Farmer Ted

If Fletch pops up on TV, it stays on. Splash, not so much. I use Fletch lines in day-to-day interactions in the office. The peeps get what I'm saying. Got your whole fist up there, Doc?

"The home run apple is being shined for its display outside the new stadium." Well, all the guys working in the chop shops can see the apple after a home run.

His coaching helmet was two sizes too small for his head.

Well, it's not the happiest day in the Ted household. I really dig Guy Conti. I thought being a bullpen coach was just left to some lackey out there making sure the pitchers didn't set fire to the bathroom. He was he first in-game coach interview I ever saw on TV describing the precision for what each pitcher needed to do and the intricacies of their regimen. Had good banter with the guys in the booth, too. Secondly, the old goat tossed me a ball after a late season game in DC last year. Much props.

"I think your brother is having a heart attack..." "FUCK HIM!" Plus you get a peek at JLC's boobies. Definitely Trading Places. "Here you go Valenine, one dollar."

Looks like those gray areas will be ads...and one right up there in between the light posts in left? I predict that's the "Company formerly known as Keyspan" ad location. I like the configuration of the lights in the Chrysler Building motif. Tall outfield walls in left?

I share Belushi's reaction.

They've done some nice updates to Cellular. Like I said previously, the Teds enjoyed the atmosphere there as much if not more than Wrigley (except when I'm hanging with my CPF peeps). From those views, it does look like a Cellular replica. HOK prolly recycling old models.

A bearded Dan Wheeler chucking fastballs for the Deviled Eggs.

God, how did I miss Henderson with the Rays? Who else didn't know?

Where the heck are they storing 55,000 seats?

Damn bulldozer in the middle of the field. Show some fucking respect.

Fucking brutal.

Mmm, Lea Thompson.

Painful. But ther new place will be a treat.

Glenn died of AIDS, too. I recall Dusty Baker claiming he "invented" the High-5, but Burke said he did it or some such nonsense.

If Guy Conti leaves, I leave. Well, maybe not. I'd at least be a little bummed.

A good peice by Marty Noble. NEW YORK -- The essence of the Mets clubhouse is no more. The people, equipment and furniture are gone, toilets and shower fixtures have been removed; so, too, a 1970 Rusty Staub card found amid the rubble created by deconstruction. And, of course, the locker stalls, the Shea Stadium homes of the 788 men who played as Mets in the now de-commissioned ballpark, have been taken away as well. Most of the stalls are nondescript now that their contents and nameplates have been removed and their locations have been changed. Mike Piazza's stall -- later assigned to Guillermo Mota -- bears great resemblance to those of Mike DiFelice and Mike Fitzgerald. And the stalls used by Doc Medich, Dock Ellis and Doc Gooden can barely be distinguished from the one used by Dr. Ron Taylor. The hooks where they hung their hats, painted over a dozen times in 45 years, have no distinction; nor do the shelves and the hinged compartments at the bottoms of all lockers. One locker had karma, though; karma, grandeur, distinction, dignity and -- who knows? -- maybe some Hall of Fame DNA mixed with that dreadful seafoam-green paint that was under all the other coats of white, blue and black. Maybe some traces of Tom Seaver survived. If not physical evidence of Seaver's presence, at least a sense of history. "That locker did have history," John Franco said on Tuesday. "More than any other in that place." Franco lived from that stall -- the one just to the right of the clock, the phone and the boom-box shelf -- for 11 years, plus a few weeks in the summer of 1992. And he made Mets history when he was the tenant. "But nobody made the kind of history here that Tom Seaver made," Franco said. Franco was the tenant of that stall for longer than another player, Seaver included. Indeed, only Ed Kranepool had lockers at Shea longer than Franco. But Franco still refers to the one that was his for so long as "Seaver's." So did anyone with a sense of the Mets franchise and the Mets' Franchise. "It doesn't matter how long anyone had it, it was always Seaver's," Franco said. But no longer. That stall and all the others belong to either the Meigray Group or the folks who have purchased them from the group dismantling Shea. Some have been sold, all have been moved to a different location. Seaver's has been moved, but it remains on the Shea shelf, available to anyone who wants to pay the terrific price of $41,000. Seaver wore No. 41, of course, so the stall is appropriately priced. "What would they be charging for it if it was being sold as mine?" Pat Zachry asked on Tuesday. Zachry, acquired in the trade that sent Seaver to the Reds in June 1977, was assigned the locker immediately upon his arrival at Shea. It was his through the 1982 season. (Seaver took it back when he returned in 1983 to his former clubhouse digs.) Zachry wore No. 40 throughout his Mets tenure. "Forty grand for mine, I guess," he said. "My locker would be a bargain." Steve Trachsel used the locker in 2005 and 2006, after Franco's departure. Trachsel wore No. 29. Such a discount! The locker was assigned to seven players, all pitchers, since the Seaver trade 21 years ago -- Zachry, Seaver again, Ron Darling (1984 to July 1991), David Cone (July 1991 to August 1992), Franco, Trachsel and, for the last two seasons of Shea, Aaron Heilman. Before Seaver -- who knows? Buddy Harrelson couldn't recall. Seaver himself didn't know. For that matter, he was unsure whether he had lived from that stall as a rookie in 1967. "It doesn't matter [who preceded Seaver]," Darling said. "It's his." Darling asked for that locker in 1984. "Unless they were going 'Thurman Munson' on it," he told the Mets. (The Yankees maintained Munson's locker in Yankee Stadium following his death in 1979.) "I'm not dead yet," Seaver said on Tuesday. Seaver had little interest in the stall, though his reaction when told of the asking price was a priceless -- and characteristic -- Spanky cackle and "What a steal!" He wondered what the three lockers to the right of the clock might fetch. At one time they were assigned to himself, Nolan Ryan and Jerry Koosman. "Not many hits in those lockers," he said. They called it Pitchers Row for a reason. Seaver hardly was sentimental. "Where you lockered really wasn't that important," he said. "It didn't make any difference. Just your own little space. But it could have been anywhere." But Darling thought, "There might be some karma," when he asked to move in. He already knew the perks of the location. There was no locker to the immediate left, just a three-foot-wide panel. A trash can was placed there. "There's good and bad to that," Heilman decided after his first week in 2007. The space allowed Franco to keep his black leather rocker there without infringing on a teammate's territory. The music and the phone could be controlled from either side of the panel. Except for when Bobby Jones lockered on the other side, Franco was in charge of the volume. There was an upside to that, he decided, particularly when Carlos Baerga blared his musical preferences. Franco would turn up Frank Sinatra or Andrea Bocelli. Darling played the Romantics full blast the first day of the first homestand in 1984. Cone kept the volume down, as did Trachsel. "We didn't have music when I was there," Seaver said. Trachsel often had a case of wine resting on the floor next to trash can, but it was fine wine. "It must have been my influence," said Seaver two years ago. The wine from Seaver's own Northern California vineyard, GTS, is highly regarded. "I just drank beer when I was there," Zachry said. "I don't remember ... too much about it," Seaver said. "So I'm not buying it. I just know it was a good clubhouse to be. Good people. Good memories. I know we drank champagne there. But it's all about the people, memories, energy, not the room or the building. It's not like it was great architecture. It's old now and pretty beat up. They're going to blow it up. I'd volunteer to light the fuse."

Any photos of Banner Day in the archives? Those would a nice treat.

Dodgers. Didn't even have to think about it.

Blue, orange and white piping is a LOT of piping.

Bobby V. Inventor of the wrap sandwich.

Warrior.

Do the Mets try to keep TATIS?

Skyline survives. Although most of the scoreboard will be dismantled and sold, the skyline will be brought over to the new stadium Great article.