MFS62

Yancy, why do you have this "thing" against blue caps? Just curious. Later

Willets Point wrote: [ My anaconda don't want none Unless you've got buns, hun You can do side bends or sit-ups, But please don't lose that butt A Sir MIX-A-LOT reference. Very good. Later

Val, that looks like a Bar Mitzvah picture, with the kid wearing his favorite gift. I'm not sure if a non-full-uni shot is UMDB-worthy. I'll let the "experts" judge that. Later

When I think of the wave, I still think about the two man wave in Major League. Later

Willets Point wrote: Someone with photoshop skillz needs to add Melissa Lima into these pics. She was in the pictures you'll have to pay to see. Later

="Edgy DC"]I was on my way to a meeting, and I conflated two Mets with an IE and an L. It sure was a smelly conflation. Is that another way to say mis-typed? Later

metirish wrote: Could the Mets say that Trax is injured and replace him with Williams? I just had a Charley Finley flashback. Later

Texans must carry around a lot of loose change.Later

I know. But I felt his comment about Delgado was quite complimentary.Later

From Filip Bondy in today's NY Daily News. BTW- the Bondy bio next to the article on the website explains that the spelling of his first name is from his Czech heritage, not an affectation, as I had thought. The bio also says Bondy has covered special events for the paper as well as basketball and hockey. I know him best from his writing about the Knicks, but I really wouldn't call that basketball.Nothing really special about the article, other than the phrases I've highlighted. They caught my eye.]Deck shuffles in Mets' favor Willie and Co. play Cards right Carlos Delgado has had a monster postseason so far. ST. LOUIS - Carlos Delgado took a well-timed swat at a 2-0 pitch out over the plate in the fifth inning, went deep the opposite way, and suddenly you could feel the whole series change again, like the weather here in eastern Missouri.The homer was a three-run job off Brad Thompson, the wrong righthanded reliever courtesy of the genius, Tony La Russa. It was the start of a 12-5 romp for the Mets in Game 4 and a 2-2 tie in the series. The meteorological shift, meanwhile, was a looming low-pressure front, expected to bring enough precipitation this evening to postpone Game 5, to give Tom Glavine his extra day of rest, after all.Baseball is a game of inches. One or two of those inches figure to fall today from the sky, perhaps changing the whole pitching equation, giving the Mets a big break. And there you have it, another playoff series spun on its axis, turned on its head.Ronnie Belliard bungles the grounder by Paul Lo Duca to start the fifth. Carlos Beltran singles. Delgado smashes his third homer of the NLCS. A blooper and a blast. A different ballgame, once more.It is a new, soggy day in St. Louis, because the Mets squeeze 5-2/3 innings of five-run, cliffhanger pitching out of Oliver Perez and because the bats wake up at last from their dangerous slumber. The Mets slam four homers at Busch Stadium, unloose all those pent-up line drives and towering flies."You create your own momentum," Delgado said afterward. "I played 12-1/2 years and never sniffed the playoffs. It's a blast."That first blast wasn't enough for Delgado, who knocked in two more runs in the sixth with a ground-rule double against another woeful St. Louis reliever, Josh Hancock. That made it five RBI in two innings for the guy, and nine RBI for the series - the most ever for a Met in the NLCS. Delgado is becoming Reggie Jackson before our eyes, only without all the theater.The pitching wasn't quite as amazin', but you knew that would be the case. It figured that neither starter was going to last too long in Game 4, that this would be a race to score more runs early. "Let's get one more than them," Delgado said, explaining the strategy.The Mets got seven more. Perez was much more effective and direct than Anthony Reyes. By the second inning, Reyes had thrown 52 pitches and already was living on borrowed time. He looked scared stiff and wouldn't throw strikes. Then in the third, he gave up homers to Carlos Beltran and David Wright.That meant La Russa eventually would need five innings from the St. Louis bullpen, which finally played down to its reputation.Perez fared a bit better. He settled down after giving up five hits over the first three innings and basically getting away with murder, with just two runs. He didn't tire until the sixth, when the Mets already held an eight-run lead.For a couple of days, it didn't look as if the Mets had this reversal of fortune left inside them. They wore a stale and bewildered look, and the rotation was not the material of smiley-face columns. And really, truly, they had not been tested this way before, not during a comfortable season cushioned by that double-digit lead.But the Mets kept insisting they'd been in tougher spots than this one last night, that they'd battled their way back all season, and maybe we should have listened. They pulled another rabbit from the curlicue cap, and then Willie Randolph insisted his team didn't need a day off tonight, that Glavine would be fine either way, with John Maine on call for Game 6."We'd prefer to just play," Randolph said. "Tommy is ready to go. He's champing at the bit and we're all ready to play, so I'm hoping we get a game (tonight)."Surely, Willie and his guys won't be too sad if Game 5 is tomorrow night instead, if the predictions are correct. But the forecasters haven't been very accurate about this NLCS, which has zigged and zagged all over the place. The Mets are overachievers, underachievers, overachievers again. The very unpredictability of their run is what makes this season so crazy, fresh and enjoyable."When you do something unexpectedly, there's a different sense of satisfaction and pride and fun that's associated with that," Glavine said last night. He was talking about the Tigers this season and the Braves back in 1991, but he might have been speaking about these Mets, too.The Mets rediscovered their way and their pluck in Game 4.Glavine and Maine, two days of rain. Sounds like a plan. Later

Possible rainfall amounts of 1-2 inches in St. Looie tonight. I wonder how long they'll wait to make a decision to postpone the game? Later

Beltran: 2.75 Delgado: 2.75 Wright 1 Valentin: .5 Perez: 1.5 Bradford: .5 Feliciano: .5 Mota: .5 Later

Thank you for starting them,Scarlet. I took away part of a point from LoDuca for the 9-6 game. In the first inning and Reyes on second, why did he bunt on the first pitch? Why not try to hit to right instead? A grounder to the right side would have moved Reyes to third (as did the bunt) but could also have resulted in a base hit. My opinion. My vote. Later

Delgado 3 Reyes 3 Lo Duca .5 Bradford 1 Heilman 1 RHernandez .25 Later

DOliver 3.5 Reyes .25 Later

metirish wrote: El Duque threw 50 pitches in a side session yesterday, from the stretch though so he really didn't test the calf fully,still he reported no pain. Then they're easy to compare. Traschell threw a lot of pitches from the stretch, too. Later

Edgy DC wrote: Will the Mets new stadium use building materials as handsome as those battleship-gray prefab corrugated walls behind KC and 'Shot? I think not. They showed a two minute preview film of the new stadium between innings at Shea on Friday night. From what we saw, I'd think not too. Later

That's OK, Steve. Anyone interested in seeing my picture can check it out at the nearest post office. B'sides, if you had said "Let me whip this out" we would have remembered the line from Blazing Saddles and run like Hell. Later

="Edgy DC"] Randolph was named co-captain of the Yanks one season and thrown over for Steve Sax the next. He may be cynical about the title. Is that thrown over for Steve Sax or overthrown by Steve Sax? Didn't Sax suffer from Knobloch disease? Later

Some (big) butts are nice to look at. White's isn't one of them. LOL! Later

Yancy Street Gang wrote: That Rick White would be very good, by the way, if it were larger. How big do you want his butt to look? Later

Is it related to the "personal matters" that he left the team to attend to at season's end? I never saw those matters defined. Is it marriage related? No wonder they guy's a wreck. Later

They're a better team with Anderson Hernandez as the reserve second baseman and Cris Woodward as the reserve outfielder than they would have been with Woodward as the reserve second baseman and Milledge as the reserve outfielder. Later

Are there any statistics that show whether team plays better when wearing black or when naked? And are those statistics recent? I cannot accept a feeling that isn't based on the latest statistics. None of that "they won when they played naked in 2004" stuff. That was a different wind they faced in those games. Later

From where I was sitting, the James Joyce with one eye patch at least had one better eye than the similarly named umpire. Thanks, WP. Later