Inspired by this, I encourage you all to check out this.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
Ah, the smell of the fresh cut crack of the bat
Well, baseball is back just in time. My bracket sucked,and the seven months of NBA/NHL playoffs are about to start dominating sportscenter, so thank God baseball is here. Forget for a minute that ESPN realized that the Sunday Night Baseball* team was horrible and then thought to themselves "Hmmm, how can we make this more horrible?...I know, Steve Phillips!" Let's just focus on the good things, like Johan Santana at one o'clock today and Ricky Nolasco hopefully coming through for 3 different fantasy teams of mine.
*I think maybe I'll use a Pozterisk** here to mention that I no longer believe a word Joe Morgan says. He can be talking about anything and I just think "No, he totally made that up. He pulled that out of his ass. This guy's an idiot." Like he said that Chase Utley had trouble on breaking balls last year due to his nagging hip injury, and I thought "No. He made that up. Even if that's true, there's no way in hell Joe Morgan knows that." And Jon Miller's lengthy explanations of OPS in the first inning were just downright insulting. Thankyou so much, Jon, for explaining that, but there's really no need as I have been sentient for the last 10 years.
**Read some of this guy's posts to understand.
Anyway, let's get some predictions going for the baseball season. I was pretty terrible at this last year, but I've got a good feeling this time around:
AL
EAST: Red Sox. Fuck this team and their racist mongoloid fans.
CENTRAL: Indians. The Twins were a fluke, the White Sox are old, the Tigers have meh pitching, the Royals suck. Therefore, the mediocre Indians win a mediocre division.
WEST: A's. Fuck it why not. The Angels let Teixeira walk and thus have a shitty offense. Lackey, E. Santana, and Escobar are hurt at the moment. I'm going out on a limb and saying that the A's young pitching comes through and the Holliday-Giambi-Cust combo is enough.
WILD CARD: Rays. I will never pcik the Yankees, and though their rotation is awesome, I don't think their lineup is amazing, especially with Anabolex out. I think the Rays are all-around solid and that Matt Joyce will have a huge breakout year (just fucking with you LCT).
MVP: Grady Sizemore. Division winner, good player, Jeter black.
CY YOUNG: Jon Lester. If he's really good, the cancer* thing will push him over the top.
ROY: Matt Wieters seems to be some sort of combo of Johnny Bench and Jesus, so we'll go with him.
*Ok, so AIDS was the disease of the 90s and cancer has been the disease of the 2000s. What will be the disease of the next ten years? The leading contenders would probably be heavyweights like alzheimers and autism, but I can't help but root for an underdog like harlequin ichthyosis.
NL
EAST: The Mets of New York town. 4 awesome players + better bullpen - Willie Randolph + Daniel Murphy's unbridled intensity + Gary fucking Sheffield - Aaron Heilman - Scot Schoeneweis = who fucking knows, but I'm not picking the Philthies.
CENTRAL: Cubs. This is definitely the most obvious choice. Why do they even have this division any more?
WEST: Dodgers. Solid lineup, ok pitching. The D'Backs aren't bad and neither are the Giants somehow, but the Dodgers lineup is deep and Chad Billingsley will be awesome (I hope, for fantasy purposes).
WILD CARD: Phillies. Ugh. Braves have a good rotation, but the goddamn Phillies just will not go away.
MVP: Raul Ibanez. If it's not Pujols, it generally goes to the 4th or 5th best Phillie hitter.
CY YOUNG: Johan. The man, the legend.
ROY: Tommy Hanson. I think that's the Braves pitcher who will probably come up at some point. I don't really know. Who cares really? Ben Grieve once won one of these.
Ok, that is all.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Names of the Year
In honor of the Name of the Year Tournament, which is one of my favorite websites of all time, I have decided to come up with some names I think would be tournament worthy. Those in bold are real names.
Herschel Controversial
Schlomo Himmler
Monetary Christmas
Rich Poormansblood
Shaky Parkinson
Peter Rigglesdick
Valentino "Scooch" Pascucci (Why was/is Marlon Anderson a met when Scooch had to settle for Zephyrhood?)
Johan S. Burg
Pretoria A. Part-Hyde
Wenceslas Malady
Horatio Hammerfinger
Booker Woodfox (Creighton hoops)
Mervin McMervin
Remember Patience Whipple (I actually don't know if this is a real name or a fictional character, but I remember my sister having a book about a girl who comes over on the Mayflower with this name)
Francine Frogswallow
Percy Merciful
Dick Octagon
Santos de los Santos (NY-Penn Leauge player from a few years back)
Glasford Barnaby (Played baseball with him when I was 13 or 14)
Alabaster Black
Drake Rakish
Martin Luther ibn Faheed
Jatavius Hotnickels
Randall Cummings-Onurback
Oregon Riverford
Dingo Destitute
Foopa Cooper
Long Dong Gonzalez
You get the idea. I could really just think of names all day, but my ideas are running pretty thin.
David Wright, National Hero
That is all.
Well, actually no it isn't. Watching the US beat Puerto Rico got me thinking just how stupid this World Baseball Classic is. I was excited at the prospect of it a few weeks ago, but now that's it under way I am fully convinced that this whole thing is pointless. Mercy Rules and pitch counts = my 10 year-old Babe Ruth little league series. Also, isn't the US playing Puerto Rico kind of like the US playing Florida. Puerto Rico is not actually a country. I understand that they are an island and speak a different predominant language, but if the Netherlands can field a team the majority of which is from Curacao and Aruba, then why aren't there Puerto Ricans on the US team?
Anyway, I thought I'd put together a roster of some states that might be able to rival Puerto Rico.
Florida
C-Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Mike Napoli
1B-Casey Kotchman
2B-Rickie Weeks
3B-Chipper Jones
SS-Jeff Keppinger (bit of a stretch...SS is pretty thin)
CF-Rick Ankiel
RF-Ryan Ludwick
LF-Elijah Dukes
DH-Gary Sheffield
Bench: Outfield-Luke Scott, Denard Spann (or Lastings or Matt Joyce or Marlon Byrd); Infield-Howie Kendrick; Utility guy-Ryan Freel
Starting Rotation: Zack Greinke, Jesse Litsch, Brett Myers, Bronson Arroyo, Tim Wakefield
Bullpen: Scot Shields, Chris Ray, Scott Proctor, Chris Perez, Bobby Seay, Boof Bonser (as the swingman), Andrew Miller (I think he could be a good releiver on this team.
Anyway, there may be some guys I missed, but that seems like a pretty competitive team. (Conspicuously absent: David Eckstein, Brian Schneider)
California
C-Gerald Laird, Jason Kendall
1B-Adrian Gonzalez
2B-Chase Utley
3B-Evan Longoria
SS-Jimmy Rollins
CF-Jim Edmonds (for defensive purposes I guess)
LF-Ryan Braun
RF-Carlos Quentin
DH-Milton Bradley (or Jason Giambi)
Bench: Derrek Lee, Dustin Pedroia, Jermaine Dye, Troy Tulowtizki (over Michael Young), Randy Winn (or Xavier Nady)
Starting Rotation: C.C. Sabathia, Danny Haren, Ted Lilly, Aaron Harang, Kyle Lohse (or Randy Wolf)
Bullpen: Heath Bell, Brian Fuentes, Bobby Jenks, Troy Percival, Chad Qualls
That's a damn good team, even taking out some big names that couldn't make it. (Conspicuously absent: Darryl Kile, Cory Lidle, Joe Kennedy, Eric Byrnes)
I was gonna do Texas and maybe another state, but I'm bored of this now.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
The worst year in sports ends...
...with a trip to the NIT.
Of course, by worst year in sports I mean worst year for dtro's teams in recent memory. And I'm also including the 08-09 Georgetown Hoyas among 2008 teams, because that's when their season started. However, if you want to count last year's Hoyas then a disappointing second round loss to a naked mole rat also fits in with the general pattern.
Let's review here: My favorite 4 sports in order are MLB baseball, NFL football, NCAA football, NCAA basketball. All other sports and leagues are pretty much pointless in my opinion.
1) The New York Mets of 2008 were not really collapsers, but a disappointing team nonetheless. And coming off 2007 and the 06 NLCS, it's not easy to be an optimistic Mets fan. Luckily, all Mets fans are sour-minded misanthropes, so the team fits our general outlook nicely.
2) The J-E-T-S were flying high for a minute before the reality that Brett Favre is old and sucks began to mainfest itself on the field. They were a true collapse and thoroughly infuriating.
3) Michigan Football suffered its worst season since the Rutherford Hayes administration or something. New coach Rich Rodriguez proved that recruiting and not necessarily coaching itself is his strong suit. The combined play of Nick Sheridan and Steven Threet was reminiscent of a back-alley abortion, and a loss to Toledo was probably very confusing and embarassing for LCT.
4) And here we are with the Georgetown Hoyas. The team started strong with a win over Memphis and only a loss to Tennessee prior to conference play. After they won at UConn to start the Big East schedule we were looking at a ranked team that was surprising people with how quickly they had recovered from the loss of Roy Hibbert and Jonathan Wallace. And then they started to suck. They remained fringe contenders for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament based on the fact that the Big East has been anointed the greatest college basketball conference in the history of forever and that their strength of schedule is #1 in all the land, but the bubble picture has finally been clarified by their embarassing overtime loss to St. John's last night.
Let's delve a little further into the Hoyas' season.
THE HIGHLIGHTS:
-Greg Monroe. An outstanding freshman center with decent post moves and good passing ability. He's already the best player on the team, but he's not good enough to be a freshman phenom and bolt for the NBA, meaning he should only get better next year. He should probably work on getting rebounds.
-Youth. The Hoyas only had one senior on the team, so at least they can blame part of their failure on being young. Dajuan Summers is a junior and has a claim against Monroe as the best player on the team (except that he disappears for no apparent reason during large stretches of games)so he'll be back next year as the senior leader guy or whatever. Chris Wright and Austin Freeman are sophomores and showed flashes of goodness. Henry Sims and Julian Vaughn are young guys and tall, which is nice I guess. I truly believe Georgetown has enough good players with a couple of decent recruits to be a Big East contender next year.
-Nikita Mescheriakov. A white guy in the rotation? Hell yes! The Bulgarian Bomber, as I have dubbed him, was pretty awkward looking at times but he could hit a few 3s and looked like he was trying hard. Also of note, he is from Belarus, but Bulgarian works better in my nickname for him.
THE LOWLIGHTS:
-Jesse Sapp. The Hoyas only senior was expected to provide leadership and hit some big shots, or at least hit a few shots. Unfortunately he completely forgot how to shoot and forced JT3 to use...
-...Jason Clark. He's a freshman, he's athletic, he plays hard and he's a fucking HUMAN TURNOVER MACHINE. He can't dribble, he can't pass and it looks like he just went through a growth spurt and hasn't yet adjusted to the size of his feet.
-Rebounding. Nobody, and I mean nobody, on this team can rebound. The Hoyas have been outrebounded by an average of 47-11 per game over the course of the season (note: figures are approximate/made up). You can play all the defense you want, but if everyone gets 2 or 3 shots per possession you are fucked. JT3 talked at the beginning of the year about running more, because the team was more athletic than it has been in years past, except he forgot to tell the players that in order to run you have to GET SOME MOTHERFUCKIN REBOUNDS.
-Bad losses. Getting blown out by Louisville and losing a thriller to Syracuse are acceptable. Getting swept by Cincinnati, losing to Seton Hall, and blowing a 16 point lead against a St. John's team led by a guy named Rob Thomas are not.
-Losing to Duke. I think we can all agree that it's tough to see the "Leader of Men" and Duke win any games. Fuck I hate that team.
-Luke Harangody. His torching of the Hoyas for 31 pts. and 11 boards was fucking miserable. Luke Harangody is exactly like Tyler Hansbrough...if Hansbrough were fatter, uglier, less athletic, had a retarded haircut, and bitched at the refs nonstop for 40 minutes.
I guess Georgetown technically has a chance if they win 5 games in 5 days to take the Big East Tournament crown. But that's not happening.
Look out Davidson, we're gonna get our revenge!
In the NIT!
EDIT: At least I don't root for this team.
Of course, by worst year in sports I mean worst year for dtro's teams in recent memory. And I'm also including the 08-09 Georgetown Hoyas among 2008 teams, because that's when their season started. However, if you want to count last year's Hoyas then a disappointing second round loss to a naked mole rat also fits in with the general pattern.
Let's review here: My favorite 4 sports in order are MLB baseball, NFL football, NCAA football, NCAA basketball. All other sports and leagues are pretty much pointless in my opinion.
1) The New York Mets of 2008 were not really collapsers, but a disappointing team nonetheless. And coming off 2007 and the 06 NLCS, it's not easy to be an optimistic Mets fan. Luckily, all Mets fans are sour-minded misanthropes, so the team fits our general outlook nicely.
2) The J-E-T-S were flying high for a minute before the reality that Brett Favre is old and sucks began to mainfest itself on the field. They were a true collapse and thoroughly infuriating.
3) Michigan Football suffered its worst season since the Rutherford Hayes administration or something. New coach Rich Rodriguez proved that recruiting and not necessarily coaching itself is his strong suit. The combined play of Nick Sheridan and Steven Threet was reminiscent of a back-alley abortion, and a loss to Toledo was probably very confusing and embarassing for LCT.
4) And here we are with the Georgetown Hoyas. The team started strong with a win over Memphis and only a loss to Tennessee prior to conference play. After they won at UConn to start the Big East schedule we were looking at a ranked team that was surprising people with how quickly they had recovered from the loss of Roy Hibbert and Jonathan Wallace. And then they started to suck. They remained fringe contenders for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament based on the fact that the Big East has been anointed the greatest college basketball conference in the history of forever and that their strength of schedule is #1 in all the land, but the bubble picture has finally been clarified by their embarassing overtime loss to St. John's last night.
Let's delve a little further into the Hoyas' season.
THE HIGHLIGHTS:
-Greg Monroe. An outstanding freshman center with decent post moves and good passing ability. He's already the best player on the team, but he's not good enough to be a freshman phenom and bolt for the NBA, meaning he should only get better next year. He should probably work on getting rebounds.
-Youth. The Hoyas only had one senior on the team, so at least they can blame part of their failure on being young. Dajuan Summers is a junior and has a claim against Monroe as the best player on the team (except that he disappears for no apparent reason during large stretches of games)so he'll be back next year as the senior leader guy or whatever. Chris Wright and Austin Freeman are sophomores and showed flashes of goodness. Henry Sims and Julian Vaughn are young guys and tall, which is nice I guess. I truly believe Georgetown has enough good players with a couple of decent recruits to be a Big East contender next year.
-Nikita Mescheriakov. A white guy in the rotation? Hell yes! The Bulgarian Bomber, as I have dubbed him, was pretty awkward looking at times but he could hit a few 3s and looked like he was trying hard. Also of note, he is from Belarus, but Bulgarian works better in my nickname for him.
THE LOWLIGHTS:
-Jesse Sapp. The Hoyas only senior was expected to provide leadership and hit some big shots, or at least hit a few shots. Unfortunately he completely forgot how to shoot and forced JT3 to use...
-...Jason Clark. He's a freshman, he's athletic, he plays hard and he's a fucking HUMAN TURNOVER MACHINE. He can't dribble, he can't pass and it looks like he just went through a growth spurt and hasn't yet adjusted to the size of his feet.
-Rebounding. Nobody, and I mean nobody, on this team can rebound. The Hoyas have been outrebounded by an average of 47-11 per game over the course of the season (note: figures are approximate/made up). You can play all the defense you want, but if everyone gets 2 or 3 shots per possession you are fucked. JT3 talked at the beginning of the year about running more, because the team was more athletic than it has been in years past, except he forgot to tell the players that in order to run you have to GET SOME MOTHERFUCKIN REBOUNDS.
-Bad losses. Getting blown out by Louisville and losing a thriller to Syracuse are acceptable. Getting swept by Cincinnati, losing to Seton Hall, and blowing a 16 point lead against a St. John's team led by a guy named Rob Thomas are not.
-Losing to Duke. I think we can all agree that it's tough to see the "Leader of Men" and Duke win any games. Fuck I hate that team.
-Luke Harangody. His torching of the Hoyas for 31 pts. and 11 boards was fucking miserable. Luke Harangody is exactly like Tyler Hansbrough...if Hansbrough were fatter, uglier, less athletic, had a retarded haircut, and bitched at the refs nonstop for 40 minutes.
I guess Georgetown technically has a chance if they win 5 games in 5 days to take the Big East Tournament crown. But that's not happening.
Look out Davidson, we're gonna get our revenge!
In the NIT!
EDIT: At least I don't root for this team.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Snow Day
Ok, so I'm the idiot who actually came in to work today not remembering that our nation's capital shuts the hell down when there's a few inches of snow. Naturally, no one else from my office is here, but my boss's boss just came by and thanked me for coming in and offered to help throughout the day (translation---I can't leave at 9:30 like I was planning to if no one else showed up). DC shutting down when there's a bit of snow is one thing that bothers me. Here are some other things that have been bothering me lately:
-Metro escalators: you stand on the right side, you walk on the left side. It's really very easy, but people not knowing where to stand is just a minor quibble of mine, because they might be tourists and not know any better. If you are going to walk down the escalator, though, then FUCKING WALK WITH SOME PURPOSE. I don't have time to be caught in the left lane behind your moseying ass. Just walk fast or stand to the side you jerk.
-Save the Children: thank God it's snowing today, because it actually spared me from having to make pretend phone calls or quickly walk away and avert my eyes to avoid the Save the Children people who usually hang around outside my office building. Listen I hate poverty and want to help orphans as much as the next guy, but with, you know, moral support---like remote pity and such. I'm at work here and I've got rent to pay, and you've seen me enough by now to know that I'm not signing up for some monthly payment plan.
-Dubious charitable donations: There's the thing, Save the Children and Greenpeace (who are occasiaonally lurking in front of the Chipotle down the block from my apartment) don't want you to know. I know what you're up to. I know you don't just get people to donate money, but make them sign up for some sort of ongoing payment thing. Don't try to guilt me into something when you're pulling the same tricks magazines do when they have "free" subscriptions around Christmas. The jig is up you charitable bastards.
-People bumming cigarettes and then needing a light too: do you smoke or don't you? I only gave you that cigarette under the assumption that you were an unfortunate smoker caught without any more smokes.
-People asking me for directions: what is it? Do I just always look like a local or like I know where I'm going? I think I must be the most approachable looking guy in New York or Washington, DC, because wherever I am I get stopped on the steet and asked for directions once a week. And I really don't know where I'm going in DC so I just make stuff up half the time.
-No sports. G'Town basketball is rather disappointing this year as they fight for an undeserved at-large bid on the strength of the Big East's ability to claim that it is the greatest sports conference of all-time. The NBA and NHL are a joke. Why can't Spring Training last for only a week.
-People looking at me funny just cause I'm reading a book called Cannabis: A History on the train. I'm not a pothead and fuck all you old ladies for even thinking that.
Monday, February 23, 2009
The Academy would like to honor Jerry Lewis, gay people, and Indians (from India)
The 81st Annual Academy Awards have come and gone and they were long and they were boring. And yet I watched them for some reason. Here are my two cents on what has been termed the Super Bowl for women. Although, I think the Oscars are more like Olympic Figure Skating if it was held every year.
-I'm glad Benjamin Button was recognized in the way it was, i.e. it got make-up and visual effects type awards, because those elements of the movie were actually very good. It was the other stuff in the movie, like the acting and story, that sucked.
-Why did they keep moving the cameras around during the "people who died this year" montage. Once we see that it's Queen Latifah singing then just show the video, because we know it's her and can hear her voice. And when you show the video just show it; this is a memorial tribute not fucking Cloverfield.
-Amy Adams should win every award ever, because I am in love with her.
-Slumdog Millionaire was a good movie. I think there has been a sort of backlash against it from a lot of people because it was SO critically praised that people went into the theater expecting to have a life-altering experience. It was a good, slightly hackneyed but visually awesome movie. I'm glad it won, because it was the best of the 3 best picture nominees I saw.
-Better movies than the best picture nominees in my opinion: The Dark Knight and In Bruges. I was rooting for In Bruges to win the screenplay Oscar, but alas it was the year of the gays and Indians.
-Best speech: the Japanese guy who kept saying "sank you" over and over and closed with "domo arigato Mr. Roboto." That guy is cool.
-Was Jerry Lewis making funny faces or is his body deteriorating rapidly leaving him with limited muscle control?
-I liked when the guy who did the music for Slumdog won his second straight award for one of the songs from the movie and said something like, "All my life I've had a choice between love and hate. I chose love and look where I am." Dude, what the FUCK are you talking about? Are you saying you're better than me? If I just choose love will I win an Oscar? Was that even your voice in the musical number? I don't think it was.
-I can't tell if Hugh Jackman was any good. I mean, it's not like I wanted Jon Stewart up there telling jokes and talking about Obama the whole time, but Hugh Jackman mincing around like a Producers audition was just weird.
-Good god Beyonce's got some thighs on her. She could cut a horse in half with those thunderstix.
-Sean Penn thanked a bunch of people and took the time to tell the Prop 8 voters that they were evil and would never be able to look their grandkids in the eye, but forgot to thank Jenny or the gay screenwriter who they kept showing in the crowd as he was tearing up. Hey remember when Sean Penn was cool as Spicoli and would say stuff like, "Whoa, those guys are fags!" That was a long time ago.
-KK Hollidae seems to think that Anne Hathaway is beautiful, like really marvelously good looking. Here's the thing about Anne Hathaway, who was about the 30th hottest actress there. Her appeal to men is that she's attainably hot, i.e. she's pretty but you might have a chance with her because she's not anything really special. Girls love these types of famous women, because they don't make them feel self-conscious or inadequate and then girls start claiming that they're amazingly beautiful when really Anne Hathaway is only pretty enough and I might have a shot at her if she was hammered and I was rich.
-Sofia Loren haunts my dreams.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Adjudicating the Mets' Offseason
The boss is out of the office today and there's not much going on around the internet to entertain me, so I might as well write a blog post. As you may know, I work for a huge government-run entity in the personnel security office and a large part of my job consists of fingerprinting employees, volunteers, contractors, etc. who work for this organization. Well when we receive the results of those fingerprint checks most people have no records and we simply close their case and let the coordinators know that they're ok to bring on board--these people are CLOSED FAVORABLY. Sometimes the fingerprint checks reveal a criminal/arrest record that forces us to review their files (some of the more interesting marks on people's records this week: forcible sodomy and uttering)--when we can't in good conscience let these people work for our organization they are deemed UNACCEPTABLE. Sometimes we fingerprint old and/or sweaty people and their prints do not come out clearly, meaning that a check is done based on their name, SSN, date/place of birth, etc. These "name checks" are not always accurate and thus we may have to re-print somebody whose prints were garbage--they were considered UNCLASSIFIABLE.
We can ignore 3B, SS, CF, 1B and Johan for the time being (they were simply ID renewals that had a previously acceptable investigation). Here were the 2008 Mets' problem areas, as determined by me: Bullpen, 2nd Base, Left Field, Rotation (behind Johan), Catcher. And remember, we can adjudicate Mr. Minaya's moves in three ways: closed favorably, unacceptable, or unclassifiable.
BULLPEN
Where we stood: The 2008 Mets bullpen was retardedly atrocious. Wagner got hurt in August, leaving a cast of LOOGs and ROOGs trying to preserve precious leads. They all failed pretty miserably. Heilman was all-around shitty, Dirty Duaner got tired as the year wore on, Schoeneweis and Feliciano couldn't retire righties to save their lives, ditto Joe Smith but with lefties,Luis Ayala was a National castoff who was thoroughly mediocre...you get the idea.
What we did: Clearly the bullpen was the Mets' biggest flaw in 2008 and Omar got right down to business fixing it. He signed K-Rod for 3 yrs./ $37 mil, which ain't half bad considering he dit it before the FA market bottomed out and early prediction had K-Rod looking for 5/70 or thereabouts. Omar also unloaded Heilman and Joe Smith, along with Mike carp and some lower-level prospects (and, alas, the lovable Endy Chavez) in exchange for JJ Putz and Sean Green (and Jeremy Reed, who ain't no damn Endy, lemmetellya). The Mets also threw out some minor league deals to no-names and picked up a guy named Rocky Cherry in the Rule 5 draft.
Adjudication: We picked up the best free agent closer and traded for an arguably better closer to set him up. Green is essentially a Joe Smith replacement and should be adequate. I expect a healthier and better year out of Dirty Duaner. If Wagner comes back in August the Mets could have the best bullpen in recent memory, and even without Billy that's still a hell of a one-two punch. CLOSED FAVORABLY.
SECOND BASE
Where we stood: 2nd base was a miasma of suck for the Mets last year. Castillo could barely hit his weight and couldn't move more than a few steps in either direction to field(great signing Omar!), Damion "GIDP" Easley actually tangibly looked like replacement level personified, and Argenis Reyes was an all-field no-hit bleach blonde dumbfuck.
What we did: Easley's gone, and in his place is...Alex Cora! Hooray, a 33-year old life-long bench player with a .245/.313/.348 in 2800 at bats. Alex Cora, come on down and collect your 2 million dollars.
Adjudication: Looks like Omar's crossing his fingers and hoping for Castillo to justify that contract. And $2 million isn't a ton, but I really think Omar could have allocated that money elsewhere. It's not like I wanted to go throw a bunch of money at Orlando Hudson (who might wind up being really cheap considering he's still unsigned as of this writing), but as long as Luis Castillo is hobbling around with an orange NY on his hat there is only one adjudication possible. UNACCEPTABLE.
LEFT FIELD
Where we stood: Left field was a revolving door of players of whom nothing was expected, because what the Mets and Mr. Minaya expected was for Moises Alou to play more than a couple of games. Fernando Tatis and the Superman music shocked the shit out of every one by playing quite well for several months before separating his shoulder in mid-September. Daniel Murphy burst on the scene in a big way, hitting very well in 131 at-bats during August and September. Nick Evans looked rather benchy, but hit lefties well in his limited playing time. Angel Pagan (definitely a member of the Brooklyn Cyclones Hall of Fame) had a hot start before falling over a railing at Dodger Stadium in May and ending his season. The Mets actually got OK production out of LF last year despite Omar's efforts, but none of these guys really seems like a big league leftfielder.
What we did: Closed our eyes and pretended Manny Ramirez, Adam Dunn, and Pat Burrell didn't exist. Signed a bunch of filler (Cory Sullivan, Rob Mackowiak, Bobby Kielty, etc.) to compete with Jeremy Reed for a 5th outfielder spot and round out the Buffalo roster.
Adjudication: It seems Omar is content with a Tatis-Murphy platoon in left. It seems pretty risky to expect Tatis to replicate last year's magic or Murphy to live up to his great start, and it's disappointing that that's what we have to hope for when Dunn, Burrell, and even Bobby Abreu (not a LF, but still) were had for very little money. I guess the budget is set and we can thank Bernie Madoff for that. Here's hopin that Murphy is the next John Olerud. UNCLASSIFIABLE.
ROTATION
Where we stood: Johan is a beast. Big Mike Pelfrey was great from some time in June onwards, but he threw a lot more innings than ever before and still can't strike people out. Let's hope he picks up those strikeout rates and doesn't fall victim to serious fatigue or arm issues after last year's workload. John Maine was pretty lousy and then hurt, but he still can be a solid 3 when healthy. Ollie was up and down as usual, with a stretch at the beginning of the year where he was brutal, a stretch in the middle where he convinced us all he'd finnally turned it around, and a stretch at the end where he was pretty blah; and he walked 1700 men. Pedro, as much as I love the guy, was brutally, indescribably awful.
What we did: We watched the Braves over pay for solid consistency in the form of Derek Lowe. After a long and arduously boring negotiation we re-signed Ollie for 3 yrs./$36 mil, which seems ok until you read smart people explain how much he's actually worth. We signed Tim Redding to a major-league $2.25 mil contract, which seemed fine at the time, but then the market went downhill and I realized we could have had 7 Tim Reddings or maybe even someone better for that. We signed Freddy Garcia to a minor league deal with a bunch of incentives. And for some goddamn reason we just signed Livan Hernandez and invited him to St. Lucie.
Adjudication: I can't help but feel that Omar paid a bunch of money to tread water. I love Ollie and I hate that Derek Lowe contract, but he's a proven commodity and a better bet to be good despite his age. I do like the fact that the Mets actually have some rotational depth this year, with Jon Niese, Redding, and Garcia all in the running for that 5th spot. I expect Garcia to make the rotation and Redding to serve as the long man/injury insurance to start the year. All in all, meh. UNCLASSIFIABLE.
CATCHER
Where we stood: With the trading away of Schoeneweis and my soon to come assassination of Luis Castillo, Brian Schneider is my least favorite Met. Whether it's sour grapes from the Milledge trade, the fact that he hit's like a little bitch, or the fact that he CAN"T BLOCK A BALL IN THE FUCKING DIRT, I can't stand the guy. He clearly is not a good catcher. Ramon Castro can hit some bombs, but he's hurt all the damn time and was again last year. Robinson Cancel looks like a retired-and-now-gotten-fat Ninja Turtle, but that doesn't mean he should be on an MLB roster.
What we did: Not a damn thing, although there weren't really any options. If they could have gotten Varitek for cheap and then fed him to sharks on live TV that would've been OK.
Adjudication: Well there weren't really any great options out there. We didn't really have the prospects to get one of the Rangers' catchers or Montero from Arizona. I'm actually pleasantly surprised that Omar didn't sign PudgeRod. Lest we forget though, Omar traded Lastings Milledge for Schneider and also let Washington scoop up Jesus Flores in the Rule 5 draft two years ago. Thank God we were able to hold on to Julio Franco for half of 2007, where would we have been without him. UNACCEPTABLE.
What have we learned: Nothing really. If Ryan Church and Delgado play like their good halves of 2008 this coming year we got a shot. Otherwise, we're looking at last year's team with a bullpen. At least I'm not LCT, though, because the Tigers are gonna suck.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
25 Random Baseball Things about me
So I read this post from Shysterball this morning and J9 recently tagged me in one of those facebook random things about you notes, so I thought it might be a good idea to try this. If you don't feel like clicking on the link, the idea is to take that facebook 25 random things bit and apply it to your experiences/thoughts about baseball. Since I haven't written about baseball here in a while (mostly due to the Mets' lackluster offseason) this will be a nice change of pace:
1. Obviously, I am a big Mets fan, although I can't exactly pinpoint when this became the case. I don't think it was a conscious decision, just the result of my dad taking me to so many Mets games over the years because the tickets were cheaper and Shea was easier to get to. I don't like to think about it, but if I had grown up in the Bonx or Manhattan instead of Brooklyn I might have been a Yankees fan. Wait, no. I have too much integrity for that.
2. Actually, there might be another reason I became a Mets fan besides the obvious geographical convenience. My dad grew up in Indiana as a Tigers fan (and somewhat Indians fan--I guess he liked whoever Rocky Colavito was playing for)during the 1950s. Therefore, like most God-fearing human beings he hated the Yankees and had to follow the Mets when he and my mother moved to New York in the early 70s (he came to NY in 1973, just in time to see the Ya Gotta Believe! Mets make a run to the World Series).
3. During a family trip to see one of my dad's friends who lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, we went to Dyersville--home of the Field of Dreams. I was about 8 or 9 I think and there was supposed to be an old-timers game. Well, the game was rained out but it was still a memorable day. As we were walking towards the corn behind the outfield grass, a guy with a microphone and a camera walked up and started interviewing me and my sister about baseball. If I recall correctly I think I told him I liked fielding better than hitting and he told us that we were going to be on some TV station in Wisconsin (I think). Later that day there was an autograph session in some big barn thing by the field and I met Mudcat Grant. I remember being really shy and intimidated and that he asked me if I was a "Bubba." I couldn't really understand his accent and when my dad told me what he asked me I had no idea what a "Bubba" was. I still have no idea.
4. Anyone who knows me well knows that my favorite player of all-time is Cal Ripken Jr. Well, because of my love for Cal I was a big Orioles fan as a kid, which meant that Jeffrey Maier hit me harder than your average Yankee ill-wisher. I really hate that kid.
5. From the more about Cal Ripken files:
The first time I saw Cal Ripken was in the old Memorial Stadium in Baltimore meaning it must have been 1991 when I was four years old. I remember being frightened because the upper deck was insanely steep, and that I asked my dad who "that tall man" was. I wasn't much interested in the game, only in the guy who, even from afar, seemed to tower over everyone on the infield. That man was of course Cal Ripken Jr.
In grade school, our librarian (and later gym teacher when P.S. 261 phased out the library in favor of more gym--who needs books when we can just play dodgeball!) Mr. Gelband would have us do a report every year on a famous/historical figure. I remember one year I was Wild Bill Hickok. The idea was to read a book about that person and then dress up as them a present a report to the class as that person. Most people did someone like Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, Abe Lincoln, etc. Well one year, I think 4th grade probably, I read Cal Ripken's autobiography (the one with a bunch of photographs, I don't remember what it was called), and put on an Orioles t-shirt and hat to give my report. I had a buzz cut back then and really light blonde hair, so I probably pulled off the balding thing pretty well.
6. As a youngster, most of our family road trips revolved around going to see baseball games and I have therefore been to more big league stadiums and minor league games than just about anyone my age I know. Like when Muggs told me she was from Frederick, I was like "Oh, home of the Frederick Keys" and I have actually been there. Or when she talked about an uncle in Hagerstown, I can relate that to the fact that I have sat on a hill behind left field at a Hagerstown Suns game. Anyway, here are the MLB stadiums where I've seen a game: Shea, Yankee Stadium, The Vet, Citizens Bank Park, Memorial Stadium (Baltimore), Camden Yards(I went to the first ever game-an exhibition against the Mets), RFK, Nationals Stadium, Tropicana Field, Three Rivers, PNC Park, Wrigley, Cellular One/New Comiskey (whatever it's called), Miller Park, Municipal Stadium (Cleveland), Jacobs Field, Tiger Stadium, Comerica. Pretty good for 22 and never really travelled much west of the Mississippi.
7. When I was 7, we finally made the jump up from teeball to live pitching in the 78th Precinct league. To ease the change the team's coach would pitch to the players for half the year with players getting to pitch in the second half of the season. I was a decent hitter but without much pop and even though our coach's son was my size or smaller (and I was a small kid) he was smacking extra base hits like crazy off his dad for the first half of the year. Well, when kids started pitching and his daddy wasn't grooving him slowballs at his belt he couldn't hit shit and I had the highest average on the team against "live" pitching.
8. I was a kind of little league journeyman, hopping from team to team every couple of years. From the ages of 5-15 I played for 78th Precinct, the Bonnies, Grace of Gravesend, Amity, Bergen Beach, and then back to the Bonnies (never did go over to St. Columba...or the Latin Souls for that matter). This of course was due to the fact that my dad inevitably had some sort of falling out or disagreement with whoever I was playing for. It was generally to get me somewhere where I had a chance to play more (although at least one of them was due to a personal injustice my dad felt we had suffered) and it was pretty frustrating at the time. Now it kinda cracks me up.
9. The first and only homerun I remember hitting was at Marine Park when I was 8 and playing for the Bonnies against Bergen Beach (which was NOT a good team). I was a good shortstop and hitting in the 8-hole all year (to give you an idea of my hitting ability) and I had just recently bought a new TPX bat that was black with red and gold lettering. I was a singles hitter mostly and everyone knew it (since we played the same 4 or 5 teams several times), so the outfield was playing pretty shallow. Well, I finally connected on a high fastball and sent it over the centerfielder's head and it kept rolling and rolling. Man, I loved that bat.
10. I have had some pretty bad injuries playing baseball. When I was 8 or 9 (Bonnies) I got a concussion in practice. We were practicing throwing down to second on steals and I was covering second when one of my teammates came barrelling in without sliding. He was wearing a helmet, I was not and helmet-to-head collisions usually wind up bad for your head. Later when I was 9 I fractured a growth plate in my right shoulder from overthrowing. When you pitch the day after a practice that featured steady long-tossing you better be older than 9. I missed the rest of that season and my fastball was never the same again.
My worst, or at least most immediately awful-looking, injury from baseball was when I was 11. Once again it was at practice, and we were practicing pickoff throws to second. I was a second baseman on that team and when I went to cover second for the throw the sun was directly in my eyes and I couldn't see the ball coming. Unfortunately, the pitcher making the throw was Tommy Costa, the hardest throwing 11 year old I've ever seen, and the ball hit me directly in the face and broke my nose. I didn't realize what happened until I looked down and saw the glove I had been holding to my face was filled with blood. I had a shiner on both eyes for weeks.
11. The worst seats I have ever had at a game were at old Tigers Stadium. My great aunt, Auntie Nan, took me and my sister to a day game and got cheap seats behind the left field wall. The view directly in front of me was a post supporting the upper level. I appreciate the effort though, Auntie Nan.
12. The best team I ever played for was the 10-year old Our Lady of Grace (Gravesend) team. I played right field, because the middle infield positions were already held by players who had been with Grace for a few years (remember, I was a journeyman) and hit second. I hit .480 that year (and probably with a Bonds-ian OBP) and we won our league and the Babe Ruth League qualifying tournament with a remarkable run after losing our first game in a double-elimination tournament. We went to a Babe Ruth League World Series in Frederick, MD (home of the Keys!) facing off against teams from all over the mid-Atlantic and northeast. Standing on a mound of dirt watiting for our coach's speech after the second game we lost (to a team from Buffalo, I think), i.e. the one that eliminated us from the series, is the only time I remember crying after a baseball game.
13. I attended Doc Gooden's no-hitter. I went with my dad and a former coach and teammate. I went to see Griffey and I got to see a former Met great throw a no-hitter...for the Yankees. Still waiting on that Mets no-hitter--Ollie, Johan, somebody?
14. The first time I ever got drunk was in the spring of my freshman year in high school. The next day was the first time I ever played baseball hungover or even had a hangover for that matter. I hit four doubles over the course of a double-header. So, yeah, I understand how David Wells threw a perfect game hungover.
15. I was at Shea in 1999 when Robin Ventura hit a grand slam in both games of a double-header, the only time it's been done in MLB history. The dark secret, of course, is that he hit the first one in the first inning of game one and we were just pulling into the parking lot so I only heard it on the radio. I usually just tell people I was there for both.
16. That '99 Mets team is my favorite team ever. My favorite Met ever is Edgardo Alfonzo, followed by Jose Reyes (clearly I have a soft spot for middle infielders). Maybe my favorite baseball memory is sitting in my parents bed with my mom and dad watching Ventura's "grand single" soar through the raindrops at Shea.
17. I was at the Todd Pratt game. My dad's friend Richie got 4 tickets and my dad drove me and my sister out to the game. We went in while he stayed in the parking lot listening to it on the radio. We sat with Richie and his girlfriend Peg in the last row of the Loge in fair territory by the left-field foul pole. We couldn't see pop-ups and we had to strain our necks down to either side for most of the game. But goddamn if we didn't have a great view of that ball going off Steve Finley's glove. And we went fuckin nuts.
18. My dad taught me and my sister to keep score when we were very young, and we both still do it pretty frequently when we're at a game. However, I've learned that the Trott method of scoring differs slightly from the more popular method: on fly outs rather than putting F8 or F7, etc. we put the number with a circle around it (a circled number with a line under it is a line out).
19. When I was 12 I learned how to throw a curveball, and let me tell you, I threw a wicked fucking curveball. I never blew my fastball past people at that point (see #10), but I kept hitters off balance with a mix of pitches. This was the age when kids were just starting to throw curves and nobody knew how to hit them, so I was a pretty effective pitcher. As I got older and kids learned to adjust to the curve, though, that lack of great velocity did me in.
20. I was at the Jeter-Mr. November game and I was probably the only one in the stdaium rooting for the Diamondbacks. 9/11 or no, I was sticking to my principles. Later in that series I broke my World History textbook in half when I threw it on the floor after Soriano hit that go-ahead homer in game 7. That game 4 and that series were outstanding.
21. My dad got two season tickets down the third base line for the inaugural season of the Brooklyn Cyclones. That team, that season, that setting was totally electric that year. I caught a couple of t-shirts thrown into the crowd over the course of the season, and I thought Party Marty was awesome. Only later did I find out that he was a jerk (except that I found that out from my friend Timmy, who, in Party Marty's defense, had just run out onto the field uninvivted for the singing of Happy Birthday even though it wan't his birthday and he was a good 6 years older than everyone else out there).
22. I am pretty sabermetrically-oriented as a baseball fan, but have only become that way over the last few years. I remember my dad telling me a number of years ago that the most important baseball stat, in his opinion, was RBIs and it made total sense to me at the time. Of course, as my knowledge of the game has progressed I now find myself disagreeing with my dad about baseball more and more frequently. I bought him Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends and I don't think he got the point. We do seem to agree on our generally positive regard for Tim Marchman and on the fact that Omar Minaya is not very good at his job.
23. I have gone to one baseball game by myself: this one. It was during the summer of 2006 when I was temping at the Pfizer gym and I really wanted to go to a game, but couldn't get anyone to go with me. I went anyway and got a $5 box down the right field line in the upper deck, but moved down closer to the infield in the first row of the mezzanine. Before the game started an usher came to check the tickets of a group of guys a section over from me who had done the same thing and made them leave, but he left me alone because I was by myself. Reyes hit for the cycle, Jose Valentin hit a homer to put the Mets ahead in the 7th (he hit lefty against a lefty which was pretty cool), and then Billy Wagner blew what had been an awesome game in the 9th. I think I might try going to a game by myself again some time soon.
24. I took batting lessons for several years from a man named Mel Zitter out at the batting cages in Funstation USA on Victory Blvd. in Staten Island. Mel had been one of Manny Ramirez' coaches when Manny was a kid in Washington Heights and played for Youth Service (a team I played against most of my childhood). Mel never missed an opportunity to remind you that he had coached Manny and he always sort of bothered me. The longish drive combined with Mel's annoyingness and the fact that my hitting wasn't really improving made me dread those lessons. One of my happiest afternoons is when my dad's vanagon ran out of gas getting off the Staten Island Expressway and we missed the lesson.
Addendum: It was while taking a batting lesson from Mel that a film crew from Channel 7 Eyewitness News taped me taking swings in the cage (while still wearing my Catholic scool khakis) and played it during a report about the dangers of aluminum bats in high school baseball. My parents have a tape of that somewhere.
25. I quit playing baseball after the summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school. I had played JV the year before, but I didn't make the varsity my junior year and I was really disheartened. I mean REALLY disheartened. I decided on the day I didn't see myself on the roster posted outside Coach Duffel's office that I was done playing baseball. It took me a few months to tell my dad, and he was so mad we didn't speak for several weeks. Baseball had consumed my life, but I had been so focused on playing it that I didn't really like it that much at that point. It felt like it had become a burden and more my father's hobby than my own. I sometimes regret quitting, not knowing if I did so on my own terms. But now I think I like baseball more. It's something to enjoy in my spare time, something I still get wrapped up in but can also ignore or follow as I please. It's still the thing that best connects me and my father. And anyway I wasn't really THAT good.
Bonus Fact: Boyce and I spent the better part of an hour smoking cigarettes with Cliff Floyd's little brother Julius during a game at PNC Park a couple years ago. Boyce won a trip to Pittsburgh from a text trivia thing at Shea, and I think I freaked Julius out when I asked if his family called his brother Cornelius.
1. Obviously, I am a big Mets fan, although I can't exactly pinpoint when this became the case. I don't think it was a conscious decision, just the result of my dad taking me to so many Mets games over the years because the tickets were cheaper and Shea was easier to get to. I don't like to think about it, but if I had grown up in the Bonx or Manhattan instead of Brooklyn I might have been a Yankees fan. Wait, no. I have too much integrity for that.
2. Actually, there might be another reason I became a Mets fan besides the obvious geographical convenience. My dad grew up in Indiana as a Tigers fan (and somewhat Indians fan--I guess he liked whoever Rocky Colavito was playing for)during the 1950s. Therefore, like most God-fearing human beings he hated the Yankees and had to follow the Mets when he and my mother moved to New York in the early 70s (he came to NY in 1973, just in time to see the Ya Gotta Believe! Mets make a run to the World Series).
3. During a family trip to see one of my dad's friends who lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, we went to Dyersville--home of the Field of Dreams. I was about 8 or 9 I think and there was supposed to be an old-timers game. Well, the game was rained out but it was still a memorable day. As we were walking towards the corn behind the outfield grass, a guy with a microphone and a camera walked up and started interviewing me and my sister about baseball. If I recall correctly I think I told him I liked fielding better than hitting and he told us that we were going to be on some TV station in Wisconsin (I think). Later that day there was an autograph session in some big barn thing by the field and I met Mudcat Grant. I remember being really shy and intimidated and that he asked me if I was a "Bubba." I couldn't really understand his accent and when my dad told me what he asked me I had no idea what a "Bubba" was. I still have no idea.
4. Anyone who knows me well knows that my favorite player of all-time is Cal Ripken Jr. Well, because of my love for Cal I was a big Orioles fan as a kid, which meant that Jeffrey Maier hit me harder than your average Yankee ill-wisher. I really hate that kid.
5. From the more about Cal Ripken files:
The first time I saw Cal Ripken was in the old Memorial Stadium in Baltimore meaning it must have been 1991 when I was four years old. I remember being frightened because the upper deck was insanely steep, and that I asked my dad who "that tall man" was. I wasn't much interested in the game, only in the guy who, even from afar, seemed to tower over everyone on the infield. That man was of course Cal Ripken Jr.
In grade school, our librarian (and later gym teacher when P.S. 261 phased out the library in favor of more gym--who needs books when we can just play dodgeball!) Mr. Gelband would have us do a report every year on a famous/historical figure. I remember one year I was Wild Bill Hickok. The idea was to read a book about that person and then dress up as them a present a report to the class as that person. Most people did someone like Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, Abe Lincoln, etc. Well one year, I think 4th grade probably, I read Cal Ripken's autobiography (the one with a bunch of photographs, I don't remember what it was called), and put on an Orioles t-shirt and hat to give my report. I had a buzz cut back then and really light blonde hair, so I probably pulled off the balding thing pretty well.
6. As a youngster, most of our family road trips revolved around going to see baseball games and I have therefore been to more big league stadiums and minor league games than just about anyone my age I know. Like when Muggs told me she was from Frederick, I was like "Oh, home of the Frederick Keys" and I have actually been there. Or when she talked about an uncle in Hagerstown, I can relate that to the fact that I have sat on a hill behind left field at a Hagerstown Suns game. Anyway, here are the MLB stadiums where I've seen a game: Shea, Yankee Stadium, The Vet, Citizens Bank Park, Memorial Stadium (Baltimore), Camden Yards(I went to the first ever game-an exhibition against the Mets), RFK, Nationals Stadium, Tropicana Field, Three Rivers, PNC Park, Wrigley, Cellular One/New Comiskey (whatever it's called), Miller Park, Municipal Stadium (Cleveland), Jacobs Field, Tiger Stadium, Comerica. Pretty good for 22 and never really travelled much west of the Mississippi.
7. When I was 7, we finally made the jump up from teeball to live pitching in the 78th Precinct league. To ease the change the team's coach would pitch to the players for half the year with players getting to pitch in the second half of the season. I was a decent hitter but without much pop and even though our coach's son was my size or smaller (and I was a small kid) he was smacking extra base hits like crazy off his dad for the first half of the year. Well, when kids started pitching and his daddy wasn't grooving him slowballs at his belt he couldn't hit shit and I had the highest average on the team against "live" pitching.
8. I was a kind of little league journeyman, hopping from team to team every couple of years. From the ages of 5-15 I played for 78th Precinct, the Bonnies, Grace of Gravesend, Amity, Bergen Beach, and then back to the Bonnies (never did go over to St. Columba...or the Latin Souls for that matter). This of course was due to the fact that my dad inevitably had some sort of falling out or disagreement with whoever I was playing for. It was generally to get me somewhere where I had a chance to play more (although at least one of them was due to a personal injustice my dad felt we had suffered) and it was pretty frustrating at the time. Now it kinda cracks me up.
9. The first and only homerun I remember hitting was at Marine Park when I was 8 and playing for the Bonnies against Bergen Beach (which was NOT a good team). I was a good shortstop and hitting in the 8-hole all year (to give you an idea of my hitting ability) and I had just recently bought a new TPX bat that was black with red and gold lettering. I was a singles hitter mostly and everyone knew it (since we played the same 4 or 5 teams several times), so the outfield was playing pretty shallow. Well, I finally connected on a high fastball and sent it over the centerfielder's head and it kept rolling and rolling. Man, I loved that bat.
10. I have had some pretty bad injuries playing baseball. When I was 8 or 9 (Bonnies) I got a concussion in practice. We were practicing throwing down to second on steals and I was covering second when one of my teammates came barrelling in without sliding. He was wearing a helmet, I was not and helmet-to-head collisions usually wind up bad for your head. Later when I was 9 I fractured a growth plate in my right shoulder from overthrowing. When you pitch the day after a practice that featured steady long-tossing you better be older than 9. I missed the rest of that season and my fastball was never the same again.
My worst, or at least most immediately awful-looking, injury from baseball was when I was 11. Once again it was at practice, and we were practicing pickoff throws to second. I was a second baseman on that team and when I went to cover second for the throw the sun was directly in my eyes and I couldn't see the ball coming. Unfortunately, the pitcher making the throw was Tommy Costa, the hardest throwing 11 year old I've ever seen, and the ball hit me directly in the face and broke my nose. I didn't realize what happened until I looked down and saw the glove I had been holding to my face was filled with blood. I had a shiner on both eyes for weeks.
11. The worst seats I have ever had at a game were at old Tigers Stadium. My great aunt, Auntie Nan, took me and my sister to a day game and got cheap seats behind the left field wall. The view directly in front of me was a post supporting the upper level. I appreciate the effort though, Auntie Nan.
12. The best team I ever played for was the 10-year old Our Lady of Grace (Gravesend) team. I played right field, because the middle infield positions were already held by players who had been with Grace for a few years (remember, I was a journeyman) and hit second. I hit .480 that year (and probably with a Bonds-ian OBP) and we won our league and the Babe Ruth League qualifying tournament with a remarkable run after losing our first game in a double-elimination tournament. We went to a Babe Ruth League World Series in Frederick, MD (home of the Keys!) facing off against teams from all over the mid-Atlantic and northeast. Standing on a mound of dirt watiting for our coach's speech after the second game we lost (to a team from Buffalo, I think), i.e. the one that eliminated us from the series, is the only time I remember crying after a baseball game.
13. I attended Doc Gooden's no-hitter. I went with my dad and a former coach and teammate. I went to see Griffey and I got to see a former Met great throw a no-hitter...for the Yankees. Still waiting on that Mets no-hitter--Ollie, Johan, somebody?
14. The first time I ever got drunk was in the spring of my freshman year in high school. The next day was the first time I ever played baseball hungover or even had a hangover for that matter. I hit four doubles over the course of a double-header. So, yeah, I understand how David Wells threw a perfect game hungover.
15. I was at Shea in 1999 when Robin Ventura hit a grand slam in both games of a double-header, the only time it's been done in MLB history. The dark secret, of course, is that he hit the first one in the first inning of game one and we were just pulling into the parking lot so I only heard it on the radio. I usually just tell people I was there for both.
16. That '99 Mets team is my favorite team ever. My favorite Met ever is Edgardo Alfonzo, followed by Jose Reyes (clearly I have a soft spot for middle infielders). Maybe my favorite baseball memory is sitting in my parents bed with my mom and dad watching Ventura's "grand single" soar through the raindrops at Shea.
17. I was at the Todd Pratt game. My dad's friend Richie got 4 tickets and my dad drove me and my sister out to the game. We went in while he stayed in the parking lot listening to it on the radio. We sat with Richie and his girlfriend Peg in the last row of the Loge in fair territory by the left-field foul pole. We couldn't see pop-ups and we had to strain our necks down to either side for most of the game. But goddamn if we didn't have a great view of that ball going off Steve Finley's glove. And we went fuckin nuts.
18. My dad taught me and my sister to keep score when we were very young, and we both still do it pretty frequently when we're at a game. However, I've learned that the Trott method of scoring differs slightly from the more popular method: on fly outs rather than putting F8 or F7, etc. we put the number with a circle around it (a circled number with a line under it is a line out).
19. When I was 12 I learned how to throw a curveball, and let me tell you, I threw a wicked fucking curveball. I never blew my fastball past people at that point (see #10), but I kept hitters off balance with a mix of pitches. This was the age when kids were just starting to throw curves and nobody knew how to hit them, so I was a pretty effective pitcher. As I got older and kids learned to adjust to the curve, though, that lack of great velocity did me in.
20. I was at the Jeter-Mr. November game and I was probably the only one in the stdaium rooting for the Diamondbacks. 9/11 or no, I was sticking to my principles. Later in that series I broke my World History textbook in half when I threw it on the floor after Soriano hit that go-ahead homer in game 7. That game 4 and that series were outstanding.
21. My dad got two season tickets down the third base line for the inaugural season of the Brooklyn Cyclones. That team, that season, that setting was totally electric that year. I caught a couple of t-shirts thrown into the crowd over the course of the season, and I thought Party Marty was awesome. Only later did I find out that he was a jerk (except that I found that out from my friend Timmy, who, in Party Marty's defense, had just run out onto the field uninvivted for the singing of Happy Birthday even though it wan't his birthday and he was a good 6 years older than everyone else out there).
22. I am pretty sabermetrically-oriented as a baseball fan, but have only become that way over the last few years. I remember my dad telling me a number of years ago that the most important baseball stat, in his opinion, was RBIs and it made total sense to me at the time. Of course, as my knowledge of the game has progressed I now find myself disagreeing with my dad about baseball more and more frequently. I bought him Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends and I don't think he got the point. We do seem to agree on our generally positive regard for Tim Marchman and on the fact that Omar Minaya is not very good at his job.
23. I have gone to one baseball game by myself: this one. It was during the summer of 2006 when I was temping at the Pfizer gym and I really wanted to go to a game, but couldn't get anyone to go with me. I went anyway and got a $5 box down the right field line in the upper deck, but moved down closer to the infield in the first row of the mezzanine. Before the game started an usher came to check the tickets of a group of guys a section over from me who had done the same thing and made them leave, but he left me alone because I was by myself. Reyes hit for the cycle, Jose Valentin hit a homer to put the Mets ahead in the 7th (he hit lefty against a lefty which was pretty cool), and then Billy Wagner blew what had been an awesome game in the 9th. I think I might try going to a game by myself again some time soon.
24. I took batting lessons for several years from a man named Mel Zitter out at the batting cages in Funstation USA on Victory Blvd. in Staten Island. Mel had been one of Manny Ramirez' coaches when Manny was a kid in Washington Heights and played for Youth Service (a team I played against most of my childhood). Mel never missed an opportunity to remind you that he had coached Manny and he always sort of bothered me. The longish drive combined with Mel's annoyingness and the fact that my hitting wasn't really improving made me dread those lessons. One of my happiest afternoons is when my dad's vanagon ran out of gas getting off the Staten Island Expressway and we missed the lesson.
Addendum: It was while taking a batting lesson from Mel that a film crew from Channel 7 Eyewitness News taped me taking swings in the cage (while still wearing my Catholic scool khakis) and played it during a report about the dangers of aluminum bats in high school baseball. My parents have a tape of that somewhere.
25. I quit playing baseball after the summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school. I had played JV the year before, but I didn't make the varsity my junior year and I was really disheartened. I mean REALLY disheartened. I decided on the day I didn't see myself on the roster posted outside Coach Duffel's office that I was done playing baseball. It took me a few months to tell my dad, and he was so mad we didn't speak for several weeks. Baseball had consumed my life, but I had been so focused on playing it that I didn't really like it that much at that point. It felt like it had become a burden and more my father's hobby than my own. I sometimes regret quitting, not knowing if I did so on my own terms. But now I think I like baseball more. It's something to enjoy in my spare time, something I still get wrapped up in but can also ignore or follow as I please. It's still the thing that best connects me and my father. And anyway I wasn't really THAT good.
Bonus Fact: Boyce and I spent the better part of an hour smoking cigarettes with Cliff Floyd's little brother Julius during a game at PNC Park a couple years ago. Boyce won a trip to Pittsburgh from a text trivia thing at Shea, and I think I freaked Julius out when I asked if his family called his brother Cornelius.
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