batmagadanleadoff

Sandy responds to himself: As for reportedly wanting to pursue Cano beyond a dinner to meet agent/rapper Jay-Z, Alderson said: �Robinson Cano was an entertaining diversion for us, but I don�t think we ever expected it was going to go anywhere. Jeff [Wilpon] and I had conversations about it. We decided to take a preliminary look at it, but I don�t think anybody had any expectations we were going to sign Robinson Cano. I certainly didn�t. And, from a strategic standpoint, it wouldn�t have been the right approach for us.� http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/mets/post/_/id/98542/alderson-downplays-mets-financial-issues

Didn't know where to put this article. It coulda went in the Sandy Dandy thread, or the Mets finance thread, or even the Your Mets Bookshelf thread. Start a new thread whenever in doubt, I say. New Sandy Alderson book offers revealing view of Madoff-impacted Mets By Howard Megdal 7:16 a.m. | Mar. 12, 2015 Mets general manager Sandy Alderson is entering his fifth season in his current role. One common question asked about Alderson, given the significant amount of public dissembling he's had to do on behalf of the team's owners thanks to Fred Wilpon, Jeff Wilpon and Saul Katz's massive investments with Bernie Madoff, is what keeps him in the job. Baseball Maverick, a new book about Alderson by veteran sports journalist Steve Kettmann, follows the familiar arc of the past few Mets seasons, with Alderson hopeful in summer and fall about adding the pieces necessary to compete the following year, fading to spring, when Alderson's desires are dashed. Alderson's cooperation for the book was total: Kettmann thanks Alderson for "more than a hundred interviews for this book". Neither Kettmann nor Alderson make any pretense about what stops the Mets every time: It's the money. "I'd been working on this book for nearly four years when I suddenly found myself wondering: Why was Alderson cooperating?", Kettmann writes on page 331. "Part of the answer was simply that I'd asked him at the right time, just as the Former state charities bureau regulator was taking over as Mets GM. ... Then, when the Mets' finances went belly-up, and Sandy lost his father, the joy went out of it temporarily�but Alderson had given me his word to cooperate on a book project, and he wasn't going to back out." That read on Alderson dovetails with what I've heard from many who know him about his desire to stay on and hopefully finish an improbable rebuild into the headwind of massive financial problems from ownership�a combination of stubborness and an understanding that at 67, this is probably his final chance to build a baseball team. While the Wilpons appear as distant, ephemeral figures in Kettmann's book�not quoted in any interviews with the author, who seemingly spoke to everyone but them, including former commissioner and Wilpon enabler Bud Selig�their responsibility for exacerbating Alderson's challenge makes many appearances in the book. Chapter 10 is titled "The Madoff Mess." Kettmann quotes Alderson saying in 2011, "The nice thing about being involved in just the baseball end is that I can separate myself from the Madoff situation by just being direct and honest with people and saying, 'OK, I knew about Madoff, I knew the Mets owners had lost money with Madoff. I can't have any credibility with the public if they think I'm a shill for Fred, Saul and Jeff." That quote is concurrent to a year in which Alderson repeatedly asserted that Mets payroll would stay high, while gradually revising his number downward throughout the season. So the gap between what Alderson knew and what he spoke about publicly cut both ways for him. What the book makes clear is that Alderson knew early on that ownwership's financial and legal problems were going to pose a problem to baseball ops, though that turned into a bigger problem than he even could have imagined. "Immediately after the Madoff litigation was made public, I realized that was going to have some impact on what we were going to be able to do," Alderson told Kettmann on page 153. But it is still possible to follow the public financial rationales the team used within Kettmann's book, with Alderson and Kettmann's gradually increasing frustration as they failed to be promised firewalls to end the ongoing austerity. Alderson spoke with David Wright in the winter following the 2012 offseason, and Kettmann describes Alderson's excitement over Wright's buy-in this way, on page 162: "Yes, he [Alderson] believed deeply in the plan they had in place to build toward a team in 2014 that would have deadwood millions off the books at long last. The Mets in 2013 would still be paying Johan Santana $31.5 million in salary and buyout, even though he wouldn't pitch at all; $16 million to Jason Bay for having released him; and another $6.5 million to reliever Frank Francisco, who would be limited by injury to less than seven innings of work. Once they cleared that salary, they would have options." Of course, the fact that those players disappeared from payroll merely meant the team dropped to $85 million in 2014 payroll�the continuing debt financing of hundreds of millions against the team, S.N.Y. and the stadium wasn't going anywhere. It still hasn't. Contrast this optimism about changing finances with this, from Kettmann, on page 235: "The wonder going into the 2014 season was that the press gave the Mets as much of a break as it did. Part of it was simple disbelief. They couldn't really be planning to hold their payroll down around $85 million, could they, despite being a team in the largest market in the country with their own cable network and a shiny new ballpark? They couldn't possibly propose crawling into the 2014 season with a payroll among the lowest in all of baseball, could they?" Kettmann doesn't identify the "they", though it is clearly the ones controlling the spending. And this isn't merely Kettmann's take, but Alderson's. "But caution about spending, extreme caution, would remain the rule," Kettmann continues. "Alderson found himself sustained through the winter by his sense of humor and the joy he'd always taken in the absurd. His own situation was in many ways absurd and he knew it. He took the job with the Mets with the expectation of being able to put in place a system ... on the one hand, with a payroll robust enough to move forward in a timely way on improving the team. Instead, because of the way the Madoff scandal engulfed the Mets, Alderson was back to the baseball version of duct tape and ingenuity, trying to get by on less." Alderson himself speaks to this in Chapter 18, which begins: "Consider the plight of the Mets by 2014: The club's payroll of right around $85 million represented not only a vertiginous dip from the $149 million in 2009... but it was the lowest for the team in fifteen seasons..." As Alderson told Kettmann on February 10, 2014, at the conclusion of the offseason talked about so optimistically earlier in the book: "We got the payroll up over $85 million, which everyone was waiting for us to do or not do," Alderson says on pages 244-45. "It sure would be nice if we could add to our bullpen. The perception of the team would be completely different. Right now people think we're incomplete, and you know, they may be right." Amusingly, the next paragraph begins a story on Fred Wilpon dropping by Alderson's office to do "a little brainstorming on how to shift the culture around the team." But just as suddenly, the Wilpons disappear again, which makes sense: This is a book about Alderson, after all. The book follows Alderson to a speech he gave at UC Berkeley jointly, with the man he mentored, Athletics general manager Billy Beane. Kettmann points out that Beane, though still running the team whose finances were so dire they created the very need for "Moneyball" in the first place, "could conceive of deals�and even increases in payroll�without worrying about too much nettlesome oversight from above; he and Wolff would talk things through, and sometimes the owner would talk Beane out of a rash idea, but if Beane believed strongly in the move, the move was likely to happen." The implicit comparison to Mets ownership is obvious, especially when Kettmann points out in the following paragraph that "the Mets were actually being outspent by the A's, they of the dumpiest-stadium-in-baseball ignominy." And on page 311, after recalling the slump that encompassed David Wright's 2014 season, Kettman adds this: "It was a depressing reminder for the Mets of their unworkable financial situation. They were limited to a payroll of $85 million, a huge portion of which went to pay Wright his $20 million salary." Any pretense that the salary cuts were coming from Alderson, as had been the public line for years, or that operating in such a fashion had anything to do with Alderson's plan were cast aside. And yet, even Kettmann, eager to end on a high note, quotes Jeff Wilpon in September 2014 saying the team is ready to "show more 'payroll flexibility,'" never mind the repeated, discredited use of that exact phrase by both Wilpons and Alderson himself. The Mets in 2015 are undeniably better, and the talent Alderson has brought in, through the farm system and in trading expensive major leaguers for young prospects, is the reason. And yet, even now, he's been limited to an absurd extent from above. A 79-win team on the cusp of contention signed two major league free agents all winter, failed to address holes Alderson has publicly (and repeatedly in the book) cited as well. Alderson, earlier this winter, described a desire to add another lefty reliever. The Mets didn't, and now their top returning lefty, Josh Edgin, has an injured elbow weeks before the season even begins. Things could go right for the Mets. But as Alderson makes clear in repeated references to the failed pitching prospect from his time with the A's, Todd Van Poppel, they can also fall short, especially as reliant as the Mets are on young players and absent the financial resources to add to the talent base, let alone put together any kind of fallback plan. If it doesn't go well, this may well be the reason for Alderson's cooperation with Kettmann's book: to get his story about what really happened out there, before ownership has the chance to tell it a different way. Or as Alderson puts it himself on page 236, in a chapter that makes it clear Alderson would have happily and more aggressively pursued Robinson Cano, last winter's most expensive free agent, if only he'd had the resources: "Madoff wasn't even a topic of conversation in my interview for the Mets job. I didn't raise it. Maybe I should have. The bottom line is, I would have taken the job anyway. It just added to the challenge." http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2015/03/8563893/new-sandy-alderson-book-offers-revealing-view-madoff-impacted-mets

George Thorogood and The Destroyers play Allentown and Glenside excerpts: Of growing up in Delaware, he said in a phone interview: �If it weren�t for The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Bob Dylan, I would�ve slit my wrists a long time ago".... With the advent of Major League Baseball spring training, Thorogood � who once played semi-pro baseball � explained why he�s followed the New York Mets since the team�s inception in 1962. �If you pick a loser, you always get good seats at the park,� he said, lamenting the signing of pitcher Max Scherzer by division rivals the Washington Nationals. http://www.pottsmerc.com/arts-and-entertainment/20150311/george-thorogood-and-the-destroyers-play-allentown-and-glenside Thorogood ain't no phony fan either, even if he doesn't own a minority share of the Mets, like Bill Maher. Thorogood knows his stuff. Don't believe me? Check out this Thorogood interview with that guy who runs the MBTN website, conducted a little over half a year after the Gl@v!ne collapse. George is a real deal Mets fan, even if his entry point as a Mets fan is suddenly cloudy. "Followed"? What's that mean?

[fimg=363]https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7642/16790901665_703d590e67_o.jpg[/fimg]

Some cage action at The Butter on Botz Day at the CPF. The picture below could well have been taken exactly 30 years ago to the day. [fimg=655:3neaamwp]https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8754/16786319172_21a54f903a_o.jpg[/fimg:3neaamwp]

Former SI cover boy, college football superduperstar and US senate candidate Craig James weighs in on the Murphy incident: excerpt: Former New England Patriots running back Craig James spoke out against gay marriage on Monday and asserted that those who support same-sex unions "have a problem with God" and are giving in to Satan.... James then stated that he's read and studied the book of Genesis and commented that the story of Adam and Eve shows that if someone supports gay marriage, they have "a problem with God." http://www.christianpost.com/news/craig-james-says-support-for-gay-marriage-is-satan-working-on-us-135480/

Enlightened comments from the comments section of a Christian web-site commenting on the Murphy incident : Baseballmomof8 � 18 hours ago Murphy did not speak HIS truth. He spoke THE Truth. Alfred Johnson � 19 hours ago Trust those in charge to ruin a moment of respect and actual tolerance between two people of vastly different views. It's a bit like those people who insist on BCE and CE instead of BC and AD, or try to remove nativity scenes at Christmas - they're scared of other people being offended by Christianity despite what the other people actually think. Rev. Alan B. Maria Wharton � 17 hours ago This is not about Billy Bean or Daniel Murphy. This is about the fact that Major League Baseball has signed on to the New World Order social engineering program of normalizing homosexuality and suppressing Christian freedom. One player is free to make public issue of his openly homosexual lifestyle - a matter of moral consequence - while another player is reprimanded for expressing his religious belief that the homosexual lifestyle is immoral. Both of them have a moral opinion, so why is one free to express his views and the other not? The reason is that homosexuality fits into the NWO view of the future, where natural families are suppressed; religious expression threatens the acceptance of the future they are seeking to construct. Unfortunately for America, MLB has decided to lend itself to suppression of religious freedom, freedom of speech, and (perhaps unwittingly) of the family, while promoting the acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle. The phrase �as American as Mom, baseball, and apple pie� is going to lose a lot of its meaning for many Americans. Thank heavens we can at least still agree on apple pie. Again, this is not about either of the two players involved. Rather, it is symbolic of the values in play. Godsaves70 Rev. Alan B. Maria Wharton � 5 hours ago You are correct! michael hall Rev. Alan B. Maria Wharton � 10 hours ago Well put � DG � 18 hours ago Would it be OK to express one's natural law views regarding homosexuality? After all, natural law is based on reason alone, rather than on any religious deposit of faith. Or is reason also now banned by the Mets? frrapper � 5 hours ago Goodbye Visa; goodbye Mets. Joseph Ferreira � 2 hours ago Not to worry. He can still express his views on lying, stealing, fornication without being accused of hating liars, thieves fornicators and so on. Just not the homosexual thing of course. I feel truly sorry for the once great USA. True conservatives need to ditch the Republican Party. They're just stringing you all along. Form a new party and let the GOP die. The GOP is really just right of the Dems. Sure they talk a good fight but when it comes down to it. they never go to the mat for unborn babies or marriage. Even Ben Carson has shrunk from expressing his views on homosexuality now. saa5of5 � 4 hours ago This is a pretty good example of the actual person with same sex attraction not being the "problem" but rather those who are pushy and loud who fear an open discussion, insisting a difference in understanding is hateful or "homophobic." Here's a great open discussion: http://gloria.tv/media/N5p8pV9... countypa � 20 hours ago The gays run the USA.....What Next...(dirtandmoredirt com) https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ny-mets-silence-christian-baseball-player-for-expressing-acceptance-but-dis

Interview with Mort Zachter (below) the author of the recently released Gil Hodges book. Zachter himself experienced a pleasant and life altering reversal of fortunes when, in his mid 30's, he suddenly discovered that he was worth millions of dollars. Zachter then retired from his CPA job to write full-time. [fimg=222]http://images.thepostgame.com/sites/default/files/Gil-Hodges-Mort-Zachter.jpeg[/fimg] LA Observed: Your first book, Dough, was a memoir about how your uncles accumulated a fortune that allowed you to leave your accounting job and pursue a writing career. Do you have any regrets about becoming a full-time writer? Mort Zachter: No regrets. When I'm writing, I'm in heaven. I never felt that way when I was a CPA. LAO: What compelled you to follow Dough with a biography of Gil Hodges? MZ: When I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, Hodges was my childhood hero. He was also one of the most popular baseball players of his era. But because he was quiet and self-effacing, died young at 47, and didn't curse at umpires or gamble on baseball, he's been forgotten. I hope to shine a light on a mensch who is unknown to most people under forty. LAO: Hodges started as a catcher, but moved to first base when Roy Campanella joined the Dodgers. How was Hodges able to make that transition so smoothly, becoming one the best defensive first basemen of his era? MZ: Hodges was a great, and graceful, athlete. He played on the basketball, football, baseball, and track teams in college. Before that, in high school, he was a shortstop, so he brought a middle infielder's mind-set to first base. LAO: Why did Hodges, a right-handed power hitter, struggle when the Dodgers moved to L.A. and played in the Coliseum with that short porch in left? MZ: That season, Hodges especially tried to pull everything to left, even outside pitches, and it ruined his swing. It didn't help that he missed his family, who were still living back in Brooklyn, or that his father, whom he was very close to, had recently died. LAO: Hodges brought the Mets their first World Series title, but you point out that, under his watch, Amos Otis and Nolan Ryan were traded away. Did Hodges not see the potential of both Otis and Ryan - or did he think that trading them improved the Mets? MZ: After the Mets won the 1969 World Series, Hodges wasn't trading his centerfielder, Tommie Agee, a Gold Glove winner. This left no logical starting spot for Amos Otis, and they traded him for their greatest need, a third baseman. Hodges saw Ryan's potential. But two years after the Otis trade, the Mets, loaded with starting pitching, were in desperate need of a third baseman since Joe Foy (the player acquired for Otis) had not worked out, and Jim Fregosi, the player they traded for Ryan, had been one of the best infielders in baseball. Also, Ryan, who grew up in a small town in Texas, was not comfortable living in New York, and had requested a trade. LAO: Was Hodges a better manager or a better player? How does he rank among all-time Dodger first basemen? MZ: From what his players told me, I think Hodges was an even better manager than he was a player. And that says a lot. At the end of his last full season as a player (1962), his 370 home runs were tenth on the all-time list. At the time, only one other right-handed hitter in baseball history (Jimmy Foxx) had hit more. Hodges won three Gold Gloves, and would have won more had the award been established before his last three seasons as an everyday player. Hodges had more home runs and RBI's than any other first baseman in Dodgers history. LAO: Does Hodges belong in the Hall of Fame? If so, what is the most compelling argument for inclusion? And, why do you think he hasn't been voted in for all these years? MZ: Absolutely, he belongs in the Hall of Fame. The rules state that the veterans committee should consider a candidate based upon their "overall contribution" to the game. That means objectively considering both a candidate's playing and managerial careers. Hodges hit more home runs in his playing career than anyone else who also managed a World Series winning team. Every single player who had at least 300 home runs (the equivalent of 500 today) at the end of the 1962 season is in the HOF -- except Hodges. During his 15 years on the baseball writers' ballot [for the HOF], Hodges received more votes than anyone else not subsequently elected. But by the time he was up for consideration by the veterans committee, most of his peers on the Brooklyn Dodgers were gone, and he had no one with cachet lobbying for him. LAO: What is your next writing project and/or book project? MZ: I'm going to write a travel blog. It's time to get up from my desk and see the world. http://www.laobserved.com/intell/2015/03/author_interview_mort_zachter.php _____________________ Baker’s Million By ANNE MENDELSON Published: November 25, 2007 Mort Zachter’s small, wry memoir suggests that with the right sort of talent a man can not only rob and ill-treat his nearest and dearest, but also convince them it’s his just prerogative. The theater in which Zachter’s uncle Harry Wolk spent 40 years exercising this gift was an East Village fixture known to the family as “the Store” and to the general public as the Ninth Street Bakery. (Despite the name, the shelves were filled from wholesale sources of day-old merchandise.) Harry’s trustiest pawn was his older brother and partner, Joe, but the store and its 119-hour work week also demanded the part-time toil of their younger sister and her husband, Zachter’s parents, whose pay was “whatever leftover bread, cake or cookies” they could lug back to a shabby Brooklyn tenement via subway and shank’s mare. Zachter’s view of the Little Business That Could and its four penny-scrimping engine stokers shatters one August day in 1994 when a phone call from a broker looking for “Mr. Zachter” reveals that his surviving uncle, Harry, now adrift in terminal dementia, had somehow amassed several million dollars in stocks and bonds. “Dough” follows Mort Zachter’s attempts to discover the story behind this bombshell. It proves as resistant to tidying as the layers of schmutz propping up the walls of Harry and Joe’s rent-subsidized Mitchell-Lama bachelor pad. All the grown-ups were in on the secret, but they managed to shut out Mort until he accidentally stumbled on it at the age of 36. Apparently, his mother had enough sanity and resolve to keep him from serfdom at the store, but at the cost of leaving him in the dark about the money and the choices it might have provided him, as his uncles’ eventual heir. Sifting through the Mitchell-Lama midden, Zachter arrives at still more incomprehensible truths about his elders’ willing acceptance of penury. Because “he’s the boss, and I’m the horse,” pious Uncle Joe abandoned life away from the cash register except for moments snatched to attend shul on Saturday mornings. And Zachter’s parents managed to talk themslves into a righteous pride in the fact that they’d never received a dime from Harry — or the store. Eventually, Zachter discovers that funny, personable Harry, the brains of the enterprise, seems to have used supposed pickup, delivery or bank-deposit duties as a cover for visits to prostitutes, dance halls and saloons. For Zachter, a struggling suburban accountant, these personal and fiscal revelations change everything — and yet nothing — about his memories of the family, the store and the Lower East Side of his youth, a neighborhood in which aging Orthodox congregations were yielding to rock clubs. In the end, the only score-settling he can accomplish is to break the family cycle of workaholism. It takes him six years, but he finally gives himself the leisure to sit down and recreate both his childhood world and his adult truth-seeking. The result is a memoir that is as miraculously loving and nonjudgmental as it is cleareyed. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/books/review/Mendelson-t-1.html

Today is Botz Day at the CPF. 53 years ago today, Ol' Butterfield was the winning pitcher in the Mets first win ever. Go out and buy yourself a turkey to commemorate the day, and to honor the guy who gave this and the original Butterball thread the legs I never knew it would have.

One Year Winner Rich Rusteck and an almost head on side view of the Butterball Field cage.

metirish wrote: ... it is a nothing story....the boss went into his managers office ..."listen we got Cuddyer and Harvey is back"..... It very well could be a nothing story. But how would anyone know for sure? Terry's gonna downplay the meeting and make it sound like nothing more than a routine chat about the weather no matter what the hell Wilpon said. Terry's play by play, therefore, isn't very trustworthy.

This is Fred Wilpon�s Steinbrenner moment and he knows it By Joel Sherman March 9, 2015 | 8:11pm [fimg=444]https://nbchardballtalk.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/41d59c23a8c41a82dea83afba344a4e8.jpg?w=320[/fimg] excerpt: �He expects a much better team,� Collins said. Wilpon sure expects a lot for 95 million dollars ... as if Collins ever did one fifitieth of the damage to the Mets that Wilpon's done. I guess Collins gets no free pass for being saddled with the box of junk he's been managing from day one. Read this story here, or in any other NY paper, 'cause it's getting total city-wide coverage. http://nypost.com/2015/03/09/the-root-legacy-issue-around-fred-wilpons-newfound-urgency/

Sotheby�s is auctioning something else on April 1 that is more portable and probably more fun to own than tall stadium letters: a Mets bullpen cart that used to deliver relievers to the pitching mound at Shea Stadium. For $20,000 to $30,000 � the price range estimated by Sotheby�s � a fan with money to burn can fantasize about being Tug McGraw. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/sports/baseball/reggie-jackson-to-auction-off-sign-from-old-yankee-stadium.html

You could tell that the photo was taken during the WF era even without any FB knowledge. Just look for the World's Fair flags flying from the open end of Shea.

Maybe those tags are for the World's Fair? They don't appear to be going to Shea Stadium.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: You know what? You don't need seven ace pitchers to win a WS. If you can get into the post-season with three very good pitchers, you have as good a chance as anybody to win it all. [fimg=173]http://keymancollectibles.com/publications/images/mets1973.jpg[/fimg] Here's an excerpt from today's Grantland piece on the Washington Nationals: Dominance is pass�. There was a time when regular-season success mattered as much as postseason success in baseball, because a team couldn�t reach the postseason without winning the regular season. But that was a long time ago. It�s been 47 years since finishing with the best record in the league gave a team a direct pass to the World Series. It�s been 22 years since qualifying for the postseason required a first-place finish. And it�s now been four years since only one team per league could reach the playoffs through the wild-card back door. There�s never been a time in baseball history when winning 108 games meant so little and winning 88 games meant so much. The Atlanta Braves claimed 14 division titles in 15 years from 1991 to 2005, winning more than 100 games six times in that span. The San Francisco Giants have qualified for the playoffs three times in the last five seasons, but failed to hit the 95-win mark in any year. Just try calling the former a dynasty over the latter and see how seriously everyone takes you. No one cares that the Giants have a .538 winning percentage over the last five years, just seventh best in baseball; all that matters is their remarkable 34-14 playoff record and three World Series titles in that span. The more regular-season success and postseason success are uncoupled, the more merely qualifying for the playoffs becomes the thing. And when the number of playoff teams jumps from two to four to eight to 10 � still making Major League Baseball the most exclusive postseason of the four major sports � the standards for qualifying for the postseason become lower and lower. It�s ironic that what people might deride as bleeding-heart liberalism or the soft bigotry of low expectations in another realm becomes transformed in the sports vocabulary into the most cherished word: parity. There is nothing more important to the long-term health of a league than fans of every team having, in the words of Bud Selig, �hope and faith� on Opening Day. But if every team has a reason to believe, no team has incentive to improve. Which is why what the Washington Nationals are doing is so refreshing. Like the billionaire entrepreneur who still wakes up at five every morning in search of his next big score, the Nationals have not let their recent success satiate their hunger for more. [***] That�s because winning the postseason is hard no matter how decisively you won the regular season. The 1986 Mets did both, going 108-54 before claiming a world championship, but they survived as many near-death experiences as any championship team ever has. [ 19] And in the 28 seasons since, dominant regular-season teams have not seen their success carry over to the playoffs. Since 1986, 26 teams have won 100 games,20 but just two of them � the 1998 and 2009 Yankees � won the World Series. 19 [fimg=222]https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7613/16582591539_5ed19fdda5_o.jpg[/fimg] http://grantland.com/features/washington-nationals-2015-nl-east-world-series-hopes/

I saw Ralph Macchio clothes shopping at the main Macy's, Herald Square. This hadda be 1985 or 1986, after Karate Kid had come out. He was with a woman who I presumed was Ralph's mother. And he looked like a teen-ager, about seven or eight years younger than he really was.

I agree with both of you (Ceets and Grimm). Only after I posted, did I really think my post through. And then, I concluded that my post was an over-simplification of a possible scenario. I suppose anything could plausibly happen, even under one specific finish. For example, if key players were to turn on Terry, he might be gone even with a playoff spot. David Wright, by himself, probably has enough clout to get Terry axed. And though Wright seems like a nice enough guy that he wouldn't do something like that, you never know. Derek Jeter is supposed to be half angel (and not the California of Anaheim type) and half Greek God, beyond reproach. I don't see that. I think Jeter's extremely manipulative in his own way. The Mets could win 84 games, but if the higher ups decide that they oughtta have won 88 and blame Terry for the shortfall, then he's probably a goner. So who knows? I'd answer the original thread question by simply saying that I don't think Terry's automatically gone after this season, even if the Mets don't make the playoffs.

Take on the tougher scenarios. What if the Mets go 84-78 but don't make the playoffs? Then whaddya think would happen to Terry?

ROY is he's promoted before Memorial Day.

In fairness to Dariling, baseball PbP is a tough job for a "rookie". I've seen and heard my share of baseball announcers who went on to become competent PbP men even though they kinda sucked at first. Darling, by the way, was about as bad as could be when he was in Washington.

Lemme start some more trouble here. Americans are turning away from organized religion in record numbers (And thank god for that. Hey! That's my joke. Me! batmags. Get it? "Thank God"? Because there ain't supposed to be a god.) Lynn Parramore, AlterNet 02 Mar 2015 at 21:58 ET With fire-breathing religion figuring anew in global conflicts, and political discussions at home often dominated by the nuttery of the Christian right, you might get the sense that somebody�s god is ready to mug you around every street corner. But if you�re the type who doesn�t like to hang your hat on organized religion, here�s a bit of good news: in America, your numbers are growing. There are more religiously unaffiliated people in the U.S. today than ever before. Starting in the 1980s, a variety of polls using different methodologies have come to the same conclusion: people who do not identify with religious labels are on the rise, perhaps even doubling in that time frame. Some call them �nones�: agnostics, atheists, deists, secular humanists, general humanists, and people who just don�t care to identify with any religious group. It�s not exactly correct to call them nonbelievers, because some still have faith and spirituality in some sense or another. A 2012 Pew study noted that 30 percent of these people believe in �God or universal spirit� and around 20 percent even pray every day. But according to the latest research, Americans checking the �none of the above� box will make up an increasingly important force in the country. Other groups, like born-again evangelicals, have grown more percentage-wise, but the nones have them beat in absolute numbers. The nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute has documented this sea change in its American Values Atlas, which it released last Wednesday. The fascinating study provides demographic, religious and political data based on surveys conducted throughout 2014. According to PRRI director of research Dan Cox, �The U.S. religious landscape is undergoing a dramatic transformation that is fundamentally reshaping American politics and culture.� Last year, for the very first time, Protestants lost their majority status in the Institute�s annual report, making up only 47 percent of those surveyed. The religiously unaffiliated, who come in at 22 percent, boast numbers on par with major religious groups like American Catholics. All told, the unaffiliated is the second-largest group in the country. It was also the most common group chosen by residents in 13 states, with the largest share (a third or more) in Washington, Oregon and New Hampshire. In Ohio and Virginia, this group was tied for first place. The unaffiliated don�t find too many like-minded folks down in Mississippi, however, where they make up only 10 percent of the population. The study also found that there are 15 states where the unaffiliated constitute the second-largest group. So what do we know about these people? Nones tend to be more politically liberal � three-quarters favor same-sex marriage and legal abortion. They also have higher levels of education and income than other groups. While about one out of five Americans is unaffiliated, the number is much higher among young people: Pew research shows that a third of Americans under 30 have no religious affiliation. Harvard professor Robert Putnam, who studies religion, thinks the trend among younger people is part of their general lack of interest in community institutions and institutions in general. Last year, the Washington Post ran an article citing research by Allen Downey, a professor of computer science at Massachusetts� Olin College of Engineering, who claims that people become nones mainly for two reasons: lack of religious upbringing (OMG those hippie parents!) and� the Internet. According to Downey, as much as 20 percent of unaffiliation is attributable to Internet use. He found that between 1990 and 2010, the share of Americans claiming no religious affiliation grew from 8 percent to 18 percent while the number of Americans surfing the Web jumped from almost nothing to 80 percent. But he acknowledges, as his critics are quick to point out, that correlation does not causation make. One thing is certain: voting nones are making their presence felt in politics. They are thought to have helped Obama win a second term. But the GOP doesn�t seem to show many signs of reducing the outsized influence of white evangelicals, who represent only 18 percent of the population, at least publicly. Just a couple of weeks ago, presidential hopeful Scott Walker could be seen refusing to answer a question about evolution, as if embracing widely accepted science would make him an apostate. Ordained Southern Baptist Mike Huckabee, also making noises of running, just released a book titled God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy, which kind of makes the Lord sound like the Great Bubba in the sky. But on the secretive big money donor trail, which all serious candidates must follow, the only religion they�ll be talking about much is free market fundamentalism. Your libertarians, your supply siders, and your various fatcats care a whole lot more about their bank accounts than any spiritual reckonings. Getting the government out of their way to leave them to their plundering is their holy scripture. But when talking to voters, the GOP really can�t afford to tone it down, because while monied elites tend to be secular, selling free-market pillage to the people getting robbed is not a very effective strategy. So they still have to mask their agenda behind appeals to popular religion so the non-rich will vote against their economic interests in places like Tennessee, which has the highest share of white evangelicals, at 43 percent. (White mainline Protestants account for 14 percent of the population nationally.) As you might expect, the fact that religion is losing its grip on the daily lives of Americans is freaking a lot of people out. The New York Times� David Brooks is quite alarmed, admonishing nones that �secularism has to do for nonbelievers what religion does for believers � arouse the higher emotions, exalt the passions in pursuit of moral action.� Of course, secularists only form one portion of the unaffiliated group, but considering that Mr. Brooks likes to wax on about the moral probity of America�s founders � your George Washingtons and so on � he might ask himself which box they might have checked. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/americans-are-turning-away-from-organized-religion-in-record-numbers/

SteveJRogers wrote: What about card #s? Do you not count O-Pee-Chees since they have the same card image on front but number is different? I count 'em the way I'd collect 'em. I'd only want an O-Pee-Chee if the image is different than the one on the Topps card.

Steve: I don't count cards like that. One image on one template is one card for me. If Topps wants to make 19 variations of the same image on the same template, but, say, with different colored borders, and wants to count that as 19 different cards, that's fine by me. But it's one card in my book. I know that others see it differently. But now you know my mindset when I thought that Collins might be on more mgr. cards than any other Met. I also meant while actively managing, to exclude, for example, the Caseys and Gils that might pop up today, though I wouldn't've expected you to figure that out.

Edgy MD wrote: Well, that was perfect. Seemed to try too hard with a 99-MPH fastball on his next-to-last pitch, and OF COURSE dropped the hammer for strike three on his next pitch. Syndertime. Harvey hit 99 on the gun?