dinosaur jesus

Zvon wrote: dinosaur jesus wrote: Bobby Parnell looks like the villain in a Hercules movie. Or G.I.Joe during the "lifelike" hair and beard phase. So Bobby's beard picks up lint too?

Bobby Parnell looks like the villain in a Hercules movie.

Edgy MD wrote: That wasn't a thoroughly shitty game, though. It was an 84% shitty offense. and a 53% shitty defense. The pitching was only 13% shitty. Gotta at least remind yourself that the pitching has been good. True enough. But the games where good pitching gets wasted are more frustrating than the blowouts. That makes them shittier to me.

Oh, and Bobby Parnell has as many wins as Matt Harvey.

Can one inning, one swing, make up for a thoroughly shitty game? I guess it can. Can it make up for a thoroughly shitty year? Probably not, but that was fun.

This is from the tour of Japan after the 1974 season. Torre had been traded to the Mets just after the season ended, and the tour was a preview of 1975. Like many previews, it turned out to be much more exciting than the movie. Torre hit .437 in Japan, but a career-worst .247 the next year. In addition to sharing an onsen with the new Mets third baseman, Mr. Met also filled in for him in the field! After Torre took a line drive to the cup in a game against the Yomiuri Giants, Yogi, his bench empty, sent in Mr. Met to play the last two innings. Mr. Met dropped an easy pop fly in the ninth (he always had trouble getting his arms above his head), but made up for it by fielding a hot smash by the next batter and making a perfect peg to Felix Millan to start a game-ending 5-4-3 double play. At the plate, he beat out an infield single when shortstop Kazumasa Kono underestimated his speed and was late with the throw. Never underestimate Mr. Met's speed. "I just try to help this team any way I can," Mr. Met told Japanese reporters after the game. "Tomorrow they'll probably want me to go back to clowning around in the stands, and that's fine with me." I couldn't find a picture from that game, but here's a fake one of him taking fielding practice. Keep your eye on the ball, Mr. Met!

And when the tour bus is low on gas . . . Canadians.

Zvon wrote: That book is full of lies. See, this, the true story of the real Mr Met (Willard Metz) is not common knowledge. This is his secret history. You can consider DJ and I whistleblowers. *books a flight to Hong Kong see crazy coloring book in my last post^ "Full of lies" is a bit strong. Reilly is telling the truth, just not the whole truth. It's actually a Tony Clifton kind of thing, with Reilly as Bob Zmuda. At the beginning, Reilly would step in occasionally when Mr. Met was overbooked or under the weather. Both of those things came to happen more and more often, and after a while Reilly was doing at least half of Mr. Met's gigs. He was good at it, too; even people in the know could never be sure which one it was. (Well, Mrs. Met could tell, but even she had her doubts sometimes.) The two of them got into some pretty sick mind games, like that time in Sarasota with Greg Goossen and the two hookers. I think Ralph tells that one best.

Come on, guys. You've got two more innings to get Matt that no-decision.

I've never seen that before. And Murphy isn't even fast.

I've been digging into the history of Mr. Met. I'm sorry if a lot of this is familiar to you guys, but it's new to me, and I thought it might be fun to share it. And if anyone has their own Mr. Met pictures over the years, I'd love to see them. One thing I was surprised to discover is that his name really is Mr. Met! Well, Mr. Metz, actually. But that's pretty close. Here's his senior yearbook picture (Rockford North, 1962). When I found this, I figured it was just a coincidence--the big head, the stitches (or is that a little beatnik beard?), the name. It's a long way from the Illinois woods to Flushing, after all, and there are lots of kids who look like that (I remember two from my high school). But then I found an interview with Linda de Roulet that filled in a bit of the story. Apparently after graduation he went to work for his uncle, who was a plumbing contractor in Long Island. The Paysons were having some trouble with their septic system, and they called in Metz Plumbing (Joan, who of course had a great sense of humor, insisted that it had to be Metz Plumbing). Willard showed up, and it was obvious that if he knew how to flush a toilet, that was the extent of his plumbing skills. But the Paysons took a liking to the shy kid from the Upper Midwest, and offered him a job in the Mets organization. And the rest, for lack of a better clich�, is history. The next picture is from 1965--August 28, to be exact. That afternoon, Mr. Met helped cheer the Mets on as Galen Cisco and Al Jackson combined to shut out the Giants. Then he changed into his street clothes and headed down with Lady (soon to be Mrs.) Met to catch Bob Dylan at Forest Hills. The couple enjoyed the first half of the show, which was just Dylan with his guitar, but were much less pleased with the second, when his band joined him on stage. The extreme volume and the riotous crowd upset Lady Met, and the couple left before it was over. "I enjoy songs with a beat as much as anyone," Mr. Met told the Daily News, �but you couldn't even hear the words!� The third picture takes a big jump forward in time. It's 1979, and Mr. Met is on his own. The Mets have let him go, and so has Mrs. Met. But for the moment he�s still on the A-list (or whatever list it is that Yul Brynner is on), and determined to enjoy it while he can. Here he is with the gang at Studio 54. (He and Liza joked about his cap matching her dress, but she was not happy about it, and a rift developed between them that wouldn't be healed until the post-9/11 game.) Maybe next time I'll go back to the Seaver years, or forward to the lean years (I've got a couple of screen shots from his infamous infomercial).

Benjamin Grimm wrote: And the winner is... Patrick Corbin of the Arizona Diamondbacks, whose name is completely unfamiliar to me. I think he used to dance with Paul Taylor.

I remember someone trying to tell me that Jack Morris knew how to pitch just well enough to win. This was in that year when he won twenty games for Toronto. If his team scored two, he gave up one. If they scored eight, he gave up four or five. So when he was getting beaten up in the second inning, it was only because his magical powers told him the Blue Jays were going to pull it out for him in the seventh. Obviously Matt Harvey has the same gift, only it's for no-decisions.

It's always intrigued me that there was another New York Mets. Or maybe it was the same Mets, returning after seventy-five years in the wilderness. Forget those West Coast emigres, or those upstart Baltimoreans in the Bronx; this is the real New York baseball club. Were there any of their old fans at the Polo Grounds in 1962? I'm sure there were, just as I'm sure there are Mets fans today who remember Bill Terry and Burleigh Grimes.

Jamie (Last Big League Player Older than Me) Moyer

Pepsi diplomacy.

Zvon wrote: What amazed me, in the original pic, was that it showed that fans have been nickled and dimed through-out history. I've seen set-ups like this before in old photos, but always thought they were just outdoor boards that were there to view for free. But they were free, weren't they? I mean, there's the display right downtown for everyone to see. And the full details in the Evening Telegram was stuff you couldn't put on a board anyway--the game write-up, the sportswriters ragging on McGraw for playing Beals Becker instead of Josh Devore, etc. And yeah, that is game 2 of the 1912 Series. Mathewson is about to retire Hugh Bedient, the Red Sox pitcher, for the last out of the game. It's interesting that the pitcher is batting. The Red Sox had position players available to pinch hit, but Bedient was their third pitcher of the game, so maybe they didn't want to use up another pitcher. On the other hand, the game was going to be called after this half-inning anyway, so what the hell.

"My dad lets me use the dacha when he's at the Party Congress. There's whitefish in the fridge, and one his girlfriends probably left a spare bathing suit. What do you say?"

Ike Davis is going to kick around three or four organizations in the next three or four years, getting signed and dropped and mostly sitting on the bench. Then in 2018 he's going to land in Oakland and hit fifty home runs. And we're all going to hate him even more than we do right now. The thing is, I really like Ike Davis. I still picture big things every time he comes up to the plate, and my first impulse is to defend him when everybody says these terrible things about him. I haven't even dropped him from my fantasy teams, though at least I have enough sense not to play him. But Jesus, he's terrible right now. He's about the terribilist hitter I've ever seen.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Fernandomania comes to New York and blows up big-time. Amid a media presence fit for the seventh game of a World Series, Valenzuela makes the cover of SI after he out-pitches Met Mike Scott in a battle of future Cy Young Award winners. Dodgers edge Mets 1-0 on an unearned run. Scott pitches seven brilliant innings in what is easily the best outing of his mediocre Mets career. I was at that game. Valenzuela's shutout streak remains intact. As I recall, Ralph had Valenzuela, Lasorda translating for him, and Scott on Kiner's Korner after the game.

Buddy.

Indian lady: Mr. President, I can prove you're an Indian. President Coolidge: How? Indian lady: Ha! Told you. Jeff: ?

Swan Swan H wrote: From 2001-2003 he pitched for Rice. Now he has a chance to pitch with Rice. How often has this happened before? Ryan's teammates who attended Howard? Cohorts of Don who played for Baylor? Brett's buddies who went to Butler? I'm pretty sure Mayo, Ozzie and Reggie never had it happen. it happens more often than you might think. Here are a few. For the Angels in 2003, former Troy Trojan Tom Gregorio formed a late-inning battery with reliever Troy Percival. Where would the 1969-71 Orioles have been with third-string catcher and Cal State Chico alum Clay Dalrymple and super-sub Chico Salmon? Okay, those are first names. If you want some last names: Dal Maxvill, holder of a degree in electrical engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, played on the 1975 A's with Claudell Washington. Austin College Kangaroo Charlie Robertson had a cup of coffee with the 1926 Browns, sharing bench time with coach and emergency third baseman Jimmy Austin. Mets content: proud Philander Smith grad Sammy Drake played on the 1962 Mets with noted philanderer Bobby Smith.