stevejrogers

You get a sense that they have no general sense of a teams history or baseball history. Take my dad for example. He grew up a Mantle worshipping Yankee fan, then in the sixties went to enginerring school and pretty much stopped following baseball, partially due to moving to Seattle to work for Boeing from about 69 to 71ish. Well he never really followed baseball again untill I started to get interested in the game around 85-86, and guess what team he decided to root for, yup the freaking Metropolitans. Basically going off and on depending on who we were watching, and usually saying he rooted for the Mets when they finally played each other (under dog, "better story") I swear I wanted to disown him. Anyway, this season he keeps telling me the Yankees are done, and I mention "You know what happened in 1978 right" to which I get a blank stare and "No, I don't know." And put it this way, he was in New York at the time, and actually gave me books to read about the era, so clearly his memory is quite fuzzy through the years because he doesn't care that much about baseball. I really have know clue how I became such an Met fan with that kind of parenting. Another example, he and his partner (who also is a causal both team fan) in a Title Company have tickets to both Shea and Yankee Stadiums, but they have to ask me frequently to find out when the Mets and Yankees are playing and what time. Not that I don't mind, but the newspaper generally has the times and dates of games in the sports section, and don't mention mets.com or yankees.com neither of them have any real experience or desire to even use a simple word processor on the computer. Hell my dad still uses an automatic typewriter (not even an electronic word processor) from the early 80's and a real old curly paper fax machine!

Valadius wrote: Willie came across as a really positive guy, the kind of guy you get inspired by. It's no wonder players love playing for him. Didn't strike me as the lying type, but perhaps a bit forgetful - when he got up to thank all the well-known people for coming, he forgot Rick Peterson entirely and had to be reminded about Sandy Alomar and a whole bunch of other people he sees regularly. Val, I think you gave Ira some material for the next couple of weeks! Especially along the lines of Willie not being manager material! =

Bumping before Squiddy swims by on Wednesday. APB for Terry Blocker BTW Edgy, even though I understand that to you and others that its me mic hogging, but this is the reason I throw multiple posts in a row in a thread like this

Clete Boyer, 70 Considered one of the top best defensive 3Bmen of his time (Guy in Baltimore was a bit better). Brother of the late ex-Card and Met Ken.

Heard a caller on WFAN once in the early 90's, when the more famous Kevin Brown was breaking out for the Rangers, complain about how the Mets once had him and let him go. His call was never really answered and got a "Well, we'll look it up, good bye." responses from the host and it was never brought up again. My first thought was that, and I'm still pretty sure, he was thinking of this guy But doing a search recently I found a shot of Brown in a minor league Met uni in some 85-86 card set. Baseball-reference.com lists Brown as being drafted by the Rangers of course in 1986 and he was a player in their chain of course, so what the heck is the story of that image of Brown in a Metly uni?

Johnny Murphy, quite a few as the "closer" of the 30s Yankees, and a posthumously one for the 69 Mets. Was he a front office guy with the Yankees in the 50s?

iramets wrote: Them Fenways can be vicious. I went to a game where they were yelling unbelievably foul stuff about Dumbo's autistic (?) kid,. Craniosynostosis

Frayed Knot wrote: In the meantime, I wasn't going to start a 'Yanx-Sawx IV' thread because I was getting sick of them and I figured that anything other than a Yanx sweep at this point wasn't really news. . Heh, in an update on 1050 ESPN Radio the update guy said "and of course the Sox are ahead by 12 and a half in the division." Granted it was local but still it implies that the Yankees are a 2nd place team! The good news is that these teams won't play again untill the last week of August.

Centerfield wrote: It's amazing isn't it? You can post those stats but almost no one has any memory of those games every happening. All I'm hearing today is how Armando can't handle pitching against the Mets. I think the perception of Armando has changed because this is a different Met team than the one he faced as a Marlin in 2004. Not to mention the 06-07 Giants are drastically different than the defending champ Marlins.

Edgy DC wrote: Torre went from player to player/manager without stepping in as coach. He played (mostly off the bench) for two months or so, but retired as a player before the end of the year. The official transaction was a waiver to give him his unconditional release on June 18th. Heh, I wonder what would have happened if someone thought they'd could use an over-the-hill corner infielder for some PH/DH duty and tried to contact him since technically he wasn't "retired"

="Yancy Street Gang"]He'd have us down to zero before the end of the day today. Easy there Belated Birthday Boy! Just be glad I'm not posting any reverse karma threads this year =;P Speaking of which, I'm surprised we haven't heard from last season's bridge jumper, cleonjones11...uh on second thought, maybe that is a good thing.

G-Fafif wrote: For the record, Mrs. Fafif, upon her introduction to it Friday night, has quite enchanted by the concept of Triple Happiness. All three games were finishing right around the same time while I was at a family party, I told a fellow Met fan cousin of mine that this was still a good day regardless of the Red Sox final, because it was a Triple Happiness Day. He got a good chuckle out of the explaniation.

Yancy Street Gang wrote: ="metirish"]If I were a betting man I woould bet that the Mets wil lnot be in NO more than two seasons. My prediction is that, once the Phillies abandon Ottawa for Allentown, the Blue Jays will grab Ottawa and the Mets will get Syracuse. Well the Phillies might be living in Allento... Oh, sorry couldn't resist =;P

Plus there are only 5 afternoon games total. On a day that used to feature classic style double headers! It might be more of a TV ruling sports thing as the NBA playoff games this weekend; which was traditionally afternoon games in the past, or at the very least a double header with one game in the afternoon and the other game with an early evening start; is now just one game per night with a tip off set around 8:40-9:00.

No JD? No problem Hope he and the rest of the Dickshots are having a grand old time!

BTW, another fallacy in the "Braves are STILL in the Mets' heads" argument is that if you look at the reverse, if the Mets had gone 6-3 against the Braves and still were 3 and a half games back what tune would those making that argument now be saying? I don't think they'd be confident that the Mets would go on to make a charge and overtake the Braves based soley on leading the season series, and even if they did they'd probably still fall back on the "yeah but they didn't beat the Braves head-to-head" as if that matters after a division/league/world title has been won. OE: The three Braves I mentioned are the three last remaining Braves since the last time the Braves were in the NLCS, 2001, while maybe you might want to stretch the Brave-Met rivalry from that time frame to 2002, it does speak to the fact that, like the Mets, there really aren't alot of voices that can say "Of COURSE we beat them 6 out of 9 so far this year, thats what we've been doing all these years, beating them like a drum." 03-05 was essentially the Mets were just another team in the division and the Braves certaintly weren't looked at as THE TEAM that the Mets should have been focused on toppling since the Mets never finished higher than 3rd those three seasons.

="Frayed Knot"] Yes, particularly since Joe Baddabingo doesn't buy it. He's still convinced that the Braves are "in the Mets' heads" - although he never attempts an explanation of how it would affect those who weren't there way back when or the reverse domination of last year. Not to mention how many Braves are really left from the era when you really can say "The Braves are in the Mets heads" from what, 98 to 01? Larry, Andruw, Smoltz, Cox, a couple of coaches, but really who else on the Braves can look at the Mets and say "Of course we beat them, we've been doing this for years now" Beningo's discounting of last year also is pretty ludicrious since he ties it in with the fact that the Mets never played the Braves in the 2000 postseason. I'm shocked that he didn't try to pick the Dodgers in last year's NLDS because they beat us in 1988, or that the Mets would beat the Cardinals last year because the Mets handled them easily in 2000. Beningo is a perfect example of why if you want to be taken seriously as a commentator you have to leave the fan part out of it.

SteveJRogers wrote: while the Nelson account is presumably from the game rather than a recreation (and those did happen for LP recordings) you can probably blame the printed form for this story. Just listened to the Nelson call couple of times, and upon further review it does have the feel of a recreation recording done for LP purposes. -The call is too quick and tight, and generally balking in a run aren't "bang-bang" plays the way Nelson makes it seem. -Too consistant level of inflection in both Lindsey's voice and the St. Louis "crowd" One would think even Red Barber would have a slight bemused sound in his voice watching the very first run a team gives up in their history on a first inning balk. Also something like that should have garnered some unsual reaction from the crowd rather than the usual general din noise. -Also a bit overly descriptive for a TV call, generally TV broadcasters don't tell you that a pitcher is winding up and throwing.

BTW, here is the link to the Murphy broadcast http://www.archive.org/details/620411NYMvsSTLC

To break up the Morgan bashing in this thread, caught this on another board that was discussing finding old radio broadcasts on the 'net, specifically Mets vs. Cards 4/11/1962 and the yarn about the Mets giving up their first ever run on a balk: ]So I'm listening to Bob Murphy call the first Mets game ever, and in the bottom of the first, I'm waiting for Roger Craig to balk across the first run. Lo and behold, it doesn't happen! Here is the bottom of the first according to Retrosheet, which matches up exactly with Murphy's description - CARDINALS 1ST: Flood flied out to center; Javier singled to left; White singled to right [Javier to third]; Musial singled to left [Javier scored, White to second]; Craig balked [White to third, Musial to second]; Boyer grounded out (third to first) [White scored]; Minoso popped to catcher in foul territory; 2 R, 3 H, 0 E, 1 LOB. Mets 0, Cardinals 2. I go looking on the Internet, and I found Lindsey Nelson's description of the balk, and he distinctly says that White scored on the balk for the first run given up by the Mets in their history. Here's the link to Nelson's call: http://www.loge13.com/images/Firstrun.L.mp3 Of course, Lindsey may have corrected himself later, I dunno. But two Mets announcers, both working the first inning of the first game of the season, and they don't agree on how the first run scored. Bizarre. FWIW, the balk story apparantly appears in Jimmy Breslin's Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?: The Improbable Saga of the New York Met's First Year while the Nelson account is presumably from the game rather than a recreation (and those did happen for LP recordings) you can probably blame the printed form for this story. Actually, probably alot of the "lore" and "lovableness" of that 1962 team probably comes from Breslin's book, which apparantly even took its title from an apocryphyl Stengel quote, well according to this Amazon.com review: ]For years author Jimmy Breslin claimed that "Can't anybody here play this game?" was an actual quote from New York Met manager Casey Stengel. Then several years later in another book that he wrote, Breslin admitted he had made up the quote. When I read his book "Can't Anybody Here Play This Game," I got the impression he used this same approach in writing it. Not that the book isn't mostly true, but what he wrote was for effect. It appeared to me that he wanted to inject a lot of humor and light-heartedness and not necessarily provide a well-rounded description of the season where that would detract from his intended perspective.

="Frayed Knot"]Seems to me that we didn't hear this much about Roger's minor league tune-up sked while he was building toward his Astros debut last year. At one point in NY his minor league game was playing on both ESPN & ESPN2 simultaneously. It's this sort of overkill whenever something involves a NY team that drives the rest of the country nuts. He didn't pitch all that well btw in what may be his last tuneup before gracing the big club with his presence. Yanx take the condom game of the series. Pettitte good, Schilling not. Gap now at 9-1/2. The two teams will pick it up again in Boston first couple of days in June, and then not again until late August. IIRC they did show it on ESPN last year 1050's evening talk show host, Brandon Tierney did a live remote from Trenton last night though (strange that he did his show in the park, I guess the rules are quite laxed for the minors) while they cut in and out of the Trenton broadcast of Clemens on the mound.

CJ Nitkowski did Nats and Tigers, Cooby's guy played with the Nats and DBacks. No one with the Tri-fecta though. Also a shame Mike Morgan never made a stop with the Mets

Todd Zeile and Rickey Henderson are your best bets for accomplishing that NL East Brave: Phillie: Zeile Marlin: Zeile National: Expo: Zeile NL Central Astro: Red: Cub: Zeile Cardinal: Zeile Brewer: Pirate: NL West Giant: Dodger: Rickey Henderson Padre: Rickey Henderson Rockie: Zeile Diamondback: AL East Yankee: Rickey Henderson Red Sock: Rickey Henderson Oriole: Zeile Blue Jay: Rickey Henderson Devil Ray: AL Central Indian: Tiger: Royal: Twin: White Sock: AL West Mariner: Rickey Henderson Angel: Rickey Henderson Ranger: Zeile A: Rickey Henderson

Yancy Street Gang wrote: ="Johnny Dickshot"]]We're sorry! The database that powers the Ultimate Mets Database is currently unavailable. Please visit us again soon. What the...?!?!!!?? (stamps feet) (cries) Yeah, it will probably be down until tomorrow. We're sorry! Please visit us again soon. Would it help if I sent a case of Pop Tarts?