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Well, she's no Jonathon Niese, but if he pitches a beauty, that won't be a compliment toward her.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: She's probably somebody's niece.

1985 eleventh inning pitcher: Roger McDowell. (LWFS had this.) 1962 twelfth inning pitcher: Ken Mackenzie. 1970 thirteenth inning outfielder: Leroy Stanton. (BG had this.) 1995 eleventh inning pitcher: Dave Mlicki. 1999 tenth inning pitcher: Billy Taylor 1999 eleventh inning pitcher: Chuck McElroy 2007 tenth inning outfielder: Ben Johnson 1979 eleventh inning pitcher: Ed Glynn 1980 tenth inning outfielder: Claudell Washington. 2006 tenth inning pitcher nightmare: Jorge Julio 1970 eleventh inning pitcher: Ron Herbel

Jim Tatum the 1998 12th inning versatile catcher.

17th inning: Kenny Greer, but of course!

The 23rd inning Met from 1974 is the perennial fan favorite Bruce Boisclair.

April 26, 1995, strike-delayed Opening Night and first-ever game at Coors Field, had three MLB debuts by Mets: Ricky Otero, Brook Fordyce and Edgardo Alfonzo.

Cora 1.0 Barajas 0.5 Rodriguez 0.5 Feliciano 0.5 Castillo 0.5 Francoeur 0.5

Tonight will be the first time John Maine pitches at Citi Field without me in attendance. I hope each of us can persevere apart from one another.

Santana 3 Wright 2 Bay 1.5 Matthews 1 Barajas 1 Nieve 1

bmfc1 wrote: Update: Kristen cannot register as well. That's 3 ladies that want to register and cannot. Please help them. Automatically flinching when there are girls around and mistrustful of anyone who doesn't love our team. The internal mechanism behind this board is a dead ringer for my ten-year-old self.

metirish wrote: Wasn't Coffey the guy working on a Willie Randolph book and then had to shelf it after Willie got cruelly fired on the west coast late at night in a seedy part of town? Actually, he didn't finish the book because he was distracted by condensation on a water glass that, if you looked at it from just the right angle, was the spitting image of the face that graces the strut-free zone that is the New York Yankee Captain, Derek Jeter, who, on April 2, 1996, sprung forth from the tears that had been shed over the passing of the legend Mickey Mantle the previous summer to refresh a franchise and moisten a sport that cried out for his authentic brand of life-sustaining morning dew. Morning is now turning to late afternoon for the young man who matures while the rest of us merely age, but rest assured dusk is clearly in the distance and nightfall will never be nigh for the Captain of youth, of strength, of overall goodness and uncommon greatness. Derek Jeter's dressing space may be no bigger than a meat locker, but rest assured that the cut of beef that is clad in no more than a blue warmup shirt and knee-length underwear is prime rib -- the finest this correspondent has ever had the privilege of salivating over on and off the field. If any dish can be termed both well done and exceedingly rare, it is Derek Sanderson Jeter, so nice they could only name him once before the mold from which he was cast was put aside by a Deity wise enough to know perfection could not be replicated, only admired for eternity.

Anybody can root from anywhere for anybody with relative ease these days, but I'm trying to picture some diehard North Philadelphian staying up late to watch his beloved Athletics, name and all -- even these guys, particularly considering there was a previous detour to Kansas City.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I'm not on board with 3 either, unless you're 20 or younger I suppose. If the Mets ever relocated, I'd be done as a baseball fan. I'd probably pay a little attention to them the first couple of years, but less and less each passing year. I image that some Dodgers fans, for example, continued to follow the team in LA while they still had familiar faces like Reese and Snider and Hodges but cared a lot less, if at all, about guys like Maury Wills, who came along later. There were and are Dodger fans who stayed Dodger fans as well as (I can assure you from personal interaction) Giants fans who stayed Giants fans from 3,000 miles away. I know second-generation San Francisco Giants fans who've lived in the New York area all their lives. Their fathers stuck with the Giants after they headed west and it remained the family business. Keeping the team name probably helps in that regard. If the New York Giants had become the San Francisco Seagulls, I doubt the connection would have stayed as strong.

All must make their own decisions, he says as nonjudgmentally as possible, but if you can switch without agonizing over the choice, then you weren't more than a "hey, I kind of like them" or "when I was a kid, I liked them but I stopped paying attention" lapsed fan at best.

Rod Barajas is "the shit," which we didn't know because "he played in Canada and we don't know what goes on in Canada," according to a helpful rowmate on the Pepsi Porch this afternoon. He also queried rhetorically, "WHERE'S THE INTENSITY?" in reference to the rather relaxed crowd late in the game.

Happy, festive day at Citi Field. Team may still suck after a fashion but the feel was Ray Knight vs. Boots Day from last year. I hope whoever spoke up at the monthly meeting and asked rhetorically, "Why don't we put the Apple outside where everybody can enjoy it?" got a closer parking spot for the first month of the season.

No charge for HOF admission (though if anybody asks "how do you get to the Mets Hall of Fame?" I'm going to reply, "Practice, practice, practice...and then wait another eight years for the committee to meet again"). There are all kinds of great things that could be in the Museum that are not, but at last we're coming at it from a position of strength. It has been built and there's lots in there. Eventual additions and rotations seem a lot more achievable than they did a year ago.

The training staff getting it was absolutely brilliant. That's paying attention. I didn't boo them but I did admonish them to DO YOUR JOBS BETTER! Darryl and Johan got the biggest cheers. I stepped on the moment of silence for Jane Jarvis by applauding.

Know That Enemy fish were taking the field after the Mets left this afternoon. Apparently this day-before workout is for the visitors, too. Seeing them brought back horrid memories of 9/28/08 when the Fish refused to disperse from Shea's sacred soil. With that in mind, I was sure to remind them that YOU SUCK MARLINS! We all need a workout the day before the season starts.

Rave review here.

I've been waiting years to say this: The Mets Hall of Fame and Museum is awesome.

Wayne Hagin is a splendid listen in exhibition games that are going from bad to worse. While Sean Green was allowing a parade of Oriole baserunners this afternoon, he told a delightful story of how he almost missed the bus when he was broadcasting for the A's. Manager Billy Martin told him, "Never be late," and for 28 years, he said, he's followed that credo...until this morning, when the itinerary had been changed on him and the Mets' bus from St. Pete to Sarasota pulled away without him and he had to hitch a ride on the equipment truck, loaded by, among others, Tim Hume, brother of Tom Hume, the ex-Red. Even as Ed Coleman kept stepping all over the story, Wayne was engaging and gripping, throwing in details about Chris Majkowski calling him at 9:17 AM to tell him the bus left at 9:15, and how Madge is generally coming into the hotel late enough to hand him his USA Today while Wayne is waking up, and so forth. I knew Wayne made it to Sarasota because I was listening to him, but I found myself worried that he wasn't going to make it hours earlier. Just a swell blowout baseball tale, perfect for the last day of Spring Training when your team is getting clobbered. Hope he has no reason to fill air time that way the rest of the year.

David Lennon on the FAN last night was unsurprised about Figueroa, said the chances of him making the club were always slim, said the team feels he'll pass through waivers, certainly more readily than Nieve, which I found surprising. Figueroa did nothing wrong dating back to last September. While Nieve didn't have as good a spring, he also did little wrong besides getting injured last year. Gosh, what an embarrassment of pitching riches. Green's and Perez's salaries may have been the true determining factors in shaping this staff; certainly Ollie has no good reason to be anywhere above Buffalo (per bmfc). The human element is Figueroa gave an interview to Kevin Burkhardt the other day (also per bmfc) in which he was on a cloud talking about lining up on Opening Day at Citi Field, delving into his Mets fandom (once nudged) to the point of remembering how they used to play "Celebration" after Met wins at Shea. I wonder if Nelson had taken a different life path, remaining a Mets fan without ever having become a baseball player how he'd view "his" predicament. Would Nelson From Brooklyn (first time, long time) be upset about a hypothetical veteran pitcher who's all but earned it not making the staff or would he be excited that the Mets were giving Mejia a shot? Which I am, incidentally. Unless this is Tim Leary in the howling cold winds of Wrigley Field, a taste isn't gonna kill him or us, arbitration clocks and the like notwithstanding. It's also not all that surprising given that the Mets have taken a relatively untested rookie north three of the past four springs: Joe Smith in '07, Bobby Parnell in '09, now Mejia. Third time's a charm, let's see some talent. And if he's overmatched, send him down. There'll be time for the Caleros and the Dessenses and everybody else to bring us down to earth. And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong -- but I'm excited, and either way, it's not my call, so I prefer to have something to be excited about and I'll hope I'm right to have this impulse not for the sake of being on target about projections but for the sake of the Mets being on target in their assessments. I'm also glad to see Takahashi make the team and hope he begins to air the lingering unpleasantness out of No. 47. Casey Fossum was no help in that regard.