Edgy MD

They didn't want to win.

Mets up 1-0. Cubs had first and third with one out in the bottom of the inning, but now it's two outs after Niese picks off Castro. (Which is more than I can say for the CIA!) OE: Three outs. Nice.

One pitch and the hook. A John Maine start. The Yankees will probably go get John Maine.

It's all part of our grand plan to get the Schwinster back.

You have to wonder if being the designated pie-facer is what kept Turner around.

Q: How could the Yankees not have a higher number? With all their quality play? And especially their hitters? A: Because so damn many of those hitters were taken from somewhere else. And Gehrig died young. And DiMaggio retired young because he didn't want to play once the game got hard.

Well, that's gonna cut into his post-season share.

That wasn't really his prime. Pirates with Wagner. Orioles with Riptide....

Why do they always let Jeter essay on how awesome his attitude is? If I'm a reporter, I have to call him on that.

So, DeWayne Wise, you spend a lifetime playing baseball, ten years at the big-league level, then you join the Yankees and become a shameless, pointless cheater. How does that happen? Do they give you a manual at orientation?

Amazin' how overwhelming the dominance is by post-1980 guys. Strikeouts in a Season by a Met Kirk Niewenhuis, Projected to End of Season: 167.53 1) David Wright, 2010: 161 Lucas Duda, Projected to End of Season: 157.68 2) Dave Kingman, 1982: 156 3) Tommie Agee, 1970: 156 4) Dave Kingman, 1975: 153 Ike Davis, Projected to End of Season: 149.04 5) Todd Hundley, 1996: 146 6) Mo Vaughn, 2002: 145 7) Mike Cameron, 2004: 143 8) Darryl Strawberry, 1986: 141 9) David Wright, 2009: 140 10) Ike Davis, 2010: 138... ...T137) Edgardo Alfonzo, 1998: 77 T137) Brian Giles, 1983: 77 T137) John Milner, 1974: 77 T137) Kirk Niewenhuis, 2012: 77 T137) Ryan Thompson, 1995: 77 T137) Kevin Elster, 1989: 77 T137) Butch Huskey, 1996: 77... ...T163) Gary Carter, 1987: 73 T163) Tony Clark, 2003: 73 T163) John Olerud, 1998: 73 T163) Lucas Duda, 2012: 73 T163) Benny Agbayani, 2001: 73 T163) Bobby Bonilla, 1992: 73... ...T186) Daniel Murphy, 2009: 69 T186) Joel Youngblood, 1980: 69 T186) Ike Davis, 2012: 69 T186) Keith Hernandez, 1986: 69 T186) Mike Piazza, 2000: 69

Murphstache, asked about being traded: You�re not going to get a whole lot of return on your investment if they move me and I�m not swinging the bat well. So I�d say no.

Well, it's technically incorrect. It's the 28th-highest mark. It's the third-lowest. Hire an editor. Anybutt, I expect David to move that mark forward a bit.

In a strange tour that I seem to be going through of eighties youth oriented movies that I missed the first time around (often with good reason, but you be the judge of you, and I'll be the judge of me), we stumbled into Hiding Out, in which Jon Cryer plays a tax-advising, investment counselor, or an investment-counseling tax adviser. It doesn't matter, because it's the eighties, and those suit wearing yuppies are all the same. The care about money. They're not keeping it real. Anyhow, Cryer and some of his colleagues are star witnesses in some government probe of a Boston thug, and when one of his friends is killed and the mob is coming after him, he decides it's time to... hide out --- in high school! So, you know, that's sort of a double fantasy there --- for high school loozas to pretend that they're really some big shot laying low and if only these assholes knew, HAH!, and also for young adult loozas who dream about going back to high school knowing what they now know, fully filled-out frames, and showing those assholes whatfor. Of course, if you're still walking around with those hangups years later, who's the real asshole? How is that redemption? Flourish here in the now! So, of course, Cryer has to man up and return to the real world, and face his demons? But when? And how does he extract himself from this elaborate fiction he's created? And what will he learn along the way? And should the relationship he develops in the meantime with pert high schooler Annabeth Gish be termed as (a) sweet? ( troubling? or © screamingly icky? Hiding Out --- look for it in video stores today on the "They Actually Bothered Converting This to DVD" shelf.

Yabbut... not at a Mike Piazza for President fundraiser.

Darwin Barney makes runs the old-fashioned way. He hits the ball exactly three inches into fair territory.

Keri Nieuwenhuis, cfKeri Tejada, ssKeri Wright, 3bKeri Duda, rfKeri Davis, 1bKeri Hairston, lfKeri Murphy, 2bKeri Thole, cKeri Gee, spDeJesus, cfCastro, ssRizzo, 1bSoriano, lfLaHair, rfValbuena, 3bBarney, 2bClevenger, cWells, sp

INteresting. Booing a guy you just laid out big money for would be hard core.

Obama thanked Boston at a fundraiser today for sending Youk to the White Sox. Got a hardy round of boos for that one. Does this leave Ortiz as the last piece of the 2004 championship?

Problem is that Tejada's the only one with an option.

"I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken."

Got to ask him to scan in that Fonzie photo.

During an international fleet convoy in Hawaii, aliens come and things get scary. The battle to protect mankind from extinction, however, is conveniently contained, when the aliens place a force field around Hawaii, somehow leaving only one ship in there --- radar and sonar jammed, mind you --- to take potshots at several alien vessels floating about the islands. O ragtag crew of the crippled USS John Paul Jones, don't let us down. Actors act and effects take effect. Boom! Pow! Was that AC/DC I heard? I think it was! Somewhere, writers are hammering out such knockout screenplays as Risk!, Stratego, and Connect Four.

The bitter sunset, as detailed in his SABR bio: His relationship with Mets front office, however, slowly headed downhill. It started in 1975, with the death of Mrs. Payson. Kranepool was the only player at her funeral, and her death hit him hard. �She was the sweetest person you�d ever meet,� Kranepool said. �You had a lot of respect for her for who she was, not because she owned the ballclub.� The new management fell to her daughter, Lorinda de Roulet, with whom Kranepool said he should have gotten along, but didn�t. Mrs. de Roulet wasn�t quite equipped to go from running social parties to running a corporation, and she preferred to rely on Joe McDonald, who�d become general manager in 1974, to make business decisions, instead of Donald Grant. �I didn�t have a good relationship with Joe McDonald. I didn�t respect him. I didn�t like him; he didn�t know anything about baseball,� Kranepool said. �There were termites who ate away at the organization, and he was part of the termites. Donald Grant got blamed for it, but Joe McDonald was the one who made the trades.� The sticking point in Kranepool�s disdain for McDonald arose from contract squabbles before the 1977 season. With the advent of free agency, players had more bargaining power and the ability to negotiate multiyear deals, and Kranepool said he needed some time to think over the figure McDonald had offered him. �I live 30 minutes from Shea Stadium; as soon as I got home, the phone rang--he�d taken back the contract,� Kranepool said. �I said, �Joe how could you rescind the contract? I just got home!� But that�s what he did. I cursed him out and used a lot of not-nice words I probably shouldn�t�ve been saying. And hung up.� Kranepool alerted Grant of the situation, and the two met at Fahnestock & Company, Grant�s firm on Wall Street, where a phone call to McDonald confirmed Kranepool�s story. �Donald Grant said, �You got the contract, and you got an additional $10,000,�� Kranepool recalled. �It was with a handshake that I signed the contract in his office. A three-year contract. When it was up in �79, I knew Joe McDonald was not going to offer me a contract.� As the Mets continued to tailspin back into their form of the early 1960s, Kranepool began hinting that 1979 would be his last year; the rift between him and Mets management was too deep, and he wasn�t getting very many opportunities to play--even as a pinch hitter--so his performance off the bench declined. And the fact that manager Joe Torre--at one time Kranepool�s roommate when the two were players--said little on his behalf, hurt even more. �Joe Torre knew what my plans were and didn�t protect me at the end, and I never talked to him again,� Kranepool said. �Joe Torre knew the situation. Sometimes, you have to be a man and stick up for your friends. I was the one that was his right-hand man in the three years as a manager, and he knew he had to protect his own job: �Let Ed fend for himself.� To me, that�s being a turncoat.� Torre would say years later that letting Kranepool go was one of the hardest things he ever had to do.[v] The final nail in Kranepool�s coffin came during the Mets� final homestand, when the Mets chose to honor retiring Lou Brock of the Cardinals and did not even acknowledge that Kranepool was probably suiting up for the final time at Shea. He received a short notice in the mail that offseason detailing his release, but not even the original: a carbon copy of the note sent to his agent, Dick Moss. Kranepool filed for free agency, but it seemed more of a formality. After 18 seasons, 1,853 games, 5,436 at-bats, 1,418 hits (for a .261 average), and 118 home runs, he was through. �I never knew I retired,� he said. �I went from one thing to another.� Kranepool had given thought to what he might do after his career was over; he had little interest in managing, but he felt he might be suited to work in the front office. Earlier that year, he had gotten wind from Charles Payson, Mrs. Payson�s widower, that the Mets might be up for sale, and Kranepool put together a group to buy the team, the package which he presented to Lorinda de Roulet that September. �And then she put together her friends, her social group, and they bought the ballclub,� Kranepool said. New owners Fred Wilpon and Nelson Doubleday brought in Frank Cashen as the new general manager, and Kranepool left baseball for good. �I left the Mets when I should�ve been on top, and ended out at the bottom,� Kranepool said. �I can�t have any harsh feelings for the Wilpons and the team.� He unintentionally stirred up some minor controversy in 1986 when he appeared in a campaign commercial for friend and former U.S. Senator Al D�Amato in a Mets uniform, causing the team to release an adamant statement that it did not take political sides. I tell you, though, he's a great interview, because niceties like "That's all water under the bridge," and "One mustn't speak ill of the dead" cut no ice with him.

We have to see that article for the snapshot in time that it was. 'Pool was a favorite of Mrs. Payson and lived in some protective bubble under her. Even Donald Grant complained of how she placed Krane off-limits from trade consideration. Lorinda DeRoulet didn't value his symbolic role with the team nearly as much and he understandably felt the chill of an Austenian plot developing around him. When the team went up for sale, the plot became more of a War of the Roses type of deal as Kranepool threw his lot in with another bidding team, and envisioned himself the head of baseball operations or somesuch for them, placing himself on the wrong side of history with a second consecutive ownership group. The early Doublepon ownership tried hard to bridge back to the past, reacquiring Kingman, Staub, and Seaver, bringing Harrelson back to coach, and bringing Shamsky into the booth. I'm sure full reconciliation with Kranepool was always on the agenda, but Ed's a businessman, and I'm sure he had his price, however modest.