Thursday, December 09, 2010

Top V Albums of 2010

And here are my favorite albums of 2010.  

1. Black Keys - Brothers
2. The Hold Steady - Heaven is Whenever 
3. Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More
4. The Gaslight Anthem - American Slang
5. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Also loved:
Girl Talk - All Day
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Mojo

Friday, August 27, 2010

Crazy Thoughts

Omar said this week he thinks Ollie Perez can bounce back. How can he possibly bounce back if he doesn't pitch?

Some have speculated that the Mets consider trading Jose Reyes. If you are going to break up "the core," wouldn't it make more sense to trade the more-replaceable David Wright? I am not saying either one should be traded, but honestly, isn't it easier to find a third baseman who does what Wright does than a shortstop with Jose's abilities?
I edited this because on second thought i realized I was insane.
OK, that is all. Except: Hire Bobby V.

Thank you.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Bobby V is out there for the taking.

I am excited to go to Sunday's Mets Hall Of Fame Day and see Darryl and Doc and Davey and Cashen go into the Mets Hall Of Fame.  It will be nice to remember a team of winners.  It has been a long time!  I have actually enjoyed this season more than any other in many years, primarily because I had no optimism whatsoever going into it.

Yesterday's win was great and all that, but in conversing with my buddy for our plans on Sunday, I got all fired up about the state of the Mets.

On Opening Day I said that if they were going to implode, I hoped the Mets would implode early so they could fire Jerry Manuel and hire Bobby Valentine.  My opinion still stands, even though the word is that these players 'love' playing for Jerry.   I don't really care what a .500 ball club loves.  Every year ownership and Omar say the on-field performance is 'unacceptable' but they never follow through and do anything except give out more bad contracts.  Willie should have been fired earlier, Ollie should have been released, players should be benched when they suck.  That's how you show losing is unacceptable:  Consequences.  It is unfathomable to me how this team can have great homegrown players like Wright Reyes, Ike Davis and Mike Pelfrey and Jon Niese and still have no idea how to build around them. 

The idea that the Mets are cheap is silly.  The Mets do spend money, but that doesn't mean the lousy  performance isn't ownership and Omar's fault. It is their fault because they never stick to a plan.  They just throw money at the problem.  They brag about how much money they spend while really they should be embarrassed.  Their teams play like a $65MM payroll, and that is actually an insult to the Devil Rays

I feel bad for Luis Castillo because the guys busts his ass out there and everyone hates him because Omar gave him a  bad contract.  As if that's Luis' fault.  He's a slap singles hitter with so-so defense and bad knees, that's what he's been and that's what he was when we signed him, and he had no business getting a four year deal, but what was he supposed to do, turn it down?

Meanwhile, Bobby V doesn't take any sh*t.  He said Todd Hundley was partying too much, he said he had losers in the clubhouse, and he got Benny Agbayani to play like an all-star.  Enough said.

Hire Bobby V, trade Jason Bay and K-Rod, find someone to take Beltran before his bum knees go out again, and find a new GM too.


Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Joseaaaaaye, jose jose jose... Pelfrey... Pelfrey

The Mets win two in a row, on the backs of Jose and Big Pelf! I have almost no optimism, but I still can enjoy the hell out of a Mets win! In fact, maybe I am enjoying it more, now that the burden of hope is lifted. Maybe I should have tried lowering my expectations sooner!

Igarashi strains hamstring - how does this play out?

So Igarashi tweaked his hammy tonight. Who wants to bet against this chain of events:

-Igarashi is declared day to day

-after about 5 days of playing shorthanded, we're told he could be ready for action tomorrow.

-make that tomorrow.

-Igarashi is seen warming up but does not enter the game

-the next day, Jerry Manuel says Igarashi is ready to play. An hour later, he goes on the 15 day DL.

-After about two weeks, we hear he is due back by the weekend.

-he's due back by the next homestand.

-sometime this weekend.

-season ending surgery.

tools for transplanted baseball fans

If you re an out of market baseball fan, you need to get yourself an mlb.tv subscription and a roku player. The subscription is about $120 and the roku about $100. The roku is primarily used to stream netflix movuies to your TV, but starting this season you ll be able to stream mlb games in broadcast quality (or better). Plus if you re away from a tv you can listen to the radio broadcast for any game, any time, home or away. A much better deal than the directv extra innings package, and in fact, you don t need any tv service at all! Love it!

Friday, April 02, 2010

¡sǝʌıɹɹɐ ʎɐp ƃuıuǝdo lıʇun WITH OPTIMISM pɐǝɥ ʎɯ uo puɐʇs llıʍ ı

Well, if you are looking for optimism, this is the place. I have to admit, all the negativity leading up to the Mets Opening Day is not unfounded, but here is my silver-lining take on it:

The Mets have historically had awesome offseasons, leading to ridiculously high-expectations, where everyone dons their rose-colored glasses going into the season. We fans have been let down time and time again. This time it's different and so one of two things will happen:

The Mets will exceed all of our expectations and 2010 will be a most magical year, indeed.

Everything will fall apart, and Minaya and Manuel will be fired and teh roster turned upside down, ushering in a new era of Mets greatness (?led by Bobby Valentine?)!!

That is all. See you at the ballpark!!

Friday, March 26, 2010

Meet Me At The Apple!

Last year, I was fortunate to be able to go to Opening Day, the first regular season Mets game to be played at CitiField. The first sensory experience I had that day was Joe Beningo and Evan Roberts broadcasting from the plaza, discussing how little Mets-ness there was at the new stadium. Things will be different this year. I expect to meet my buddies at The Apple, because the Shea Stadium Home Run Apple is being moved to a very prominent location right outside the main entrance. We'll take a shot of ourselves there, then walk over to the left field entrance and walk on in through the Endy Chavez Rotunda. Can't wait!

I love Bobby Ojeda - Transplanted ex Mets Update

Mets World Series champ Bobby Ojeda answered five questions for the New York Post (one more than the number of full sized fingers on his hand), and Matt Cerrone posted a quote that states exactly why I feel Jerry Manuel shoulod have been fired last year:

Q: Coming out of spring training with Carlos Beltran out and Jose Reyes questionable for Opening Day, do you think the first month of this season is about survival for the Mets?
A: You can't have that attitude. You heard that ad nauseum last year. "Let's hold on until so and so comes back." It drove me nuts. On any given team, you are going to have people injured. The attitude has to be that you are going to go out and stick it to people. We are going to remember what happened last year and teams are going to pay. "Just survive until Beltran and Reyes get healthy" is a loser attitude.


Exactly!  That is a direct shot at Jerry Manuel, and it is completely deserved.  We hear all the time from the Wilpons that the Mets performance has been 'unacceptable', but Jerry M sent a consistent message to the contrary all season long.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Transplanted ex-Mets update: Dwight Gooden arrested for DUI

The Mets got Reyes back on the field today, but Matt Cerrone passes along word that Mets graffiti artist Doc Gooden was arrested for DUI early this morning. Can the season start already?

UPDATE from the Associated Press:

FRANKLIN LAKES, N.J. (AP)—Former Major League Baseball star Dwight Gooden has been charged in New Jersey with driving under the influence of drugs and leaving the scene of an accident.

Franklin Lakes police Capt. Joseph Seltenrich says the 45-year-old former pitcher for the New York Mets and Yankees had a child in his vehicle at the time of the two-vehicle crash around 9 a.m. Tuesday. It wasn’t clear whose child it was.


If this isn't the saddest story you'll hear all day I feel bad for you.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Who The Hell Is Ike Davis?

I've been reading a lot about Mets first baseman prospect Ike Davis on Matt Cerrone's Metsblog this week. Seems the kid is getting a ton of hype by the Mets organization, which leads the cynic in me to believe they are trying to boost his value so they can trade him. Wonder if he'll be as good as Lastings Milledge, Alex Escobar or Carlos Gomez? Personally I am rooting for Mike Jacobs to win the job.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Mets have no sense of tradition!

I just saw a note that the Mets will be giving away a Citi Field Home Run Apple savings bank to the first 25,000 fans on Opening Day.  I was surprised to see this, because a magnetic schedule has been the Opening Day giveaway for as long as I can remember.  Turns out they will be giving away the calendar this year on Friday April 9th.  Another bit of evidence noting the Mets' lack of a sense of tradition! 


Monday, February 15, 2010

I'm Shockingly Excited For Opening Day!

2009 was the worst season in my personal history of being a Mets fan.  There, I said it.

After three seasons of blogging, by the time late August hit, I just didn't have the heart to post on a regular basis any more.  I had absolutely no motivation to write about the Mets, not even to vent.  That's how disengaged I felt. 

I could not have been less engaged, less enthused, or more disappointed in the Mets than I was in 2009.  I went to fewer Mets games than I had in probably 20 years, which is saying a lot considering that for three of those seasons I lived in North Carolina!

It wasn't the injuries.  The multitude of them was almost comical.

It wasn't the losses.  I've seen seasons with far fewer wins and felt exponentially more joy in following the team.

The lack of enjoyment I had about the Mets was because of the manager, the players who played for him, the arena they played in, and the management that oversaw it all.

Yes, there were injuries that decimated the roster.  But even the players who were left standing had more talent than the club Bobby Valentine inherited when he took over the Mets in the late 1990's.  The difference was that he demanded excellence and heart from his players, while Jerry Manuel demanded that his players "tread water" until the stars came back.  I'm still scratching my head why we were supposed to wait for Delgado and Beltran to come back from the DL and be saviors - these were the same guys who were healthy when the team fell short in the 2006 playoffs and then had September collapses in 2007 and 2008. 

I wished the Mets could have backfilled the roster with some players with heart like we used to have - Turk Wendell, Benny Agbayani, Matt Franco, Joe McEwing, even Masato Yoshi for crying out loud, they may not have been blessed with superior talent  but they sure had intensity.  Al Leiter, John Franco, Cliff Floyd and Carlos Baerga won't get many Hall Of Fame votes but they sure etched a place in Mets fans hearts in a way that the current roster just hasn't and quite likely won't.

There was some great talent on the Mets roster last season, and Reyes and Santana are fun to watch, but they have been the exception to the rule of personality-devoid, essentially clutch-less robots collecting paychecks from the Wilpons.  How can we argue with Cole Hamels assertion that the team is made up of choke artists?  Was he wrong?

The Mets spent billions of dollars to build (and millions to hype) a stadium with obstructed views all over the place.  Dave Howard can debate the semantics if he'd like, but when I am sitting in the second row of a section and one handrail is blocking the pitcher from my line of sight, and another blocks the batter, and I have to peer through plexiglass to see anything, I am not getting my money's worth.

Omar Minya, Jeff Wilpon, Tony Bernazard, Dave Howard, Jerry Manuel... they all embarrassed themselves to such a degree in 2009 that I will not even waste another typestroke describing it.

However, here I am, just weeks away from Opening Day and I suddenly find myself excited for the season.

I can't even remember the last time I missed an Opening Day, and last year was the hardest ticket to come by.  The only way to get a seat to Opening Day last year was to buy a ticket plan of 15 games or more, or to pay a scalper.  Fortunately, I had a guardian angel hook me up so I wouldn't miss the first game in the new stadium.  That guardian angel would not be coming through in 2010.  However, I wouldn't need him.  The Mets announced that they were bringing back the Six Packs, which have been absent for at least five years, when the 6 pack became a 7 pack and then an eight pack, before last year the smallest package was 15 games, 14 of which were undesirable.

There is an Opening Day Six Pack for sale, and my two buddies and I were debating the investment.  The available seats were not great, but the price was not wholly unreasonable.  We were not sure whether to give more money to this club when they gave us so little in 2009.  Coincidentally, the same day we were discussing the purchase, I got a call from the Mets about 2010 tickets.  I'll leave this guy's name out of this post because I don't have his permission to print it, but I do want the record to show that my phone calls with this guy represented the best experience I have had with or related to the Mets since Carlos Beltran took a third strike looking.  I told the guy I wasn't sure about the seats, and he volunteered to take a walk out into the cold, and send me a picture from his blackberry of the seats available so I could be sure my view would be satisfactory.

Yes, I won't be able balls hit to the left field wall, and we won't be able to see Jason Bay if he's playing deep, and there are still some plexiglass panels within my field of vision, but just the fact that there is a guy working for the Mets who is still committed to customer service gives me a glimmer of hope that this season will not be an unmitigated disaster.

But even if it is, I am excited for six days to share a beer with my buddies and share some laughs (probably at the team's expense).

OK, Mets, Bring on Opening Day!

And bring back Bobby Valentine while you're at it.