MFS62

I wonder what they would call Raffy, based on his Viagra ads. Later

Edgy, speaking of prospects, I happened to look up our pal Chase Lambin in the new Baseball Almanac. I saw his fielding stats last year. He played thrid, short and second at two levels (AA and AAA) and if fielding percentage is any measure of defensive prowess, his percentages were pretty terrible everywhere. But his hitting stats were good at both levels. It could be we are looking at the emergence of a new, switch hitting, Matt Franco. http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/L/chase-lambin.shtml Later

Yancy Street Gang wrote: If Frank's nickname isn't "Chicken", it ought to be. I'll hazzard a guess to say you just might not be the first person to think of that. Later

Spoilt for choice John Arlidge of The Sunday Times learns that you should always expect the unexpected when househunting with the super-rich Going househunting with the rich and famous can be a tricky business. The American pop diva Mariah Carey �doesn�t do stairs�. Paris Hilton won�t look at property without a walk-in refrigerator, �where I can chill out�. And then there is Yuki Oshima-Wilpon. Like Miss Hilton, Yuki, 24, is a darling of New York high society. Her father, a Korean-Japanese entrepreneur, is worth $1.4 billion (�795m), according to Forbes magazine, the American business bible. She is married to Bruce Wilpon, 27, son of Fred Wilpon, the New York multimillionaire real-estate developer who also owns the New York Mets baseball team. They recently left New York for London because they want to establish themselves out of the shadow of their parents. The golden couple are trying to raise their profile and launch themselves into London society, which is why I find myself at Farnborough private airport on a cold winter�s day. Yuki wants to buy a home in the hills above Monaco and has invited The Sunday Times to join her, to see her in action and to hear her �strong views� on animal welfare. Yuki does not �fly commercial�. Her Club 328 private jet is waiting on the tarred apron, and the pilot is growing fidgety. Yuki is late. Very late. Twenty minutes before we are due to take off, her car finally arrives and she rushes into the terminal, her Dior earrings and matching watch jangling. �I really need to pee!� she shrieks, and rushes to the lavatory. Five minutes pass. Then another five. And another five. �Is she okay?� I ask her husband, who is beginning to look embarrassed. �Oh, she�s always like this,� Bruce smiles. Yuki finally emerges, freshly made-up. �I want to look right. Can you Photoshop out my love handles?� she asks The Sunday Times�s photographer. Crossing the French coast a few minutes later at 30,000ft, Yuki disappears into the lavatory again. This time she takes 20 minutes, and we are descending fast towards the C�te d�Azur by the time she emerges. Sensing that I am suspicious about why she is taking so long, she comes, er, clean. �I like to wash my hands all the time,� she says. �I like to clean the toilet and put paper on it and stuff. Cleanliness is definitely one thing. There�s not, like, a rational explanation.� Waiting for Yuki at Nice airport are Wendy MacAnthony and her team, from international property firm, MacAnthony Realty International. On her way to view the first property, Yuki explains what she looks for in a house. She is a Buddhist, whose homes must have perfect �placement� and perfect feng shui. Walls should be white inside and out, and there must be a �sense of fluidity and continuity between the spaces�. Leather and fur products are strictly off-limits. The garden must be certified pesticide-free, with organic plants. Energy must be provided by solar panels and the pool naturally cleaned with marine salts, not chlorine. When she arrives at the 230sq m (2,475sq ft) modern villa in a gated community near Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Yuki asks to see the bathroom, and once it is spotlessly clean she completes the tour of the house. She hates it. The kitchen is a �joke� and the lawn is too green. �It�s pesticides.� The place has �no soul�. Nul points. Back on the road to the next property, the blue BMW Yuki is travelling in heads down a steep hill. This, she says, breaks the rules of feng shui: �You should not live on a descending hill�. The modern glass and steel house meets her hygiene standards, but the view is too ugly � it looks out over the flat roof of a neighbouring apartment block. It�s almost time for lunch, but Wendy and her team decide to squeeze in one more viewing. �There�s a house owned by an artist that might have the character you�re looking for.� Oh, Wendy, how you must wish you hadn�t done it! Why didn�t you just take Yuki to the nearest brasserie for a vegetarian croque monsieur? Three hours later, Yuki is sobbing hysterically, Bruce is having a stand-up fight with the caretaker, and the police and an ambulance have been called. The problem starts the moment Yuki arrives at the artist�s house. She takes an instant dislike to V�ronique Deguilhem, the French estate agent representing the house, because her coat has fur trim. Yuki walks into the house and spots a black crossbreed dog lying on the kitchen floor. She kneels down to pat it � and begins to sob. �She�s so sick,� she says. Bruce agrees. �She�s got tumours,� he says, pointing to painful-looking growths on the dog�s legs. �We can�t leave until we get a vet,� sniffs Yuki. Wendy pales. It is lunchtime, when most French businesses, including vets, are closed. Time is short, and Wendy is determined to show Yuki the house she thinks she and Bruce might buy: animal-lover Brigitte Bardot�s former villa. She cannot afford to linger. �We will sort out a vet on the telephone and make sure the dog receives the treatment it needs, but we need to move on,� she says. �Poor baby. She�s in so much pain. She might pass away. I�m not leaving,� sobs Yuki, who is now lying on the floor, paralysed with grief. Wendy and her colleagues try to call the local vet. The office is closed. Bruce asks the maid for the telephone number of the homeowner and calls him. The owner tells Bruce he knows that the dog is ill but claims that she belongs to another local family. Bruce, spotting pictures on the wall featuring the dog with family members, accuses the owner of lying and tells him he is going to call the French equivalent of the RSPCA. Yuki promises to chain herself to the railings until the dog�s �torture� ends. An hour passes and Madame Deguilhem explains that she cares about the welfare of the dog but has to go to another appointment and so the party must leave. �Oh, yeah. Like she cares? She�s wearing a f***ing fur coat!� shrieks Yuki. Deguilhem storms off into the garden to smoke. �This woman is completely mad,� she says. �This is a farce.� After half an hour, Bruce finally manages to persuade Yuki to call off her canine intervention � by promising that they will return to the house with a vet later. They retreat to the back of the BMW, telephoning the local town hall, the gendarmerie, the vet and an animal ambulance service. Two hours later, they are back at the house with a vet. He examines the dog before placing her in the ambulance. Wendy frowns. �I�m not comfortable with taking the dog without the owner�s permission.� Yuki snaps: �I spoke to the police and they say it�s okay.� They are still arguing when a Peugeot tears down the driveway and parks behind the ambulance, blocking its exit. A man and two women leap out. �Where is this mad Japanese woman?� they cry. The man, who is the caretaker, spots Yuki, marches over to her and calls her �a hysterical imbecile�. Bruce calls him �a dickhead�. Wendy�s assistant intervenes to stop them coming to blows. The caretaker persuades the vet to take the dog back in to the house as Yuki shrieks: �I�ll have you arrested for animal abuse.� �I�ll have you arrested for dognapping,� he replies. Fearing that the police will be the next to arrive, Wendy decides it is time to cut and run. She arranges for the private jet to come early to pick up Bruce and Yuki and coaxes the pair into the BMW. �We just need to get you guys to the airport and be done with the day � as soon as possible!� But the drama is not over. As the car is about to leave, the vet blocks its path. �Who is going to pay me?� he shouts. Bruce thrusts a �100 note out of the window, and the BMW speeds out of the drive. Yuki and Bruce have not bought a home, nor have they seen anything they remotely like. The poor dog is back where she was at the start of the day. What was meant to be an MTV Cribs day has turned into Pet Rescue. And the whole story is going to appear in The Sunday Times. �I could get fired for this,� Wendy sighs as the car pulls up at Nice airport. �This is the last PR trip I ever want to go on.� MacAnthony Realty International, 0808 178 5191, www.macanthonyrealty.com ******************************************************************* If she's that fanbatical about the cleanliness of bathroons, no wonder she wants to move as far away from Shea as possible. Later

Who "owns" the statistics? http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/sfl-basestats16jan16,0,7384944.story?coll=sfla-sports-front Implications for strat? Later

Bret, are you sure you're not really Tim McCarver? That sounds like something he would think of. He likes to question "traditional" defensive positioning. He has droned on for long stretches of air time about how to properly guard the line. Later

vtmet wrote: by the way...that field is the old Cosmiskey Park, right? Looks like Wrigley Field to me. The old Comiskey's outfield stands were uniformly deep, and did not taper off in thickness (number of rows of seats) as you got toward the foul lines like the bleachers in Wrigley. Later

I think pitcher Brent Gaff falls into the same category as Ron Gardenhire - I think he was born in Germany of US military parents. He was nicknamed "Willy" in reference to his German upbringing. Later

What made him especially hateful was the fact that in games when the Mets would hit him, his team would score enough to take him off the hook for the loss (and sometimes give him the win). Plus, he always seemed to have a smirk on his face that I wanted to wipe off with a sledgehammer. And Kiner loves him. I think he's the one who named him the Polish Prince. And, after Mike retired, when Ralph was at the mike on tv games, he would always have the cameras show Krukow in the other announcing booth. Drove me nuts. Why pay tribute to the enemy? Later

Are pitchers included? Its the weekend and my shitty browser doesn't let me drill down on most sites below the main screen. Can someone please do a Met vs rest for Mike Krukow? Thanks in advance. Later

Elster88 wrote: I doubt Dog would be competent too, though. I think Mike would be okay. I think the exact opposite. Massive Mike has never done play-by-play to the best of my knowledge. He started out as a back room research geek , wth a specialty in college sports. They started interviewing him as a regular on tv, based on one year when he had a good prediction record for upcoming games, and he got his radio gig from there. I don't think he ever paid his dues as a p-b-p guy. By contrast, the Cretinous Canine has done a lot of play by play in at least basketball and football since his days in college. If you can get past his voice, I'd be he could do a pretty good job. Later

Bret Sabermetric wrote: ="metirish"]F&*k them both, they both HATE the Mets, especially Francesa. This is an interesting larger point: who else do you think hates the Mets? I'll take Irish's response here to be one vote for Mike and one for Dog, but surely there are others on your own personal list of known "Met haters." (And I didn't call you "Shirley," I called everyone "Shirley.") Based on their penchant for biting sarcasm and history of (at least at times) outright Met-bashing, this would be like inviting Osama Bin Laden to a Bar Mitzvah. Later

Edgy DC wrote: It's hard to imagine an answer that doesn't invove at least some specualtion. I know, But I'm a devious bastard and wondered if that loophole existed. Later

Can Mike Piazza announce his "retirement", then the Mets sign him as a coach for, say $500K? It would be an incentive laden contract that says if activated, he would get an additional $X million. Is this allowed? I know they can't resign him as a player until May. But as a coach? Real answers, please - no speculation. Later

IIRC, Paul Horning holds (held?) the all time NCAA record for having beat seven paternity suits while at Notre Dame. Later

Bret, I'd guess there would be more than one, from the stories we occasionally hear or read. In his book Wilt Chamberlain boasted that he had over 10,000 sexual encounters. Whew! Just reading that makes me tired. And then there was Magic Johnson. Seems like he was trying to proove that name was correct. Later

Hopefully, he will be another Fred Norman, who took a while to find control, then went on to have a pretty long and decent major league career. http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/N/fred-norman.shtml Or he could just be another Oscar Henriquez or Jim Mann. Later

seawolf17 wrote: My first thought on Bret's comment is ex-wives, but I guess they should know about all of those. But they might not have known about children fathered while on road trips. Later

Birthdays? Grey hairs? Assists? Later

Kevin Millar to the O's: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2289745 You knew they were going to have to do something to keep Tejada happy enough to want to stay. Later

cooby wrote: Guys I never heard of Oscar Charleston (16) Martin Dihigo (68) The were Negro League players. Later

Tem writers wrote in the name of Pete Rose on their ballot. Question: Is it better not to have his name on the ballot, so nobody can (legally?) vote for him? or Should he be placed on the ballot, giving writers the opportunity to NOT vote for him, forever putting his try for the Hall to rest? Laten

Willets Point wrote: Theo's family history led to this classic post by Frayed Knot. Yep, that was a classic. And thanks for the info everyone. Later

Tonight on M&MD they were discussing baseball with Joel Sherman. The topic of when Theo Epstein might resume his GM duties with the Red Sox. Mike said someting like "well, he doesn't need the money. He comes from money, his grandfather wrote "Casablanca". Sure enough, the credits for the movie list three writers. Two of them are: Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein. Anybody know if they are related to Theo and which of them might be Theo's granddad? As for the way Mike phrased his comment, I have no comment. Later

Yep, Thigpen batted cleanup on that team. He was your typical "best arm on the squad" and an all-around athlete, playing in the field when he wasn't pitching. He was converted to pitching full time when he became a pro. If he had played in the NL and allowed to bat, who knows how good he would have been? Or if they would have converted him back to a position player. Later