Mets New Batting Helmets

How cool do the new Mets batting helmets look? Usually I am more of a traditionalist, but these are futuristic in a very cool way:








Delgado Franco

I don't know if they will use them in the regular season, but I guess it depends on if the players feel the vents or other features are helpful or not. I think they're cool looking though!

Photos from Newsday.com

Mr. Wendell Lyrics

Here, have a dollar, in fact no brother, man here have two. Two dollars means a snack to me, but it means a big deal to you...

Remember Turk Wendell, that crazy pitcher who wore bones around his neck and used to slam down the rosin bag between pitches? That same Turk Wendell was in the news this week as he asserted that "it's physically impossible" for Sammy Sosa to have put on thirty pounds in one offseason and become the prolific hitter he became in the late nineties. Some quotes:

"Here's a guy [Sosa] who goes from 30 homers to 60 homers every year, and just as fast he's out of baseball. Can't get a job. How's that work?"

"Everybody in Chicago knew what was going on, just like everybody in baseball knows about Bonds," Wendell told the Herald. "The coaches knew. So did the managers and owners. How could they not know?"

"Then, Jose Canseco comes out and says it and everybody rips him, and now everything he said was true. A lot more will come out about guys who nobody's talking about yet, too."

Then he makes an even more dire prediction:

"You still see Yogi Berra and Phil Rizzuto and Johnny Pesky around, but this era of players is going to be dying early," Wendell told the Herald. "The stats don't lie. The stuff will kill you."

Oh, Turk. Ya gotta love him.

Metsui Down

As if Kaz Matsui hasn't played poorly enough this Spring (.184 BA, and too many errors), he got hurt yesterday, spraining his knee while sliding into second. He and Willie expect that the injury will only sideline him for a day or two, but every injury he's suffered in the past has seemed to linger endlessly. In any case, all things being equal, Kaz has played the worst of all the second basemen who were competing for the allegedly open job.

My pick for the position was Jeff Keppinger, and he has played the best, but recent reports have said that Willie considered him a longshot at best and Keppinger's apparently headed to Norfolk to start the season regardless.

If Matsui's injury lingers though, this may open up a spot for the kid. We'll see... Of course I wouldn't mind if the job went to Anderson Hernandez either, but it just seems unacceptable to me to allow Matsui to continue his mediocre ways with the big club.

My NCAA Tournament Bracket

I don't know a darn thing about college sports. Somehow, however, it's inevitable that every March I will get involved in the tournament that determines the national champion. Every year, the one guy at work who actually watches college hoops will rope everyone else into participating in the bracket.

Now that I've moved to North Carolina, it's even worse. They LOVE the college basketball down here. It doesn't hurt that there are four teams (Duke, UNC, NC State, UNCW) from this state in the tournament this year, but these people follow the sport THE WHOLE SEASON.

So I have picked my teams for the bracket, despite the fact that I have never seen one team out any of the sixty four play in my entire life. I picked Villanova to win the whole thing, partially because I actually know the name of their coach, Jay Wrifght, because he was the coach at Hofstra while I attended.

I was almost starting to care who won the tournament, until while I was reviewing my highly-educated picks, when I saw that the championship game is played on April 3rd. April 3rd! Frickin' Opening Day! Do these people have no shame???

Bobby Valentine's Blog

My favorite Mets manager of all time is Bobby V. I love how much he wants to win, and how much he doesn't mind talking about how much he knows about baseball. Like Muhammed Ali said, "it ain't bragging if it's true,"

After Bobby V was fired and replaced with Art Howe, and the Mets stunk just as badly, I showed up at Shea with a sign that read "See? It Wasn't Bobby V's Fault!" We had second row seats beside the visitors dugout so my sign was very visible. A security guard made me take it down, even though he didn't understand what the sign meant.

"Is that a negative sign?"

"Bobby Valentine wouldn't think so," I replied.

He made me take it down anyway.

Please check out Bobby Valentines blog at www.bobbysway.jp

I Despise Tom Glavine

I don't hate Tom Glavine just because he's stunk for the Mets. There are plenty of players who fit that description., and I don't have enough energy to despise all of them the way I despise Tom Glavine.

Tom Glavine has only done one thing consistently since he arrived in New York: whine.

Whine, complain, and make excuses. Questec computers, Roger Cedeno and Armando Benitez are all the scapegoats blamed for the fact that Tom Glavine's chase for 300 wins has stalled since joining the Mets. He talks about that 300 wins all the damn time. He comes off like such a selfish ass every times he mentions his goal to reach 300 wins. The only wins he should care about are team wins. I don't want to hear him talk about his personal win-loss record until he's retired.

It's been especially tough living in the South, with plenty of Braves fans around to remind me of the pitcher Glavine used to be.

And that's what makes his whole demeanor even rougher to swallow. The worst thing about it is that he's already a Hall of Famer based on his career stats. He doesn't need to hit that number to reach the Hall.

Even this year, when Freddy W and Omar have compiled a team that gives him the best chance of reaching the World Series since signing with the Mets, he is still a whining, selfish, pain in the ass.

From David Lennon's column in Newsday, on June 10th:

Tom Glavine is a stickler for routine, so when the Mets shuffled his schedule to make him their contingency plan for Opening Day, he didn't seem overly thrilled about it.

Opening Day is the only game I know for sure I'll be watching from the seats at Shea, so I want to know that the guy who's on the hill for the Mets that day is thrilled to get the honor to pitching on Day One.

And now his old GM in Atlanta writes a book and exposes that Tom Glavine had serious second thoughts after agreeing to come to the Mets.

This guy is a real bastard. I honestly hope that teh Mets win every game he starts, but I hope he doesn't get credit for any of them. I'm begging for a bunch of late-inning, come from behind victories for the Mets when Glavine starts.

And here's my latest prediction: no matter how well or poorly he does this season, this off-season he'll sign with the Baltimore Orioles and rejoin his old pitching coach Leo Mazzone.