MFS62

That Pendleton home run is one of my worst memories. Later

JD, maybe this is more of what you wanted to see. Later ] Mets can't wait to rule Mike Lupica Today N.Y., tomorrow the world The Yankee season finally ended yesterday, three days after Game 4 in Detroit. The Yankees are officially over and so is George Steinbrenner, who got talked into un-firing Joe Torre by a lot of people who worked much harder at preserving the status quo at Yankee Stadium than our Yankee millionaires worked against the Tigers. Yeah, the Yankees were big news for a couple of days after losing to the Tigers, and were again yesterday with Torre's press conference. More than anything, though, they felt like yesterday's news. Suddenly they are only a big story in October when they can't get out of the first round again. Then they are another kind of story, two years running, because nobody knows if the manager is coming back. Old news, old story. The Mets are a much better story. The Mets are today. They are today, and tonight's game against the Cardinals at Shea Stadium, and this weekend and next week and maybe the World Series after that. Yankee fans ought to know better than anybody. The team that matters the most is the one still playing. On the field, the last Yankee dynasty ended six years ago, when they beat the Mets in a Subway Series. Now a different kind of dynasty ends, because the Yankees are gone and the Mets are still here. That Yankee dynasty was one where they felt like the only game in town. It really has been ending all season. Now the Yankees are gone and the Mets are still standing. And that is fitting, because even though both New York teams ended up with 97 wins this season, the Mets were really the better team. As usual, we heard at the end of the regular season that Joe Torre had done the best managing job of his life, because we seem to hear that every year. Willie Randolph, who was never considered worthy of being Torre's successor at Yankee Stadium, did a better job with the Mets in the regular season and did a better job in the first round of the playoffs. "I've been dreaming about this, personally, for a long time," Randolph said yesterday. Randolph's team isn't going anywhere, not for a long time. More than ever, Steinbrenner looks like some kind of baseball King Lear, not trying to divide up the Yankee kingdom, just giving it away to his son-in-law, Steve Swindal, and Brian Cashman, and even Torre himself. At the very same time, the Mets have the chance to become the same princes of the city they were 20 years ago. The Yankees give us a lot of big talk about next year. The Mets are still this year. And, the next few years in baseball, whether they win the World Series or not. The Mets are the two kids on the left side of the infield, David Wright and Jose Reyes. They are Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado and a Brooklyn-born catcher, all National League, named Lo Duca. They are Tom Glavine painting the corners and Billy Wagner trying to throw the ball 100 miles per hour out of the bullpen. Now they are no lock to beat the Cardinals even after the way St. Louis stumbled down the stretch. So did the Tigers. It meant nothing when it came time to beat the Yankees, who dominate baseball only in the payroll department now, and in luxury taxes. The Yankees dominated at the end of the '90s and right through the 2000 World Series, you bet. They started to break the bank and eventually break attendance records. And even when the Mets made it a Subway Series, the Yankees still owned New York. And as they did, people acted as if it had always been this way and would always be this way, acted as if the 1980s had never happened. But the '80s surely did happen. And in those days, it was the Yankees who were the Other Team in town. The Mets outdrew the Yankees, out-performed them, out-headlined them. "We were like rock stars," Keith Hernandez says. Then he smiles and says, "In just about all ways." You had to be there. Maybe in the next two weeks this Mets team will even do what Hernandez's Mets team did 20 years ago this October, which means bring the whole city to a stop with a single ballgame. Stop traffic, stop a New York rush hour. Stop everything. Because that is exactly what the '86 Mets did the day and night of Game 6 of the National League Championship Series against the Astros. It was three games to two for the Mets, but the Astros were winning Game6 in the ninth and Bob Knepper was one-hitting them and Mike Scott, unhittable that year, was waiting to pitch Game 7 the next night. Only then Lenny Dykstra tripled up the gap in the top of the ninth and the Mets came back to tie the Astros, 3-3, and a game that began in the afternoon looked like it might go all night. It was sometime in extra innings, maybe after the top of the 12th, when I passed Tim McCarver in the Astrodome press box, both of us running for coffee. And McCarver, who didn't so much broadcast that '86 season as narrate it, said, "Can you imagine what it must be like in New York right now?" We found out later. This was before instant-everything on the Internet, and cell phones that gave you pitch-by-pitch and Palm Pilots and all the rest of it. Commuters were afraid to go home that October day 20 years ago, afraid to leave Grand Central or Penn Station, afraid the game might end while they were on their way home and they wouldn't see it. The pitch-by-pitch that day was passed from taxicab to taxicab on Seventh Ave. People stood in crowds, we found out when we got back from Houston, in front of appliance stores with TV sets showing the game in the front window. A baseball happy hour in New York. That was the kind of team the old Mets were. A team that could stop the biggest city in the world dead in its tracks, all the way to old Jesse Orosco getting the last out in the bottom of the 16th the way he would get it later against the Red Sox in the World Series. Now here come the Mets again, with the Yankees out of the way, with the stage to themselves. They are today's news, and tomorrow's. The Yankees are gone and they are back. First pitch tonight a little after eight. Next pitch for the Yankees next April.

I was at a client site yesterday. One of the execs is a BIG yankee fan. He knows I am a Mets fan. When he saw me walking toward him, I could see the look of anticipation on his face (over what I might say to razz him). I just said "hello" and kept on walking, leaving him to wait for the other shoe to drop. Later

Johnny Dickshot wrote: Someone get me the dope on that watch DW is wearing. Almost as interesting is who has been doing David's eyebrows. Later

Still recovering from that picture. Yes, welcome, Bunt. Good job. Welcome abordick. (That's not an insult, BTW. It is in honor of former met Mike Bordick.) Later

metsmarathon wrote: but for 6 years, he's failed in the postseason, and therefore he's failed in his primary task as manager of hte yankees. why do the same yankee fans who ruthlessly skewer all other comers skate over this inconvenient truth? Maybe they can't face the real issue. So they have to focus on something else as the reason for their failure. (Jeter, A-Rod, karma, whatever) Mr. Sulu, raise the deflector shields! Scotty, we need more power! Later

Farmer Ted wrote: Why would we want the third best SS in New York playing second base for the Mets? Wassamatta' you? Don't you remember Hernandez' highlight reel catch? Jeter might be the fourth best shortstop in New York. LOL! Later

Oh ye of little faith. me too Later

I dunno. Anderson Hernandez and Jose Valentin can switch hit. That's an edge they have over Jeter. Later

I'm going to guess that wasn't the first, or will it be the last, column we'll see with the same theme. Later

]The team, the time By Josh Peter, Yahoo! SportsOctober 7, 2006 LOS ANGELES � Ladies and gentlemen, introducing your 2006 world champions, the New York Mets. Fit them for the rings. Order the confetti. Schedule the ticker-tape parade. What about the National League Championship Series and the World Series, you ask? Mere formalities. On Saturday night, the Mets not only completed a three-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Division Series but also showed why they�re on their way to winning their first world championship since 1986. So much for that Subway Series. The New York Yankees collapsed. And the Minnesota Twins crumpled. And now the Mets can motor on. Fans of the Oakland A�s, Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Cardinals and San Diego Padres, go ahead and fire away with the vicious emails. I�m just trying to save you the pain and anguish that will come with thinking your teams have a chance to derail the Mets. Their lineup might not be a Murderer�s Row, but it�s capable of manslaughter. Carlos Delgado, Paul Lo Duca, David Wright and Carlos Beltran � watch them pound out hits and soon enough you�ll forget about the team�s suspect starting pitching. The Mets were everybody�s darling when they were running away with the National League East. But just before the playoffs, when Pedro Martinez and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez went down with injuries, and the panic began. Forget about the World Series, naysayers said, the Mets are going to have trouble getting past the streaking Dodgers. But more than exposing anything about the Mets, the loss of Martinez and El Duque revealed something. This team has heart, and it was on display again Saturday night. Oh, sure. New York�s 9-5 victory over the Dodgers was no Picasso. At times it looked downright ugly. Chris Berman in drag ugly. But world champs win ugly. They win pretty. They win in every way imaginable. What they do is win, and in a three-game sweep the Mets showed why they�re not about to stop. Game 1. Delgado, the team�s star first baseman, makes his postseason debut. It�s the kind of pressure that has rattled even the most skilled players, including Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds. But Delgado pounds out four hits, including a home run, and leads the Mets to a 6-5 victory. Oh, and that's with rookie pitcher John Maine starting on the mound. Game 2. With Martinez and El Duque on the shelf, the Mets still need an ace. They look no further than Tom Glavine, who pitches six innings of shutout ball in a 4-1 victory. But it was Game 3 that told us all we need to know about the Mets. They were facing Greg Maddux, the future Hall of Farmer who in six starts this season at Dodger Stadium had a 1.76 ERA. He entered the game with a lifetime record of 35-18 against the Mets. And contemplating retirement at age 40, Maddux looked like a man determined to burnish his Cooperstown credentials with a playoff gem. "Greg's the kind of guy you�ve got to get to early," said catcher Lo Duca. And that's exactly what New York did. The Mets ambushed Maddux for three runs in the top of the first, stringing together five consecutive hits and showing the discipline needed to beat the four-time Cy Young Award winner. Noted for his efficiency, Maddux needed 23 pitches and two sterling defensive plays to get out of the inning. He made it only four innings � his second shortest outing of the year � before being lifted for a pinch hitter with the Dodgers down 4-0. Then came the big Dodgers rally. With Tommy Lasorda pumping his fists. With a sellout crowd of 56,293 stomping its feet. With James Loney delivering a two-run single in the fourth, with Jeff Kent belting a two-run homer in the fifth, with the Dodgers taking a 5-4 lead in that same inning on a bases-loaded walk. "When we got ahead of them, it looked like we had a chance." Lasorda said. Fat chance. It would�ve been easy for a visiting team to succumb to the momentum, get sucked up in the vortex of a sellout crowd, ease up and regroup for Game 4 Sunday and, if necessary, close out the series with Game 5 in New York. Not these Mets. "Put them away," Mets manager Willie Randolph said. "No mercy. You know all the clich�s. But we really believe it." We do, too. The Mets scored three runs in the sixth and began to pound the Dodgers' bullpen into submission and its sellout crowd into silence. After the Dodgers had crept out of their coffin, the Mets bullpen shoved them back in and nailed it shut. "I think it�s just a microcosm of our year," Wright, the Mets' third baseman, said of the victory. "We fell behind in the middle of the game, and to be able to claw back and to be able to fight the way that we did, it just shows the heart and the character of this team. We�ve been doing it all year. It doesn�t matter how many we�re down. It doesn�t matter what�s the situation in the game. We�re confident that we�re going to win." With Guillermo Mota and Aaron Heilman setting up closer Billy Wagner like picadors and banderillos set up a matador, it�s no wonder the Mets are now 75-4 when leading after six innings. The key for the Mets is getting to the seventh inning, and Saturday they did it with the likes of journeyman starter Steve Trachsel and Darren Oliver, Chad Bradford and Pedro Feliciano. Who are they? Beats me, but by the time Mota took over in the sixth it was almost easy to forget that neither Martinez nor El Duque was available to pitch. "There�s a lot of guys that want to prove something," said Lo Duca. "We were the second best pitching team in the National League, and they keep hearing about [the injured pitchers]. I think the guys on the pitching staff take it personally, and they�ve gone out all year and showed they can do it." After the game, Randolph said he was starting to feel something � and it had nothing to do with the champagne spraying overhead. "All year long, we�ve been pushing and battling and preaching to these kids what it takes to play winning baseball," the manager said. "We�re starting to feel it right now." I�m starting to feel something, too. So here�s my prediction: The St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers. Those are the next two victims as the Mets march and mug their way toward baseball�s crown. Later

metirish wrote: Strawberry will throw out the first pitch tomorrow night.... I like that. Later

Centerfield wrote: CPF EXCLUSIVE: Torre Situation Could Go Either Way Thanks, CF. We'll mark that one down as a definite maybe. Later

I heard on the radio this morning that one NY writer says that Torre will be staying on as manager. I tuned in late. Didn't hear the name of the writer or the paper. Anyone see the article? Later

As heard on this morning's Imus radio program: "The Tigers mauled the Yankees so bad that the guy from Sigfried and Roy could only say Damn". Later

Didn't take it as one, Irish. No blood, no foul. Later

metirish wrote: I swear I have read that same article several times the last few months..... I thought if we had it on the CPF, this would have been the thread for it. I didn't look anywhere else, but if its here, it might be in the "So You Want To Be a Sportswriter" thread. Later

]Mets: Dykstra is all business these days Tuesday, October 10, 2006 BY KEVIN MANAHAN Star-Ledger Staff SIMI VALLEY, Calif. -- The cell phone rings. "Dude," Lenny Dykstra says. "Do I know you?" We had arrived unnanounced at the Lenny Dykstra Car Wash looking for a rental car rinse and an interview with the former Mets postseason hero. A manager says Dykstra will call. When he does, he laughs. "You're Pearl Harboring me?' he says. "Dude, I like that. It shows guts. Come up to my office. Just two rules, man: No questions about steroids or my partying days." When we enter the office, we realize Dykstra, now 43, has been watching us the whole time. From his paneled office, with the lights off and the wooden blinds opened only in slits, he watches it all, either from the large window that overlooks the final wipe-down area or on the television next to his desk. That screen is divided into 16 panels -- 16 closed-circuit eyes on this location, his other car washes and his home. "In the past, people have tried to take advantage of me," he says. "Some have stolen from me. I've had business partners and family members stealing. I mean, what do you think, I won't find out? Do they think I'm stupid?" Actually, they probably did. And they weren't alone. Bring that 1986 picture of Dykstra into focus: He is a cocky, trash-talking kid playing center field for the Mets. He has a wad of tobacco bigger than a catcher's mitt in his cheek. He is the symbol of the Mets in the 1980s: a guy with a big mouth and the game to back it up. Then, everyone around him would have said he wasn't the tightest stitched baseball in the ump's pocket. But from a clubhouse that included Ivy League-educated pitcher Ron Darling, soft-spoken and reflective left-hander Bob Ojeda, cunning first baseman Keith Hernandez and camera-loving catcher Gary Carter, Nails has emerged as wealthy and savvy as any of them. Now the man they called Nails is an entrepreneur, worth millions more than when he was the sixth-highest-paid player in the game. He owns a string of car washes. He is dabbling in corporate real estate. He says he has devised a system of option-playing to outsmart the stock market. "Lenny met my sister when he was playing Double-A ball in Jackson, Miss.," brother-in-law Keith Peel says. "We thought what everybody thought. Don't get me wrong: We loved Lenny. But when he said he was going to play in the majors, we said, 'Sure, sure.' He was a little runt." Peel then holds his hand waist high, pauses, and moves it above his head. "When it comes to smarts, everybody thought he was down here," Peel says. "But he was really way up here." 'HUMAN XANAX' The car-wash campus is immaculate, and it includes a cul de sac of squeaky clean buildings: a handful of bays form Dykstra's quick-lube business, a large garage houses a detailing operation, another is used for the installation of car toys, like DVD players and navigational systems. The buildings are being remodeled, and Dykstra is sparing no expense. "A money pit," he joked. He is washing 1,000 cars a day on the weekend. And every few minutes the land in Simi Valley climbs in value. Cha-ching. Cha-ching. As a free agent, Dykstra took the Phillies' $27 million and invested wisely. Between the oil change bays and the detailing business is a lounge, with flat screen TVs. One was tuned into Bloomberg, the other a football game. Dykstra soon will provide his customers with wireless Internet and Dell laptops, in case they want to bang out a few e-mails while they wait. The laptops haven't arrived yet, and it's killing him, because he wants to show his visitors the new toys. So, he launched the Internet on the billing computer, called up the Dell Web site and pointed to the model he ordered: the XPS M1710, which runs about $2,500 a pop. "They're monsters, dude," he said. But they're just part of the empire. In the lobby of the car wash, there is a trophy case with sports memorabilia, including photos and some of his jerseys and a miniature world championship trophy from the 1986 Mets. Fish swim in a large aquarium. You can buy anything from air fresheners to floor mats to greeting cards and knick-knacks, ice cream bars and soda. The place is spotless. Outside, customers sit on a beautiful stone patio. Music is piped in. There is a rock formation with a waterfall. Workers have just installed granite floors in the detailing center. Dykstra likes them, but doesn't like that the job is still unfinished. He gripes about that. He points at a small patch of brown grass at the base of a palm tree and orders it restored. Everywhere he goes, he spots something he doesn't like and assigns an employee to fix it. Wipe this, Polish that. Pick that up. When he thinks the wipe-down guys are slacking, the guy who always hustled calls Ricardo on the cell phone. "They're human Xanax," he barks. "Get them hustling. They're human sleeping pills. Look at 'em all, dude. They're all dreary. It's misery. Nothing is happening. No one is moving. We're all falling asleep watching them." DOING HAPPY STUFF It's easy to see why people have underestimated him. Even now, years later, the words still crawl from his mouth. Check that. They don't crawl. They awaken, sit on the edge of his tongue, stretch and yawn and then exit his mouth. Jose Reyes could go first to third on one Dykstra syllable. But if the words only trickle out, the ideas come fast and furious. "You have to be ready for anything with Lenny," Peel says. One day not so long ago, Dykstra decided he wanted out of the car repair business. So he canned the mechanics and turned the bays into his oil change business. Leftover space went toward the installation of stereos and DVD players. There was too much conflict in auto repairs. "When they would get hit with a big bill, they acted like they had just lost their life savings in Vegas," Dykstra said. Said Peel: "Lenny wants to do happy stuff. Even when the mechanic is totally honest, people still feel like they're getting ripped off. Lenny couldn't stand that." Meanwhile, Dykstra was talking to oil change customers. He tells everyone who will listen that Castrol's synthetic oil is the best they can buy. "It doesn't come out of the ground, man," he says. "It's made in a lab, by scientists, the smartest people on earth. Which would you rather put in your car -- something we pulled from the earth or something specifically designed for you car?" By the time he's finished, they think he's a genius. He is launching other ideas. Some are big, like The Players Club, a financial vehicle to protect athletes with virtually risk-free investment income when they retire. Some are small, like his landscaping business that employs the overflow of Hispanics that come to the car wash looking for jobs. "Almost every day he comes in here with something new," Peel said. 'NAILS ON NUMBERS There are a couple of things that still get Dykstra's juices flowing. One is coffee, which he drinks continuously. Into each cup, he pours a mountain of powdered creamer. He scoffs at caffeine-free drinks. The other is the stock market. For a while, he wrote "Nails on Numbers," a column on TheStreet.com. Imagine that: Lenny Dykstra, stock wiz. Web site owner Jim Cramer said Dykstra "plays the market with the same enthusiasm he played baseball, which is a total blast to watch. I think the guy comes to play everyday." These days, Dykstra is trading only for himself. He says he is making big money by trading options on ignored companies with sound financials. Within minutes, he is talking about price-to-earnings ratios, contracts, debt and debt-to-equity ratios, and again we find ourselves thinking, "This is Lenny Dykstra?" He calls up his personal finance page on Yahoo! and invites us to look at the scoreboard. There are far more winners than losers. He pulls out spreadsheets on the car washes. Dykstra likes to keep score, and, just like in baseball, he can do that in business and the stock market. At times like this, he doesn't sound like Lenny. But in minutes he is Nails again, describing parties thrown by Wayne Gretzky, his neighbor, or telling the story of how he needed a better mortgage, so he walked down the street and banged on the door of Countrywide Mortgage COO Angelo Mozilo. "He answered the door and I said, 'Dude, I'm in a bad deal.' I didn't know the guy," Dykstra said. "But he took care of me. He locked me in at 5.5, dude. He's cool. He gets all the free car washes he wants." Like everything else, Dykstra keeps an eye on the Mets. Two years ago, in spring training, he spent time teaching Reyes how to be a leadoff hitter. When he talks baseball, people are sure he knows what he's talking about. "I was a punk when I played," Dykstra said. "Things change. People underestimated me. But that's how I set up pitchers, man. They thought they could outsmart me, too." He recalls John Smoltz's near no-hitter, which Dykstra, then with the Phillies, broke up with a one-out double in the ninth inning. "He tried to sneak the cheese (fastball) by me," Dykstra said. "I knew he would try that. So, I'm at second and I'm down there retying my shoelace and I'm laughing to myself and thinking, 'Outsmarted 'em again.'" Later

I think you're right. Too many Police questions to answer; too many forms to fill out. Guess they didn't want to be late for the dance contest. Later

So, Edgy, How did you comfort Ms. S? Later

]While the Cardinals may have missed Rolen, Padres manager Bruce Bochy may have made out the weakest lineup in postseason history for Game 4 Then I guess he missed all those Twins playoff game lineups that had Jason Tyner (no career home runs) as the DH (as in "designated hitter"). Later

Never thought I'd see Don Hahn's name on any all-time list. Good job, Yancy. Later

ScarletKnight41 wrote: The Coliseum is one of the very few current Major League parks that is crappier than Shea. The A's are in desperate need of a new stadium. When I was listening to one of their games on radio, I heard the announcer say it was a "full house" in Oakland. Later, he said the attendance was (IIRC) 35,000+. As I recalled, they play football in the Oakland Alameda County Stadium, so attendance is at least 55,000. Were the other 20,000 people disguised as empty seats? I sent an email to an A's fan friend and he told me that they rope off the upper deck for baseball games and don't sell tickets to those seats. Later

Watch out for Preston Wilson and So Taguchi, who have tormented the Mets at times in the past. Later

Kudos to the Daily News. We might have expected the picture of A-Rod on the front page would have been bigger than the picture of the Met player. Or there would have been a picture of Torre, with no mention of the Mets. But they didn't. So watch the door. The bandwagon jumpers wil be arriving shortly. Later