batmagadanleadoff

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Where do the Topps proofs come from? They were auctioned on ebay last year.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Where do the Topps proofs come from? The Topps [crossout]ostrich[/crossout] stork.

Here's another example --- Casey Stengel's 1962 Topps card, and proof:

Uniwatch was having a discussion about the old Hostess baseball cards that were on the backs of Twinkies boxes, and I was reminded of this Rusty Staub disaster. Among the flaws: 1) They left the Expos logo on the jersey 2) They painted on only some of the pinstripes. 3) They used a photo that was more than three years old, as this is from 1975. I can only guess that the artists were on a major sugar buzz from eating too many Ring Dings and was distracted. Or, they just didn't give a damn. I'm guessing that Hostess licensed their pictures from Topps and that the screwup with the Expos "elb" logo and pinstriping was not an artist's oversight, but that the photo was supposed to be cropped higher up, at around Staub's neck and through the shoulder line. I've seen several proofs of old Topps cards where the cap or helmet was airbrushed to reflect the player's brand new team. In those proofs, the jersey top (former team) was left unaltered. The final card was cropped above the jersey. Comparing the 1974 Topps Bob Miller card with its' Topps proof (below) illustrates why I thought that the Hostess Staub image was intended to be cropped, rather than airbrushed further.

Pitcher and Catchers, Spring 1962 style: Jay Hook, Hobie Landrith, Chris Cannizzaro and Joe Ginsberg -- February, 1962

MFS62 wrote: A statue of a batter is probably easier than a pitcher. You can show a batter in his stance. What position should a pitcher be in? His windup?

I don't see how that calendar trivia question is "blaming" Beltran for anything.

I'm down with an upgrade, but Luis Castillo is making SIX MILLION DOLLARS this year. I know it's play money to us, but it's not. We can't realistically expect Fred to just eat that money. I'd bet they took a look to see what they could get, and couldn't find anything reasonable. So Luis it is; sure, there are better second basemen out there, but I think we're stuck with him. Two words: sunk cost. To a team with the revenue streams and current budget situation* that the Mets have, 6 million should be chump change. A team that was willing to offer 5 million to Molina or 15-16 million (over 2 years!) to Pineiro but isn't willing to do 3-5 million for a virtual sure-shot upgrade... FOR A ONE YEAR COMMITMENT, no less... well, that team is either kinda FOS, or its player-evaluation system is brokedown. I. Totally. Agree. If the Mets keep Castillo, it should only be because management believes that he'll be effective, and to hell with his his guaranteed money.

seawolf17 wrote: I'm down with an upgrade, but Luis Castillo is making SIX MILLION DOLLARS this year. I know it's play money to us, but it's not. We can't realistically expect Fred to just eat that money. I'd love to see Fred literally eat six million dollars. One penny at a time.

In the final analysis, the Mets made the right move by not re-signing Ray Knight after their championship season. Knight sucked the rest of the way and retired two years later, after the 1988 season. Nineteen eighty-six turned out to be Knight's last effective season. Hojo's first season as an everyday player and Knight's replacement was an excellent one: 1987 was Hojo's first of three 30-30's. That Davey Johnson's Mets never returned to the WS had nothing to do with the team's unwillingness to retain Knight or to replace him with Hojo.

Rob Neyer more than implies that a Tom Seaver statue should've already been erected at CF. Excerpt: "Of the 30 franchises, only 20 feature statues depicting actual players. And the Orioles' only statue is Babe Ruth, who didn't actually play for the franchise (of course the Babe was born in Baltimore and did play for the minor-league Orioles in 1914). Four stadiums have generic sort of players, with the Rockies sporting the best of those.... So six teams -- the Rays, Twins, A's, Mets, Marlins, and Dodgers -- don't have statues .... With that in mind, let's run through the other candidates for the statue-less ballparks.... Here are my top candidates, after just a bit of research: Orioles - Cal Ripken (why hasn't this happened already?) Mets - Tom Seaver (ditto) Twins - Kirby Puckett, Rod Carew, and someday probably Joe Mauer Dodgers - Sandy Koufax, Sandy Koufax, and Sandy Koufax Rockies - Todd Helton Blue Jays - Dave Stieb (yeah, it's a stretch) Rays - Carl Crawford if they lock him up (and Evan Longoria if they don't) Marlins - Hanley Ramirez if they lock him up Athletics - Rickey and Reggie both candidates, but played a lot for other teams Angels - Garret Anderson? Tim Salmon?? Brian Downing??? Diamondbacks - Randy Johnson, but only if they're desperate " http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/2264/who-deserves-to-be-bronzed

I'm also a sport. I'll take the Mets winning more than 70 games. My favorite charity is me.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Adding to the ugliness of the scorebaord was that the ads themselves looked terrible, particularly the aprielle equipment one. I'm not sure who's to blame for how ugly those ads were but if it were my park I'd send that design back to the agency and ask them to clean it up some. otoh, 2009 was probably the worst year in advertising history. There's no way to make a scoreboard that's only 30 or 40% scoreboard and 60% or 70% advertising look right.

They did this part right at Target - Wish the Mets had something Metly like that in the outfield. They should have taken the skyline from Shea and put it atop the new scoreboard rather than on top of the Shake Shack. That Twins outfield display is a thing of beauty. By comparison, I think that the Citi Field scoreboard is hideous. Is there another main scoreboard in MLB with a worse info to advertising ratio than the one the Wilpons authorized? It reminds me of the recent Mets yearbooks and programs: they're 50% thicker but with 45 % more advertising. Don't get me started on the right field CF scoreboard.

Allen Barra is neither a Met hater nor a hack. From the Village Voice: Jockbeat Mets Doctors Doing a Heckuva Job, Apparently By Allen Barra, Tuesday, Feb. 2 2010 @ 2:10PM ?As if we didn't know by now, something is wrong -- drastically wrong -- with the Mets front office and the way they're handling their players. All the fuss over Carlos Beltrán's surgery and management's indignation over not being informed might have been written off as a failure to communicate. But the current travesty involving reliever J.J. Putz can't be swept under the tarp. According to John Harper in today's Daily News, Putz says, "It was a mess from the beginning ... I never really had a physical with the Mets, I had the bone spur [elbow], and it never got checked out by any other doctors until I got to spring training, and the spring training physical is kind of a formality...It [the bone spur] was bugging me through April, and in May I got an injection. It just got to the point where I couldn't pitch.'" Here's the capper: Putz now regrets allowing the Mets brass to talk him into pitching with a bone spur, which eventually required surgery anyway. "[i learned] that it's my career, and when you know something doesn't feel right, and they want to take little sidesteps to do something and just wait and wait and wait, you've got to get it taken care of instead of trying to prolong the inevitable." Putz learned what Carlos Beltran already knew and what every professional athlete should know: it's always "my career" and it's always the athlete's responsibility to consult a personal physician and not allow the team to influence that decision. Awareness of this fact dates at least as far back as 1995 when Red Sox player Marty Barrett won a $1.7 million malpractice suit against Red Sox team physician (and part owner) Arthur Pappas. Pappas misdiagnosed Barrett's knee injury and gave him the wrong surgery which, Barrett successfully contended, brought his career to a premature end. Pappas's dual roles as team physician and owner, Barrett's lawyers argued, constituted a conflict of interest. In point of fact, though, Pappas's role as part owner of the franchise had nothing to do with it: What Barrett should have understood (and his agent should have told him) from the outset is that in any and all situations a team physician is likely to make a medical decision that is most beneficial to the team -- and that usually means getting the player back in the lineup as quickly as possible rather than looking at the long-term picture. And in the era of free agency, the player might not be around long enough to make it worth the team's while to consider the long-term picture. Note to the Players Association: Until the Beltran and Putz situations came up, it's been years since the question of conflict-of-interest surgery has been an issue. Maybe the players need to be reeducated on what constitutes their own best interests. http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/02/mets.php

The S-Trib's Joe Christensen says a basic framework is in place... but WCCO jumps all in and affirms that Joe Mauer's going to be a Twin until he's eligible for the presidency. Yes, but can we still trade for him? This would be unexpected. The Twins are one of baseball's three or four poorest teams: they have less money to work with than Billy Beane's Oakland A's. One would expect that Mauer would go the way of Santana and Carew.

I'd put Jane in the Mets HOF if it was up to me. How come the press didn't mention that Jane was Ruth Buzzi's half-sister?

I would eat 7,000 calories a day if only I could.