batmagadanleadoff

Yeah, that was the game that, sadly, drove Mora out of town. I remember it well, along with most of Valentine's quotes, supportive of Mora and rightfully critical (in a veiled sort of way) of the craptapulously overhyped stinkmeister, Rey Ordonez. BASEBALL; Mora's Misplayed Grounder Leads to Boston Rally in 9th By TYLER KEPNER Published: Friday, July 14, 2000 There was nothing unusual about it, Melvin Mora insisted. The Mets shortstop said he should have turned a game-ending double play tonight against the Boston Red Sox on Jose Offerman's hard-hit bouncer in the ninth inning. But Mora rushed himself, took his eye off the ball as the pinch-runner Manny Alexander approached second, and bobbled the grounder. Armando Benitez, who was pitching, counseled Mora, telling him not to worry about it. Mora told Benitez he was fine, and eager for another chance. ''That's what I think when I make an error,'' Mora said. ''Give me another one and I'm going to turn it.'' The opportunity never came. Jeff Frye flied to center for the second out of the ninth, and a 1-2 pitch to Brian Daubach just missed being called a strike to end the game. Then Daubach lined a low fastball down the right-field line. Right fielder Derek Bell thought one of three things would happen: the ball would bounce over the short fence for a ground-rule double; it would bounce high and carom back to him; or it would bounce low and stay near the wall. Bell hung back and waited for the carom, but it never came. The ball stayed near the wall and Bell scampered after it, but Offerman scored the winning run in a 4-3 Red Sox victory. ''It really hurts,'' said Mets catcher Mike Piazza, who went 1 for 4 and caught the whole game in his first game since suffering a concussion when he was beaned by Roger Clemens on Saturday. ''These types of losses do hurt pretty badly.'' The Mets had a chance to win a game started by Pedro Martinez, the best pitcher in the American League. Martinez struck out 10 in seven innings but was victimized twice by Jay Payton and left with the score tied, 2-2. The Mets also wasted another solid effort by Bobby J. Jones. But Mora may have been hurt worst of all; he said he felt responsible for the loss. The error was only his fifth in 33 games at shortstop. The Gold Glove winner he replaced at shortstop, the injured Rey Ordonez, had six errors in 45 games. ''He's playing just the way Rey played this year,'' said Mets Manager Bobby Valentine, who said Offerman's hit had sliced and was hardly routine. ''His errors have been the same per game that Rey had. If we're going to give him a full-page story every time he makes an error, then we've got to give him a full-page story every time he helps the team win.'' The error would have been an afterthought if Benitez's penultimate pitch had been called a strike. Daubach was asked if he could have done anything with the pitch. ''Nothing -- I would have struck out,'' Daubach said. ''I wouldn't have been surprised if he called it. There were a few high pitches that were called for strikes. It was close.'' Daubach took advantage of his new life and gave the Red Sox their first victory this season when trailing entering the ninth inning. In the process, he put the spotlight on Mora's misplay -- and on the absence of Ordonez, who has sometimes been forgotten because of Mora's superior offensive ability. ''Some people are going to think if Rey was there, he would have got the ball,'' Mora said. ''But I do my best. It's not the first error or the last one. But now, I feel sad. We could have had that game. Benitez threw pretty good, everybody threw good. Then one error, we change the whole score.'' Benitez (2-4) was the fourth Mets pitcher, and the first three were impressive. Jones worked six innings, allowing two runs and striking out eight to tie his season high. Dennis Cook looked dominant in a 1-2-3 seventh, striking out two, and John Franco pitched a scoreless eighth. Those pitchers were helped along by fine defense. Payton chased down a potentially troubling fly ball by Nomar Garciaparra to end a scoreless fifth inning with the bases loaded. Todd Zeile dived to his left to spear a hard grounder by Troy O'Leary, tossing to Franco for the out and saving a run to preserve a 3-2 Mets lead in the eighth. Payton and Zeile helped build that lead. Martinez set down the first five batters of the game, but Zeile doubled to the warning track in left-center. Payton was up next, and in his first career at-bat against Martinez, he doubled down the left-field line, scoring Zeile to give the Mets a 1-0 lead in the second. After striking out on a curveball in his second at-bat, Payton lifted a fastball over the Green Monster in the seventh, tying the score. INSIDE PITCH BOBBY JONES has a 2.73 earned run average in five starts since his brief assignment to Class AAA Norfolk. . . . BOBBY VALENTINE said he would try to slot RICK REED to make his next start on Monday in Toronto, and Reed is all for that. The right-hander, who is on the disabled list with a broken left wrist, threw about 40 pitches yesterday. He can catch with his glove hand and his strained calf has improved. ''I've done everything that I can possibly do,'' Reed said. ''Just got to get the clearance.'' . . . The Mets looked into trading for DENNY NEAGLE, the club's assistant general manager, JIM DUQUETTE, said, and they considered him the best starting pitcher available. But the Mets could not match the Yankees' offer of four prospects. . . . RICH RODRIGUEZ rejoined the Mets after five games at Class AAA Norfolk, where he added a changeup with movement. Rodriguez, who has been mainly a mop-up reliever, said he would no longer be bothered by how he was used. ''That was my biggest problem,'' he said.

It's been 25 years since SI awarded its' Sportsperson of the Year award to a Track and Field athlete for Track and Field Accomplishments. The majority (but not all) of the SI Sportsman of the Year Track athletes were honored in the earlier days of the magazine, when much of the magazine's coverage was devoted to the more "gentlemanly" aspects of sport. This trend didn't bode well for Usain Bolt wining their award.

What the hell was so sportsmanlike about Jeter's year? That he didn't whine when the better candidate (Mauer) won the league's MVP? What the hell did Jeter do to compensate for the fact that he wasn't even the best player in his own sport last season? Why not Albert Pujols if they wanted to award a baseall player? Boy, talk about a charmed life. This guy's halo is so big, he shoulda been playing for the team in Anaheim all along.

Oh, the indignity of it all! Will 2009 baseball ever end? (FK: What about Usain Bolt?)

It's hard to tell. Everything went wrong for last year's Mets. Were ticket prices too high, or was it the weakened economy? Or both? It didn't help matters that injuries reduced the Mets to fielding a team that would lose 100 games in the shade over the course of a full season. Here's a tidbit from that site you recommended: In 2009, the Yankees filled their new ballpark to 87.8% capacity, a decline from the 92.3% capacity figure the team generated in 2008. This statistic is interesting because the New Yankee Stadium has a smaller capacity than the previous one and also, because of the team's success last season.

Compare Pujols' career to the first nine seasons of any other player in the game's history. By that standard, you could make a reasonable argument that Pujols is the best. Ever.

The Mets continue to look at potential one-year platoon options at first base, reportedly checking in yesterday with well-traveled Russell Branyan and Nick Johnson. http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/mets/mets_take_first_look_at_veterans_KbscwYkpzmv2NS6Kjy55bL I like these one year stop gap plans for first base because I can then dream that the Mets real strategy for the position is to go all in on Albert Pujols in 2011.

Because whenever I see black drop shadows on a Met uniform, the first thing I think of are the '69 Mets. Yeah right, Fred. Whatever you say. I hope the Mets thought to issue cream colored pants to match these new alternates. In other news, the Mets announced that they will be retaining their wildly popular black home and road jerseys. According to the Mets super secret fan poll that no one but Fred Wilpon is allowed to audit, Met fans voted the black top jerseys as their favorite Met uniforms of all time. "And they make the perfect tribute to the 1969 season", said Wilpon, noting that the black jerseys evoke instant memories of black cats and black shoe polish.

Something tells me the lawyers from Score won't care ... Click here: http://www.kcmets.com/CPF/Score1170a.pdf Score: The sports magazine with the in-your-face attitude. Little did they know who else O.J. Simpson was capable of hurting. Tom Seaver also appeared on the inaugural February 1970 issue of the short-lived pulpy "Score Magazine". I can't find a decent picture of that issue on the web and I don't subscribe to any web-hosting image storing sites, but here's an active ebay link to a pending auction for that mag: http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-1970-SCORE-SPORTS-MAGAZINE-TOM-SEAVER-METS_W0QQitemZ370254240477QQcmdZViewItemQQptZVintage_Sports_Memorabilia?hash=item5634df5add

I'm not aware that there was ever any tangible pressure for the Wilpons to name the new stadium after Jackie Robinson. Any pressure of this nature was only in the imagination of the beholder. There were numerous editorials politely suggesting that naming the stadium after JR would be a good idea -- most but not all of it coming from cloutless bloggers, but also, from U.S. Sen Charles Schumer, who issued a press release in which he agreed that naming the new stadium after JR would amount to an honorable and decent gesture -- perhaps a bit of political grandstanding on the Senator's part-- but nothing even remotely resembling pressure backed by the threat of shame or the withholding of public funds. In fact, when the Wilpons made it official that the stadium's naming rights would ultimately be sold to a corporation -an eventuality that was never reasonably in doubt for even a second- Mayor Bloomberg and then Gov. Pataki responded publicly by backing the sale of the naming rights as the right thing to do. And if there was no serious pressure to name the stadium after JR, then creating a JR Rotunda could hardly be seen as a compromise. And who was there to appease anyway: the 30 year old who's too young to have ever seen JR play, blogging from his mother's basement in his pajamas for a JR Stadium? I think that the easier and less complicated answer is that Wilpon envisioned and then created a JR Rotunda because he wanted to. Or is Citi Field the House that Shame Built?

I know. The truth of it is that I never really did measure the 42 sculpture that honors a Dodger that never even played for the Mets, situated at the architectural centerpiece of our new stadium. Not that a Duke Snider Rotunda would be any more appropriate. In fact, I shut my eyes real hard whenever I have to pass that number in order to lessen the indignity of it all. I never measured Wilt Chamberlain either for that matter, so what do I know even though, ironically, I began this post with "I know"? But really. Wilpon has to be shamed into building a Mets Museum? What kind of owner is the kind of owner that wouldn't know to honor its past right off the bat? What kind of soul does Fred Wilpon have? Does he love the Mets? Does he love the Mets the way you do, or the way I do, or the way any other member of this forum loves the Mets, all of us (and hundreds of thousands of others) devoting unreasonable amounts of our time and thoughts and emotions to this baseball team that we love. What do the Mets mean to Fred Wilpon? Perhaps the franchise is nothing more than another opportunity in Capitalism for Wilpon to make more money that he doesn't even need? I don't know that I'm convinced otherwise. Fred certainly hasn't shown it.

Too little and too late. While I'm glad to hear about the resuscitation and revival of the Mets HOF, I'm not about to cheer ownership for doing now what they ought to have been doing 10 years ago, and only after being shamed into it by fan outrage. They're not gonna mollify me by putting Tom Seaver's name on some plaque attached to some entrance way. Let's see what kind of Met Museum ownership installs what with just about every single Met artifact apparently sold off to pay for that big dumb number 42 looming in that rotunda that I refuse to acknowledge by name and about as tall as two Wilt Chamberlains.

That would render Garvey no better than the third best 1974 Dodger. Did we miss any other '74 Dodgers better than Garvey? (covering a copy of SI in 1974 not required)

By the way, checking out Lube Rock, I looked at 1974 MVP voting. What a bunch of crap. Bench, Mike Marshall, Schmidt, the Toy Cannon, Joe Morgan. How are these guys (maybe more) not more valuable than Steve Garvey? Was square-jawiness a legitimate voting criterion then? The 1974 NL MVP is one of my least favorites. In a perfect world, 1974 NL MVP Steve Garvey wouldn't have received a single vote: the voters can only select their top 10 candidates and in 1974, there were at least 15 NL'ers who had a better season than Garvey. Therefore, if Garvey wasn't one of the leagues 10 best players, he shouldn't have appeared on any voter's ballot. Garvey wasn't even the best player on his own team in 1974. The Dodgers best player that season was 1974 SI cover boy and the perenially screwed over in MVP voting guy -- Jimmy Wynn. I would have given the '74 MVP to Joe ("how can such a smart baseball player be so stupid otherwise?") Morgan, thus eventually giving Morgan a run of three consecutive MVP's.