The Mets' 10-Game Report

The latest disaster is here:  

http://mets10gamereport.blogspot.com/2009/07/mets-10-game-report-volume-8.html

Whiskey

I've been a fan of whiskey since 2004.  I've always had it on the rocks.  But I have discovered recently that it is better neat.  I have a new philosophy of whiskey now.  Actually, this is more like my new philosophy of life: no ice.  That's how I roll.  No ice.  That's how I'm gonna have to take the road ahead - including the Mets, and all that dissertation writing and the job market and the whole becoming a 30 year old adult thing.  With no ice.  Just a nice, slow, burn.  The sort of burn that reminds you of what truly matters in life.  

Adrienne is looking at me funny.  

Eddie and I like to drink whiskey together on occasion, which I am certain we will do this weekend in Boston.  102% of the time, I drink him under the table.  In spite of my new no ice ideology, I will still drink him under the table.  

That's just how I roll.  

Random notes and tidbits

-The Mets won a game today, shutting out the Brewers and exploding for 1 run in the 6th.  Sweet.  

-This weekend I'll be shipping up to Boston with Adrienne to hang out with Eddie and Robyn.  Yes.  

-I don't know why, but I have a decent feeling about the Mets going to Philly this weekend.  I think they may take 2 out of 3.  

-The NL East really is a cesspool of mediocrity, though I'm confident that if the Mets never lost 2/5 of their starting rotation and 3/4 of their best offensive players, they'd be at least 40 games over .500 by now.  

-I have a lot of work to do, but I just want to play.  All work and no play makes Anthony a dull boy.  

-I'm having a really hard time getting passed Super Macho Man in the old school Punch-Out! for NES.  

-Goodfellas is on.  

-Fuck you, pay me.  

-What am I, a clown?  

-Do I amuse you?

-Fuck you, pay me.  

-I saw The Taking of Pelham 123 last night with my dad, and then we went to Ruddy and Dean and killed their porterhouse for two.  The movie was pretty good.  Denzel is always good.  And, Shea Stadium made a cameo in the movie.  

-Eddie makes a good point, one I thought of myself the other day.  Watching and rooting for this Mets team, a team that plays meaningful games everyday because of the standings, sure as hell beats watching and rooting for a team that is already out of the race by now.  Like the Nats.  

Uncle

Did all of that really happen in one inning?  Johan walks the pitcher on four pitches, Fernando Martinez nearly breaks his face as he trips on the field after misjudging a routine fly ball, and then a walk and a double later, on an 0-2 pitch no less, Braun rips a double that turns into a virtual inside the park homerun because Johan Santana airmailed a throw from home to third... ???????

You can't make this stuff up.  

I could take it if this Mets team were simply not hitting (which they are not, of course).  No one should really expect this depleted lineup to hit much.  But no - they have to add INSULT TO INJURY with all the ridonkulous errors and mental mistakes.  They have to walk Mariano Rivera with the bases loaded.  They have to fall on their faces.  They have to airmail throws that lead to extra runs being scored.  

In April, we saw this team underachieve like we have seen them do so many times... so many times before.  In May they turned in on in a big way, and they did it mostly without Carlos Delgado and Jose Reyes.  

June has been a disaster.  It started out with a sweep at the hands of the Pirates that left a bad taste in your mouth.  Then we won a series against the lowly Nats.  Then we lost four 3-game series in a row, losing 2 of 3 in each of them.  Those were somewhat tolerable, because the lineup was depleted and every freggin game was close.  And then we took 3 of 4 from the Cardinals, AFTER Beltran was placed on the DL.  WOW!  LOOKING GOOD, BOYS!

Then the Yankees came into town, and the bats have been silent since.  5 straight losses.  Yet still only 3 games behind the Phillies.  

I don't really know anymore. 

 

I have a confession to make.  I love watching Nissan Postgame Live and Geico SportsNite on SNY after the game.  LOVE it.  BUT (here's the confession) I can only watch after a win.  I can't watch after a loss.  I don't like the negativity.  I like to forget about losses fast, and I love to revel in every win.  Yet for the first time in quite a while tonight, I found myself effortlessly watching the postgame stuff.  I wasn't even that upset at the loss.  Granted, Philly losing made me feel about 2 percent better.  But the point is - at this point, I'm resigned to the fact that they will most likely lose with the team they are currently putting out there and that any sort of win is like winning the Series.  

Oh well.  

Adam Dunn

Should the Mets trade Bobby Parnell and Fernando Martinez for Adam Dunn?  I would think Dunn would cost something like that.  So let's say Washington would make that deal.  Should the Mets make that deal?  

Parnell has great stuff, showed tremendous promise in April and May, but has stunk lately and is hardly major league proven.  F-Mart, top-prospect notwithstanding, has a long way to go before he is even close to major-league ready.  And who knows how he'll turn out.  

Add on to that the fact that the Mets' offense right now is absurdly anemic.  Dunn will provide the power the lineup is missing.  He is a 40, 100 guy.  AND, if we get a healthy and able Delgado back, Dunn can move to right field.  Granted, the thought of Dunn playing right at CitiField kinda scares me, but let's face it - we need the power very badly.  Imagine this lineup:

Reyes

Castillo

Beltran

Delgado

Wright

Dunn

Sheffield/Church

Schneider/Santos

Pitcher

Yes, I'll take that.  

I don't know in my heart if this would be a good trade.  But I'm leaning towards it.  In fact, if I had to make a decision right now in the face of losing the option entirely, I'd probably say make the trade.  

Oh, the pain...

The Mets and their fans have suffered a new low with the beating they took at the hands of their cross-town rivals at CitiField this weekend, capped off with Mariano Rivera walking with the bases loaded in the 9th inning last night.  I had the pleasure of going to the first two games.  

In game two, a Yankee fan prevented David Wright from catching a foul ball and then taunted him after the play.  If I was sitting near this guy, so help me Jesus H. Fucking Christ I would have dumped my beer all over his ugly New York Yankee loving face, and then he would have done something, and then I probably would have started beating the shit out of him, and then I probably would have gotten arrested, or at the very least kicked out of the park.  Good thing I wasn't sitting near that asshole.

Anyway.  

Sometimes you just have to take one on the chin I guess.  Good thing about baseball and New York is that today's story becomes yesterday's news in a New York minute.  A couple of wins and this disaster of a weekend will be forgotten.  

If we can get a couple of wins, that is.  The thing is, without Delgado, Beltran, and Reyes, this lineup is simply a joke - one that seems to be capable of playing, just barely, .400 ball.  

The Mets are currently 2.5 games behind the Phillies (3 in the loss column).  Now, that's nothing to get upset about.  We should be thanking our lucky stars actually.  But this could get ugly, and fast.  

Here's how I see things shaking up.  We have 13 games left until the All-Star break.  3 @ Brewers, 1 @ Pissburgh, 3 @ Philly, 3 vs Dodgers, 3 vs Cincinnati.  The Mets will go 6-7 over this stretch.  The Phillies also have 13 games left before the break, and they will go 9-4.  That puts us 5 and a half games behind them at the break (6 in the loss column).  That's bad, but hardly insurmountable.  ASSUMING we get our guys back after the break, we could still be in this thing, especially given the fact that our second half schedule is a cakewalk compared to the schedule we are in the midst of right now. 

The weird thing is - we've seen the healthy Mets roster perform this badly too.  Last year at this time the Mets were flirting with a .500 record.  That was with the All-Star laden lineup.  Yet now, if and when we get these guys back, it will feel like we have a team of superheroes or something.  

Well, anyway...  For now, one game at a time.  Gotta hope the Mets can at least play .500, and gotta hope that the Phillies lose frequently.  

My First Game at CitiField

June 26th, 2009.  First pitch: 7:10pm.  New York Mets vs. New York Yankees.  @ CitiField.  

This is a night that will be engraved in my life and memory forever.  It wasn't a great night.  But it was, somewhat, an enjoyable night. 

The Mets lost to the Yankees 9-1 on this night - my first game ever at CitiField.  Pelfrey was alright, but he couldn't overcome the 3 errors that his teammates made behind him in the second inning, and the injury ridden Mets couldn't figure out C.C. Sabathia.  

Big Jay has a friend in his family who has had season tickets to the Mets for quite some time now.  Every so often, Jay grabs a hold of these tickets and takes me to the game and we sit in some seriously awesome seats.  The Shea seats were in the Loge, right behind home plate, just a bit on the third base side.  I was pretty excited to see where we would be at Citi.  We were pretty much in the same place, only on just a bit on the first base side.  

It was a struggle getting over the GWB during rush hour.  And then the clouds opened up, and it started pouring... and then we sat in some classic NYC traffic.  Finally, after a couple of bumper to bumper ridden hours, we got off the Grand Central at the Shea Stadium... sorry, CitiField, exit.  The rain was coming down hard, and the winds were flailing, and there was even a good bit of fog.  And, there was some serious lightning... the kind that strikes fear into the hearts of grown men.  

But we finally got there... driving off that exit ramp... this was where I was always so used to seeing that giant, awkward looking blue building coming into sight...

But not this time.  This time it was the sight of an elegant brick structure, with the bright sign "CitiField".  

I have to tell you - CitiField is a sight to behold.  It is simply beautiful.  (And expensive.)  But it was just such a very, very strange experience.  I felt like I was on another planet or something.  It was a very contradictory feeling, because it simultaneously felt some comforting, yet so foreign... so welcoming, yet so distant... so perfect, yet so lacking in that... something...

At Shea, the seats were very bunched up and close together, and you sat there, and you went outside the seating area to get a beer or some food.  And that was it.  But at Citi, the park just begs you to walk around and admire it and socialize.  And that really is the most charming and warming part of it - that it is just so... welcoming...  Despite it's high ticket prices, it yells out to you: "Come and enjoy me and take me in.".  Shea was welcoming too - in its own way - but it wasn't quite the same.  Citi has this encompassing feel, partly because of the seat layout, and it really creates for a very intimate atmosphere.   

The pulled pork sandwich that I had was wonderful, as was the beer and the whiskey.  So my initial evaluation is as follows: CitiField is a beautiful place, and it will grow to be a wonderful home for the New York Mets.  

But it has to grow still.  We are still many wins and many memorable moments away from such growth.  I'll miss Big Shea.  But I think that CitiField won't take long before we can legitimately call it "home".  

I have to be honest with you: I hate that this ball park is called "Citi".  I hate that it has this corporate logo.  I really, strongly, dislike it.  I wish it was called something like "Robinson Park", or "Wright Field". 

But it is what it is.  And we'll deal with it.  And we will win baseball games.  And maybe at some point we will win a pennant here.  And maybe, at some point, we will win a World Series here.  And someday, I'll take my future children here, and I'll tell them all about how David Wright was the hero in Game 7 of the 2009 World Series.  

LET'S GO METS!

(I am going to the game tomorrow, too, with my girlfriend, Adrienne.  And we're gonna win.)

Thoughts on Michael Jackson's passing

I was born in 1981, so Michael Jackson was not as much of a part of my childhood as he was for people born in the heart of the '70s.  Although, I do remember really digging the song "Bad".  But in any case, I never really had a strong attachment to his music.  And I gotta say - I'm a little bemused by all the emotional and sentimental outpouring in the wake of his death.  

The most common refrain goes something like the following: "Say what you want about Michael Jackson.../Regardless of how you feel about Michael Jackson.../You can hate MJ all you want.../ but you cannot deny that his music was groundbreaking/amazing/life-changing/orgasmic/soul-warping/revolutionary."

Well, I agree in a sense.  You can't deny that Michael Jackson was, arguably, the greatest entertainer of his generation, maybe even the greatest entertainer of the 20th century.  Great performer, no doubt.  

He also had a tendency to abuse children.  And the fact that people are so blindly overlooking that fact as they "celebrate" his life is disturbing to me.  And frankly - the media should be focusing more on Iran than the death of Michael Jackson.  

I'll always enjoy classics like "Thriller", "Billy Jean", and "Bad" when I hear them on the radio (today, it's ALL you'll hear on the radio!).  But I refuse to "celebrate" this disturbed man's life.