G-Fafif

One of these two teams was playing to win. The other was playing so the game (and season) could be over. Utley slid hard and maybe a little chippily. So somebody get on first tomorrow and slide hard and chippily at him.

Faith and Fear was asked to contribute a "Dear John" letter to Yahoo Big League Stew's series of kiss-offs to out-of-contention teams. Read ours here. As long as we remained cuddled together at home, everything was great. But you had to convince us to travel with you. What a mistake! The itinerary from hell ... San Juan? Why did we have to go to San Juan? You know we never feel comfortable in Puerto Rico (or have you forgotten that little Expo affair?). The losing started in San Juan at the end of June and it never seemed to stop.

The Pagan Ritual! Pa-BOOM!

Thread title = Good name for midseason replacement series ABC might have tried airing after Starsky & Hutch.

Good news: R.A. has surpassed the 162-inning threshold for ERA leadership qualification. Bad news: His ERA is rising every inning.

Also, our last off day until we are faced with six months worth of them.

Wow - listening to Whitey Herzog's scouting report on Jon Matlack was pretty amazin'! Indeed. Let the MFYs keep their two-dimensional Blahm-berg (he's Jewish and he was the first DH -- got it). We got a rookie of the year and three-time All-Star. Unspoken but definitely between the lines if one listened for it: MFYs had first draft pick in 1967 because they finished LAST in 1966.

It's coming: Bader�s call to baseball last spring initiated months of talks that have led to an agreement allowing the MLB Network to televise the game in the off-season, and wrap interviews and other programming around it, with Bob Costas as the host.

Bing Crosby, that old crooner, turns out to have been a baseball video visionary. �Best Game Ever� Broadcast Found in Bing Crosby�s Wine Cellar By RICHARD SANDOMIR How a near pristine, black-and-white reel of the entire television broadcast of the deciding game of the 1960 World Series � long believed to be lost forever � came to rest in the dry and cool wine cellar of Bing Crosby�s home near San Francisco is not a mystery to those who knew him. Crosby loved baseball, but as a part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates he was too nervous to watch the Series against the Yankees, so he and his wife went to Paris, where they listened by radio. �He said, �I can�t stay in the country,� � his widow, Kathryn Crosby, said. � �I�ll jinx everybody.� � He knew he would want to watch the game later � if his Pirates won � so he hired a company to record Game 7 by kinescope, an early relative of the DVR, filming off a television monitor. The five-reel set, found in December in Crosby�s home, is the only known complete copy of the game, in which Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski hit a game-ending home run to beat the Yankees, 10-9. It is considered one of the greatest games ever played. Crosby, the singer and movie and TV star, had more foresight than the television networks and stations, which erased or discarded nearly all of the Major League Baseball games they carried until the 1970s. A canny preservationist of his own legacy, Crosby, who died in 1977, kept a half-century�s worth of records, tapes and films in the wine cellar turned vault in his Hillsborough, Calif., home. �Bing Crosby was way ahead of his time,� said Nick Trotta, senior library and licensing manager for Major League Baseball Productions, the sport�s archivist. Three years ago, baseball acquired the rights to Yankees pitcher Don Larsen�s perfect game in the 1956 World Series � leaving the finale of the 1960 World Series high on its wish list. The hunt for old games � this one unseen on TV since its original broadcast � is constant, serendipitous and often futile. Great games like the Game 7 in 1960 are often recalled with just a few newsreel clips. Crosby was so superstitious about hexing his Pirates that he and Kathryn listened to the game with their friends Charles and Nonie de Limur in Paris. �We were in this beautiful apartment, listening on shortwave, and when it got close Bing opened a bottle of Scotch and was tapping it against the mantel,� Kathryn Crosby said. �When Mazeroski hit the home run, he tapped it hard; the Scotch flew into the fireplace and started a conflagration. I was screaming and Nonie said, �It�s very nice to celebrate things but couldn�t we be more restrained?� � After Crosby viewed the 2-hour-36-minute game, probably in a screening room in the house, the films took their place in the vault, said Robert Bader, vice president for marketing and production for Bing Crosby Enterprises. They remained there undisturbed until December when Bader was culling videotapes of Crosby�s TV specials for a DVD release � part of the estate�s goal of resurrecting his body of work. He spotted two reels lying horizontally in gray canisters labeled, �1960 World Series.� They were stacked close to the ceiling with home movies and sports instructional films. An hour or so later he found three others on other shelves. Intrigued, he screened the 16-millimeter film on a projector. It was Game 7, called by the Yankees� Mel Allen and the Pirates� Bob Prince � the complete NBC broadcast. The film had not degraded and has been transferred to DVD. �I had to be the only person to have seen it in 50 years,� Bader said. �It was just pure luck.� Bader�s call to baseball last spring initiated months of talks that have led to an agreement allowing the MLB Network to televise the game in the off-season, and wrap interviews and other programming around it, with Bob Costas as the host. �It�s a time capsule,� Trotta said. Hearing of the broadcast�s discovery, Jim Reisler, a historian born in Pittsburgh, sounded stunned. �Wow,� he said. His book about the game � �The Best Game Ever� � would have benefited from seeing the NBC production, he said; he relied on the radio call. �It would have given me a greater sense of the tremendous ebb and flow of the game,� he said. Dick Groat, the Pirates shortstop, said: �It was such a unique game to begin with. It was back and forth, back and forth. It was unbelievable.� The production is simple by today�s standards. NBC appeared to use about five cameras. The graphics were simple (the players� names and little else) and rarely used. There were no instant replays, no isolated cameras, no analysis no dugout reporters and no sponsored trivia quizzes. Viewers looked at the hand-operated Forbes Field scoreboard that on that day (of 19 runs and 24 hits) got a vigorous workout. Occasionally they saw newsreel cameras atop the ballpark roof. Price and Allen rarely interacted; the former called the first half, Allen the second half � putting him on the air for Yogi Berra�s three-run homer in the sixth inning (Allen first called it foul); Pirates� catcher Hal Smith�s eighth inning homer to put Pittsburgh on top, 9-7 (�That base hit will long be remembered,� Allen said as the film showed Roberto Clemente � Allen called him Bob �bounding around the bases with joy); and Mazeroski�s winning drive to left field (�And the fans go wild,� Allen said). The game included the play in which a ground ball hit by Bill Virdon to Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek kicked off the dirt and hit him smack in the Adam�s apple. He fell on his back, sat up within a minute looking dazed, stood up, then lobbied Manager Casey Stengel unsuccessfully to stay in. It also included remarkable base-running by Mickey Mantle with one out in the top of the ninth. The Yankees were trailing, 9-8, with Mantle on first and Gil McDougald on third. Berra hit a sharp grounder that was grabbed by first baseman Rocky Nelson, who quickly stepped on the bag for the second out. For a split second, Nelson seemed ready to throw home in time for a tag play on McDougald for the final out of the World Series. But Nelson immediately became distracted by Mantle, who never took off for second when Berra hit the ball and was now standing just a few feet away. Nelson reached to tag Mantle. but he feinted and dived back safely into first. McDougald scored, and the game was tied 9-9. �How about that?� Allen said after Mantle�s play. But just minutes later, Mazeroski stepped to the plate. NBC�s sound was good enough to hear a fan shout, �Just get on, Billy, get on!� Mazeroski did more than that. After his home run, fans poured onto the field and danced on the Pittsburgh dugout. Only later did Bing Crosby witness the joy and jubilation recorded just for him. �I can still see Bing hitting the mantel with the Scotch,� Kathryn Crosby said.

Reminder: 6:30 tonite -- in case you don't reflexively tune into SNY these evenings at 6:30.

Edgy DC wrote: Give me the trend right now and that's a meaningful judgment. 0-5. Fire everybody.

Most promising lefty specialist since Mark Guthrie. Maybe Carlos Diaz, even.

Edgy DC wrote: Yeah, but with "since 2006" and "big market," aren't we drawing deliberate arbitrary lines to amplify the insult? I mean, the Baltimore/DCmarket is huge. So is Miami, especially when you consider it's unshared. But why through amgiuities over such? I would be no more comforted by the poor performance of my team, I reckon, if they played in Cincinnati. More important to attend to, I think --- regarding what's happening in the next couple of weeks --- is that the Mets are going to make huge decisions concerning the direction of the team over the next five years or longer. That seems to me a healthier focus as adovocates and partisans of the team than dredging up the failures of 2003 and 2004. October 19, 2006 is hardly an arbitrary line in the sand. More teams than not have played in the postseason since the Mets did. For an organization generally believed on the precipice of joining the elites (if not already being a member thereof), that's astonishing. Market size/resources is a squishier marker, I'll grant you. There was a time when Toronto was considered big market, and by population, I imagine it still is. I'll cede any first-hand insight on DC/Baltimore, but those strike me as peculiar cases, one a de facto expansion team (or operated as such), the other an incredible case study in mismanagement. But the whole package -- Mets in the No. 1 market, Mets with star-studded roster, Mets with ideal mix of youngsters and veterans -- was supposed to ensure a period of bliss. You'd think it would have produced at least one more postseason berth and something approaching continual success. As far as what is a "healthier focus," we've been known to sit here and dissect games, seasons and careers that took place 10, 20, 40 years ago. Is it healthy to remain mad about Terry Pendleton? Maybe not. Do we do it? Absolutely. If 2003 or whatever sticks in somebody's craw, so be it. We're long-term fans with long-term memories. Expressing the frustration (and the joy) associated with that condition is what we do. The failures of 2003 and 2004 were committed under the auspices of the same ownership that will be making those huge decisions regarding the next five years. It's probably at least a little relevant. Either way, I'm guessing we can walk toward 2011 and chew Duquette-era gum at the same time.

Meanwhile, they maintain an incredible competitive advantage because of their payroll/resources. Teams like Boston and LA (over .500 9 years, playoffs 4 years), who are similar financially, have managed to compete consistently year after year. The Nationals. The Marlins. The Pirates. The Astros. The Blue Jays. The Orioles. The Royals. The Mariners. The Athletics. One or possibly (but not likely) two among the Giants, the Padres and the Braves. And the Mets. In a couple of weeks, those will be the only teams to have not played a postseason game since October 19, 2006. Only one of them strikes me as a big-market franchise.

TransMonk wrote: G-FAFIF gave me a reason to watch in the NL East thread...I don't want the Phils clinching at Citi! LGM! Happy to do so, except it's us at the other park named for a bank, which will make it maybe worse, given the braying red-clad multitudes (and whichever 2,000 Mets fans who thought this would be a swell weekend to make the trip to Philly to see their beloved team). LGM anyway!

When MFPs passed MFBs, John Kruk declared that was that, the MFBs would never retake the lead. I took that as the line of the day as I anticipated a hotly contested back-and-forth. But Kruk was right: The MFPs have not been headed and, with three games against the Mets this weekend, quite obviously won't be. Only the Nats and Met pride can keep the Mets from being clinched against by Sunday. Oh well, there's always the Nats.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: We continue to pathetically stagger towards the finish line. Only the three most faithful voters (me, G-Fafif*, and metfairy*) have voted for Tuesday's loss to the Marlins, which will close tomorrow morning. *Thanks for hanging in there guys. If not for you two, I'd feel really silly sticking with this! Democracy is fun! Mets, too, sort of.

A poor start by Ubaldo Jimenez (in a game the Rox really needed) pushes R.A. up to 9th in ERA. Jerry's improv rotation has him going Friday.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: And, yeah, they hit this one, too. SielSKIIIIIIIII! Mr. Francoeur is well-liked among his teammates. Mr. Manuel said Sunday that he wanted to keep playing Mr. Francoeur "as much as possible, bringing those intangibles." "Yes, this poison I'm drinking does strip away the membranes protecting my esophagus and dissolve my organs," said Mr. Manuel, "but it's got a very pleasant, oaky nose." Mr. Sielski's original article was lame in the first place but it was pretty obvious Mr. Sielski's lame tongue was in his lame cheek the whole lame time. If his tongue was planted in his cheek, then dude's got a tiny tongue... it really wasn't all that obvious. (And if it was, then... what? He was bitterly, sardonically baiting Francoeur? Really?) In the context (or ironic framework) of A-Fraud hitting his 600th homer, which was when I first read it, his tiny tongue was planting hard. However you gauge it, a first-pitch popup to first...not unlike Jeff Francoeur.

Beltran 2.5 Davis 1.0 Niese 1.0 Green 0.5

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: And, yeah, they hit this one, too. SielSKIIIIIIIII! Mr. Francoeur is well-liked among his teammates. Mr. Manuel said Sunday that he wanted to keep playing Mr. Francoeur "as much as possible, bringing those intangibles." "Yes, this poison I'm drinking does strip away the membranes protecting my esophagus and dissolve my organs," said Mr. Manuel, "but it's got a very pleasant, oaky nose." Mr. Sielski's original article was lame in the first place but it was pretty obvious Mr. Sielski's lame tongue was in his lame cheek the whole lame time.

Grimm: "I have to confess, there's nothing at all that's motivating me to watch." Monk: "I'll admit, I've been pretty bad about watching the Mets since the calendar turned to September." Enough with your sanity! The New York Mets are on the air! Jose Reyes � SS Angel Pagan � RF Carlos Beltran � CF David Wright � 3B Ike Davis � 1B Lucas Duda � LF Josh Thole � C Ruben Tejada � 2B Jonathon Niese � P versus Maybin CF Martinez SS Morrison LF Uggla 2B Sanchez 1B Stanton RF Helms 3B Davis C Sanabia P

Bump. This quest needs to be followed. Dickey has two starts left and is tenth in the league with a 2.92 ERA. He's also 15th in the NL in WHIP and first in books on the top shelf of his locker.