MFS62

Not just depth perception, Its total vision. His eyes are blocked because he has his head up his ass. Later

Terry Bross. Later

In keeping with the spirit of the thread, I happened to pick up a copy of USA Today. Every Tuesday, they give the baseball statistics, by team. Here's a team made up (quickly - I may have missed a few) of players who were ex-Mets property and who are now with other teams: SP Bannister Kasmir* A.J. Burnett Hampton* L. Hernandez MP Mota Dotel Oliver* Bradford RP Lindstrom Bell C Flores Castro IF Jacobs* Keppinger Scutaro Wigginton Mota K. Matsui (s) OF Bay Cameron Milledge Nady Church* Later

Vic Darensbourg. Later

All-time fave: Frank Robinson Second tier: Ernie Banks Clemente Stargell Gibson Koufax Jim Palmer Mantle Ron Washington - I dunno. He was someone I always thought was destined to be a Met, but never was. Larry Walker Later

Promoted to Binghamton, started tonight and got 3 hits. Later

Heard onm the radio that Josh Thole has been called up and will be joining the team in Denver tomorrow. Later

As I've mentioned, I listen to many Buffalo games when driving home from work. The station actually comes in better than ESPN radio out of New York. Ken Oberkfell hasn't been using Kunz in key situations for most of the year. Maybe that's because his ERA has looked like the model number for a Boeing airliner. To say he is "dropping like a rock" is being kind. Later

Edgy, look at the bright side. If the Mets don't bring up too many players after Sept 1, it will make your roster updates easier. Later

Happened to catch about 2 minutes of the Little League Championship game. There's a conference on the mound with the coach and players of the Chinese/Taiwan team. The Coach is mic'd up and is speaking Chinese (naturally). Brent Mussberger says "He's Telling them to ...." and that's when I lost it and yelled at the set "How the fuck do you know what he was saying? Do you speak Chinese?" What a pompous asshole. Sorry, but I just had to get that off my chest. Later, when I heard the US team from California won, I was sad. I don't like it when any baseball team from California wins a game at any level. Later

Those are his good points. He's also an arsehole. I was in the men's club at my Temple a few years ago. We invited him to come to one of our Sunday breakfasts (he lived in the next town, maybe 5 miles away), give a little speech, answer some questions, and sell some autographed books. He asked for an appearance fee, even after we told him that the small admission fee we charge goes for a schollarship fund. We told hm no thanks. Later

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/media/madoff-author-sees-sale-ny-mets-coming/ Madoff Author Sees Sale Of N.Y. Mets Coming Jon Friedman MarketWatch NEW YORK -- Fred Wilpon, the owner of the New York Mets, will be forced to sell the baseball franchise as soon as 2010 after incurring heavy Bernie Madoff-related investment losses. So says Erin Arvedlund, author of "Too Good to Be True," a new book from publisher Portfolio that has gotten a big buzz in its first few weeks by detailing the evil deeds of the disgraced New York hedge fund manager. Madoff, who is serving a prison sentence, has become the poster child for Wall Street's excessive corruption, greed and all-around sleaziness. "You can quote me," Arvedlund said of a possible sale of the Mets. "It's a matter of when. It could be as soon as next year." Arvedlund estimates the Wilpon family may have lost as much as $700 million on Madoff-related investments that went awry. Mets management has been criticized for failing to acquire such stars as Manny Ramirez -- and many fans suspected that the team couldn't afford to obtain such high-priced players. "As I understood it, they knew each other from way back when," Arvedlund told me. "Wilpon was one of the big real-estate magnates who was a Madoff investor." A Mets spokeswoman said on Thursday by e-mail: "The numbers speculated continue to be inaccurate. We refute what has been reported. As we have said on numerous occasions, losses incurred by the Sterling Partners do not and will not affect the day-to-day operations and long-term plans of the Mets organization. The team is not for sale in any respect." Wilpon's Sterling company controls the Mets franchise. Still, the media have speculated about Wilpon's prospects. The New York Times (NYT: 7.96, 0, 0%) has written: "Perhaps most troubling is the possibility that losses incurred by Sterling Equities could put pressure on Wilpon to raise money by selling other assets. Because Sterling invested money directly with Madoff, Wilpon may have to come up with money to reimburse some of his own investors for losses. That may cause him to sell valuable assets, including a portion of his ownership in the Mets." In April, Forbes pegged the Mets to have a value of $912 million. The Mets ranked as the second-most valuable baseball franchise, trailing only the New York Yankees. See Forbes story. 2001 article Arvedlund understands Madoff well. In 2001, she wrote a story while working for Barron's that helped lift the veil on his secretive investment practices. (Barron's, like MarketWatch and The Wall Street Journal, is published by Dow Jones and owned by News Corp. (NWS: 12.99, 0, 0%) ) In her book, Arvedlund is shying away from the sociological implications of the scandal and concentrating on explaining to readers how Madoff turned his once-legitimate business into a huge fraud. "The two missing pieces were finding the really old people" who could talk about the origins of the fraud "and how (the company) produced these phony statements," Arvedlund said. What resulted was a page-turning narrative. Like many authors, Arvedlund became happily obsessed with her work. This kind of drive can help authors persist when they feel discouraged by the weight of the work or head cold or family distraction. Of course, it also can result in a strange way of life for the author. "I talk about these people like they're my family," Arvedlund laughed. She set aside a specific part of her Philadelphia home where she would be free of Madoff, at least for a moment or two. "My husband and I had a no-Bernie zone in our apartment," she chuckled at her fixation. "I had an office there but I had to have a Madoff-free zone." Ponzi scheme The Madoff story exploded last December. Madoff stunned Wall Street when he admitted to running a $65-billion Ponzi scheme, unraveling his carefully constructed mystique. In the glittering world of New York high society, Madoff had been a beacon of the investment community because of his philanthropic work. To his employees and business associates, he could seem imperious. He was a complex man, and book publishers jumped at the chance to tell his story. Adrian Zackheim, president of Portfolio, a division of Penguin Group, knew instinctively that Madoff would be a compelling subject. "It broke before Christmas and got more and more outrageous," Zackheim told me. "I thought pretty early on there would be books about this. We were hoping that we'd come out first, or early, and were looking for someone who had some relationship with the story before the coverage started." Arvedlund had written about Madoff on Portfolio.com, the Web site of the now-defunct Conde Nast business magazine. "One of (my) assistants found a blog on Portfolio.com and it mentioned that Barron's piece," Zackheim said. "That seemed like a good argument," Zackheim said. He promptly called Arvedlund. "She was much more likely than anyone to be on the story. She had a lot of sources already and got up to speed right away." Resonates elsewhere Zackheim is confident that Madoff's saga will resonate outside Wall Street and New York City. The Madoff story is "being covered all over the country," Zackheim said. "It's a major national news story everywhere. Even people who weren't connected to any of this think it's kind of exotic." It's a challenge for a journalist to write a book about a subject who is living and whose story is fluid and constantly changing. In a Wall Street Journal column about the many Madoff books that have been published so far, David Weidner noted that "Too Good to Be True" was "thoroughly reported." But critics say that the Madoff books fail to answer a fundamental question: What did Madoff do with his fortune? Madoff's followers appreciate the fine storytelling but they want to understand how he could have been so evil. Plus, were his wife and family members truly innocent? Any discussion of Madoff inevitably raises as many questions as it answers. Zackheim said Arvedlund's book has sold several thousands of copies in its first few weeks. "She is definitely selling nationally," Zackheim noted. "Our marketing strategy is to get her in front of her as many people as possible," Zackheim said. Is this a publicity stunt to sell books, or do you think this is real? LAter

And from the "Oh Shit! Why not?" category: MIAMI - Jose Reyes may be the next Met in line for surgery, joining Johan Santana and Oliver Perez on operating tables in the coming days. Reyes, who has not appeared in a major-league game since pulling himself from a May20 game at Dodger Stadium, has a completely torn hamstring tendon behind his right knee, a source confirmed to the Daily News. While hardly ideal, surgery is not necessarily as ominous as it might sound. That tendon is expendable, and is sometimes partly removed and inserted into the elbow when a pitcher undergoes Tommy John surgery. The Mets aren't resigned to Reyes undergoing surgery just yet, although the decision is looming. Reyes, who is presumed to be out for the year, continues to get treatment, with physical therapists trying to break up scar tissue that is irritating the severed tendon and causing significant pain. Reyes was suffering from bursitis early in the season and eventually suffered a hamstring tendon strain. That injury became further irritated when Reyes tried to run full-throttle to first base during a June 3 extended spring training game in Port St. Lucie. It is believed that Reyes subsequently fully tore the tendon, the scar tissue and inflammation are aggravating the tendon. Surgery should be able to alleviate the discomfort and allow Reyes to return unimpeded next season. Reyes, 26, was tormented by leg problems early in his career, which is one of the reasons why he signed a four-year, $23.25 million contract in August 2006. That deal is guaranteed through next season, with a team option for 2011 at $11 million. His salary leaps from $5.75 million this year to $9 million in 2010. The shortstop will finish this season with the fewest at-bats in his career (147). He is coming off consecutive seasons in which he produced the top two plate-appearance totals in franchise history, with 765 and 763, respectively. The next-highest total is Felix Millan's 743 in 1975. Six other players have started at shortstop for the Mets this season: Alex Cora (54 games), Anderson Hernandez (15), Ramon Martinez (nine), Wilson Valdez (eight), Angel Berroa (six) and Argenis Reyes (one). Cora also is lost for the year. He underwent surgery to repair a torn ligament in his right thumb last week, and will undergo the same procedure for a torn ligament in his left thumb in a month. Without Reyes in the lineup, the Mets are getting the worst production in the league from the leadoff spot. The team's No. 1 hitters this season, including Reyes, have combined to score a National League-low 68 runs. Mets shortstops have scored only 50 runs, ahead of only Pittsburgh, and are batting .241. Leadoff man Angel Pagan went 2-for-4 with three runs in yesterday's 10-3 win over the Marlins, while shortstop Wilson Valdez had two hits and scored twice. Reyes is one of 13 Mets on the disabled list. Already this week, the Mets announced Santana will have arthroscopic surgery to remove bone chips from his left elbow and Perez will undergo a procedure to clean out his right knee. http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/2009/08/28/2009-08-28_jose_reyes.html#ixzz0PTnbbXKZ Did we expect anything else? Later

Da Besssst. (That deserved one back) Still laughing. Later

Redding had 80 pitches his last outing, and he's close to that number now. Later

Memo to Tim: Try a different pitch with the guy the next time you face him. Later

Are we sure those didn't gain something in the translation? You know, as in the formal translation. I'm not sure anyone speaks like that. If he does, I'm very impressed. Later

="metsmarathon"]when they first dug the foundation for citi field, and found those pottery shards, arrowheads, and old indian bones, and still built the damned thing, the die was cast for this season. 'Thon, I mentioned that to a friend who is married to a Native American woman. I asked if there was anything that could be done to reverse a spell. This was his email reply: ]u're on your own on this one....i suggest a sacrifice at home plate...u have enough injured bodies that burning one more at the stake wouldn't make a big diff OK, so, who do we pick? Later

How fucking could he? Doesn't he remember that his American roots were at Shea Staduim? This one really pisses me off. Turncoat! Later