As we rapidly approach 2011’s edition of the dreaded “Trading Deadline” (cue dramatic organ music: DUN-DUN-DUUUUUUUNNNNNH…!), the Mets are in a situation they haven’t been in since at least 2004: being courted. It only makes sense that Carlos Beltran will be traded in-season. The logical, clear-cut, business and baseball reasons have been enumerated since last [...]
When I left you last time , faithful reader, I had just sworn off buying Met tickets. You may recall, I was in high dudgeon, brimming with moral outrage and righteous wrath. I vowed that my own personal boycott would force the House of Wilpon to revamp the front office, which would turn out a [...]
I used to be a partial season plan holder at Shea Stadium. I bought the seats in 1992, splitting a weekend plan with a friend of mine: he took Saturdays, I took Sundays. Just in time for The Worst Team Money Could Buy. Isn’t my timing exquisite? I loved those seats. Mezzanine level reserved, section [...]
A Billy Joel lyric never seemed so apt. Tomorrow night (7/15), the season re-starts with a half-clean slate. This is when baseball takes on a different hue: more serious, less romantic, more about action than speculation. The stakes get raised in the second half, and the surprises of April, May and June are usually worn [...]
We’ve reached the halfway point of the 2011 New York Metropolitans’ baseball season, chronologically, if not statistically. The Mets sent two players to the game, one of which will play – a commendable showing for a team which had been predicted to act as the spittoon of the NL East and began the year five [...]
“Walk right side? Safe. Walk left side? Safe. Walk down middle? Squish, like grape.” – Mr. Miyagi to Daniel-san in the original KARATE KID So they’ve hit a season’s high in terms of winning percentage, climbing the dizzying heights of three games over .500. So they’ve taken a second step on the way to what [...]
Last night (7/4) was one of those games that felt really bad, then suddenly euphoric. Not in the same sense that Sunday’s ambush of the TGMR (The Great Mariano Rivera) was, the 5-2 win over the Dodgers (I will refrain from any snarky nicknames referring to their bankruptcy filing: there but for the grace of [...]
Four games, 52 runs scored, 69 hits, only three of which were home runs – all hit in a single game and two of those were grand slams. As Casey Stengel meant to tell us all those many years ago, “The Mets are amazin’.” Every cylinder of the offense is firing, the pitchers are unfettered [...]
I was vacationing in the Catskills last week, and I’m not sure if I missed anything. I know that the “meaty” portion of the Inter-League schedule began with a dreadful, boring three-gamer with the Angels at Citi – and what the hell is a Tyler Chatwood, anyway? Dropping two-of-three to an Anaheim squad which is [...]
Since their 3-1 start to the season, the Mets have scraped the .500 mark twice: on May 20 at Yankee Stadium, and then last night (6/15) in soggy Atlanta. That’s a couple of pretty fair ballclubs, isn’t it? It’s not like they bulldozed the Mudville Nine to get there: they did it at two of [...]
You would think that after 40 years of watching the Mets’ brand of baseball, I’d be used to it by now. I was about six-years-old when I finally kind of caught on to what this “base-ball” thingy was. Since then, I’ve seen some seasons where it’s been awful from Jump Street: 1974, 1977 through ’79 [...]
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?" A four-run lead headed to the bottom of the eighth is supposed to be safe. To paraphrase Howie Rose, I was putting this one in the books before the eighth was over. But we know the narrative these past two weeks, don’t we? This bullpen stinks [...]