Tuesday, April 20, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
brian schneider era is over.
brian schneider era is over. schneider will take it one day at a time with the phillies.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Transplanted ex-Mets Update: Ed Hearn
Mets Police lets us know that the New York Times has an article on the whereabouts of former Mets Catcher Ed Hearn. Ed Hearn sticks out in my mind primarily as being the subject of a David Letterman joke following the 1986 World Series. Dave was talking about the hype and hysteria surrounding the World Champs and held up a prop, a book called Ed! The Untold Story of the 1986 World Champion Mets Back-Up Catcher. I remember thinking I would like to read that book. Check out Mets Police and the article at:
Ed Hearn's website says that Ed is the first and only current or former athlete from our country's top professional sports league to recieve the coveted (his words) C.S.P. designation (Certified Speaking Professional) from the National Speakers Association.
View the irony-free video: Ed Hearn: An Inspirational Champion at http://www.edhearn.com/newvideo.html.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Newsday: Mets to cut 2010 ticket prices 10-20 percent
According to an article posted on Newsday.com, the Mets announced today that some seating locations at CitiField will have cuts or more than 20 percent. All season tickets will go down in price.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Bobby V Is Back!
Neil Best passes along the news that ESPN has hired former Mets manager Bobby Valentine:
Bobby V will serve as a "Baseball Tonight" analyst beginning with the league championship series next month. Next season he will be a regular contributor, as well as work for 1050 ESPN radio and the soon-to-be-launched Web site ESPNNewyork.com.
Next season he will be a regular contributor, as well as work for 1050 ESPN radio and the soon-to-be-launched Web site ESPNNewyork.com.
Valentine did not dispute the assumption he would like to return to managing in the majors, but he added, "At this time I'm totally committed in thinking about trying to be as good as I can be for the team that showed interest."
The "team" he meant is ESPN.
ESPN executive Norby Williamson said he assumed Valentine will be with the network at least through 2010.
Valentine said it was difficult to follow American baseball closely while managing in Japan, but he offered this when asked about the 2009 Mets:
"I followed it from afar and I have some friends there that I've shared tears with, because I think it's been a tragedy.
"It's been disappointment after disappointment, and I don't think anybody could have fixed it as the season was going on. As soon as it seemed like things were getting better, they seemed to get worse.
"I was kind of a fan that was really disappointed and upset by the outcome."
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Transplanted ex-Mets Update: Mike Hampton out for 2010
37 Year Old Mike Hampton, on the disabled list since August 18th, will have surgery on his pitching shoulder and both knees. He may miss the entire 2010 season. Hampton's infamous 8 year, $121M contract that he signed with the Rockies after helping the Mets reach the World Series in 2000, runs out after this season and he will be a free agent. For some reason his MRI results are in the hands of Mets' Dr. David Altchek. No idea why anyone would approach anyone on the Mets medical staff for medical advice!
Monday, September 14, 2009
Maybe you shouldn't take financial advice from Lenny Dykstra
The Mets were officially eliminated from playoff contention last night, at the hands of Pedro Martinez and the Phillies. As if the season couldn't have been bad enough, this just put a rotten cherry on the worst sundae I've ever eaten. The offseason officially begins for Mets fans, though we still have a couple more weeks of rooting against the Phillies and Yankees.
Earlier this season, I posted a link to ex-Mets OF Lenny Dykstra's financial column for The Street. Sports Illustrated has posted word that Lenny is broke, and is auctioning off his 1986 World Series ring to raise money. So much for limiting downside risk, dude.
Earlier this season, I posted a link to ex-Mets OF Lenny Dykstra's financial column for The Street. Sports Illustrated has posted word that Lenny is broke, and is auctioning off his 1986 World Series ring to raise money. So much for limiting downside risk, dude.
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