dinosaur jesus

Ed Nunez and Jamie Moyer. Edgy MD wrote: I'm capped by Miguel Garcia and Jamie Moyer. But I'm not really interested in my endcaps who were MLB players, I'm more interested in who the first Met who was younger than me and the last Met who was older than me. I never wanted to be merely a big-league player. I wanted to be a Met. I'm almost certain the answer to those are Gregg Jefferies and Julio Franco. The first Met younger than me might be Stan Jefferson, depending what time of day he was born. Otherwise it's David Cone. The last Met older than me was Julio Franco.

Mine just got here. It doesn’t smell bad, just a bit rubbery. And the orange is pretty orange. The size seems accurate. I ordered the deluxe or premium or whatever they call it, because it’s supposed to be made of nice thick cotton. But it’s the same thin stretchy clingy stuff that passes for cotton everywhere these days. (That’s one of my old man rants; I’m pretty sure the cotton consortium is conspiring with the polyester interests to label cotton-polyester as 100% cotton. You can write to your congressman, but he’s probably been paid off.) So I’m reasonably satisfied.

I haven't been voting on most of these, but I'll make an exception here, just to vote against hideousness from 1982. The caption is idiotic, and the portraits look like they were done by the sidewalk artist at the Nelsonville Spring Arts Festival. I hope Bambi got that thing on his chin lanced.

Holds are noted if you play if you play fantasy baseball. But otherwise, not much, no. And they don't even count in a lot of fantasy leagues. Yeah, they're a weird statistic. But saves are just as weird, really. And even wins don't make that much sense. I think it's nice to have some kind of stat that marks what middle relievers do, given how many innings they pitch now.

I know I've seen that baby somewhere else.

I was at the Gooden shutout in 1986. That was fun. I'd started grad school in St. Louis in the fall of 1985, which was when I learned to hate the Cardinals. I'd always kind of liked them before--Dizzy Dean, Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, those great old-school uniforms. Plus my great-grandfather, picking up KMOX on the radio way down in north Texas, had been a fan. I actually enjoyed the pennant race that year; that last series, when the Mets couldn't quite pull off the sweep, was some amazing baseball, even if it did turn out wrong. But that "Mets are pond scum" crap, and having to hear nonstop about Whitey ball, wore on me. When the Cardinals got lost game 6 on the Denkinger call, I felt bad for them. But when they imploded in game 7, like they were still sulking about it and didn't want to play anymore, my schadenfreude was like a revelation to me. I liked the city—still do, really. But screw the Cardinals. And their uniforms looked like shit, too. (They really did in those days--those double-knit all-whites and all-baby blues.) From a St. Louis perspective, it really did feel like it was over after that series in May. But then I had to be there for the 1987 season too. Oh well. Savor your schadenfreude while you can; you'll pay for it someday.

That 1964 cover is so screwed up, it's hard to figure out what's going on. It's like they took a simple gag and tried to work so many things into it that it turned surreal. The welcome mat gag is actually pretty clever--the Mets are pulling the rug out from under the rest of the league and showing that they're not doormats anymore. But a doormat should be in front of a door. Instead, there's a circle with a view of Shea. Maybe it was originally supposed to be a door, and they decided to evoke the World's Fair by making it look like the World's Fair globe (though it doesn't really). But then it doesn't register as a door, which makes the doormat nonsensical. And Casey is supposed to be hiding behind the door/globe, but it looks instead like he's straining to support it on his shoulders, like Atlas. Which means the huge visiting player is Hercules, and Casey is going to try to trick him into taking the globe from him? Probably not, but who knows? The visiting player is supposed to be distracted by the magnificence of Shea, so Casey and the kid can take advantage of him. And why shouldn't he be distracted? Shea seems to be contained within a floating bubble, as if a portal to another dimension had suddenly appeared. (It looks like the crystal egg in an H. G. Wells story, in which you can see Mars.) I'd like to think that that bubble is still bobbing around somewhere, and inside it's still Shea Stadium in 1964. Anyway, that's the cover I voted for.

1971: Joe Torre

I saw Dale Murphy once hit a line drive to right field--the opposite field. I assumed it would be caught, or maybe take a couple of hops to the fence, but it carried right over. Way over, still rising. I was stunned, because in those days you just didn't see balls hit that way go for home runs. And now, of course, it's routine. Was that true, and were most power hitters in those days dead pull hitters (and was Murphy incredibly strong)? Or had I been conditioned by watching too many games at Shea?

Did Tommy John go into making men's underwear? That's what comes up when I search his name. Anyway, I went with him, Miller, Simmons, Tiant, and Trammell. I think as the Hall has gotten bigger, the standards have tightened (with some obvious exceptions). All these players would have been obvious Hall of Famers fifty years ago. But Trammell is overqualified by any standard. (Whitaker too.) Adrian Gonzalez is a better player than Steve Garvey was. John Olerud was a better player than Don Mattingly. Dale Murphy looked like the best player you ever saw, but he was actually only really good. Dave Parker had a hell of a peak and a hell of a long decline. And Jack Morris has my name, so I can't be impartial.

I did a few minutes of digging on this. The Wikipedia page on Fred Haney, the Angels' first GM, has a photo of Haney presenting Frawley with the pass. Frawley was on This Is Your Life, and the episode aired in January 1961, shortly before the Angels' first season. Frawley was on the Angels' advisory board, which I imagine just means he was one of the celebrities signed up by the Angels to promote the new team. But I'm also guessing he was a friend of Gene Autry's; they'd both been part-owners of the old Hollywood Stars (along with everyone else in Hollywood) going back to the thirties.

Edgy MD wrote: dinosaur jesus wrote: The thing about Duda, though, is that he's chronically underrated--his perceived value is way below his actual value. Which is great when he's on your team, but it means you won't get a good return for him in a trade. It's a bind. A .900 OPS speaks for itself, though, don't it? I mean, this isn't FAN yahoos you need to convince. You just need to convince one MLB GM from a contender that needs a first-sacker (or perhaps a DH). I'm not advocatin', but maybe the Sox want to make an improvement on Hanley Ramirez or whoever is DH-ing for them. I imagine they're capable of accurately evaluating him. They might know what he's worth. I'm not sure the Mets front office does.

The thing about Duda, though, is that he's chronically underrated--his perceived value is way below his actual value. Which is great when he's on your team, but it means you won't get a good return for him in a trade. It's a bind.

A black day. I'm still upset. But I wonder if things could actually have gone even worse. This way it was a clean break--there was an obvious villain, Seaver was still terrific, and even on the Reds (at least it wasn't the Yankees) he could still be the good guy. But that Mets team was collapsing, and he wasn't going to save it. By the next season things could have gotten really ugly, and he'd have been right in the middle of the ugliness. It wouldn't have been fun. Not that it was fun anyway, of course.

I'm a little suspicious of that story. I don't think Attila's Huns ever reached Greece.

Edgy MD wrote: Edgy MD wrote: Lefty-swinging and blandly named Tommy Joseph is entering his first full season taking over at phirst. He's a big meaty Thome-ish white guy who probably went through the minors too fast, but the power is there. Not a huge strikeout guy either. He got off to a slow start this year, and I'm hoping he craps out, but he's better than Ruf on his worst day. Looks like a statue on defense. A statue of Greg Luzinski. That's a nice touch, actually putting it on the playing field.

"Catch you later"?

Edgy MD wrote: Phillies phans have passed over Placido Polanco and (far more surprisingly) Scott Rolen to elect Pete Rose to their Wall of Fame. I know Rose supposedly taught the Phillies to win or something, but Scott Rolen gave that team 20 times the productivity. The first six seasons of his career with the Phillies were everything the first six seasons of David Wright's career was with the Mets. But he's not Mike Schmidt, so screw him.

I'm a little confused. In this thread, opening day is considered to be the home opener. But in the opening day quiz thread, it's the first game of the season. That's what I'd actually consider opening day to be. For the record, the Mets are now 36-20 by that definition. Gary actually mentioned that during the broadcast, and said it was the best record in baseball.

Zvon wrote: So if the blister is on his middle finger what was that on his thumb? I distinctly saw a yellow looking thing on his thumb. Maybe he had two blisters, but the one on the thumb wasn't the problem. Does that make sense? I'm thinking that the thumb is the launching point---some discomfort there doesn't matter--but the finger is where he applies the torque.

89-73 2nd, behind the surprising Florida Marlins. Win the wild card game, lose in the Division Series.

Good luck to him. Dallas Green was a dick.

When I was in elementary school, we had an assignment to make a diorama, using twisted wire, that illustrated a favorite book. I chose Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? I wasn't skill enough to make anything too conceptual, like Throneberry missing second and third, or Kanehl being Casey's little scavenger. It was just a Mets pitcher, done with white and blue and orange wire, with his arm cocked behind his head, preparing to throw a pitch. He was pretty wobbly, like he was close to falling off the mound--not what I was going for, but appropriate. I must have read that book a dozen times. The last time was probably forty years ago or more, but I still remember odd bits from it once in a while. The Parks Commissioner, Newbold Morris, telling the architects for the new stadium they were putting in too many bathrooms (bad call there, Newbold). Comparing the Mets to the Marx Brothers in Room Service (a strange choice). The enemy home runs that went exactly nine miles. Rogers Hornsby preparing a scouting report on current players and writing next to Mickey Mantle's name "Looks like a ballplayer." Babe Ruth asking a bartender for one of those heavens to Betsy drinks and swallowing the whole thing all at once, ice and all. I thought "heavens to Betsy" was a pretty funny expression, and it didn't occur to me until decades later what the Babe actually said. The book was my introduction and guidebook to Met culture, as I'm sure it's been for an awful lot of people. It helped shape the idea of the Mets as lovable losers, which shaded into the idea, still with us today, of them as perpetual underdogs (sometimes lovable, sometimes not so much). I don't know if that's an entirely good thing, but the hell. It was my favorite book when I was ten, and I'm still a Mets fan.

Frayed Knot wrote: Although Bill Hands and Barry Foote were both Cubs for part of their careers, I long thought it was too bad that they were never teammates. Foote also ever hit against Hands; he was 1 for 3 career against Rollie Fingers but now I'm afraid my little joke here is getting out of ... well, you get the idea. Bill Hands was teammates with Pete LaCock, though. And he hit against Roy Face one time. He struck out.

Lefty Specialist wrote: Cespedes has looked good. Worry about the quad, though. Don't worry. Tebow will lay his hands on Ces's quad and it'll be fine. Whoops. Sorry.