batmagadanleadoff

Then it should read "Perfect Three" for outs or batters faced. Or "Perfect Inning". 10 is for pitches.

I wanna vote for Perfect 10 but I'm struggling with it a little bit. I mean, perfect is nine pitches, not 10. Unless some batter fouled one off with two strikes. Then I could see "Perfect". Was that the case, or did deGrom throw a ball? I gotta think on this one a little bit more.

I'm like most other one-time Mets in this and the original (and better) archived Butterball thread. I never played for the team I'm practicing for in the picture below, sticking around just long enough for The Man From Topps to capture the historic moment. I barely played for the Mets if you wanna hear about it and all that David Copperfield kind of crap. So who am I? And don't tell me that I was a young Martin Sheen look-a-like. [fimg=355:19n2q1cf]https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5644/23068046315_4e9bfaa3ce_o.jpg[/fimg:19n2q1cf]

Edgy MD wrote: They're using "Alderson" as a euphemism for "Ass". Very lame. See I read it as a very lame attempt to suggest Sandy is high and mighty, and holier than thou, and needs to be taken down a few pegs. "GET OFF YOUR ALTAR, SON." Awful, but it beats ALDERSON=ASS. I mean, how do you get there? They both have an A and an S, but Alderson has a bunch of other letters. I wonder how the people who composed the "POW! BATMAN!" pages for the News and the Post felt in the morning when they each saw their rival's back page. They each probably thought they were being so original and clever. I was wondering what it says about newspaper readership that they (both!) thought they could find deeper meaning and relevance by referencing a TV farce that was canceled 48 years prior. Some channel I never knew about until about a week ago on my cable showed some BATMAN (1966) today. I watched the episode (guest villain Mr. Freeze, the Eli Wallach version -- there were two other MF's) and saw the wackiest thing I ever saw on Batman. Even wackier than the shark repellent Batman pulls from his utility belt to fight an obviously rubber shark. I hadn't seen this show in so long that I didn't even remember this scene and so I experienced it as if I was watching it for the first time ever. Here's the scene: Commissioner Gordon dials up Batman on the hotline, while simultaneoulsy, Chief O'Hara dials Bruce Wayne on the regular phone. Both Batman and Wayne are needed in order to coordinate some crazy plan to nab Mr. Freeze. The whole episode is off the rails crazy and centers around Mr. Freeze's attempt to acquire some top-secret ice-making formula from some top scientist. Ice-making formula. Anyway, back to those phone calls. The police brass decides to have Batman and Wayne talk to each other to hash out these intricate plans. There are apparently, no multi-line phones in 1966, at least none that can connect to the Batman hotline, so the Commissioner takes the two headests, turns one upside down, and puts them next to each other so that Batman and Bruce can talk. On the other end of all of this is Adam West, having a conversation with himself, going back and forth making subtle voice changes so as to appear that Batman and Bruce are not one and the same while all the while, Commissioner Gordon is listening in. Did you know that that Batman TV show won an Emmy? It did. In the comedy category.

I'm sorry. Somedays, I just can't help myself.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I think I'm the opposite. I'm more likely to vote based on the cover's visual appeal. And I think Newsday is doing a really good job with that in many cases. If this contest was to pick the back page cover you'd most want to hang on one of your office/home/den/whatever walls, then I'd definitely place more emphasis on the photo and layout than I am.

Tylers don't count. Neither does Tyson Ross.

Recommended read on this published author's favorite baseball cards sets of all time. Card Stock Betcha never thought of baseball cards as art before, eh? By Colin Fleming As a kid, I had what I thought of as two epic walks that I could take. The less frequent one was by far the longer of the two, although it never felt as such to me when I kitted myself out with a mini-frame backpack and set off into the woods behind our house for a two mile romp, pretending I was Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone come upon the latest jungle, with a baseball bat-like piece of wood wrapped in hockey tape at the base for a grip serving as my extemporized machete. I was not the coolest kid. But it was my other epic walk, which couldn�t have been more than a fifth of a mile, that always felt like the more Lewis and Clark-worthy trip, with so much of my future happiness � for that particular day, at least � hanging in the balance of what was going to go down at the tiny mom-and-pop store whose entire business was in supplying the people of our development with soda, beer, chips, ice cream, the odd bottle of glue, and � for us kids, anyway � baseball cards. The store seemed leagues away, almost an impossible journey, save that I had made it enough times in the past to know that perseverance would get me there, with maybe a grape juice pack stuck in my pocket for refreshment just in case. The reason for my skewed sense of distance, I now realize, was because I flat out could not wait to get to that store, plunk down my thirty-five cents on the counter (and there is no one I wouldn�t hit up for thirty-five cents; great aunts were particularly susceptible, I came to learn, and you could try to curry their favor several times a day when they were visiting) in hopes of landing, say, something like an �83 Carlton Fisk Topps card, Fisk being my favorite player, and the design being a clean, well-flowing one � with just enough action in it � as I had discovered when a friend unearthed the card from one Reggie Jackson in mighty-follow-through mode. Never mind that all of us New England kids � well, discounting Connecticut kids, I suppose � were raised to hate Jackson. I was like everyone else in my neighborhood in this regard. Anyone pro-Yaz had to be anti-Reggie. In theory, anyway. But I was a little different, for I was somewhat of a baseball card aesthete. I would luxuriate in the designs of each annual set, caring, at the time, only for Topps, as they had such a storied history, and thinking little of Donruss and Fleer (nothing was tackier than Fleer, for God�s sake), whose packs were also on sale at the little mom-and-pop shop, although you had to have something wrong with you � or just wanted to be a contrarian � if that�s where your thirty-five cents went. There was no getting around it: anything but Topps, in the world of a burgeoning card buff (one who was unaware of the rich pre-Topps history of cards) was a �jip,� and there wasn�t a lot worse than that in the world of an eight-year-old. Kids would flip the cards, trade the cards, sometimes try to sell the cards, barter for recently caught pet frogs and turtles from those aforesaid Romancing the Stone woods with the cards. But I�m not sure anyone else studied the cards. I couldn�t stop studying them. I�d note their visual architecture, how each year�s new set would compel the eye to move in a different manner across the plane of an ostensibly humble cardboard slab than the previous year�s set had. I got so into all of this that I�d go to the library, storm past the perpetually assembled group of Reading Is Fundamental kids that were trying to decide what they�d like to check out, a harried librarian attempting to meet their demands, and pull out this massive tome that had a photo of every card Topps had put out since the company began releasing baseball cards in 1951. I all but slathered that book in drool. It was technically a reference book, so you couldn�t take it home, but man, I thought, what a neat idea � some adult thought baseball cards were important enough to get their very own reference book, like ancient coins got theirs, and post-Impressionist painters had theirs. I told my dad that I thought baseball cards were a form of art. Or could be. Or sometimes were. Or maybe I�d understand that they were some day. And what did he think? �Van Gogh made very small sketches about the size of a baseball card when he�d write to his brother.� Excellent, I thought. That probably counted for something. I was worried that the small size might be this uber-hurdle to qualifying as official art. So what if it was maybe just one adult ever who thought baseball cards warranted the reference book treatment. I knew, some day, that with my help � that is, in getting older � there�d at least be two of us. And you no more bartered something like a glorious 1973 Topps Johnny Bench � a pictorial distillation of a catcher�s leonine, balletic grace � for your buddy�s recently landed garter snake named Hank than you ever put a Reggie Jackson card at the top of your card pile where a Red Sox legend like Jim Rice more properly belonged. Actually, that wasn�t quite true, for me. I�d rate � and store � my cards in order of their aesthetic appeal, much as I�d later daily roam the corridors of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, arguing with myself as to what Fitz Henry Lane canvas was the most visually successful, or with what skill Motherwell could make one�s eye journey around a canvas such that you felt the simple elegance of the Monorail had been crossed with Abstract Expressionism, a largess of minimalism in a maximalist world. That�s how I liked my baseball cards. As a result, I didn�t care for a number of 1970s sets, like the disco-y �75 issue, which was still a triumph compared to the �72 set. This was problematic for me, as that was the year of Fisk�s rookie card, a card I came to acquire at a curio shop somewhere not far from Story Land on a summer vacation. I wanted to like Fisk�s rookie card � visually, that is � more than I did. But I�d just sit there with it in its pathetic plastic sleeve (a transportable frame for protection, of course) on the floor of my closet, the place of my own private museum, trying to believe the thing didn�t look like part of the set decoration from a Brady Bunch episode, but, alas, it did. But there was no shortage of classic set designs from Topps� back catalog. The �71 set, with its black enameled borders and sharp, deep-focus photography, took the palm as far as the 1970s went. The �67 set was all liquid color, almost like the cards had originated from a series of watercolors that had crystallized inside a camera�s aperture ring. The 1950s was stacked in terms of all-time great sets, and the pull back to that decade is a strong one for collectors. I remember going to MoMA when I was a teenager, and being heartened to see baseball cards on display there, with lots of samples from the 1950s, as if there was some vanguard curator whose pictorial obsessions dovetailed with my own. Granted, the cards at MoMA were a representative slice of baseball card history, with no real attempt to say, in effect, �this is art, this is not, this is better art than this,� etc. which were the terms I came to understand I was thinking in. Of course, the further I went along in thinking these matters through, the more card sets I discovered, and, with that, the epiphany that while Topps was pretty cool, in the cards-as-art game, Topps was not by any means the company you�d exclusively turn to. But in looking at the top five card set designs of all time, we can begin with the company that started a lot of artistic mediations for me back when my mates were trying to pry Hank from his latest owner. 5. 1956 Topps This was a big year in baseball card history. Topps had bought out it�s rival, Bowman. This meant, foremost for a lot of Baby Boomers, that Mickey Mantle, who had not made a Topps appearance since �53 due to contractual obligations, would be returning and doing so in a design that is a triumph of cardboard-based trompe-l�oeil. The Mick�s card is an easy highlight, �aw-shucks� American wholesomeness in the visage at the foreground, which humanizes the athletic virtuosity of the background as the Yankees� Triple Crown-winning outfielder gobbles up a would-be home run. There is a painterly finesse that runs throughout the set, with the colors having more of a soft, burnished, autumnal quality than with Topps� 1955 product. So what if Hank Aaron�s card features Willie Mays in the action shot? For me, it adds a nice, quasi-dreamy affect, like when you�re mulling over who won a batting title or the MVP in a given year and names, stats, and legends start to conflate. And never has the purity of the left-handed swing been better visually encapsulated than in the set�s Ted Williams card. Never mind that it looks like he�s just popped one up to the second baseman; any painter from Rubens on down understands the difficulty of capturing torque, and in that regard 1956 background Williams (Mini-Williams?) could be a veritable model. 4. 1953 Bowman Bowman could be rather hit or miss. In �55, they went with a TV-based design, because that�s when everyone was getting a TV and radio was being kicked out the door. I picture Ward Cleaver digging that design. The �51 and �52 sets used paintings, but it�s almost like they were done in marker, just these slabby, wettish-looking works that made you think they�d feel heavier than normal cards to hold. The �54 set was pretty good, but there was no depth of field, with players occupying 80 or 90 percent of the composition. But none of this was a problem in �53, when the art director at Bowman must have said something in essence of �screw this, we�re using deep-set photographs that will be so beautiful that we won�t even put any text on the front of the card.� This just wasn�t done, but Bowman in �53 did it. I�d call this set out as the most poetic baseball card set that�s ever come out, as if Walker Evans was behind the camera, James Agee pissed off somewhere that he wasn�t given more to write. Stan Musial�s card is the most commonly cited favorite of his fans, but I�m not sure you can beat the sheer visual audacity � and brilliant end result � of Dodger shortstop Pee Wee Reese floating in air in the dead middle of the composition of his card, as if he were both ruler of this infield diamond and occasional resident of a world beyond it. Which is perhaps what it most feels like to overleap a hard-charging base runner at second. read the rest at http://thesmartset.com/article09031301/

I agree. Newsday's look is cleaner. I'm also not a big fan of wordplay on "Citi", Like "Party Citi", etc. It's become cliche. Now on the other hand, if the Mets were to, say, introduce some canine mascot who debuted by running all over the field and pooping all over the place (not that such a thing could ever happen) and some tabloid went with "SH**TY FIELD", I'd vote for that one.

So far, I'm voting solely based on the taglines. I don't say that the photo or layout won't influence my votes, just that so far, those elements haven't.

I noticed that too. I figgered I'd let it go, though.

Clever and original.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I think I read somewhere that the Mets are open to forgiving Jenrry Mejia again. Good by me. It's a lot easier to forgive a player's transgressions when he might have electric stuff and he's neither a wife-beater nor baby abuser. If Mejia played a key role in a Mets WS title, and then got caught, would the Mets give back their trophy?

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I guess so. And maybe I should have done that. But if these articles are going to continue to be revised, there's still a chance that confusion will result. The article states that Mets officials inquired "Thursday morning" so it must be a very recent development.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: And yes, the lead paragraph changed after I initially posted the link: Joel Sherman's revised paragraph wrote: Mets officials inquired Thursday morning about the now available Andrelton Simmons and were told by their Braves counterparts it would take Jacob deGrom or Matt Harvey to land the shortstop, which instantly curtailed talks, The Post has learned. You see, I tried to be ethical and post a link instead of copying the article, and it just led to confusion. Next time I'll copy and paste instead. Two sentences is fair use, no?

Does this mean that the Braves think Noah's not as good as Jake or Matt?

It appears as if all the fun here, if any, is mostly in looking at these graffiti'ed up cards, instead of having to find the original card versions to post here. So here's a sampling of vandalized baseball cards from the creative folks over at Baseball Vandals (http://www.baseballcardvandals.com/). Thank you for playing. [fimg=333:gd6sad8u]https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5689/22966980535_286f6d18c6_o.jpg[/fimg:gd6sad8u][fimg=333:gd6sad8u]https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5792/22966980525_aab1c40ae0_o.jpg[/fimg:gd6sad8u][fimg=333:gd6sad8u]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/705/22966980515_d9cb714372_o.jpg[/fimg:gd6sad8u][fimg=333:gd6sad8u]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/717/22966980505_17df505523_o.jpg[/fimg:gd6sad8u][fimg=333:gd6sad8u]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/680/22966980495_5e18d45ed8_o.jpg[/fimg:gd6sad8u][fimg=333:gd6sad8u]https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5633/22966980455_e985d193d7_o.jpg[/fimg:gd6sad8u]

BOCA RATON, Fla. � Mets officials inquired Thursday morning about the now available Andrelton Simmons and were told by their Braves counterparts that it would take Jake deGrom or Matt Harvey to land the shortstop, which instantly curtailed talks, The Post has learned. read the rest at: http://nypost.com/2015/11/12/braves-make-andrelton-simmons-available-should-mets-get-involved/

cooby wrote: Love this so far! We'll see. The next card'll test your limits of good taste. All I can say is that those 1975 A's were one raunchy crew.

[fimg=444:13vkm3hp]https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5633/22342974114_a5ba3919e7_o.jpg[/fimg:13vkm3hp]

Aren't these fun? [fimg=555:3akdf3ia]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/725/22956334565_fdbd353512_o.jpg[/fimg:3akdf3ia]

Winner. Winner. This means we get to play another round. Here's an old new friend, courtesy of those guys that like to graffiti up their cards: [fimg=444:2dm0tt0v]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/631/22766547760_bae769179b_o.jpg[/fimg:2dm0tt0v]

I discovered this web site run by two "artists" who graffiti up baseball cards. It's crude and scatalogical junior high school humor. But clever crude and scatalogical junior high school humor. You'll see what I mean soon enough. I'll post a card from their site, all graffiti'ed up and, if you choose to play, you must find the actual ungraffiti'ed version of that card and post it here to get full credit. So for example, if I posted this card: [fimg=444]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/781/22964053341_7c4f89b03b_o.jpg[/fimg] You'd have to find this Rick Reuschel card (below) and post it here to get credit for a correct answer. OK? Ready? Here goes. I'll post the first card, or round one of this game. WARNING: Some of these cards you probably wouldn't want your nine year olds to look at. They're like an Fman joke, but in pictures. Round one: [fimg=444]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/726/22939552752_cbe05d0567_o.jpg[/fimg]

Ceetar wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: I could care less what you voted for. But having spent your whole life in this metropolitan area, I just don't get what your expectations are from a NYC tabloid covering the local laughing stock baseball team that just got no-hitted by a no-name no-fanfare rookie. You realize this is a voting thread right? and I'm explaining why I voted the way I did? I mean, there's a poll at top and all. I have very little expectations from the NYC tabloids. Absolutely none. I think they add zero value to the city. I was going to say "Just don't incite violence" but I don't even expect that of them. I realize it's a voting thread, but it wasn't your vote that baffled me -- it was your process. I didn't vote that edition either, but for very different reasons.

Ceetar wrote: how about crediting Heston instead of mocking the Mets? It's just poorly constructed.... They did credit Heston. They credited Heston and then they also mocked the Mets. They did both.