote: I was watching the highlights of those games, and i had to stop before heilman delivered the pitch on that last game.... A lot of looking away after that pitch -- and a lot of regret for checking back on the final pitch from Wainwright. Watching the Scioscia highlights was worse if only because I've seen them less.

The Scioscia game, really that is top 50? As the clip shows, it was the Scioscia game, the Gibson game (before there was another) and the Mets loading the bases in the twelfth with Shelby making a very good catch on McReynolds's blooper game. I mean eff the Scioscia game, absolutely...but for those without a vested interest, a helluva game. The one that intrigued me more than any other was the Tigers-A's game from 1972. Good call, but I barely remember it. Shows somebody did some homework. Mostly forgotten classic series. Five off the top of my head in the omission category, non-Mets segment: � Blue Monday (Dodgers beat Expos for pennant), 1981 � Pine Tar Game, 1983 � T#m Gl@v!ne's eight one-hit innings to clinch World Series 1-0, 1995 � Longest World Series Game (won on Geoff Blum's 14th-inning HR), 2005 � Armando Gallaraga's Perfect Game That Wasn't, 2010 I'd also throw in Game 6 from 1971 WS -- Clemente stars for Pirates, F. Robinson staves off elimination for Orioles with daring baserunning to win it in the bottom of the tenth.

A tilde will put a smile on anybody's face.

Edgy DC wrote: Let me tell you, for back and forth drama in an otherwise low-leverage regular season game, the 1983 game in which Darryl Strawberry debuted was tremendous. Among the cool things were they had one hit through seven,they came back from down 3-0 after seven against one of the toughest draws in baseball at that time, Mario Sotothe two guys kicked to the bench that day --- Danny Heep and Hubie Brooks (Tucker Ashford came up along with Darryl and took Brooks' place in the lineup --- came off the bench as heroes,Seaver did yeoman's work, striking out seven in getting a no-decision,Jesse Orosco won the game with three gorgeous innings of spotless relief, as he tended to do that yearStrawberry got no hits, but he walked twice, stole a base and scored, and nearly won the game with a shockingly long foul drive in extra inings, when I just got it --- having spent two years thinking of Strawberry as a hitting prospect with power and suddenly realizing that he was a prodigious power hitter that could make jaws drop. http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN198305060.shtml Did this make G-Fafif's elimination tourney of great games? Tucker Ashford's first game...IN The "Mr. November!" game...OUT

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Wow! I think he has to explain the hat before he explains the tracksuit! "If the Phillies get Cliff Lee from the Indians for the 2009 stretch run, I'll wear some incredibly embarrassing get-up next remote I do from AT&T Park."

how hard it was to not just pick 50 yankee games and dedicate the whole thing to The Boss Yeah, that too. Thirteen MFY games on the ballot, four of them [crossout]tolerable[/crossout] orgasmic: � Game 7, 1962 WS � Game 4, 1963 WS � Game 5, 1976 ALCS � Game 5, 1977 ALCS � Game 6, 1977 WS � AL East tiebreaker, 1978 � Game 5, 1995 ALDS � Game 4, 1996 WS � Game 4, 2001 WS � Game 7, 2001 WS � Game 7, 2003 ALCS � Game 4, 2004 ALCS � Game 2, 2009 ALDS

Brief highlight package included for each nominee. The two Mets non-wins are still gut-punchy to watch.

Last night MLB Network introduced the nominees for its Top 20 Games of the Last 50 Years -- they (panel of experts, et al) picked 50 from which viewers are asked to vote for their top pick. The ballot, with video clips, is here. They'll have a countdown through 2011, 20 to 1, starting in early January. On the show, Bob Costas and Tom Verducci stressed over and over how hard it was to whittle it down to 50 nominees. The last 50 years were the parameter because, quite frankly, they needed video and you can't always get film from pre-1961 (seems they lacked video on two of their fifty anyway). They were all (certain MFY selections aside) fine choices -- including a few mostly forgotten gems -- but as you'll no doubt decide, there are plenty of "HOW DID THEY NOT INCLUDE...?" games omitted as well. The hosts mentioned "context" about 40 times, which is appropriate in that 40 of the games chosen were postseason (context!) and five others decided postseason participants. Two were regular-season pitching duels, three others were regular-season slugfests. As for our parochial interests, seven Mets games show up among the 50, five you'd want anything to do with: � Game 4, 1969 World Series � The Fourth and Fifth of July, 1985 � Game 6, 1986 NLCS � Game 6, 1986 World Series � Game 4, 1988 NLCS � Game 5, 1999 NLCS � Game 7, 2006 NLCS

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: HahnSolo wrote: Willets Point wrote: Holiday parties just aren't the same... OK, detectives, right hand side of this photo...who is that in the light blue blouse with the nice ra.., um, posture, with the legs that go on forever? That's a good question to which I demand an answer NOW!!!! That was Andy Martino, who IM'd, "If the Mets trade Mike Jacobs for Carlos Delgado, I'll replicate the outfit on the cover of this month's Elle magazine and strike the same pose to boot."

They were all more forthcoming than Swoboda. Beltran's mole, for example, was quite expressive. (Was not starstruck for more than a couple of seconds by the sight of Carlos three feet away, but the mole is a celebrity in its own right.) My favorite aside: As someone was asking a "how do you handle all the media in New York?" question and cataloguing TV and newspapers and "bloggers," Jason Bay retorted, with just a touch of incredulity, "You consider yourselves media?" Not really, I interjected.

There was no free food. Or drink. Well, for the children, yes. But the rest of us did a lot of standing around and waiting before being served up Mets: Terry Collins, Sandy Alderson, Ike Davis, Carlos Beltran, Jason Bay and Santa Wright. Each was steered to our blogger group (consisting of me, Eddie Kranepool Society, Always Amazin', Amazin' Avenue and Mets Merized Online) after doing bits for the print media and then TV (or vice-versa; we were last). Each guy we got was solid in his responses to whatever was put forth. I wish there had been more time to ask more questions but beyond sharing each guy with the other bloggers, Mets PR (not Jay, who was there but not involved at our level) was diligent about whisking them away to whatever else had to be done. If I only got one or two questions per Met big shot/player, well, it was one or two more than I've been getting the rest of my life. Still, would have loved ten minutes with each. All came off as decent people who enjoy talking baseball (note my being sucked in by access). Pen and pad because I'm apparently the last dinosaur who doesn't own a fancy digital recorder. If I taped more interviews, they'd have to start up the cassette factory on my behalf. Or I'd have to buy a fancy digital recorder. A journalism prof in college told a long sad story about interviewing John Connally and having her recorder fail, but she took meticulous notes throughout, so she was OK. Pen and pad over other devices if I have to choose. Lots of familiar faces beyond the subjects. Your Mets media was there (shared the elevator with somebody whom you might think would be wearing a tracksuit but didn't), some of your TV/radio talking heads, Mets execs who didn't want to be quoted, even a COO. It went from surreal to job-like pretty quickly. Not in a bad way, just the reportorial instincts kicking in. It could have been a trade show, except instead of covering new ready-to-drink teas, the product being hyped was enthusiasm -- or whatever. Anna didn't show.

FILIP AND FASTERSTRONGER: A DULL-AS-DURBIN EPISTOLARY TALE (W/link to his Oct. 14 column) Accurate, unbiased, well-considered. Congratulations on nailing it! Francis: Yanks ask Rangers not to overuse Lee in World Series. Want him in tip-top shape for spring training in Tampa... Arrogantly yours, Filip Every time Lee throws a complete game three-hitter or something like it next year, I will remember this and decide there are worse things than the Phillies, if just barely.

Ceetar wrote: Enjoy, wish I could get there. More so than the other things bloggers have done, the party will probably have the bloggers and media guys in the same place at the same time. I wonder if they're gonna stand on separate sides of the room and nervously eye each other like a high school dance? They know their way around the gymnasium, so to speak.

HahnSolo wrote: Sandy on the FAN with Francesa Right Now! And he will take calls. Missed it till now, but just heard Mike announce they will open the phone lines. Alderson getting a real education in baseball from Francesa. Gosh he's lucky.

The New York Mets: Trying to sell tickets and generate favorable publicity. What bastards.