batmagadanleadoff

Major League Baseball Plans to Ban Collisions at Home Plate By BENJAMIN HOFFMAN Published: December 11, 2013 It is an iconic part of baseball: A player rounds third base, sprints toward home plate and barrels into the catcher at full speed. But now, baseball officials have decided to ban collisions at the plate to protect players from concussions and other injuries. The decision, which could go into effect as soon as next season, is the latest example of sports officials looking to improve safety amid a growing awareness of the long-term dangers of head injuries. Mets General Manager Sandy Alderson, the chairman of Major League Baseball�s rules committee, announced the plan Wednesday at baseball�s winter meetings in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. �This is, I think, in response to a few issues that have arisen,� Alderson said. �One is just the general occurrence of injuries from these incidents at home plate that affect players, both runners and catchers. And also kind of the general concern about concussions that exists not only in baseball but throughout professional sports and amateur sports today.� The details of how the ban would work have yet to be announced. For the plan to take effect for the 2014 season, it needs approval from team owners and the players association. It will be presented to the owners for a vote at a meeting on Jan. 16. If the players reject the change, M.L.B. can put it into effect without their approval for 2015. Collisions between base runners and catchers have traditionally been viewed as integral to the game. Catchers like Mike Scioscia, the current manager of the Los Angeles Angels, became stars based on their ability to block the plate. But a series of high-profile injuries to catchers in recent seasons has resulted in an about-face from some of the game�s most powerful voices. Perhaps the most famous home-plate collision occurred during the 1970 All-Star Game, when Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds ran over Ray Fosse of the Cleveland Indians. Fosse, a 23-year-old, up-and-coming player, sustained a fractured and separated shoulder. Although he made the All-Star team again in 1971, it is widely believed that he was never the same after the collision. San Francisco catcher Buster Posey, less than a year after helping the Giants win the 2010 World Series, was injured in a collision at home plate with Scott Cousins of the Florida Marlins on May 25, 2011. Posey sustained a fractured fibula and torn ligaments in his ankle that forced him to miss the rest of the season. After recovering from the injuries, he won the National League�s Most Valuable Player award in 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/12/sports/baseball/major-league-baseball-plans-to-ban-collisions-at-home-plate.html?_r=0 [fimg=555]http://cdn.lightgalleries.net/4bd5ec034b4b8/images/30605FLPE101-2.jpg[/fimg][fimg=555]http://a.espncdn.com/photo/2008/0724/mlb_parker_300.jpg[/fimg][fimg=555]http://i2.cdn.turner.com/si/dam/assets/130409122629-00-josh-thole-single-image-cut.jpg[/fimg] [fimg=566]http://blog.detroitathletic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Ty-Cobb-home-plate.jpg[/fimg]

You know that [Megdal's] just chomping at the bit to ridicule the Mets off-season pickups, but he's gotta bite his tongue for now because the team still has -- according to the team, anyway -- about $25M more to play with. So we get this Tejada piece instead, for now. Mets perform triage for beat reporters By Howard Megdal 4:10 p.m. Dec. 9, 2013 It's been a staple of Sandy Alderson's tenure as general manager of the New York Mets to provide ever-changing guideposts for what payroll, in the post-Madoff reality for Fred Wilpon and his partners, might be to reporters. These guesses are almost uniformly inaccurate, and as the broken promises have piled up, the Mets have gotten diminishing public relations returns on this strategy. Now, P.R. aside, there's an argument to be made in general that a general manager's public proclamations needn't carry a ton of truth to them, providing Alderson, or others, with more negotiating room. The problem is, there's a universal trend that's gone into every revision of Alderson's self-described budget. He's never missed low. You'd be a rich man, if each time Sandy Alderson talked about how much money the Mets could spend, you'd bet the under. (How systematically disappointing fans by failing to live up to their own promises counts as useful public relations, no one can really say.) This is no accident. So it was anything but encouraging, two days after the Mets agreed to terms with outfielder Curtis Granderson, to hear Alderson say his budget for payroll in 2014 is $85 million in a conversation with reporters Sunday night at baseball's winter meetings. And not surprisingly, the reporters noticed. That means, with Granderson in the fold, that the Mets are almost tapped out. They've got about $11 million to spend, if that is the limit. As mentioned above, it also wouldn't be a shock if that turned out to be high. But when such a declaration comes 19 days--19 days!--after Alderson told most of the same reporters that Mets payroll would not be lower than $87 million, it's worrisome. And when that declaration, complete with revisionist math, came just a few months after Alderson described needing a $90-100 million payroll "to be competitive", it's more perplexing, still. If only Alderson were making these declarations for public consumption, while working with, if not a sufficient budget, even a static one. But the public statements mirror the uncertainty within--the Mets front office is well aware that today's numbers from ownership could change tomorrow. That the changes are coming closer together certainly doesn't suggest any stability, nor does the consistent dropping of numbers that for years now, have turned out to be too optimistic, every time. As long as those covering the Mets don't make ownership's big-picture inability to provide basic resources for the major league team to compete the story, the stories about whether the Mets will trade Lucas Duda or Ike Davis will seem like the most important thing going on. Alderson wasn't hiding from the fact that the budget he's been given, if you can call slow-walked approval for individual player expenditures (the result of the process the Mets owners go through with their creditors to make such things happen) a budget, isn't enough. "We came into the offseason hoping to improve in a number of areas," Alderson said Sunday night. "And I think we have improved, hopefully, in one area. That, logically, leaves three or four others to potentially address. But, depending on how things materialize, we may live with certain weaknesses. The idea is to minimize the number of weaknesses--not necessarily correct all of them--and hope we've constructed a team that minimizes those." This is an astonishing admission by a general manager in December. That it comes from a GM of a New York team (with New York revenues, in a situation where those revenues aren't siphoned off to keep ownership afloat), one whose organization spoke of finally being freed of financial shackles to return the Mets to prominence this winter, is disspiriting to a front office which desperately hoped that would be so. It's not going to make the fans come back any sooner, either. Alderson's not wrong on the math required to make the Mets contenders. The Mets won 74 games last year. They did so with Marlon Byrd posting a 138 O.P.S.+ in right field and Matt Harvey dominating for most of the season, two players certain to be missing in 2014. Granderson is a better bet in 2014 than Byrd, but neither outfielder is particularly likely to repeat Byrd's 2013. That still leaves the Mets a Matt Harvey short of... a 74-win team. The Mets can address roster needs with trades, and it wouldn't be a surprise to see Daniel Murphy dealt. Alderson seemed to imply that Eric Young Jr. could be a starting player, and there have been rumblings that the Mets could jettison Murphy and play Young at second base. Other than his hitting and his fielding, Young would be a fine choice at the position. Alderson also said to expect one of Lucas Duda or Ike Davis to be traded soon, clearing first base for the other. Exactly how many needs the Mets can address in what they receive for Murphy and Davis will go a long way toward determining how helpful this offseason was at repairing years of financial starvation from ownership. But the promised winter of relevance has, once again, devolved into triage, while ownership tries frantically to re-work a coming loan of $250 million due next June, merely one of the huge financial roadblocks ahead for ownership. Or as Alderson put it Sunday night, talking about the shortstop he and others buried all year back when they thought they'd be given money to buy another one: "For example, we can come out of these meetings with Tejada as our regular shortstop. Worse things could happen to us certainly. But, to the extent we can address as many additional issues as we can, we're going to try to do that." http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2013/12/8537110/mets-perform-triage-beat-reporters

War's Over. Thank you for going to war this afternoon. Drive home safely. And hide all the women and children when Prince logs on to play.

Darryl Strawberry Jim McAndrew Lance Broadway Tyler Walker Jermaine Allensworth Tug McGraw Billy Wagner Dave Weathers Pete Walker Mike Howard Chris Woodward Don Cardwell Chico Walker Gene Walter Brian Lawrence

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Edgy MD wrote: If I had a nickle for every time someone was impressed by my Lance Broadway. You don't impress Lance Broadway. Lance Broadway impresses you.. A career worthy of his name.

[crossout]Three[/crossout] Two more to end this WAR (quiz). Darryl Strawberry Jim McAndrew Lance Broadway Tyler Walker Jermaine Allensworth Tug McGraw Billy Wagner Dave Weathers Pete Walker Mike Howard Chris Woodward Don Cardwell Chico Walker Gene Walter Hey, Hey. LBJ. How many Mets did you name today?

Three more to end this WAR (quiz).

Darryl Strawberry Jim McAndrew Lance Broadway Tyler Walker Jermaine Allensworth Tug McGraw Billy Wagner Dave Weathers Pete Walker Mike Howard Chris Woodward Don Cardwell Chico Walker [fimg=444:2ggkxkj0]http://www.lornebair.com/pictures/16081_2.jpg[/fimg:2ggkxkj0] [fimg=444:2ggkxkj0]http://www.lornebair.com/pictures/16081.jpg[/fimg:2ggkxkj0]

Darryl Strawberry Jim McAndrew Lance Broadway Tyler Walker Jermaine Allensworth Tug McGraw Billy Wagner Dave Weathers Pete Walker Mike Howard Chris Woodward Woodward. That was like seeing a Larry Bird blind no-look over the back shoulder blade pass. [fimg=666:17mu7u14]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nJ6r-DkkI4U/TcNFsuSwe9I/AAAAAAAABRU/yVjKUdKU_Lw/s400/Civil-War-Mets.jpg[/fimg:17mu7u14]

Darryl Strawberry Jim McAndrew Lance Broadway Tyler Walker Jermaine Allensworth Tug McGraw Billy Wagner Dave Weathers Pete Walker Mike Howard [fimg=700:1g9id2io]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_uJeQUbIjbc0/SP58vnS8hfI/AAAAAAAAACY/sxI6i2wfIrY/s1600/mets%2Bbanner.JPG[/fimg:1g9id2io]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: I was impressed with your Lance Broadway. I thought he was a forgotten Met. Not that I wouldn't of gotten Lance if I was playing. I am in the process of migrating my stinky neglected website to a new platform, manually moving posts one at a time. I spent most of the last two weekends in 2008 and 2009 and was reminded of a lot of things I'd rather not remember. Lance Broadway! Can you remember what non-WAR Met was traded away to get him? The fartmaster, Ramon Castro.

Darryl Strawberry Jim McAndrew Lance Broadway Tyler Walker Jermaine Allensworth Tug McGraw Billy Wagner Dave Weathers Pete Walker [fimg=600:2f8yzy1d]http://digilander.iol.it/u2island/cover_file/War_fronte.jpg[/fimg:2f8yzy1d]

Darryl Strawberry Jim McAndrew Lance Broadway Tyler Walker Jermaine Allensworth Tug McGraw Billy Wagner Weathers [fimg=600:1l9q5bzc]https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSVRlvTgggqRDnmWFGSwte5kpAKkdRxxLE3OJYt4ioqpyzg2gB_[/fimg:1l9q5bzc]

Darryl Strawberry Jim McAndrew Lance Broadway Tyler Walker Jermaine Allensworth Tug McGraw Billy Wagner

I was impressed with your Lance Broadway. I thought he was a forgotten Met. Not that I wouldn't of gotten Lance if I was playing.

Less than half of the WARMets are listed.

Darryl Strawberry Jim McAndrew Lance Broadway Tyler Walker Jermaine Allensworth (Players only -- No Rubes) [fimg=744:2sx7gpni]http://www.rockfordreminisce.com/images/CG_Indoor%20Baseball_1917.jpg[/fimg:2sx7gpni]

Darryl Strawberry Jim McAndrew Lance Broadway [fimg=744:14h0lzvr]http://static-l3.blogcritics.org/09/07/21/108993/civil-war-ball.jpg[/fimg:14h0lzvr]

Well, then, here's something to fuel your palpitations. Somehow looks photoshopped. ha. It does. Or thats a felt hat or something. I wasn't sure if felt was the right word. I had never spelt felt in terms of this meaning before. Looked it up: 1.a nonwoven fabric of wool, fur, or hair, matted together by heat, moisture, and great pressure. 2.any article made of this material, as a hat. If that's Curtis, he needs to dump his tailor.

I'm looking for Mets players who have the letters "W", "A" and "R" in their last names. One guess per post.

I'd ask ol' Ned about the 25 year old that's poised to be next year's biggest free agent if he doesn't re-up with the Dodgers. Cause it don't hurt to ask.

Edgy MD wrote: A lot of great things have been done by 33-year-olds. This is true. At 33, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. Jesus of Nazareth became the greatest religious figure ever when, at 33, he was crucified. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence at 33.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Figured it was borderline, at best. Okay, then... I gotta go now. I can't think straight when I see that guy. In fact, I can't even breathe.