Thanks to The Happy Recap for inviting me to participate in last night’s chat. If you missed it, you can catch up with the transcript, here.
Aside from a 30 second blank where I couldn’t remember wtf Timo Perez was (except someone TBF mentioned with expletives around his name), I think I did all right.
Yours truly will be participating in a Mets blogger roundtable online chat at The Happy Recap on Tuesday, March 11, at 8pm EST. I’ll appearing with Mike Steffanos from long-time MG favorite Mike’s Mets along with the bloggers-in-charge at Shea Nation and Always Amazin’ (over at nj.com). I would be thrilled to get a little support from regulars, if you had a few minutes on Tuesday night.
To participate, visit The Happy Recap, register for an account (hey, it keeps out the trolls) and click on the live chat button under David Wright in the site banner. See you there!
Generalissimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead
When I walked into work this morning, Carlos from Accounting waves at me.
“Please, give me some optimism.”
I stare blankly at him.
“Alou.”
Another blank stare.
“Out with a hernia. 4-6 weeks.”
“Wait - Moises Alou is injured?! Surely you jest. Alou - out 4 to 6 weeks? Nooo. You must be talking about someone else.” I shake my head. “Carlos. It’s Spring Training. It’s Moises Alou.”
As Mike put it this morning:
The bad news about Moises Alou has been dispensed, and the endless string of handwringing and negativity begins anew. The euphoria over the Santana trade is all but forgotten.”
Steve Somers said something similar a few nights ago - oh my god, it’s March 4, the season is over, you’re all going to be calling with the gnashing and the moaning.
Am I the only person in the Tri-State Area that didn’t expect Moises Alou to get through the year injury-free? It’s the eternal TBF-MG debate: TBF reminds me of how great Alou is. I point to his DL stints. He quotes his number of at-bats. I remind him that the reason he got so many at-bats last year was because he was the only guy not falling apart at the end of the year, so of course he was performing, he’d been RESTING for 3/4 of the year. Andrew from row F leans over and reminds us that there’s a rock in his backyard that moves faster than Moises Alou. Some Cubs fan glares at me from the Friendly Confines and speaks of him in hushed, reverent tones. Moises himself looks straight into the camera instead of at Kevin Burkhardt and states for the 53rd time in a 3 minute interview how much he’d like to stay in New York. I say, Moishe, honey, maybe try some yoga?
There are exactly 4,563 beat reporters are down in PSL. The magnifier is on full amplification, everybody’s scurring around trying to find something new to say. OMG METS DEAD IN WATER, WASTED $137.5M ON BRINGING SANTANA TO FLUSHING is going to get more eyeballs than CALM DOWN THE SEASON HASN’T STARTED YET.
Part of today’s birthday gifts from TBF.
I really wanted a pink glove, but they’re all softball gloves. We’d been talking about this for a year or so now, and a few months ago, while in a sporting goods store, I started trying gloves on and fell in love with this one, because it fit wonderfully and just felt right.
You are looking at my very first baseball glove.
Weekends are wondeful, because you can sit down and read an astonishingly great three-part interview with our favorite grump, Marty Noble, conducted by the proprietor of Mets By The Numbers.
Amazing stuff. Nuances about the clubhouse and the beat reporters and the history of the team I guarantee you have never read anywhere else. Things nicely written. With full punctuation. No, seriously, go read this, even if you don’t know that much about the Mets.
Mr. Fragile?
Mr. “I know it’s my contract year but I really do want to stay in New York”? [Actually, no, that’s Alou.]
Mr. “I Make Moises Alou Look Hale and Hearty”?
Mr. “We really, really like Carlos but this is getting out of hand because our first base situation sucks”?
[If you don’t know what I’m talking about, click here.]
Add your ideas in the comments.
TBF and I had made a pact: total blackout today. We wanted to be able to come home and eat dinner while watching baseball. I closed the “baseball” folder on my RSS feed (as though I had any time to even think about my RSS feed today, much less look at it) and put a post-it on my monitor reminding me to not visit my Google home page, because the score would pop up somewhere.
There. I was safe.
Except I forgot about the Captivate Network.
For those of you who don’t work in a big Manhattan office building with a fancy-shmancy elevator, the Captivate Network are little televisions in the elevators that run news and ads. They’re actually reasonably entertaining. Now, I don’t work in a building that meets that description, but I had a meeting in one. And said meeting was exhausting enough that when I walked out of the meeting and stepped into the elevator, seeing Jose Reyes in a Mets jersey drew me closer to the screen like a bee to a flower, where I learned the score.
I sighed quietly, not wanting to try to explain to my coworkers that I had just ruined my night.
Ah, well. It’s still baseball.
I am calmer this year about Spring Training, interested to watch the game but happy to let TBF fast forward after Johan and Heilman until we got to his NSMC, Mr. Sanchez. I do, however, already need to watch the television with the sound off, even if it is Gary, Keith and Ron. I am a baseball moron compared to those three and yet it is painfully obvious to me that Pedro Martinez is a very smart man who is deliberately trying to manipulate the media and destroy the angle of “OOOOH! COMPETITION BETWEEN JOHAN AND PEDRO!! FILM AT 11!!!” but yet everyone comments on how Pedro is walking around all buddy-buddy with Johan. If I hear Kevin Burkhardt say it one more time there will be words and Gary should know better. Come ON.
Other random thoughts:
I think Jose has gotten faster.
I cannot believe that Keith’s attention span started to wander only four innings into the first televised game of the year.
Ramon Castro is looking trim, but unfortunately, he is still Melon Head.
And while I am glad we avoided the insanity that was ST this year, I still wish we were down there today, in the warm breeze, sunglasses and sunscreen on, TBF keeping score, me taking photos.
Soon enough.
However, in this particular case, I’ll make an exception.
Seriously, though, the Cardinals have some serious issues, clearly, but having LaRussa be your spokesperson on Cardinals team values regarding substance abuse is just the tiniest bit hypocritical, dontcha think? He was found IN AN INTERSECTION. ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL. ELEVATED BLOOD ALCOHOL.
I am not quite sure when and how we started talking about going to Texas to see the Mets play, but it probably came out of the fact that the other possible roadtrips were more expensive. And I am also not quite sure what, exactly, about our half-conscious conversation at brunch this morning triggered a flurry of action once we got home, TBF looking at airfare, me looking at hotels and maps and proximity to ballparks. Several hours later, here’s the tally:
1) Reservation at a 5-star hotel in Downtown Houston, walking distance from the ballpark
2) Reservation at a Holiday Inn Express about 1 hour south of Dallas
3) Rental car reservation booked
4) Provisional airline schedule selected
5) Evaluated all tickets on the market at this time for Houston
6) Plans for ballpark tours to take at both Houston and Dallas
7) A map of the location of every Sonic Drive-In on the route from Houston to Dallas (remember we are the people that made a detour to stop at Sonic in Pennsylvania on the way to and from Pittsburgh two years ago)
The itinerary:
Friday: Fly out of JFK at 7am, arrive Houston 10am. Nap, ballpark tour, game, barbeque.
Saturday: Drive to Arlington, Rangers v. Blue Jays, drive 1 1/2 hrs. and stay overnight in some godforsaken town on the freeway, but said town has a 24 hour Walmart not far from the hotel, so we’ll make it work
Sunday: Drive balance of distance to Houston, arrive approx. 11am, ballgame, drive to airport, fly home
Pickings are very slim for the Astros, as 1) we now are forced into StubHub, instead of the local club’s ticket marketplace and 2) Season Ticket holders have not yet received their seats, and not everyone sells their seats before they are in hand. So we’re looking at a bunch of overpriced crap on the field level, but in row 38 or 39, which are the last rows of those sections, which appear to be what was sold in the general public sale.
Tickets in Dallas have not gone on sale yet. However, the day of the Saturday game in Dallas is a concert by a local Christian Rock group, and last year, the games that had the Christian Rock concerts sold out way in advance. This means that we will be buying our tickets in the public on-sale, because even if we end up not going for some reason, given the fact that they sold out, with the magic of eBay and/or StubHub, we could recoup our initial investment easily.
[No, we will not be attending the concert. I’m not even sure people like us would be allowed in to such a thing in Texas.]
But it is exciting to be planning another baseball trip. Excited to be excited enough about the Mets to be wanting to be planning a baseball trip.
Anyone who knows anything about the ballparks and general vicinities in Houston and Dallas, by all means, share your thoughts. All assistance and suggestions welcome.
How much money would the Mets make if they sold photos of that? Of course they won’t - like that awesome back-to-back image of Wright and Reyes last year that I would have paid $$$ for. Why on earth would they actually try to monetize something people would actually like to buy, and would promote the team, when you can charge everyone $2 to get into Open Workouts? [UPDATE: The Mets have link, and now that $2 is a “donation” instead. How about you donate half of the parking concession if you want to raise money for charity?]
I have to admit that I was relieved when I read the caption for the photo above and confirmed that it was posed. Not that I don’t already know what a big ham Pedro is, but for a minute I was a little worried.
Yesterday was Spring Training Photo Day, when Your 2008 New York Mets had the duties of assuming 100% forced gaiety, and posing for photos like the one above, as well as this:
That’s got to be the most, um, HAPPY image of the Mets since that promo for the All-Star Game last year. Pedro is SO skinny!
(Do you think that if he keeps posing for photos with his arm around Johan, it will make every member of the press stop asking about the big competition between the two of them?)
