Frayed Knot

Does this mean I'm no longer head of the welcoming committee?

This "backing in" stuff is mostly nonsense. If a team really suxx down the stretch and gets in the playoffs only because other teams suck even more, then THAT'S backing in. But it's NOT if the mathematical moment of clinching comes via a persuer's loss simply due to the order and timing involved .

Reyes - 2.0 LoDuca - 2.0 Perez - 1.0 Bell - 0.5 Fleiciano - 0.5

- Dodgers & Padres lose - Phillies win and tie LA for WC lead - SD leads NLWest by 1/2 game - Giants 3-1/2 back of WC, Florida 4 out, Braves & Reds 5, Astros 5-1/2

NYGAMEUSED wrote: Frayed Knot - are you serious do you know who the Mets are? Are you even a fan of the Mets???? The Met, that's where the stage operas right? ]You do not know who Steiner / Mets Collectibes are? Have you been to a game this year? I do, I have. ]Amazing how people can speak out of the side of there neck and not have a clue!!! Usually people accuse me of talking out of other body parts, but they know me better. ]Like I said I am new to this forum, So you decided to enter it by spamming? ]but not to others and in other forums rule of thumb is even "If you dont have anything nice to say dont say it at all" I see that goes right out the window here!!! Depends on the entrance. ]To those who would like to be educated Educated? Is that what they're calling sales pitches these days? ]The Game Used Collectiong hobby is huge and becoming bigger then Collecting Baseball Cards. The great thing about this hobby is you can actually own a ersey or Baseball bat of some of your favotite players that were actually used in a Game. R thay also autogaffed by our favotite playaz? ]For investment purposes - these items do go up in vaule and is another reason why people collect them. Tell that top the guy who bought that Bonds ball. These things will go up in value ... unless they don't. ]If you have any questions you may contact me as posted earlier. I'll get right on it

Letters/certificates of Authenticity are great! First, a guy wants to sell you a jersey that he claims is legit -- and, to prove that it's legit, you get a slip of paper verifying it ... from that same guy!! Oh, well NOW I believe you.

Go away!

The Sox is dead! Well, not officially, but for all intents and purposes. They just lost their 2nd of 3 to the Tiggers - at the same time the Twins were beating Boston - putting them 6 behind Detroit and 5-1/2 behind Minnesota with only 10 left to play.

Some NYY fans have a tendancy to credit Munson for the years he would have had had his career (and life) not ended so tragically - and then judge his H-o-F credentials with the tacked-on career numbers those years would have provided. But, of course, you can't do that for so many reasons, not the least of which is that Thurman was already sliding downhill offensively and had wrecked knees to the point where his catching days were likely over anyway.

To sum up: - While there will always be those on both sides of the fence, Reggie was very UNpopular with large segments of Yanqui fans during his first season in NYC for all the predictable reasons: clashes w/Billy & Thurman, big contract, big mouth, didn't hit immediately - The inevitable pickup in his hitting and then particularly the 3 HR WS game went a long way towards changing that. There will always be some who never warm to a controversial figure like him (Francesa claims to have never been a fan) but his 2nd-4th year in pinstripes were very good as was his rep for hitting "in the clutch". In short, he became what fans thought he'd be ... it just took a while. (see Piazza, M.) - He slumped in the final (5th) year of his contract and the Yanx decided not to bring him back. George later blamed bad advice from his always mysterious "baseball people" in order to deflect bad pub from himself as that decision backfired and Reggie had a bounce-back year w/Anaheim. That, and the fact that his "replacement" Winfield never really became a NYY fave (this time Mattingly was the entrenched fair-haired boy) made Reggie even more popular in retrospect. - Fans in NY think of Reggie as a Yankee even though he spent about 1/4 of his career here because ... well because they're in New York. Most fans are provincial that way and Yanqui fans particularly so since they tend to view other MLB teams as merely conduits to deliver them players. - The press LOVED Reggie because he filled up their notebooks. He was all feast or famine the way Strawberry often was but Reggie enjoyed talking more and had a better vocabulary. - Munson was extremely popular with MFY fans of that era for the reasons mentioned here; old-skool, tough-guy, home-grown, everyman looking straight talker (he could also be a bit of a cantankerous bigot but that rarely got out at the time). - Why Billy Martin was a loved as he was always escaped me. I know he was an old-time Yankee and all, and fans seem to naturally gravitate towards small-ball strategy skippers even when it makes no sense. But, while I don't want to speak bad of the dead, if there's someone you had to pick in advance to wind up dead in a ditch on the side of the road due to a drunk driving accident while his young bride (5th wife btw) sat at home alone on Christmas Day ... it would have been Billy.

I remember a (National Lampoon?) magazine parody of the 'Reggie Bar' soon after it came out: It's expensive, has a 160 IQ, and turns to shit shortly after you buy it Perhaps not coincidently, ARod is in SI reminding Verducci (among other things) about how intelligent he is, just like Reggie ws fond of doing. More than a few parallels between the two situations IMO. The big contract; the outsider status; the seeming need to feel loved and included; both having their battles with the beloved/entrenched stalwart (Jeter/Munson). The difference is that Alex has yet to have his NYY/WS moment to throw off the dogs in the press and stands, plus has the backing of manager - at least publicly anyway. Torre is reportedly close to Verducci and could be the source of some of the anonymous clubhouse sniping in the article.

Oh he was quite villified during his first season in da Bronx. He didn't hit at all in the first half of that year which, when combined with the (then) huge contract, his big mouth, plus the battles he had w/Munson & Billy, made him at least as abused as ARod is now. It also didn't help that he was seen as "George's boy" at a time when George wasn't popular. He then had a much better 2nd half, finally capping it off with the 3HR WS game which essentially turned him into a ... wait for it ... True Yankee!!

]But enough of their methodology. Here's the breakdown: 1. Blue Jays: 17.5 composite score 2. Twins: 18.5 (does NOT include Liriano) 3. Angels: 21 4. Mets: 22 5. Red Sox: 30 6. Rangers: 35 7. Astros: 35 8. Yankees: 36.5 9. Mariners: 38 10. White Sox: 38.5 11. Phillies: 39 So I'm assuming this is: low number = good? And what do those numbers represent? ... a sum of scores showing how close to 1st place in the various categories?

Main two things I wanted to see from last night were good games from Glavine (regardless of W/L) and Milledge. Check and check

Jessica Alba would look good in burlap. That ARod article - the full SI/Verducci cover story not just the NYDN excerpts - is going to cause a stir over the next few days. Both M&MD (who had advance copies yesterday) and the MFY broadcast crew last night were discussing it. The main theme doesn't even seem about ARod himself so much as it is about how much his teammates were willing to say about him. Singleton commented that it seemed like Verducci was part of the team he got so many quotes.

It's also possible that if a weekday Met game falls on the same day as a MFY game AND a home west coast game (the A's likely won't earn home-field edge but the Dodgers/Pads could nose out the Cards) then it could push a NYM game into the 1:00 slot since the left coast game can't be put there.

The way they generally work it out is that there'll be 3 games each day (Tues, Wed, Thurs) which is why they have the one series with extra off-day. General consensus seems to be that - out of games 1 & 2 - the Mets will have a 4:00 game on the day they conflict w/the Yanx and a 8:00 game on the MFY off day. Which order those will be in is the remaining question and won't be determined until all opponents are known.

Pads & Dodgers show (once again) how this "momentum" thing is usually a bunch of hooey. Coming off their dramatic win Monday night, LA lays an egg vs the Pirates, while the Padres get a 3R HR from Mike Cameron and a non-dramatic save from Trevor Hoffman to drop the D'Backs and re-take 1st place by 1/2 game in the West. - Philly beat the Cubs and are sitting 1 game behind the Dodgers for the WC lead. The remainder of the teams are essentially on life support at this point: - The Giants (4-1/2 games out of WC) dropped their 4th straight and have given up 32 runs to the Rox over the last 2 games - Cincy (5) and Houston (6-1/2) have been knocking each other off for the last two nights - Marlins (5) have dropped 4 straight - and Atlanta (6) needs to go 7-3 over its last 11 games just to finish at .500

Glavine - 4.3 AHernandez - 1.5 Milledge - 1.4 Wagner - 1.0 Tucker - 1.4 Woodward - 0.4

In addition to the technical problems with integrating the post-season, PotG just isn't that interesting for post-season games. Ws and Ls are the only currency that matter by that point.

]Had 25 players on the roster (40 in September). Actually, 1986 was the year of the "voluntary" 24-man roster.

Trachsel - 4.2 Valentin - 2.8 Mota - 0.6 Wagner - 0.6 Heilman - 0.6 Floyd - 0.7 Beltran - 0.5

Tigers took game 1 last night as Buehrle got hit around in the 1st inning. It actually could have been a lot worse: he started the game by giving up a 2B then a HR, then two straight 1Bs ... before being bailed out by a triple play! 6 games out now, the defending champs have to virtually run the table in order to get back in.

Wild one out in LA while we were all celebrating last night: Pads take a 4-0 lead in the top of the 1st - in part thanks to a Piazza 2B & Cameron 3B Dodgers erase all that, but Pads go on to score 3 in the top of the 9th to take a 4-run lead. Then the fun started: With Jon Adkins pitching; Jeff Kent HR'd JD Drew HR'd out goes Adkins, in comes Trevor Hoffman; FIRST PITCH from Hoffman is a HR to Russell Martin then the NEXT PITCH is a Marlon Anderson HR and we're all tied and there's still no outs!! (2 HRs and a 3B on the day for Marlon) Hoffman winds up getting out of the inning without any more damage and SD even goes out and takes a 1-run lead in the 10th So then in the bottom of the 10th w/Rudy Seanez pitching, Lofton walks and then Garciaparra hits a walk-off 2R HR And, with that win, the Dodgers re-take 1st place 4th time in history there were 4 consect HRs, although I'm assuming it's the first time while a team was down by 4 in the 9th. Elsewhere: - Phils lost - Giants got stomped on by the Rox - Reds lose to the Astros - Braves win - and, oh yeah, the Marlins lost to someone

]Am I alone in my thinking that last night's celebration was just a bit over the top? Maybe a bit. But, while the division title obviously isn't the big prize, it's sometimes the biggest celebration ('cept the WS) because it represents the culmination of 7 months of work. The guys have been at it since mid-February and now they get to cut loose a bit and then relax for a week or so. It's tougher to celebrate winning the 2 intra-league rounds* because you know you have to get right back to work with maybe only one day off. * Unless you're on a flight home from Houston apparently