Edgy MD

Tommy Hanson and the Braves trying to break the Mets stranglehold on the concussion market. http://markbowman.mlblogs.com/2012/02/21/hanson-suffers-mild-concussion/

Another comment is that Justin Turner is his backup firstbaseman. I guess the takeaway on that is that, if Ike was unavailable, he wouldn't want to deny Murphy development time at second, even if it might make more sense. I guess. Also lists Hairston as his backup centerfielder and Torres as his leadoff hitter.

Terry says, "Blah-blah yourself." "We are going to play in the post-season."

Samuels due in court today with an expected plea bargain arrangement.

Terry Collins press conference happening on Sportsnet New York! TCPCPSLSNY!

Bazzy leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Dickey explains to Thole how he's going to once again make his life miserable, while in the background, Jeurys Familia rubs a baseball and plots a murder.

Former member Bret Sabermetric was something of a Fitzgerald expert (but disagreed with the way GG was typically taught). I imagine Old Mole, if he wasn't a Fitzexpert already, became one while writing Nick and Jake. So if you need any on-set script doctorin', let us know.

I'm with LWFS. I keep mine in the love den. And I keep second base covered.

So, anywutz, Daniel Craig plays Jason Bourne. Well, he doesn't really, but like Bourne, he plays a guy who wakes up badly wounded with no idea where he is or who he is, or memory of anything except (a) English and ( awesome fighting skills. Except it's not awesome, because it makes no sense. Maybe the rules of movies have changed, but things don't really make sense when a cowboy has awesome ninja instincts (quick hands, lighter-than-air turns, eyes in the back of his head, quick and deadly hand-to-hand killingness) instead of awesome cowboy skills (steely gaze, quick draw, a rock hard right hook, a gritty toughness to take a lickin'). Whatever. Maybe it'll make sense later. (SPOILER ALERT: It doesn't.) Anyhow, three travelers ride up on him, and he demonstrates his skills in a disproportionate way that's sort of inappropriate for a hero and inappropriate for an anti-hero. Meet Asshole Number One. He rides into town, gets patched up by a preacher/medic who's not an asshole, so he can't be long for the film. Asshole Number Two comes in the form of the spoiled brat son of the local strongman cattle baron, who shoots up the town while acting the whiny brat because he knows his dad runs things and can get him out of any trouble he gets into. This is unintentionally funny, because if you're like me, your first exposure to Daniel Craig was his playing this exact sort of wet diaper baby in The Road to Perdition, and every time Craig plays a total badass, I remember him as a big fat crybaby and it takes a heckuva job to suspend disbelief. Well, that's AH#2. Number Three is a barkeeper who is apparently (and inexplicably) a doctor (his name is "Doc" and he's got medical skills, anyhow) but has this dream he's trying to make work about running a saloon in the Old West and he's having a fight with his wife in the middle of the street about how unhappy his stupid dream is making him. He's the Guy Who Needs to Be Shown How to Shoot, to put aside his non-violent sensibilities to make the stand that is now clearly necessary. I don't know if the GWNtBSHtS is a Quaker, but if he is, he's the biggest asshole Quaker I've seen on film. OK, a bunch of minor assholes show up. But then it's time for Asshole Number Four. How do you top this bunch we've already met? Well, it's Harrison Ford --- he's the aforementioned cattle baron and he's introduced into the movie torturing a guy for being a bad employee. Torturing the fuck out of the poor guy. Don't they have a clue how this shit resonates in 2011? What's next? Is one of our heroes going to turn out to be a suicide bomber? (SPOILER ALERT: Yes!) Anyhow, it's a long ride to redemption for such a dicky bunch, and fighting for the planet is going to take us there: Ranchers, lawmen, outlaws, Indians, and beautiful chixx --- they all got to team up for a fight against aliens that are kidnapping their kin, probing them, apparently raping them (warn your rape-scene-averse partners --- it's sort of implied, but sort of there also), and eating them. These aliens are sophisticated enough that they really should be spraying our heroes with some bug spray or biological weapons, but apparently we can stand toe-to-toe with the nameless menace from beyond the stars and even could with 1880-era tech, so we've got that going for us. I guess I got chuffed that they give it dumb name like Cowboys & Aliens and I thought they wouldn't take themselves seriously --- like Snakes on a Plane, or Tremors, or Eight-Legged Freaks. But they do, and by piling asshole upon asshole and presenting them as anti-heroes, I guess you're supposed to appreciate the gritty realism of folks trying to tell you, This is what the Old West was really like --- DEAL with it. Well, they made a big blockbuster budgeted movie that could've been good and wasn't. Now they've got to deal with it. You'll get through it. But it'll take more imagination on your part than the six or seven credited screenwriters brought to it.

You know, I think maybe.

This may seem obvious, but if Beltran is talking about paying for plastic surgery....

The jaw looks too big and the skin too old to be Wes Westrum at the time of his Mets employment. Eyebrows and jowl flaps look right, but Wes seems to have wider nostrils. It would sure help if the guy in the incidental photo wasn't swallowing his teeth.

Human torch.

For those of us who think they've really bolluxed up the system with the limitations they're placing on starting pitchers --- and the demands they're placing on relievers --- that's a sorry turn of events.

Memories of Mike Cameron.

Been a long time without a Dinopost. Nice to hear from you.

"Today, I got it hanging in my studio office." [youtube:3ch82duz]AY5RSmXzfvc[/youtube:3ch82duz]

Aliens come to earth in the Old West, where virtually everyone is an asshole. They nonetheless ride together to avenge their dead. Jon Favreau directs. Han Solo and James Bond star.

As noted above, Red Kress wasn't alone long in the Mets afterlife. Passing away November 29, 1962,, he was soon followed by Rogers Hornsby, the original Mets batting instructor and the first Mets Hall of Famer. (He had been inducted 20 years before, garnering 78.1% of the vote of the BBWAA.) While Casey seemed to defer to him in hitting instruction, there was a conflict between the two, with Casey telling the players to hit the ball to the corners and Hornsby telling them to hit it up the middle, while I was (or would have been) telling them to stop aiming where they hit the ball and to just concentrate on hitting it hard. Anyhow, it made some sense that the Rajah would be preaching about squaring up and hitting the ball hard, while Casey, with his more pedestrian playing career, would be talking about finding a way to hit 'em where they ain't. Besides, in the Polo Grounds, if you're going to aim, you might as well aim for the corners. Anyhow, Hornsby, disliked in his playing days, widely regarded as an unreconstructed racist and gambler (but an avoider of cigarettes, alcohol, and the movies), must've been an interesting thing on the original Mets, the first team ever integrated from day one. Like Kress, he was felled by a heart attack. This was apparently preceded by cataract surgery in December followed by a stroke, which had been presumed to be small, but I guess did heart damage. Pallbearers included Ray Schalk, Ted Lyons, Gabby Hearnett, Rip Collins, Lou Boudreau, Johnny Mostill, Frank Parenti, and Glen Miller. For a disliked guy, that's a lot of Hall of Famers to have carrying your box. His last request was widely noted, that he didn't want flowers. Apparently, he just really disliked flowers, but he also wanted any money going to the National Heart Fund instead. Anyhow, the truth is that he was really a big softy. Hornsby is buried in the family plot in (get this) Hornsby Bend Cemetery in Travis County, TX. You'd think that a cemetery would have a lusher lawn around the graves of the family who apparently gave the place it's name, but you know, it's Texas. Growing grass is hard. I'm not sure if that glove is a permanent part of the monument. it would be cool if it were, but it looks to be an actual glove that the photographer or another visitor placed there. Only speculation can tell us if Ron Hunt, Ed Kranepool, Joe Christopher, Danny Napoleon, Cleon Jones, and Ron Swoboda and all might have had developed more consistent batmanship under the tutelage of the man frequently referred to (at least up until the end of his life) as the greatest righthanded hitter of all time. So, next time you're in Travis County (and you someday will be there, as it is the county which includes Austin and Round Rock) go visit the Rajah, the man who, along with Babe Ruth, discovered that if you uppercut on the ball, often enough, you may hit the ball really really far.

Frayed Knot wrote: BP also posts an article dealing with the whys and wherefores of the deal which brought him to NY Now I'm not going to be one of those guys who'll claim to have KNOWN at the time that this was the put-em-over-the-top kind of trade. In fact, I'll admit to being luke-warm to the deal upon first hearing about it. I was a big Hubie fan living with a friend at the time who was even more so - boy was HE pissed that night! I also had hopes for Herm Winningham to the point where I remember thinking that I bet they wished they could have subbed Mookie into the deal now that Lennie was here. Plus I was leery of Carter due to that odd circumstance where you begin to get numb to the greatness of a player who had been as good as he had for such a long time and start to think of him as yesterday's news and not the kind of younger, dynamic player the '85 and beyond Mets needed. I'm certainly not going to poop on the trade, but I don't think it's a no-brainer. Immediately after the deal, Hubie Brooks became the slugging righty that they needed. Of course, his mid-season injury could have short-circuited 1985, though Darryl's thumb injury pretty much did that. When they got Carter, he had 13.7 WAR ahead of him (as per baseball-reference.com). Brooks, Youmans, Fitzgerald, and Winnngham had 14.2 (including -2.0 for Herm). Of course, all the eggs can't be unscrambled and it's really hard to make WAR represent what it's supposed to --- especially with something as nebulous as a catcher's impact on his pitching staff --- but then you count in the relative salary, and I, well, I don't think it's a no-brainer.

Casey called Kress "the hardest working coach I ever saw." That's the sort of thing you get out of a morning-after obituary, but it is true that he was originally hired for the Syracuse staff, but apparently made such an impression at camp that Casey added him to the big-league squad. I'm not sure if he was technically replaced. During the 1962-1963 offseason, Ernie White replaced Red Ruffing, who was the pitching coach even if they didn't always specify a role for coaches back then. But in place of Kress and de facto batting instructor Rogers Hornsby (who died a month later), they added only Clyde McCullough, a former catcher.