Edgy MD

That's a little bit o' encountering right there.

Here's to our bats encountering the ball against Wilson.

Josh Edgin: fielding disaster.

Listening to Vin Scully at my end. Bad hometown scoring giving a hit on that one-hopper to Murphy.

Duda likes that curve these days.

Wright is getting pretty reliable with regards to the GiDP.

Yeah, but now two thirds of that lead be lost.

Maybe, but I think there's ways to get a guy at-bats besides handing him a position. Hit like a big leaguer first, then we'll see if we can find you get a job. That's the way I play it.

That's a bunny rabbit of a call, ump. But Curtis, strike two was your pitch, and you should have parked that one in the gap.

JP Howell, another House of David guy.

When did Van Slyke get called up from the House of David All-Stars?

Full-Time Flores = Mistake

That injury to the Angels' starter has to pitch up the market at least some for Bartolo Colonifornia.

Haven't watched any ESPN, 'ceptin' at the pub the other night, but I've gotten highlights. No shortage of great tales. The Chicago team that has a bunch of MLB'ers led by LaTroy Hawkins sponsoring their parents so they could make the trip. The 4'8" Mexican kid hitting the snot out of the ball. Coachy coach from New England consoling his boo-hooing team. Mo'Ne Mo'Ne Mo'ne Davis. Hope Cooby has been able to catch some of the action.

By "leads" do you mean mostest, or most successful? Because I think that, for most of the season anyhow, he's been lapping the field with regard to successful replay challenges. I also question the use of the term meddling. It's unnecessarily pejorative. Meddling is good when you do it right. I mean, there's smart dumb managers (Tommy Lasorda, Don Zimmer), and dumb smart managers (Gene Mauch, Jerry Manuel). There are also smart smart managers (Davey Johnson, Whitey Herzog) and dumb dumb managers (Don Baylor, Grady Little).

It wouldn't have taken 50 years. But amirght? Was yesterday's ballgame just a bea-yoo-ti-ful thing to watch or what?

Gordon Beckham goes from the Whities to the Angels for cash and a PtBNL.

So my wife went out and purchased the "soundtrack," which in fact was presented as a clever package representing Peter's mixtape. It's actually just called Awesome Mix Volume 1. And I hate myself for saying this, but they totally fuck up that small little appeal. 1. Why don't they release it on cassette? Cassettes throwbacks are totally a thing now. They could have used auto-sign machines to mark up the packaging with Peter's mother's handwriting. 2. Why do they include "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "I Want You Back"? You see the film, you know that these two tracks are clearly tacked on the end as representative of Awesome Mix Volume 2. They could have padded out the mix with three or four tracks not used in the movie under the premise that these were tracks from the tape that we didn't hear. 3. (or 2b.) It totally violates the spirit of the enterprise. "ANMHE" and "IWYB" are songs from the late sixties, the implication being that his mother filled the first mix with songs from the '70s and the latter with songs from 60s. While they are far less cheesy, they scrape away the authenticity of the whole. Of the whole! I'd blame marketers not getting down with the spirit of the artists, but the director and screenwriter are listed "Soundtrack Executive Producers," so I don't know.

I didn't like installing Jefferies at second. I imagined a four-man/three-position platoon. Essentially a Backman/Elster platoon, with Johnson and Jeffries shuffling to accommodate. Positionvs. LHvs. RH2bJefferiesBackman3bJohnsonJefferiesssElsterJohnson While Jefferies earned his playing time with his 1988 late-season run, he didn't really earn Wally Backman's job, and I think outright giving him the position of a popular guy who just hit .303 really set him up to fail.

I like that. A lot. I like to think that the re-write of the 2006 post-season wouldn't have been necessary for the re-write of the stadium rebuild --- that the right thing was the right thing was the right thing no matter how things turned out on the field. But as long as you were re-writing, I understand the appeal.

Maybe they were expecting (hoping for) Ayala and Boisclair to come on like a ton of bricks. But neither debuted until late in the season.

Interesting point and, while I certainly know the eggs can never be unscrambled with regard to Shea, I'd be curious to hear you elaborate some.

Transactions from the 1973-1974 offseason. October 24, 1973: Willie Mays announced his retirement. No new Mets that way. December 20, 1973 New York Mets traded Jim McAndrew to the San Diego Padres for Steve Simpson. I would call that subtraction by subtraction. March 26, 1974: New York Mets sold Buzz Capra to the Atlanta Braves. No new players, but HEY! New money! The Braves would convert Capra from reliever to starter and get a great first season out of him, with a ninth-place CYA finish, which is more CY support than any Met got in 1974. March 27, 1974 New York Mets released Jim Beauchamp. Just when he thought he was going to get #24 back from Mays! April 6, 1974: New York Mets released Rich Chiles. The third outfielder shed in one offseason, so you'd think the beneficiary would be some new guy, but nope, it was Schneck, Theodore, and Kranepool. Same old, same old.

I have to say, there's no baseball quite as delightful to my eyes as day baseball at Oakland�Alameda County Coliseum. Watching Lucas Duda chase a popup and start relaxing his legs after 10 strides before realizing he's not even halfway to the railing, the goofy roof, the green paint everywhere accentuated by the yellow shirts in the crowd, the ramps between wonky mis aligned sections, the maintenance ladders beyond the outfield wall that seemingly climb from nowhere to nowhere, the on-the-field bullpens that (unlike Wrigley) almost never come into play because there's just so much room, the sense that Willie Mays is going be introduced any moment. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think so: in the rush to embrace nostalgia, they replaced so many ballparks, that the most nostalgic feeling I get is from the one that has escaped the purge. And, while it's a wasted and largely pointless thought, I think everybody would have realized Shea could have offered the same, only better, had they stepped back a stride or two and thought it through.

Duda needs a glove caddy