batmagadanleadoff

Do you suppose that Mike Piazza's Mets HOF induction day is just another excuse for the team to wear the hideous black drop shadow unis? Okay, maybe not just another excuse -- that's a bit harsh and overly sarcastic, and a disservice to the awesome Mets legend of Mr. Mike.. But do you suppose that the Mets will break out their sartorial black mistakes on Piazza day? Which uni will the Mets wear on Piazza day? Poll closes in three weeks. So vote early. Void where prohibited by law.

If you double Terry's out for three to five weeks guesstimate, that gives you a worst case scenario of 10 weeks, which puts you in October -- clearly beyond the end of the Mets schedule. Really. Trust me. About the part where I just wrote that October would be beyond the end of the Mets schedule. So normally, I'd guess that Wright would be out for the season and submit Opening Day, 2014 as my DWRD. But these being the Mets, they'll probably want to bring Wright back if only just to play the season ending home series against the Brewers. Because it's gonna matter that the Mets remain competitive in late September, especially when there are still plenty of home tickets to sell. 9/25 @ Cincy.

Try and solve the David Wright jigsaw puzzle. To make the puzzle, you'll need a high definition printer to print out the jigsaw puzzle, a jig saw to cut the puzzle pieces into puzzle shapes, jigsaw puzzle cardboard stock, and glue. But if you're too cheap to splurge for a bottle of Elmer's, you can, instead, participate in this contest by submitting your David Wright return date. The DWRD is the next date that David Wright appears in a Met game. And by "appears", I mean plays. Takes the field, pinch runs, or takes an at bat. Not simply an appears on TV camera appearance. In this ESPN article: Wright: Playing through injury not unwise Met skipper Terry Collins estimates that David Wright will miss three to five weeks. The ol' batmags formula for calculating the length of a baseball injury requires that the ETA be doubled -- so that's 6-10 weeks in my book. So give us your guesses. One guess per contestant. Winner gets a free copy of Beggar's Banquet or a Roy Staiger baseball card (my choice). The closest date to the actual DWRD is the winning entry, no matter whether the winning guess precedes or passes the actual DWRD.

"To all you hard working and low of birth people: after you've put in your day of quiet desperation performing some menial back breaking task that's a lot different than what I do -owning a major league baseball team, which includes first dibs on the post game buffet- come on out to Citi Field. And hurry, because for a limited time only, we're waiving the processing fee on ticket purchases. We do this all for you". "That was some pitch"! Mets waiving ticket fees By Adam Rubin | ESPNNewYork.com NEW YORK -- The Mets offered this announcement about ticket pricing for upcoming home games: The New York Mets today announced a �No Fees� promotion. The Mets will pay all service fees charged on any tickets purchased from Monday, Aug. 5 - Thursday, Aug. 8 online at Mets.com or by phone at 718-507-TIXX. Fans can take advantage of this limited time offer by purchasing their tickets at Mets.com/nofees from 9 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 5 through 5 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 8 or by phone at 718-507-TIXX from 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. or through the seventh inning on game days. Throughout the four-day offer, fans will be able to purchase tickets to any of the 27 remaining 2013 Mets home games at Citi Field with the Mets covering the associated ticket fees. For example, a fan purchasing two tickets online or over the phone on Monday, Aug. 5 for the Saturday, Aug. 23 game against the Detroit Tigers will not be changed any service fee for placing that order. The covered fees will apply to any ticket purchased during this four-day period, regardless of the date of the game by ordering online at Mets.com or by phone at 718-507-TIXX. The balance of the 2013 regular season schedule includes games against National League East opponents -- Atlanta, Miami, Philadelphia and Washington along with matchups against Detroit, San Francisco and Milwaukee. Exciting Remaining Promotional Dates at Citi Field include: Tuesday, Aug. 20 vs. Atlanta (7:10 p.m.) Home Run Apple Bank for the first 15,000 fans in attendance presented by Citi Friday, Aug. 23 vs. Detroit (7:10 p.m.) Third Eye Blind postgame concert for all fans -- presented by Duane Reade Sunday, Aug. 25 vs. Detroit (1:10 p.m.) Tom Seaver bobblehead for the first 25,000 fans in attendance courtesy of Toyota Sunday, Sept. 29 vs. Milwaukee (1:10 p.m.) Mike Piazza Mets Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony Remember all Tuesdays at Citi Tuesdays whereby fans using their Citi credit card or Citibank debit card receive 10 percent off tickets. *The only fees not covered by the team during this promotion are Express Mailing, including mail and UPS. http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/mets/post/_/id/74493/mets-waiving-ticket-fees

Ridiculously brawny Mets fan can�t open a water bottle, needs help This fan�s biceps are the size of Matt Harvey�s head, but despite his brawn, he couldn�t generate the force necessary to open a water bottle at Citi Field during the Royals-Mets game. Let�s take a look at his struggle, frame by frame. The standard twist doesn�t work, so he uses his pants to combat the slipperiness. Smart. The bottle still won�t yield. Back to a standard right-hand twist. He switches to the left hand, and hopes nobody�s watching. *Broadcast cuts to actual baseball action for 10 seconds* *Back to the struggle* STILL NOT OPEN. He eventually admits defeat, and hands the bottle off to someone else. Been there, bro. http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/08/ridiculously-brawny-mets-fan-cant-open-water-bottle-needs-help/

October 09, 1989 Dropping In The Series Parachutist Mike Sergio's landing led off the startling events of Game 6 in 1986 Stephen Kiesling "No kidding, there I was!" Those are the first words of every parachute story. Next comes the Pucker Factor, a scale from 1 to 10. A PF-10 can be a near-mythical achievement, but more often it is merely terminal. According to sky divers, you earn it when both chutes fail, you are gyrating wildly at 120 mph, heading straight down, and fear puckers your sphincter with such force that your eyeballs pop out of your head before you "bounce." First-time jumpers often believe that they have experienced a PF-10 on that initial step out of an airplane. But unless something goes monstrously wrong, the objective PF rating for a first jump is closer to 1�. To get close to double digits you have to do something outrageous or stupid, or both. There is, however, one exception to the first rule of telling a parachute story, and it comes from a "bandit" jump that earns a PF of at least nine. Like the one-mile free-fall through the night sky over New York City that culminated in a landing in Shea Stadium, smack in the middle of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. The perpetrator of that jump, Mike Sergio, is Central Casting's idea of a New Yorker�a rock musician-actor-screenwriter. Sergio starts his parachute tale like this: "No kidding, there I was, PF-9... but I can't talk about it." To parachute into Shea Stadium, Sergio and his pilot played dodge 'em with jetliners taking off from nearby LaGuardia Airport. As a result, lawyers representing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sought "maximum sanctions" against the pair to set an example for the rest of the parachuting community. Most of all, the FAA wanted the pilot: If it could catch him, it could strip him of his license�and probably his livelihood�thus threatening the code of silence between jumpers and their pilots that makes bandit stunts possible. Sergio and most of his buddies were subpoenaed and examined under oath. When no one would break the code, the FAA played hardball. Sergio was jailed for contempt of court with a fine of $100 for each day he refused to talk. Meanwhile, his brother, David, a New York policeman, was dying of cancer. After three weeks, it became obvious that Sergio would never talk, and the FAA figured they had made their point, so Sergio was let go. David died six weeks later. When I met Sergio for the first time in February 1988, he still wasn't talking. But he gave me the name of his nemesis, a Yankee fan in the FAA named Loretta Alkalay, a lawyer who allowed me to read the transcripts of the hearings. Alkalay believes the FAA was very close to solving the mystery. It knew the identity of the plane, a 1964 Cessna 182, and where it had flown from, the Ranch Skydiving Club in Gardiner, N.Y. But Alkalay missed one big clue to finding the pilot: a PF-10 stunt in 1975 that helped launch the madman sport of BASE (buildings, antenna towers, spans and earth) jumping. The Ranch is about 80 miles north of New York City. It doesn't look like much. The runway is a narrow asphalt strip through a field of weeds and mud where jumpers set up tents each weekend. The "summer clubhouse" is a corrugated steel building left over from World War II. Apparently no work has been done on it since. There's a bulletin board on a wall of the clubhouse. On it is a snapshot of the torso of a man wearing a T-shirt that reads I FLEW SERGIO: THE WORLD SERIES 1986, but no photo of Sergio himself. I asked one of the members about Sergio's jump. At first he only shrugged, but when I continued to press him, he turned surprisingly hostile. Finally he pointed to a larger photo on the wall: a jumper poised on the edge of a tall building. "Find out who took this picture," he said and walked away. I wandered over to the "winter clubhouse," a dilapidated yellow school bus furnished with ancient couches and a kerosene heater. A tugboat crewman named Stryker said he planned to do some target practice while waiting for the wind to die down. Stryker was friendly enough, but since it didn't seem to be the time to risk provoking him with questions about Sergio, I asked about the club. "The cowboy days are over," he said. "Skydiving has become a yuppie sport." He pointed to the graffiti that someone had spray-painted onto the ceiling. It read: REMEMBER WHEN SEX WAS FUN AND SKYDIVING WAS DANGEROUS? Stryker muttered wistfully about his "hero," a man named Owen Quinn: "The first guy to parachute off the World Trade Center�or any building, for that matter. Pucker Factor 10. There's a picture of Quinn on top of the World Trade Center over there on the bulletin board," said Stryker, pointing to the shed. "Oh, really? Who took it?" "Mike Sergio. Quinn was sort of his guru. If you want to write about parachuting, you ought to talk to Quinn." Quinn, 48, is a plug of a man who wears his history in tattoos and scars. His work is heavy construction, pounding pilings along New York City's waterfront, and it seems he can't drive by a construction sight without waving to somebody. He has retired from jumping to spend more time with his wife, Roseann, and four children. When we met at his apartment in Queens, he was exultant both about a successful wild turkey hunt with his son and a victory in his 11-year battle to have a stop sign installed at a nearby intersection. To quiet the phone that seemed to ring constantly for his three daughters, he tossed the receiver into the clothes dryer. Then he mixed us tall glasses of Vino Rustico and cream soda with a twist of lemon and started to talk. Quinn was born in the Bronx. His father, Huey, was a sleepwalker. His mother, Anna, was chronically ill, and when he was three, his parents split up and left him in the care of the Catholic orphanage system in Queens. "The Sisters at the orphanage didn't want to be there either," he says. "They went crazy and tried to beat religion into us." Young Quinn fantasized about flying and jumping out of planes, but his nighttime dreams were not so pleasant. Like his father, he was claustrophobic and would roam and scream in his sleep. After some nine years of orphanages and foster homes, Quinn was rescued by his parents, who had reunited. He says he was not much of a student: He did not take well to Sacred Heart Middle School, but he was a runner with natural speed and a boxer that "nobody beat in the ring." Outside the ring, his fighting was less successful. When Quinn was 17, a judge gave him a choice of prison or the Army. He signed up for the airborne division, but a three-day pass stretched out to two weeks, a car was stolen, and Quinn landed in Elmira (N.Y.) Correctional Facility. From there he earned a transfer to an eight-by six-foot steel-doored cell at the maximum security prison at West Coxsackie, N.Y. He boxed and read during the day and at night roamed his cell in his sleep, screaming. Said Quinn, "I was young and bad. I wasn't a thief, I was a madman." Quinn was 20 when a friend of his father's went to the president of the Seafarers International Union in Brooklyn and obtained sailing papers for him. Quinn's first two assignments were crewing aboard munitions ships bound for Vietnam. His third trip out was on a boat supposedly carrying rubber and tin from Indonesia to Malaysia and back, but hidden inside the cargo was an arsenal of high-tech weapons, ammunition and electronics. A unit of the Malaysian army boarded the ship, found the weapons, and Quinn spent nearly two months under ship's arrest awaiting execution for smuggling arms. "No kidding, there I was in Malaysia with a machine gun in my face. PF-9.5," he says. Eventually he was released. Quinn was 23, on home leave, when he drove with some friends to a parachute school on Long Island. "It was the most terrifying thing in my life," he says. "But when I finally left the airplane, I felt I had total freedom." It was several years before Quinn could jump again, but when he did, he became obsessed. He caught on as a stunt jumper and a wing-walker for air shows. In 1969, when the Mets were in the NL Championship Series against Atlanta, Quinn planned a bandit jump into Shea Stadium, but the scheme failed. Three hours before he planned to make the jump, his pilot suddenly backed out. Quinn says that one of his most memorable moments�a turning point in his life�happened when a novice jumper sought his advice on packing a chute. "After all those years of being locked up and told what to do, this guy was asking me�he was trusting me with his life," Quinn says. Quinn became a jumpmaster and later went to West Point for intensive training to become an instructor. The man who had taught Quinn to jump took the same course...and failed. Quinn passed. It was then that he developed his first of many tenets as a skydiving guru: "If the student does not surpass the master, has not the master failed?" Sergio is eight years younger than Quinn. He can look like a tough construction hand or a rock musician or a soap opera star. He has played all three roles at various times, and it is sometimes hard to know which one you are dealing with. Sergio was born on East 122nd Street in Harlem, around the corner from where his father still runs the family waterproofing business. Like Quinn, Sergio had trouble in high school�all four of them. But Sergio says he was very lucky while growing up: He was arrested once when the police mistakenly took the asthma pills he must carry as something far more potent and far less legal. The night Sergio spent in jail persuaded him to "straighten out." In 1968 he was accepted at Queens College and set about studying to become an actor. Sergio first parachuted in 1971 when Pete the Greek, a roadie for the band in which Sergio sang, invited him to join an expedition to a parachute center called Ripcord in New Jersey. Says Sergio, "I volunteered to be the first to jump because I didn't want to have to watch the others. I was exploring the discipline of being scared." Eventually, Sergio started jumping at an upstate New York drop site called Shawanaga, the home of "sky gods" like Owen Quinn. There was something mystical about Quinn. He was full of aphorisms and odd quotes from the Bible. One night, when the jumpers began settling in their tents under a huge pine tree by the runway, Quinn came over and persuaded them to move. Shortly afterward, a bolt of lightning split the tree in half. Sergio had found a guru. It was in 1973, around the campfire at Shawanaga, that Quinn first began to talk about a pair of buildings that he was working on in Lower Manhattan: the twin-towered World Trade Center, which would rise 1,350 feet above the ground. Quinn had not yet parachuted from a building, but he had jumped from airplanes at altitudes lower than the height of the towers. Ray Maynard, a friend of Quinn's from Shawanaga, remembers the gleam in his eyes as he described how the jump could be done. Quinn estimated that he would have to fall about 50 stories to gather enough speed for the chute to open. Sergio got Quinn to promise to phone him when he was ready to jump. It was on a Thursday afternoon�July 21. 1975�that Sergio got the call. The North Tower was not yet completed, said Quinn, but the construction equipment was out of the plaza at the foot of the nearly completed towers. "We met at the World Trade Center the next afternoon at three o'clock," Sergio says. He came directly from his waterproofing job, wearing his hard hat and carrying a roll of roofing tar paper and an old paint can with his camera inside. Quinn had brought the parachute and his crash helmet to work in a duffel bag. Says Sergio, "We wanted to see if we could make it to the roof, so we left the parachute with Owen's cousin at the base and went into the building. The construction elevators were not working, and security was allowing construction workers through the main elevator to the 80th floor. From there we walked to the 110th carrying the roll of tar paper. A security guard blocked the access to the roof, but we convinced him to give us a tour. As the guard pointed out the sights below, we scouted the jump, and then headed back down to collect the parachute and the camera."' By the time they returned to the top it was after five and a new security guard was on duty. They told him they were from RCA to fix the roof aerial and were allowed on the roof by themselves. "Owen put on his chute and helmet and walked to the edge of the northwest corner." says Sergio. "He kept repeating: 'I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it.' " "Then reality started to sink in," says Sergio. He took his helmet back off, sat down and said. 'Should I really do it?" " The building, they had discovered, does not go straight down. A cornice covers the top floors, so you cannot see the marble steps below. To get clear of the cornice, Quinn would need a running start and would have to dive blindly, head first�"No kidding, PF-10!" Sergio had Quinn framed in his camera as he stood by the edge of the tower gathering his nerve. They waited what seemed like a long time. "Finally," says Sergio, "a cloud started coming over, and I yelled, 'Come on! I'm losing the light!' Quinn leaped over the side." "It was like jumping into a glass full of pencils," says Quinn. "All those other buildings coming up at me. And you know what I did? I laughed. Once I was over the side I was back in my element." Fifty floors down, level with the top of the old New York Telephone Co. Building, he pulled the rip cord. The chute popped open, spun him 180 degrees and...Wham! He smashed into the side of the tower, face-to-face with a very surprised secretary inside the building. A modern square parachute might have collapsed at that moment, but Quinn had decided to use an old Navy "conical" chute, and it bounced off in good shape. A fashion photographer and a couple of models were at work in the plaza. When Quinn spotted them, he yelled, "Take my picture." but they just scattered. Security people closed in on Quinn as he began stuffing his parachute back into the pack. He was handcuffed and taken to the First Precinct, where three cops brought him into an interrogation room and slammed the door shut. One of them handed him a pad of paper and a pen. He said, "I want you to sign this first one to my granddaughter...." After Quinn jumped, Sergio didn't know if he was alive or dead. After taking shots of Quinn's running jump, Sergio stuffed his camera back in the paint can, grabbed his bag and started to run down the stairs. The guard said, ''Wait. Where's your friend? Sign out." Sergio was so pumped that it took both hands to sign the book. "I started running down endless winding flights of stairs." says Sergio. "I heard a door slam above me and people running down, so I ducked into a bathroom and changed into a suit and tie. On the 65th floor, I got into the elevator. As I walked out the revolving doors, the police were coming in. I still didn't know what had happened to Owen." Sergio took his film to ABC News, and when the pictures appeared. Quinn phoned to ask if he could turn Sergio in. After all, the police knew someone was with Quinn on the building. Sergio agreed, and they ended up in a bar, along with the three detectives, swapping stories. After 13 court appearances, charges against them were finally dropped. Meanwhile Quinn had become one of the most famous jumpers in America. The lounge under construction on the 44th floor of the World Trade Center was named Skydive. A few years later, Shawanaga closed, and Quinn retired from jumping. Sergio stayed away from BASE jumping, but he competed internationally in the tamer forms of skydiving. He also worked at becoming an actor. In 1977 he quit construction for good and began a full-time show business career with a two-year stint on Broadway in the musical comedy I Love My Wife. In 1986, when the Mets were climbing toward the Series, he was a regular on the TV soap opera Loving. By then demonstration jumps into stadiums had become fairly common, but a bandit jump into the World Series remained the stuff of barroom fantasies. After the Mets held off the Astros in the 16th inning to win the National League pennant, the skydiving community, like everyone else in New York, caught World Series fever. Maynard planned a bandit jump into Shea for the opening game, but his pilot refused. Then, with the Mets two games down to Boston and looking tired, Sergio was part of a group of jumpers at Benson's, a bar in Gardiner, N.Y., that began plotting to make a jump of their own. On Monday, Oct. 20, when Met pitcher Ron Darling complained in a press conference at Fenway Park that the fans who had supported the team throughout the season were not in the stands because they had been replaced by the corporate expense account crowd, the jump seemed a matter of civic duty. "Sergio said he had a pilot and an aircraft but would not mention any details," says Maynard. 'The less anybody knew, the better off everyone would be." The sixth and seventh games of the Series were scheduled for Shea, and there was some argument about which game Sergio should jump into. When the Mets lost the fifth game, Sergio saw no choice. The Mets would need all the help they could get to make it to the seventh. Friday morning, the day before Game 6, Sergio went to a company that makes banners for parachutes, but the design he wanted would cost $300 and the company could not guarantee overnight delivery. On his way back home, he stopped at a Woolworth's and bought a twin-sized sheet and some spray paint and headed back to his apartment in Manhattan. There he painted the words GO METS on the sheet. Meanwhile the man who was to pilot the jump plane must have asked himself what he stood to gain from the stunt�which, at best, was nothing�and what he might lose, which could be his freedom and his livelihood. He called Sergio and said he was bowing out. Sergio got on the phone to find another pilot but came up with nothing. Finally he called Quinn. Yes. Quinn knew a man who could fly the mission�a pilot who owed him a debt dating back to 1969. If Sergio was completely serious, Quinn said, he would give the pilot a chance to "redeem himself." Said Quinn, "I really put the screws to the guy." On Saturday morning Sergio was at the Ranch early to connect the bed sheet to the rigging of his parachute and to try a couple of practice jumps to make sure the sheet would open. The official story was that Sergio and a friend had been hired to do a demonstration jump on Sunday for some Mets fans on Long Island, and it required an American flag flying from the parachute rigging. On Saturday evening, just before dusk, Carl Zatts, a pilot from the Ranch, flew a Cessna six miles south to a tiny airfield, Kobelt, which has a lighted runway. From there Sergio would take off for "Long Island.' " Zatts flew to Kobelt, left the keys and the radio headphones in the unlocked plane and went to Benson's to join other members of the Ranch gathered to watch Sergio come in on TV. Kobelt Airport was completely deserted when the real pilot arrived. He was joined by three jumpers. One of them backed out before he got in the plane. After a slight delay Sergio and a man with an American flag got in. To protect the pilot, the plan was to spend as little time in the air as possible. From Kobelt they flew directly toward Shea Stadium at full throttle�about 140 miles per hour�climbing steadily before leveling off below a deck of broken clouds at 10,000 feet. Most airplanes have a transponder, which automatically reports the plane's location and identity to air traffic control, but this Cessna 182 was flying "dark," without its transponder or its running lights turned on. The three men listened to the Mets pre-game show on the radio. They also monitored the LaGuardia air traffic control. It was a beautiful night under the clouds, with unlimited visibility. Shea's lights reflected against the clouds and the stadium itself could be picked out from almost 60 miles away. Says Sergio, "If you monitor the frequency of the Tower Control Area [TCA] and have radar, you can know more about the airspace than they do." Sergio says La-Guardia Runway 31, the one that sends planes almost directly over Shea, was closed that night. He also says that air traffic was being diverted elsewhere because of the presence of the Goodyear Blimp over Shea. The FAA says otherwise: Two airliners were in the vicinity of Shea within two minutes of Sergio's flight. As Sergio and his companions flew toward the stadium, a problem suddenly appeared. They planned to be in jump position just before the end of the pregame show so they would sail into the stadium with their own flag and banner during the national anthem. But last-minute preparations had cost them some time before takeoff and they were flying into a headwind. They weren't going to make it during the anthem; instead they were going to drop into the first inning. As they listened to the end of the pregame show, the man with the flag decided not to jump. Sergio would go it alone. About six miles away from Shea, the pilot kicked the right rudder hard, banking the Cessna so the gull-wing door fell open in the plane's shadow. Sergio grabbed the wing strut and stuck his head out to track their speed and direction along the ground. He signaled the pilot. A little more than three miles away, the plane was lined up with Shea. It was Sergio's day�made possible by the favor owed to Quinn�and there was no turning back. Normally a plane's engines are throttled back before a jumper leaves, but Sergio had a couple of miles to fly to reach Shea and he needed all the momentum possible. He would have to leave the plane while it was at full throttle. Sergio lunged back and forth in the open doorway, like a downhill skier in the starting gate. On the third lunge, he plunged out of the aircraft into the night. Every movement in free-fall is expended against a wall of air pushing the jumper at 120 miles per hour. The roar is deafening. Even under goggles one's eyeballs jiggle. Sergio arched his back, pointed his toes and brought his arms to his sides, like a sweptwing fighter plane. He fell for about 50 seconds, a mile down and about three quarters of a mile toward Shea. At 4.000 feet, he pulled his rip cord. Meshed in the rigging of a parachute is a "slider," a device that keeps the canopy from opening too fast. For an instant the slider jammed�it was hung up on the rope to the banner�but then it slipped free, the chute opened, and the bed sheet unfurled. "Shea under the lights was the most beautiful sight imaginable, like a crystal-green pool," says Sergio. He knew he had about four minutes under the parachute canopy before he hit the ground. Within a couple of minutes he was directly over the stadium lights, spiraling down. He could see that the Red Sox were still at bat, and he tried to locate the ball so he could decide whether to land on the field or turn away to the parking lot. "Then [pitcher Bob] Ojeda threw the ball to [Gary] Carter." Sergio says. "Carter dropped it for a second. I could see the play was dead, and I turned into the stadium. I heard a roar. I was confused because there was no play going on, and then I realized the noise was for me. I wanted to land on home plate, but Carter and the umpire were not moving, so I cut toward the first base line. The fans were on their feet screaming�all those smiling faces." As the police escorted Sergio off the field, Ron Darling slapped him a high five. By the time Sergio touched down, the Cessna was about 10 miles away. By the time anyone thought to call the FAA, the plane was more than 20 miles away. Over Kobelt the pilot banked out of his approach pattern to check for police, then landed. Quickly he shut down the plane and then drove away in a car. At this point, the FAA was tracing another small plane that had inadvertently crossed through air traffic control. FAA agents would not get to Gardiner until the trail was cold�hours after the Mets had won Game 6 with the help of Bill Buckner's 10th-inning error that allowed New York to overcome Boston's 5-3 lead. Quinn was at a wedding on Long Island when his friend parachuted into Shea. He had promised the bride and groom a special present. Quinn says he "was not at all surprised" when it was delivered. "No kidding, there he was." http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1068903/1/index.htm

Perpetual Pedro thrown into fire in return By Adam Rubin | ESPNNewYork.com NEW YORK -- Pedro Feliciano was surprised to be inserted into a tie game in the ninth inning with the potential go-ahead run at third base in his first major league action in three seasons, especially after arriving at the stadium mid-game. Feliciano nonetheless got the job done, coaxing an inning-ending groundout from lefty-hitting Alex Gordon, and the Mets went on to beat the Kansas City Royals, 4-2, in 11 innings. Feliciano was particularly excited to return to the majors with the organization with which he emerged as one of the premier lefty specialists in baseball. He was promoted from Triple-A Las Vegas on Friday after Josh Edgin landed on the disabled list with a fractured rib. After a series of health issues, Pedro Feliciano returned to the majors for the first time in three seasons Friday. "Back in my house," Feliciano said Saturday morning about Citi Field, after a day to reflect. "When I got that call yesterday morning in Nashville with Las Vegas, my heart started beating." There have been a ton of obstacles for Feliciano to clear since he last appeared with the Mets in 2010 and set a franchise record with 92 relief appearances. He never pitched in the majors during two seasons with the Yankees while collecting a combined $8 million. He underwent shoulder surgery on his left rotator cuff on Sept. 8, 2011. Poised to return late the following season, he suffered an ankle sprain while rehabbing in the minors and never wore pinstripes in the majors. Feliciano then signed a minor league deal with the Mets last offseason, but had a heart issue flagged on his preseason physical and was idled for part of spring training. Once he was cleared to pitch again, Feliciano developed a severe case of food poisoning known as ciguatera from fish served by his mother during an emergency trip to Puerto Rico because his son had been hospitalized. "Ten at night ate fish. At midnight I was almost dying," Feliciano said. Feliciano was prescribed pills, but ended up back in an emergency room in Port St. Lucie after rejoining the Florida State League team. The issue took about six weeks to get out of his system. "Crazy stuff. Nasty," Feliciano said, who said his body repeatedly got tingles and itchy. His body also would burn if he touched something cold. The 36-year-old southpaw said he never lost his resolve to return to the majors. "Like Mariano [Rivera] said when he tore the ACL, 'I'm not going to retire until I get back,'" Feliciano said. http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/mets/post/_/id/74470/perpetual-pedro-thrown-into-fire-in-return

With last night's walk-off win, the Mets are now practically twice as likely to make the playoffs. Odds: 1.9% http://espn.go.com/mlb/standings

Mets place David Wright on 15-day disabled list with right hamstring strain

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9529179/the-legacy-harry-nilsson For all you Nilsson heads, Grantland covers Harry's career in a lengthy piece: Deconstructing Harry. Lotsa footnotes, links and videos. It comes on the heels of last month's releases of a Nilsson biography and a comprehensive box set of virtually every Nilsson recording.

Zvon wrote: I've been dicking around with graphics during the game. += Hows that look? Nice work. But in correcting one Staub snafu, you created another.

Mets face Royals without Parnell, Edgin in bullpen. Feliciano brought up from Triple-A The Washington Post scoops NY media. Nobody scoops Prince.

"Remember when that stray cat ran in front of the Cubs dugout"? "That was so cool".

Catching up with Michael Sergio, Parachute Man of Game 6. Opening Day � An Interview with 1986 Shea Jumper Mike Sergio We go off topic today because it�s opening day, when hope springs eternal and your hometown team has yet to lose a game. And to celebrate, I bring you a baseball interview celebrating one of the most memorable World Series the sport has ever seen. This is the 25th anniversary season of the 1986 Mets v. Red Sox series. And I was there in Shea Stadium for all four of the home games, having used some creative means of getting inside, since most of the tickets went corporate. (The statute of limitations has passed, thankfully, on my creative means, and Shea is no more.) And it was Game 6 of that series that will live on in the minds of sports fans. Not only because the Red Sox were up by two in the 10th inning and just one measly out away from ridding themselves of the Curse of the Bambino..and the Mets rallied�and a legendary at bat by Mookie Wilson that included a game-tying wild pitch by Bob Stanley that skipped past Rich Gedman, and a game-ending error by Bill Buckner when Wilson�s squibbler went through his legs. No, the game was memorable for something else as well. For Mike Sergio drifting down out of the Queens night sky with a Go Mets banner strung from his rigging that turned him into an instant cultural icon. And to celebrate the 25th anniverary of that season, I decided to interview Sergio, now an actor and filmmaker (and an Emmy winner) (whose jump was profiled at length in this 1989 Sports Illustrated article) 1. You landed on the field in the first inning of Game 6 of the �86 series, and were promptly arrested. So does that mean you were in custody when Mookie Wilson had his legendary at bat in the bottom of the 10th and the Mets came from behind to beat the Red Sox? How did you feel about missing the game? My brother David Sergio (sadly he passed away from cancer just after I was released from prison) was a NYPD police officer and in the vicinity of Shea Stadium at the time of my jump. Needless to say when he showed up at the local precinct the atmosphere turned pretty festive. I was really concerned that if the Mets lost the game the media, and worst of all the Met fans, would instantly blame me and then I�d have to move out of NYC� and believe me I really wasn�t looking forward to living on a farm in Canada� not that there�s anything wrong with Canada (ok, let�s just leave the Toronto Blue Jays out of this discussion). So, with the baseball gods smiling on me, a TV suddenly appeared and I was able to watch the end of the game. At the top of the 10th inning I was already mentally planning how much winter clothing I should pack for my trip north but then the beautiful, marvelous and amazing Mets went to work� and what a job they did. Where I was, and I can�t say too much about where I was, everybody went absolutely wild. So in my mind I quickly unpacked my winter clothes and went to work signing autographs. Like Rick in Casablanca, all I could think was �of all the games, in all the towns, in all the world, I picked this one to jump into�� yahooo!!! 2. Were you still in custody for Game 7? Did they let you watch the Mets win the Series? The next morning Judge Alan Beldock released me on my own recognizance and ordered a court hearing. The Judge said to me �I�m a Mets season-ticketholder, I was there when it happened. I�m still trying to figure where you came from.� So yes I was out and free and able to watch game 7� and I was trilled to see fans in the bleachers holding up signs like �send in Sergio.� 3. Has there ever been a moment in your life when you regretted the jump? Not a single time� not for a single moment� not even when I was in jail and I honestly thought I was going to have to do at least 18 months on the contempt of court charge� not even then. Obviously it was a more innocent time, but in my heart I knew that what I did, I did for fun and to show support for our New York Mets. So whatever was to come I was just going to take it and then move on. I never thought it would be any big deal and I was really amazed at how much of an event it became. 4. In the 25 years since that stunt, did you pull off any others? Or did you simply quit while you were ahead? STUNT!!!!! Eric please, as a sensitive artist I prefer to call what I did �my performance art�� and yeah, I quit while I was ahead. I couldn�t see myself, in my waining years, jumping into country fairs for 50 bucks and a ride on the Giant Ferris Wheel. But actually that doesn�t really seem all that bad right now� hummm? 5. Did you lose any acting/film jobs as a result of the stunt? Or gain any? Actually I never used the event to try and capitalize off of� and I was always very conscientious about keeping my jumping separate from my artistic life (although I did do one skydiving Wendy�s commercial which I think I booked before the Shea jump anyway?). The networks put out feelers about doing a film but I turned everything down. At the time I was acting on a soap (Loving), I was in numerous commercials, I was singing almost every night at the NY Improv, I had recently been in a Broadway play for 2 years (I Love My Wife), I had sold a screenplay that actually got made (Simple Justice) and I was starting a directing career that has turned into something wonderful for me (I�ve won an Emmy for Directing and numerous awards for my film & theatrical distribution company CAVU Pictures). But now, 25 years later, some very creative people have approached me about doing both a book and a film about the event, but like everything in the film business, it would be dependent upon them raising the funds to do it. But honestly, at this point in my life I think it would be great fun� so, we�ll see what happens. 6. Do strangers ever recognize you (or your name)? And if so, is it for your Shea jump or your film work? Wow� this just happened� I was in Trader Joe�s on 6th Avenue about 2 weeks ago and I�m pushing a shopping cart down the vegan isle when a young guy who�s pushing his cart in the opposite direction looks up and with a questioning surprise on his face points at me and says� �Mike Sergio�? So I figured he�s a crew guy who I must have hired on one project or another and I say �yeah, that�s me�. He goes absolutely nuts� I mean he is really happy to see me and he says �Mike Sergio from the 1986 World Series�? Now I�m stunned because this guy doesn�t look like he was even born when I did the jump� and he holds up a magazine section that one of the dailies had just done about the Mets so now I�m floored. Over the years my hair has sprouted an age appropriate amount of gray and I have definitely become gravity enhanced� so I say to the guy �how did you recognize me� and he says back �because your face looks exactly the same�. OK, so I took that compliment and just jumped into the moment. I signed his Trader Joe�s produce flyer, or it might have been a notebook that he had� who can remember with all the excitement. But then reality starts to set in and I said to him �come on� are you from the government�� but he doesn�t skip a beat and he says that his girlfriend is in college and she�s has this big Mets sports blog and he instantly called her� so yeah� I still get recognized. 7. When you failed to cough up the name of the pilot � who violated a few aviation rules when he dropped you from the sky so close to LaGuardia Airport � you were held in contempt of court and jailed for three weeks. The judge finally let you go when he realized you weren�t going to talk. Is there any chance that the pilot, assuming he is still alive, will release you from your vow of silence? And if so, is that day today? Like I said� (cue the heavy New York accent)� �I�m just glad I had my parachute on when I fell out of the bleachers� (cut� one more time with feeling please). 8. In 2006 Jeb Corliss tried to BASE jump off the Empire State Building, apparently with the objective of landing in the street. He was arrested on the observation deck, and then sued for emotional distress. He was convicted of reckless endangerment and lost his civil suit. I thought it was a spectacularly stupid stunt due to the risk of stunned drivers in midtown Manhattan and pedestrians being distracted. As a stunt junkie yourself � and someone who assisted Owen Quinn in being first person to BASE jump off the World Trade Center � how did you feel about it? STUNT JUNKIE!!!!! Eric please� for the last time� I prefer to call myself a �performance art junkie�!!! Now this is a bit of a dicey question for me, and being of the legal persuasion I know you�ll appreciate my situation so� I�m lawyering up and taking the 5th. 9. What�s the most common question you get asked about the stunt? STUNT!!!� AGAIN WITH THE STUNT!!!! That�s it� no answer for you� next!!! 10. Have the Mets invited you down to participate in this year�s 25th celebration? Actually while the players were always really supportive of me the Mets organization itself has not been. I can understand their position but you would think a PR person would see the value of giving a �walk on� to the guy who parachuted into the 1986 World Series�. you know to fire up the crowds! In fact a couple of years ago they invited a parachutist to jump into the stadium and people wrote that it was me jumping in again. Wow� now I�m a franchise and get credit for jumps I don�t even do. (Hey can I get them on �Performance Art Infringement�?) Last year I even went down to the Mets open call for singers (and I can sing!!!) to try out for one of 5 slots to sing the National Anthem at Shea� but I literally got a �Mr. Sergio, don�t call us, we�ll call you� message. http://www.newyorkpersonalinjuryattorneyblog.com/2011/03/opening-day-an-interview-with-shea-jumper-mike-sergio.html

Mets odds of making the playoffs, according to ESPN, are now almost under 1%. http://espn.go.com/mlb/standings

In positive news, [Edgin's injury] means the return of Pedro Feliciano Come back, Pedro. Your flirtation with the MFY's is forgiven. Pedro needs to maintain velo to return NEW YORK -- Pedro Feliciano has tossed 6 2/3 scoreless innings spanning seven appearances with Double-A Binghamton. And opponents are hitting only .136 against him. Brad Barr/USA TODAY SportsPedro Feliciano is pitching for Double-A Binghamton. So what is the hold-up in Feliciano returning to the majors? Terry Collins said Feliciano has not yet demonstrated he can maintain his velocity when he works on consecutive nights in the minors. And given his role with the Mets would be coming in to face one lefty batter, then repeating that task the next day and maybe the day after that without rest, Feliciano needs to show more resilience before returning to the majors. A team insider recently said Feliciano's velocity has been comparable to spring training -- sitting in the 82-83 mph range. "There will be days when his velocity is good," Collins said. "And the next day it's down. One of the things obviously here is because of who he is and his background ... if you pitch him tonight, you're probably not going to give him tomorrow off. If he gets somebody out tonight, he may have to get Eric Chavez out tomorrow. So I've got to make sure his velocity stays a little consistent." Feliciano has not appeared in the majors since 2010, when he set a franchise record with 92 relief appearances with the Mets. Still, asked if Feliciano might make it to Citi Field in the second half, Collins said: "Absolutely, there's a chance we'll see him." http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/mets/post/_/id/71517/perpetual-pedro-needs-to-maintain-velo-to-return

Josh Edgin: Edgin lands on DL with stress fracture in rib Bobby Parnell has neck issue Despite sore hamstring, Wright in lineup

Any Met ever hit a grand slam and steal a base in the same game? 1986-10-05 Darryl Strawberry 1987-08-01 Howard Johnson 1993-08-05 Jeromy Burnitz 2003-06-15 Jos� Reyes Straw's and Reyes's game are Happiest Recaps, though not necessarily for the GS-SB combo (well, maybe a little for Jose). Grote in that power/speed club, albeit in a strange uniform. Amazin'! That single game performance of Grote's has got to be one of the most statistically improbable games ever. Grote played in 16 seasons and accumulated almost 5,000 PA's (4,844). For his career, he stole 15 bases and homered just 39 times -- and I doubt that more than three of his HR's, if even that many, were grand slams. Here's how Grote stacks up in lifetime HR's and SB's against the four Mets that also stole a base and hit a grand slam in the same game: HR's Strawberry - 335 Burnitz - 315 Hojo - 228 Reyes - 98 Grote - 39 SB's Reyes - 421 Hojo = 231 Strawberry - 221 Burnitz - 74 Grote - 15 Grote's lifetime HR's and SB's, combined, add up to 54. 54 would still place last on any of the above two lists.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: G-Fafif wrote: Jerry enjoyed one out-of-nowhere offensive explosion a little before the strike. Did you notice that Grote even stole a base in that game? Any Met ever hit a grand slam and steal a base in the same game?

G-Fafif wrote: Jerry enjoyed one out-of-nowhere offensive explosion a little before the strike. Did you notice that Grote even stole a base in that game?

Edgy MD wrote: Staring at the end of the tunnel, he somehow got a call from the playoff bound Dodgers, who liked the Grote-ness he brought to the 1978-1979 teams. He only got into two games, but I bet he was allowed to travel with the team in the post-season, catching guys in the bullpen. Heck, maybe he was on the post-season roster, as teams tended to carry three catchers in the post-season back then. Anyhow, he went out a champ. Maybe even got a post-season share. And more good for him if he got a WS ring for beating the MFY's.

Kong76 wrote: I have no recollection of Grote being a Royal ... not that my recollection skills can be trusted anymore. Me neither. Apparently, Grote came out of retirement in 1981 after missing the last two seasons, to play for the Royals for a few weeks. Before his Royals stint, he last played for the Dodgers in 1978. The Grote Royals card is not a real Topps card. It's a faux 1981 DIY I found on the web. Some other Grote DIY's 1977 Mets card 1982 Dodgers card, front and back

Did I tell you that there's $320M worth of Sterling-Wilpon debt due soon? Because I'll tell you again in case you didn't remember it the first 682 times I wrote it. Check out the bold, italicized text. You think Megdal reads this forum? We already noted that the Mets are league average at best at every position but 3B and that who cares what the outfield did last month: it's what they might do going forward that matters. Another year in shackles for the Mets general manager By Howard Megdal Sandy Alderson. SNY The July 31, 4 p.m. non-waiver trade deadline for Major League Baseball came and went, with a familiar result for the Mets: the buzz about potentially adding talent yielded nothing at all. This result will have an impact on the team's 2014 fortunes, and on the possibility that the astute front office team, led by Sandy Alderson, remains in place. Way back on May 27, Alderson talked up the possibility that the Mets would add talent in the summer period of baseball activity, with a Mets source pointing out, rightly, that "it�s hard to build an entire outfield in one offseason.� A few weeks later, on June 15, Alderson said this: "I do believe that over the next six months or so we will be in position to make some significant acquisitions, whether it's through free agency or trade. We're certainly looking forward to that possibility." Taking Alderson at his word, that means most of those six months, June 15-December 15, are now up. The Mets didn't add anyone through July 31, and the difficulty of getting a high-performing player through waivers takes us through the end of the season, then the playoffs, which run until the end of October. It'll be November before activity can resume, and Alderson will have one offseason to build what the Mets had feared was impossible to build in that time, an outfield. And that's something worth remembering: a talented front office, with a real, static budget at its disposal, can't just will a championship team into being. It's hard under the best of circumstances, when you don't have to fight internal battles just to make marginal upgrades. The Mets, to add payroll this winter, need to not only outbid 29 other teams for their preferred players, but do so while ownership somehow convinces JPMorgan Chase to defer a $320 million loan due against the team, and at the same time, let new spending on the team jump ahead of it in the credit line. So it's no wonder Alderson and his crew are getting tired of this game. The outfield isn't the only area in need of building. There's shortstop, where Ruben Tejada is marooned in Triple-A until, apparently, September. (Omar Quintanilla is not a long-term answer for them at the position.) Nor does it address first base, where Ike Davis, after returning from Las Vegas, is slugging a meager .322 in his first 73 plate appearances. But about that outfield, which Alderson was only recently telling fatalistic jokes about. "We've taken what seemed to be a fairly barren outfield at the beginning of the season and turned it over the last month into maybe the most productive outfield in baseball," Alderson said by way of explaining his inactivity on Wednesday. "So some positive things have happened. And we want to let that play out." Now look: the outfield has been better. But "maybe the most productive outfield in baseball?" Primary left fielder Eric Young Jr. and now-primary center fielder Juan Lagares have clearly been much better than what they replaced, and have been vital to the team's recent respectable form, and are at even league average O.P.S. at their positions in the National League this season. But unless we are using Lake Wobegon math, that's not the most productive outfield in baseball. Moreover, the concern isn't so much how they performed over the last month, but what it means heading into 2014. Alderson is much too smart to believe Eric Young, the 28-year-old with the 77 O.P.S.+ and below-average fielding, is as good as it gets. The approach-conscious Alderson and his staff will also be well aware that Lagares' solid output, more than sufficient given his elite fielding in center field, has come despite just five unintentional walks in his first 195 plate appearances, and a likely unsustainable .358 batting average on balls in play (.476 over these supposedly transformative last 28 days). The backup plan, if and when they cool off, are the same outfield options as before. Right field, meanwhile, was a major storyline of deadline day. The Mets have come a long way from Alderson's January interview, when he struggled, with good reason, to name which if his castoffs would start at the position. Now, the Mets have Marlon Byrd in right, and Byrd has been terrific for the Mets, second only to David Wright with a 133 O.P.S.+, leading the team in home runs and R.B.I. Still, Byrd is 35, and he's never before approached that level of production, even in what are typically a player's prime years. He's a free agent after the season, leaving the Mets with the unenviable options of offering him a qualifying offer expected to be more than $13 million for 2014, hoping he's found a new level of talent at this point in his career, or at least getting a draft pick as compensation if Byrd turned that offer down and signed elsewhere. (Reality: he almost certainly wouldn't.) Alternatively, they'll lose him for nothing. Even if you accept that keeping Byrd will improve attendance or provide the Mets with slightly more 2013 revenue, it would seem to be precisely within the purview of Jeff Wilpon's declaration last month that ownership was "ready to invest" to take that minor revenue hit to add to the 2014 talent base. But despite teams offering the Mets what Joel Sherman labeled interested teams' 10th-to-15th-best prospects, the Mets elected to hold on to Byrd, a player who gives them no on-field value after the next 57 games. A cursory glance at some 2010 Baseball America prospect lists yielded players within that range like Nolan Arenado of the Rockies, who forced his way to the major leagues earlier this year and is starting at third base, and Jason Kipnis of the Indians, who the Mets recently saw at Citi Field, in the All-Star Game. Sure, there were prospects in that range who missed, which is the nature of prospects. But when the best position player prospects the Mets have at or above Double-A are catcher Travis d'Arnaud, who missed much of the season with a broken foot, Wilmer Flores, a natural third baseman blocked by David Wright, and Cesar Puello, who looks likely to be suspended in the Biogenesis probe any minute now, adding some decent position prospects to come up with some answers at positions of need seems like more of an imperative than a luxury, cast aside for a slightly better 2013 finish. (At least it appears d'Arnaud, now back playing for Double-A Binghamton, may get the chance to play in New York, and show what he can do, as soon as John Buck's wife goes into labor.) And naturally, had the Mets really been concerned about being competitive in 2013, they could have spent more than $5 million, total, on a pair of major league free agents at the very end of last offseason. That was a critical offseason, too, according to Alderson, who expressed the need last August to add "an infusion of players, productive players," and then, constrained by ownership's financial bind, did nothing of the sort. The owners, of course, explained that that only happened because Alderson has chosen not to spend money to improve the team, which isn't something Mets decision-makers privately even pretend is true. That moment when last offseason went from one about preaching patience to a missed opportunity happened in the blink of an eye, if you followed the official line. So did this summer window. And so more time goes by, the Mets hiding behind some plausible deniability (sure, had they been at liberty to add significantly to payroll, trades for productive hitters aren't so easy to negotiate anyhow), and some not-so-plausible ("maybe the most productive outfield in baseball," or Fred Wilpon saying, to the puzzlement and anger of Alderson's camp, that "we haven't turned him down on anything"). We're 16 months out from Wilpon and his partners settling the litigation against them brought by the trustee for the Bernie Madoff victims, a settlement brought because the trustee determined, after a full examination of Wilpon's finances, that he and his partners were circling the drain financially, and couldn't pay the trustee even the pre-trial award of $83.3 million. That supposedly freeing moment has led to more of the same. Alderson has been steadily stockpiling pitching prospects and rebuilding the farm system, but without the ability to supplement by adding major league talent, his task of making the Mets into major-league contenders is an enormously difficult one. Back in the heady days of June, when the public statements of Mets management made it sound like a big-ticket acquisition, or even, you know, an acquisition of any kind was imminent, Alderson, who is only signed through 2014, said this to Newsday's David Lennon: "Was 2014 always a target year? Yeah," Alderson said. "It should be an important year for us." He surely meant it. http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/sports/2013/08/8532472/another-year-shackles-mets-general-manager?top-featured-2

Perhaps he should stop worrying about what not to wear.