Frayed Knot

There were several stories over the weekend about her trip into the locker room; IIRC Cano and (who else?) ARod were most interested. The best part though was about how, in the wake of this tramp getting in, MFY mgmt was scrambling to re-define who was allowed in and under what circumstances. The kicker is that they seemed most upset not by the fact that she weasled her way in somehow but that she did so on a night (Friday) when they lost.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I think in that case, they charge you an "inconvenience fee" of $5 to compensate them for the time you spent standing on their box office line. Jokes aside, there are cases where customers get charged for things like 'printing fees' even if they print their own, or 'handling fees' even if the tickets are picked up and never sent in the first place, etc. IOW, these fees are frequently unavoidable by any means and are usually just a way of jacking up prices while advertising that the price of the ticket is only _____ . Obviously they have the right to charge whatever they think they can get away with but I have no problem with rules that make that process at least appear to be somewhat honest. The real crime is when tickets on the "secondary market" are not secondary at all but rather an arm of the original seller making it look like they've got their hands on "hard to get" seats, seats which were actually just funneled to the re-seller branch of the business before ever actually being offered for sale in the first place. The Cubs did this a few years back and, when bad business practice suits were filed, beat the case in court in what seemed at the time to be Chicago politics at its best/worst.

I guess Sheb Wooley's 1958 hit about the one-eyed, one-horned 'Flying Purple People Eater' doesn't really fit in this category as it's unclear whether the eater is actually a human - y'know, with the one eye/one horn thing going on and all, plus the part about being able to fly.

G-Fafif wrote: And yet the Fine Young Cannibals never had a hit within this genre. They may have missed out on a good thing. And that drives me crazy.

I'm not going, but mainly because I missed #s 1 & 2 so I'm afraid I'd be lost and not able to follow the plot.

The Second Spitter wrote: Not sure if this was mentioned before (in another thread perhaps) but does anybody think the Mets were influenced by how the MFY brought up Jabba? I hope not. The comparison gets brought up in the NYC media every once in a while but the stage each pitcher was at and the road he took to get there were so different that the two situations shouldn't be treated as analogous at all.

In a lot of ways it was a typical Mets/Yanx game in that the killer inning occurs via three consecutive shit hits followed by a blast. Typical in that the Yanx took advantage of it (I swear they must conduct 'shit hit batting practice' at least once a week) and that the Mets served up a granny. Santana never looked comfortable the whole game. He was just working so goddam slow even before he got into trouble that, once he did, the result wasn't a surprise at all.

Pelfrey - 1.5 Igarashi - 0.5 Reyes - 3.5 Pagan - 2.0

- Twins eventually win 13-10 in the 11th in Philly, scoring 5 in the 9th, 1 in the 10th, and 3 in the 11th to do it. The 10th inning HR was the first of the ML career for Drew Butera, a former NYM 5th round draft pick dealt away in the Luis Castillo deal. - BoSox beat Dodgers on a Dustin Pedroia GW-RBI single in the 9th at Fenway off Broxton's overly large ass The supposedly dead BoSox are just a game behind the Yanx and (for now) the Rays. Rays leading the Fish - Royals & Braves tied going to the 9th. Wagner on. ... and now Troy Glaus wins it for Atlanta with a walk-off

I not only had no problem with Jerry not going to Frankie to start that inning but I would have had a problem had he done so. We can't ask him to go to the closer with 4 run leads, particularly after using the main set-up guy for two innings, and then complain that he over-uses the same pen guys all the time. The problem was the reliever he did choose - although that was at least arguable - plus the fact that he proceeded to put two of the first three guys he faced on base complicated by Frankie then putting his first guy on too.

Obviously the two 2R-HRs were the problem, but other than that ... - too many lead-off runners allowed - we might have actually been lucky to get away with as few runs against as we did - Wright & Bay were non-existent

Not really related to the above article, but I caught brief glimpses of Strasburg's game last night between innings of our game - although that one was going so quickly compared to ours (so do plate tectonics) that I never saw more than a few pitches at a time. But of the dozen or so SS pitches I did see that weren't called or swinging strikes, Rob Dibble on the broadcast questioned - well, not questioned really, just flat out called a fraud - at least 4 of them. The fact that Dibble does this for every Nats pitcher in every Nats game or that the electronic gizmo on the screen showed the ump to be correct and him to be wrong while he's claiming otherwise (as it always does) neither stopped nor slowed down the diatribes. So, in other words, yes the umps are missing Strasburg strikes, just like they're missing them for every other Nats pitcher ... at least in the gospel according to Rob Dibble.

Jeter SS Swisher RF Teixeira 1B Rodriguez DH Cano 2B Posada C Granderson LF Gardner CF Pena 3B Assuming this is correct, it's interesting how, after Granderson PH'd last night, Girardi stuck him in CF displacing Gardner whom he moved over to LF. Now, given the opportunity to start clean, he sticks Granderson in LF and Gardner in CF. Not sure it means much one way or the other, I'm just not sure what his thought process is there. Not that the Yanx really have a full-time DH - well they do but his name is Nick Johnson meaning he's on the DL - but Girardi almost has no choice now but to alternate ARod & Posada there on most days as neither one can handle multiple days in the field w/o a break right now. For those crying about the very existence of Cora on the roster, Ramiro Pena [.186/.234/.203] is what other teams' backup middle infielders look like too. Plus, on days when he does get a start, more often than not it's not even as a middle infielder.

Takahashi - 3.3 PFeliciano - 1.1 Rodriguez - 0.6 Wright - 1.1 Davis - 0.9 Reyes - 1.3 Pagan - 1.7

That Huffman guy was just called up last week or so. 1 for 4 so far - decent minor league record in the Sandy Eggo org

If this is turning into a discussion of whether to bet on Carter for the future or Martinez I'm casting my lot with Martinez. Don't be too eager to give up on 21 year olds. Just because we Met fans started hearing of him when he was 16 doesn't mean his 21 is the equivalent of someone else's 26. The injuries are frustrating although a good sign is that it's not one recurring problem that portends a chronic condition. Some guys tend to get hurt a lot right up until that point where they don't.

Phils wind up taking 2 of 3 as the Yanx hit Halladay but no one else Braves beat Tampa again so no 1st place tonight Nats lose, Marlins lose

Yanx offense still leads the AL in runs scored - despite scoring just 3 runs total off Moyer & Kendrick over the last two games. 1B - Teixeira -- not as inept as earlier in the season but it's almost too late for this to become anything other than a very off season for him 2B - Cano -- just the opposite. Best hitter on the team right now. SS - Jeter -- having a typical Jeter-ish year 3B - Rodriguez -- missed a few games and/or was relegated to DH recently on account of a mangina injury or something. Power is off this year. C - Posada -- just off the DL but is still missing games and DH-ing. Girardi won't play him behind the plate back-to-back LF - Gardner -- no power, but fast, good D, and hitting better than the Yanx had any right to expect CF - Granderson -- also off the DL recently. Only an OK year otherwise RF - Swisher -- nice season for him The pen pre-Rivera is where we have to smack these guys around. Joba seems to alternate good and bad outings and just melted down again tonight - and now the fill-in guys are being gang-raped by the Phillies as well. Sergio Mitre just DL'd Can Ike make one of his patented over-the-rail catches at YSIII or does he have to buy one of the over-priced and $12 beers seats first?

Diana has suffered through some very unfortunate haircuts in her career.

Very nice 'D' by Reyes tonight. Been trying to pigeon-hole him as a defensive player lately and have come to the conclusion that I don't think he'll ever be the spectacular type - the kind to sprawl out on the ground and steal sure hits and turn them into outs. But he does take a lot of funky plays and make them look fairly routine. Tonight there have been some slow choppers for him to grab on the 1B side of 2nd where he used his foot-speed to make plays that others won't get to quickly enough.

Feliciano looked pretty fast on that Reyes hit. If the Indians have nothing else going for them, this Carlos Santana guy looks like a very nice player - both behind the plate and with the bat. A highly touted prospect just called up in the last two weeks but already looks very comfortable and like he knows he belongs.

ESPN could have found that out for themselves or stole it from anywhere. Either way they're likely to present it as their own ("ESPN has learned ... " -- they just don't tell you that they "learned" it by listening elsewhere) But mainly I brought it up because I caught about 10 minutes of 'SportsCenter' and maybe 20 of ESPN radio and heard the "record" mentioned about six times and treated as if that was the most important aspect of the game. And again at lunch today I was in a place with ESPN-News on and they teased the upcoming NYY/Phils highlight as containing "something that's never happened before". WHAT?!? What never happened before: - they Yanx losing? -- no, I think they've lost before - the Yanx losing to an old guy? -- no, this turns out to be the third time they've lost to a 47 year old (Phil Neikro twice) meaning this "record" turns out to be just a difference of a few dozen days. So, yeah, mainly I was just knocking 'The World Wide Leader' and their penchant for treating Yanqui news as if more newsworthy than that of all others. Put another way, Moyer's won 17 games just since turning 46; y'think some of them might have fit the "oldest ever" category too? Probably but we didn't hear about them did we? Oh, and Michael Young broke Pudge Rodriguez's career Texas Ranger record for hits yesterday -- that get the same airplay as the Jeter/Gehrig festival from last year?