This Cadillac ad neatly encapsulates everything that's wrong with us as Americans. Cadillac was always an evil symbol, especially in its heyday. It always stood for conspicuous consumption, for new money, for flashy clothes and pinky rings and showing off. Now it wants to stand for a reward for people who think life outside of work should not exist. Whether it's George W. Bush calling a woman who has to work three jobs to feed her family "uniquely American", or calling the long-term unemployed "takers", we have this idea that unless you're spending every waking minute either doing work or thinking about work, you are some kind of slacker.

I just got back from a three-day oncology meeting in Boston, where I spent a lot of time with one of my European colleagues. She's about to take off for two weeks in the Seychelles. She'll take three, perhaps four trips like this in 2014, because where she lives, people get vacation time. Lots of it. Six weeks to start. They don't take their laptops with them and they don't check their e-mail, and when they get back they don't have to pay in blood for having taken time off. They don't work weekends, either. They have two people on the same project that in the US there's only one assigned. On weekends they have fun. They don't spend their weekends running the errands or doing the housework they couldn't do during the week. Working yourself to death in Europe makes you a chump, not a hero. And despite the myth perpetrated by Cadillac, it doesn't make you a hero here either. You're still just another number, just another mindless cog in a vast machine. If you drop dead of a heart attack at your desk, they'll have someone in to replace you by the end of the week.

The group in which I work is still in the throes of a reorganization that's been in process for over a year. None of us knows what our title will be when it all shakes out, or to whom we'll be reporting. We're all told we can apply to jobs that will be posted, but it looks like it's all kabuki theatre -- that people have already been chosen for those jobs.

In Europe, it's not unusual to get a year of paid maternity leave. But here in America, the myth is that we're "crazy hardworking believers" and that's why we do it. We do it for pools and Cadillacs, or so they tell us, when the reality is that we do it so we can delude ourselves that management has any idea who we are and that we can't be replaced tomorrow with some other drone. We do our job better than anyone else? So what? They'll live without it if it'll save a few bucks, or get them a younger or prettier version, or can send it overseas and not have to think about it.

I could post this three-minute rant by George Carlin every single day:



Charles and David Koch don't work any harder than you do. Neither does Donald Trump. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg does, but you can bet he won't be when he's sixty. But we've internalized this idea that we have to Work Hard. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week. Until we drop dead.

All of which brings us to Daniel Murphy.

Daniel Murphy, for those who aren't familiar with him, is the second baseman for the New York Mets. Murphy isn't a natural. He works hard to learn how to field his position. He's got a decent bat and a mediocre but improving glove. He's not Derek Jeter, or Big Papi, or some other big-name ballplayer who can do whatever he wants. But here's what we now know Daniel Murphy is: He's a mensch. He's also persona non grata on New York sports talk radio.

What is Daniel Murphy's crime?

He missed the first two games of the season after his wife gave birth by C-section on Opening Day.

Mike Francesa: "You see the birth and you get back." Craig Carton: "Assuming your wife is fine and assuming the baby is fine...you get your ass back to the team and you play baseball." Boomer Esiason: "I would have said 'C-section before opening day."

Daniel Murphy: "It's going to be tough for her to get up to New York for a month. I can only speak from my experience -- a father seeing his wife -- she was completely finished. I mean, she was done. She had surgery and she was wiped. Having me there helped a lot, and vice versa, to take some of the load off. ... It felt, for us, like the right decision to make."

And good for him.

It isn't often that baseball makes it into the chick-o-rama into which Melissa Harris-Perry's weekend show sometimes devolves. But this story sure as hell did, and the fact that Chris Hayes is taking some time off following the birth of his SECOND child put it smack into MSNBC's radar.

It's good that we're having this discussion. It's good that Boomer Esiason apologized, but the fact that so many male sports announcers feel that your team (i.e. your JOB) should always come before your family, is troubling. But they're not alone. They're just a microcosm of what all of us who experience transitions in our personal lives go through.

And of course, since I'm rather self-involved these days (hopefully understandably so), I started thinking about the "widow brain fog" that seems to happen to about 95% of people of both sexes who lose a spouse. No matter how prepared you are, no matter how "done" you may have felt at times in your marriage, no matter if your life is "easier" without having to deal with someone who's angry and depressed and lashing out at you, losing the person with whom you've spent half your life tears a chunk out of your soul. You are not the same. You may FEEL the same for a while, but after the numbness wears off and the grief kicks in; the realization that this person Will Never Come Home, that Opening Day has come and gone and he is not here, that there's a Game of Thrones marathon leading up to the premiere of Season 4 and he isn't here to watch it or share Season 4 with you, that you are going to grow old alone -- well, it changes you. And you do not run on all cylinders. You dream every night that he is still here and wake up every day feeling like you've been hit with a sledgehammer. You're exhausted all the time. You're an intruder in your own life. But most of all you realize that time is short and life is fleeting. And you want to be able to smell the roses. The average duration of bereavement leave in this country is three days. From what I've been able to gather, it's not much better in Europe. If you need more time, you have to burn your vacation time -- IF you can get permission to do it. OR, you can look into a leave of absence, which is what I did, and I'm sure my experience is typical. If you are, say, suicidal and under the care of a mental health professional, or even better -- hospitalized or on suicide watch, you can get a disability leave. This protects your job and keeps you on company-paid health insurance. If your manager agrees, you can take a personal leave for a pre-defined period of time. It is unpaid, your job is NOT protected, you are on COBRA for health insurance (which decreases the duration of COBRA coverage if you leave your job), and if you are not ready to come back on the pre-defined day, you are assumed to have resigned voluntarily.

All things considered, I'm doing better than most people in my position. But I'm definitely not firing on all cylinders. If I could take four weeks off, say, with assurance of my job being there when I got back and continuation of health insurance, even if it was not paid, I would probably be doing a lot better. But I can't, and I'm not. One thing I'd like to do for activism in my retirement years is advocate for better bereavement leave or other accommodation for loss of a spouse or child. Because NO ONE can "suck it up and deal" after just three days.

Daniel Murphy is protected by the Players Union, so he will not suffer any consequences other than shitty remarks by talk radio rabble-rousers. But most Americans are not. Most of us are expected to show up every day, be tethered all the time, and show our dedication so we can delude ourselves that we have "job security." We give a whole lot of lip service to families in this country, but where the almighty dollar is concerned, we don't have a shit about families -- or people, for that matter.

Labels: American workers, Baseball, family values, New York Mets

(Originally posted May 30, 2012. Reposted 9/27/12 in honor of R.A. Dickey's 20th win in an otherwise dismal Mets second half)

It's sometimes difficult to get emotionally involved with baseball these days. This most poetic of games has become, like everything else in our society, a simple matter of dollars and cents. New ballparks that charge sky-high ticket prices. Players chasing ever-more-obscene contracts. Owners tainted by association with scam artists.

Last weekend I had the rare pleasure of being able to actually sit and watch a movie, and that movie was Moneyball, last year's Academy Award-nominated film based on Oakland A's GM Billy Beane's book of the same name. For all that there's something formula about it, there's also a hint of melancholy that hovers over the movie, which doesn't have the Big Dramatic Happy Ending that we expect from baseball movies. In baseball movies, the GM who failed as a player is supposed to win the World Series with his ragtag team of cast-offs and never-wases. The star manqué who after mysteriously vanishing, refuses to take the dive and hits a home run right into the lights, causing a shower of sparks to appear on the field. The lunatic who builds a baseball field in his farm succeeds in reuniting with his long-dead ballplayer father. A good baseball movie is supposed to leave you blubbering, because baseball is about nostalgia, but it's also about timelessness. It's a game that despite better bats and nutrition and workout equipment and performance-enhancing drugs and the multimillion dollars is still, as Trey Wilson's baseball manager in Bull Durham says, "...a simple game. You throw the ball...you hit the ball...you catch the ball." It's the same game that Honus Wagner played, and that Babe Ruth played, and that Jackie Robinson played, and that Reggie Jackson played, and that Gary Carter played.

And occasionally there's a Story. It's about Jim Morris, the A-ball dropoout who promised the high school baseball team he coached that he'd try out for the big leagues if his team won the district championship. Miraculously, at the age of 35 and after a number of surgeries, Morris had somehow developed a 98 mph fastball. He made it to the big leagues, even if only for a short time. With a Story like that, you get portrayed by Dennis Quaid in the movie. Or it's a story about Jim Abbott, who was born without a right hand and not only made it to the majors, but threw a no-hitter for the Yankees. The movie practically writes itself, and it's surprising that no one's made a movie about him yet.

And then there's this guy. Meet R.A. Dickey:



Two years ago, knuckleballer Dickey was cast off by the Seattle Mariners after rattling around the majors since 2001 and signed to a minor league contract by the Mets in 2010. This year, on a team that was supposed to find itself in a no-return spot in the basement of the NL East by now, Robert Alan Dickey is 7-1, with a 3.06 ERA. The story of a 37-year-old knuckleballer coming out of nowhere to became a near-ace (and "near" only because Johan Santana has come back as if he'd never left) is already enough to make a movie, or it will be if the Mets somehow manage to emerge from the shadow of Bernie Madoff and make it to the post season. This prospect is not as ridiculous as it sounds, because as of this morning, the Amazins were six games over .500, a game and a half out of first place -- a third of the way through the season. And Dickey was just named the National League's Player of the Week. This in a league that boasts the likes of Philadelphia's Cole Hamels and Washington's phenom Stephen Strasburg.

If Dickey were just a story of yet another guy who was on the verge of giving up baseball, only to finally get his Big Break in the Bigs, no one would buy it, because Abbott has a more compelling story and Jim Morris has already been done. But Dickey may be baseball's first true Renaissance Man.

This is a guy who studied existentialism and modern American literature at the Christian college he attended. This is a baseball player who is currently reading “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories,” by Haruki Murakami, likes sushi, is partial to Chopin's Nocturnes, climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro last January, and wrote a book in which he revealed that he was sexually abused as a child -- hardly the sort of stuff professional athletes want to admit. He's accessible to the fans, he's worked with a charity that rescues girls from sex traffickers, and he's a born-again Christian. He's what people THINK Tim Tebow is.

Here's Dickey playing pick-up wiffleball in Tompkins Square Park:



And here's his speech after being inducted into the Tennessee Baseball Hall of Fame:



The wonderful thing about R.A. Dickey, what makes him a true role model, is not that he can throw a knuckleball for strikes, or because you can say that those six games over .500 that the Mets are can be attributed to R.A. Dickey's knuckleball. It's because this is the best of what an American Christian man can be. He's pious without being self-righteous, his faith is humble, he recognizes that there is no incompatibility between the life of the spirit and the inquisitive mind's quest for knowledge. No matter what your spiritual path, no matter whether you follow baseball, there's no disputing one hard and fast fact: R.A. Dickey is a mensch.

Labels: a real mensch, Baseball, New York Mets, Real Christians

After watching the Mets get swept by the Yankees this weekend, I needed this: (Apologies to JP, but this was just too good not to share.)

Labels: Baseball, New York Mets, sheer awesomeness, Some Things Are Universal

It took fifty years, but if you were a Mets fan, tonight was Davey Johnson striking out in 1969 to give the Mets their first World Series win, Mookie Wilson's grounder skittering through Bill Buckner's battered ankles, Endy Chavez' incredible 2006 NLCS catch and Jesse Orosco falling to his knees in 1986 all rolled into one. Until tonight, NOBODY -- not Tom Seaver, not Jerry Koosman, not Dwight Gooden, not David Cone, not Ron Darling -- NOBODY had EVER pitched a no-hitter for the Mets.





And I didn't even watch. I can't even count how many times I've sat on the sofa watching a Mets pitcher flirt with history, only to find that the minute I had to get up to pee, said pitcher would give up a fat one to some guy with a .214 lifetime batting average. I can't even count how many times over the years I screamed at Tim McCarver to shut the fuck up because every time he'd say that some pitcher was throwing a no-hitter, said pitcher would immediately give up a fat one to some guy with a .214 lifetime batting average. I've even sat in the stands once, watching Bob Ojeda flirt with history for six and two-thirds innings. But while Dwight Gooden and David Cone both went on to pitich no-hitters with the Yankees, of all teams, and Tom Seaver finally got his no-no in Cincinnati. And let's not even TALK about Nolan Ryan, shall we?

But no one in a Mets uniform has ever been able to climb over that hurdle, until tonight. And I knew that if I turned on the game, Johan Santana would join the ranks of guys flirting with a no-no and then giving up a fat one to some guy with a .214 lifetime batting average. Because it always happens that way.

The only possible way I could be happier is if it had been thrown by R.A. Dickey.

But Johan Santana now has his own Story. Santana was always a class pitcher and he's a superstar, which already makes him special among the ranks of pitchers who have thrown no-hitters, who are more often than not guys you never heard of before or again. But Santana's story has all the baseball cliché you could want. He was traded to the Mets for, among others, top prospect Philip Humber, who threw his own no-no earlier this year. He's received some of the worst run support from this team, a record no pitcher of his caliber should have to bear. And most importantly, Santana is a pticher many believed Would Never Pitch Again after what usually is career-ending shoulder surgery to repair a torn anterior capsule. But after missing ALL of last season, Santana has been nothing short of spectacular, which is no doubt making Mets medical director Dr. David Altchek kvell with naches, since this achievement means you CAN come back from this relatively new type of surgery. And if you're Mets pitcher Chris Young, currently rehabbing from the same surgery in Buffalo, you've got to be feeling pretty confident after throwing six scoreless innings against Columbus last night and now hearing this news. Who knows, this procedure may end up being called "Johan Santana Surgery" the way Tommy John surgery is called, well, "Tommy John surgery".

But this is the way this team plays. In a year when everyone had the Mets picked to do absolutely nothing, they're in the hunt, they're playing the kind of scrappy, Put Me In Coach I'm Ready To Play ball that we haven't seen since the early 1980's, when a bunch of guys named Darryl and Doc and Wally and Lenny and Mex and Kid went out every day and played it like they meant it. And now this. The Holy Grail of pitching.

UPDATE: From the great Mike Lupica, who is really the one sports writer you MUST read after a game like this one:

Darling would talk when it was over, about how a Met finally threw a no-hitter in Queens and it was a Queens kid who saved it for him, Baxter of Whitestone and Archbishop Molloy and Coach Jack Curran of Molloy, crashing into that wall, reaching as far as he could, like he was reaching across all the years, catching a ball hit by Yadier Molina, ending up in a heap on the warning track.

Maybe it had to be Molina, who hit the home run that beat the Mets in Game 7 of the 2006 National League Championship Series. Maybe it had to be Adam Wainwright starting for the Cardinals Friday night, the same Wainwright who got the last out of that Game 7, who threw the pitch that Carlos Beltran took for a called third strike, bat on his shoulder.

And maybe it figured that Beltran hit the ball past third that should have been a hit because it hit the line, but was called foul by the third base umpire. Maybe it all had to happen like that on the night Johan Santana pitched a no-hitter.

This, my friends, is Goofball at its finest. Some days you win. Some days you lose. Some days it rains. And some nights Johan Santana, who many thought would never pitch again, throws a no-hitter.

Another update: Also, too.

And yet another: Howie Rose calls it:

Labels: Baseball, New York Mets, sheer awesomeness, things that make you glad to be alive

I have a confession to make.

I've been watching the Mets in April.

Oh, I promised not to. I promised that I would boycott this team until the Madoff-tainted baseball-inept Wilpon family sells the team. That was an easy promise to make, with the Mets universally picked for a last-place finish.

But then something happened.

The ragtag band of scrap-heap rejects, not-yets and never-wases started to actually play baseball.

The starting pitching staff, consisting of the newly-reassembled shoulder of Johan Santana, Renaissance man R.A. Dickey, new $25 million man Jon Niese, Z.Z. Top fashion statement Dillon Gee, and until recently, the million dollar arm and ten-cent head of Mike Pelfrey --a guy who every time he plays looks as though he'd rather be having a colonoscopy without sedation -- started showing that they can actually pitch. Santana is the rare case of a pitcher who missed a full year being reborn. Niese is already earning his new contract. Dillon Gee has been mostly great. And until a season-ending injury, Pelf was Pelf -- occasionally brilliant, maddeningly inconsistent. The bullpen is still questionable, but the offense, never expected to be anything special, shows signs of becoming something more than what Ike Davis has looked like in the first month. Perhaps most astonishingly, the Curse of José Reyes isn't coming to pass, with Reyes hitting .205 for the currently last-place Marlins and Mets rookie Ruben Tejada hitting .310. But more importantly, there are signs of life from three sluggers who had started the season in terrible slumps. Worst Acquisition Ever Jason Bay went on the DL after showing a few tiny signs of breaking out of his slump, but callup Kirk Nieuwenhuis has not only come up and hit .310, but has made some stellar outfield plays. David Wright is shining in his new role as The Guy now that he's not overshadowed by Reyes, and the deliciously-named Lucas Duda, whose name already has him called "The Big Lebowski" in some circles and "The Dude" in others, is a plate monster already, and might be a great player if he can learn how to catch an easy fly ball.

A few weeks ago I caught "Shea Goodbye", a film made at the end of the 2008 season. It isn't until you watch a compendium of Mets lunacy over the years that you realize that there is something about this team. Maybe it's the enduring legacy of Casey Stengel, the goofiest man ever to manage a baseball team. Maybe it's some kind of weird karma that hangs over the outer boroughs ever since the Dodgers and Giants decamped for points west. But there is something about this team, this organization, that doesn't change no matter who owns it, who manages it, or who plays on the field.

This team does not play baseball. This team plays Goofball.

Mets baseball isn't like anything else in the major leagues. Other teams play baseball. But when they play the Mets, anything can happen. 19-inning July 4 games where the fireworks are set off at 4 AM the next morning. Black cats show up on the field not once but twice, in different stadiums, bringing wins to the team both times. (Funny, though, that orange cats, who sport one of the team colors, do not bring as good fortune.) In the 1980s there was the "K" corner for Dwight Gooden's strikeouts, and the Coneheads when David Cone pitched. There was the woman rolling her hands behind home plate at the 1986 World Series, a tactic that you still see around the majors but with less effect. And the players play Goofball. It's multi-inning, four-hour marathon games. It's players going into vapor lock on the base paths. It's dramatic come-from-behind wins -- a Mets specialty.

Yesterday saw a vintage game of Goofball. After going into the 9th leading 4-0 in a game where they should have been leading at least 8-0 but intead leaving thirteen men on base, Tim Byrdak served up a fat one to Todd Helton, who promptly hit it over the fence with the bases loaded to tie the game. The way this team was expected to perform, that was the time to switch the channel to Holmes on Homes. But this is the Mets. And sure enough, in the 11th inning, the slumping Ike Davis drove in David Wright in the 11th and Ramon Ramirez, after giving up a long fly ball that was just barely snatched by Nieuwenhuis, won the game.

As I write this, The Washington Nationals and Atlanta Braves are in a tie for first place, with the suppoesd Worst Team in Baseball just a game back.

When John Franco was the Mets' closer, they used to call him "Heart Attack Johnny." They were wrong. This is an entire Heart Attack Team -- no matter who's in the bullpen or who's in the lineup. When the Mets play, you don't know what kind of crazy-ass stuff is going to happen. Because the teams they visit, the teams that come to town, think they're there to play a baseball game. But what they really should be brushing up on is their Goofball.

Labels: Baseball, New York Mets

No sport played professionally in America bears the literary and poetic burden of baseball. You'll never see soft-focus movies about football, Brian's Song notwithstanding. The Natural wasn't a movie about Michael Jordan. No one will ever make a tennis movie called Court of Dreams. The right-wing may conjure up images of the 1950s in its longing for a return to the past, but their image is a false one. It doesn't take into account the desperate isolution of women in suburbia, the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, the drab and predictable lives of the men in the gray flannel suits. It's baseball that carries the mythology of America. Ken Burns created twelve hours of soft-focus reverence about the Greater Meanings of Baseball.

There have been endless musings about why this is, from the pastoral green field reminding us of our agrarian past to the great George Carlin's immortal comparison of baseball and football:



But damn it if baseball doesn't live up to all this burden of Norman Rockellian mythology.

This month saw the 25th anniversary of what is known among Mets fans as "Game Six." We don't need any further explanation about what "Game Six" means, though I, being the iconoclast that I am, have always preferred the grit and determination of game six of the NLCS that year, which went for sixteen grueling innings, the first eight scoreless for the Mets, who tied it in the ninth and again in the fourteenth, then finally won in grand style in the bottom of the sixteenth when Kevin Bass struck out. That will always be the most memorable game for me, right up there with the 19-Inning July 4 Marathon Of 1985, which saw Mr. Brilliant and I get home from watching the Macy's fireworks, watch a few innings, go to sleep around midnight, and wake up with the TV on a few hours later to Steve Zabriskie saying, "If you're just tuning in, write and tell us why"; and Tom Gorman giving up a fat one to Braves relief pitcher Rick Camp (lifetime batting average: 0.30) in the 18th before the Mets finally won in the 19th.

I thought on the anniversary that I really should write about this momentous anniversary, but frankly, with the Mets in the kind of disarray in which they find themselves now, the less I think about the Mets the better.

1986 is long gone; the Mets' glory days are long past. Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez are graying and thickening. Lenny Dykstra had a spectacular fall from the financial high life and this week pleaded no contest on car theft charges. But the family of Gary Carter, who is being treated for malgnant brain tumors, is reporting that his tumors have shrunk almost 75% since initial detection and 10% since his last scan and Bill Buckner and Mookie Wilson becoming the Bobby Thompson and Ralph Branca of the latter half of the 20th century, so it seems that perhaps it's time for another World Series to deliver a similar kind of drama.

When one's own team isn't participating, it's hard to get up much enthusiasm for the World Series. I might pay more attention if the Giants were playing, just because Tim Lincecum is cool. But my loathing for anything Texas not named "Molly Ivins" or "Ann Richards" is so complete that I had to toss my lot in with the Cardinals. I owed them that much after they defeated the hated Phillies in the NLDS. Then I stuck with them in the NLCS, if only because the Brewers were from Wisconsin, Scott Walker is governor of Wisconsin, and it just works that way.

This year the Cardinals were the wild card team, having edged out the hated Atlanta Braves in the last week of the season (giving Mets fans a scintilla of schadenfreude), and wild card teams are not supposed to make it this far. It isn't as if the Cardinals have made it look easy, especially after manager Tony LaRussa couldn't even get a call to the bullpen right in Game 5. But if you're a Mets fan, and an aficionado of the Goofy Game, you have to admire the work of art that the Cards put in last night, which forced a Game 7 tonight -- the first one since 2002. The Cardinals NOT being the Mets, however, it only took eleven innings to tie the game twice and win, not nineteen.

Go Cards.

Labels: Baseball

Here in the New York metropolitan area, it's been a long and depressing winter. We here at Casa la Brilliant have had our share of tsuris, including a number of unexpected expenses, all punctuated by hot and cold running blizzards, and I'm not talking about the kind served up at the local Dairy Queen.

So with the Super Bowl safely over, and the Valentine's Day roses (for me) and cheesecake from Calandra's (for him) ensconced in their appropriate places, and the Project from Hell being finally released, and a brief tease of sixty-degree temperatures coming on Friday, it would ordinarily be time for a middle-aged woman's thoughts to turn to baseball.

Unless, of course, she is a Mets fan.

These are not exactly the best of times to be a Mets fan. We aren't like Yankee fans, who can never really enjoy their team unless they win every game and take home all the marbles every year. We're used to a certain amount of futility. But this year even the most masochistic baseball fan is going to have a hard time mustering any kind of enthusiasm for Fred 'n' Jeff Wilponzi's (™ Steve Somers) ragtag band of misfits and scrap heapers. When the best hope you can have for this year is that former Mets "Generation K" prospect Jason Isringhausen, now thirty-eight and coming off Tommy John surgery after a terrific career as a reliever, can manage to make the team and contribute, things are at a sorry pass indeed.

Carlos Beltran is insisting he can still play despite his reconstructed knee, Minaya's Folly Luis Castillo is still clogging up the bench, the ever-delusional Ollie Perez is still insisting he can contribute, and frankly, if you can get a team full of good prospects for José Reyes, I think you've got to trade him, at least until the ownership situation straightens out.

The best I'm hoping for this year is entertaining baseball played by a bunch of cast-offs and not-yets, kind of like the team was in 1982 and 1983, right before a small army of young pitchers came up from the minors and formed the nucleus of what would become a World Series-winning team. I'm hoping that the classy R.A. Dickey's fairy tale continues and that Angel Pagan continues to be -- yes, I'm going to say it -- the angel in the outfield. And I'm hoping that the Wilponzis finally realize that the game is over, the jig is up, and like Hosni Mubarak, their family legacy is not to be.

And that they don't sell the team to a famewhore like Donald Trump.

UPDATE: If nothing else, we can amuse ourselves by making "Hu's on Second" jokes, waxing nostalgic about how they just don't make baseball player names like they used to -- except for Boof Bonser, and when all else fails, we can make the obligatory Spicoli jokes about Tobi Stoner.

Labels: Baseball, New York Mets

In case you're wondering why I haven't written about the situation in Egypt, it's because it's really difficult to work 15-hour days and have enough left of your brain at the end of the day (or in the morning, for that matter) to do cogent analysis of something that isn't my area of expertise. There are any number of people, some of them right here, who can do a far better job than I can of covering a complex situation that requires more analysis than I can do at a bleary-eyed 5 AM. If you're looking for a single source of information in Blogtopia (™ Skippy), you could do worse than checking out Juan Cole, for whom the Middle East IS his area of expertise.

So go ahead, tell me I'm fiddling while Rome burns, but YOU try having 100% accountability for a project with about 30% of the control and 0% of the authority and see if YOU can handle it and then come home and talk intelligently about the future of Egypt.

What I can talk about at this ungodly hour is baseball, particularly the giant flushing sound going on at $iti Field, where the involvement of the Wilpon family in the Bernie Madoff mess becomes uglier every day:

Elyse S. Goldweber, the widow of a former employee of Wilpon’s and Katz’s corporate holding company, Sterling Equities Associates, has charged in a federal lawsuit in New York that the company, Wilpon and two other officers breached their fiduciary duties by offering employees the chance to invest their 401(k) plan with Madoff. By the time Madoff’s scam had been uncovered, about 92 percent of the 401(k) plan had been invested with his fraudulent firm, all of it lost. Goldweber had $280,420 invested in her husband’s 401(k), and it was wiped out, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit says that Sterling officers, as overseers of the retirement plan, were required to use “care, skill, prudence and diligence” in administering it, and to diversify investments “to minimize the risk of large losses, unless under the circumstances it is clearly prudent not to do so.” But Goldweber’s lawsuit contends that the officers — two of whom, the suit noted, were certified public accountants — fell far short of honoring that obligation.

The lawsuit, which was filed last summer and covers about an eight-year period starting in 2000, cites example after example of instances in which other individuals and institutions over the years raised alarms about Madoff and his firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC.

Moreover, the Goldweber lawsuit noted that Madoff and his wife were investors in Wilpon’s and Katz’s real estate business at the same time Sterling Equities was offering his firm as an option in the retirement plan — something the suit says was never disclosed to employees.

“These reciprocal investments, and the close personal relationship between” the Madoffs “and the Wilpons created a conflict of interest so great that investing with Madoff should never have been an option for a 401(k) participant and likely caused defendants to purposely turn a blind eye to these red flags,” the lawsuit contends.

[snip]

The lawsuit contended that Sterling officers were not only negligent, but also conflicted. Madoff was an investor with Wilpon and Katz, as was his wife, Ruth. Over the years, Madoff and his wife have put millions of dollars into various Sterling entities. The lawsuit said that according to Picard, the trustee in the Madoff case, from the end of 2002 to the end of 2006, for example, funds from Madoff’s firm were used to invest more than $2.3 million in those entities for Ruth Madoff’s personal benefit.

Major League Baseball is a kind of screwy hybrid of private enterprise and public trust. MLB has approval rights over transfers of team ownership, about where and whether clubs can relocate, and a score of other rules. The MLB has essentially a monopoly over professional baseball at the major league level as a result of its antitrust exemption, but there's also this aura of poetry and heritage that always hovers over the sport, for all that other sports seem to have eclipsed it in the public's interest.

But Bud Selig had to have been thinking during his meeting with the Wilpons recently, about the impact on The Business for a franchise in the biggest media market in the country, even the also-ran franchise, to be in this kind of financial mess. Baseball hasn't even recovered yet from the steroid scandal, and now this.

I wrote earlier this week that Fred Wilpon is looking more every day like the Hosni Mubarak of baseball, in that he refuses to leave, he insists that the Mets be HIS family legacy and that the hapless scion Jeff, whose meddling brought the club to its currently appalling state, be the heir, and that Wilpon grandchildren inherit, lo unto millenia. That is why Wilpon, backed into a corner, is making an offer any smart investor would refuse: 25% of the team, none of the profitable SNY network, and absolutely NO say into how the club is run.

Now one could argue that with Sandy Alderson in the front office, the use of the Mets as a shiny toy by a spoiled rich boy is going to be less prevalent than it was during the Omar Minaya years. But there's some question as to whether Alderson was even aware of how bad things were when he took the job, and I have some questions about whether Alderson was sent in to be Bud Selig's Trojan Horse to try to get in there, look at the books, and see just how bad the situation is.

On paper at least, there are the glimmerings of at the very least a fun little ballclub brewing in Flushing. Anthony DiComa of Mets Cetera projects an opening day lineup that looks like this:

C - Josh Thole
1B - Ike Davis
2B - Brad Emaus
SS - Jose Reyes
3B - David Wright
OF - Jason Bay
OF - Carlos Beltran
OF - Angel Pagan
Bench - Chin-lung Hu
Bench - Daniel Murphy
Bench - Scott Hairston
Bench - Willie Harris
Bench - Mike Nickeas

SP - Mike Pelfrey
SP - R.A. Dickey
SP - Jon Niese
SP - Chris Young
SP - Chris Capuano
RP - Francisco Rodriguez
RP - Bobby Parnell
RP - D.J. Carrasco
RP - Taylor Tankersley
RP - Taylor Buchholz
RP - Manny Acosta
RP - Pedro Beato

The pitching is questionable at best -- a top three that can be either brilliant or appalling, depending on which Mike Pelfrey we see, whether R.A. Dickey can repeat his success of last year, and if Jon Niese is ready for the responsibilities of a #3 starter; and a bullpen consisting of maybes (Bobby Parnell), a head case (Francisco Rodriguez), and a bunch of warm bodies.

The team is saddled with Jason Bay for another few years, but if Carlos Beltran can be traded and there's someone in AAA who can move up, you're looking at a young team that at least is going to play hard and not just go through the motions. It's at BEST a third-place team, more likely a fourth, but I'll settle for Positive Signs over the wreckage of the last few years.

But when you have an organization that invested staffers' and players' 401(k) money with a scam artist like Bernie Madoff, and that apparently ignored all signals that something wasn't quite on the up-and-up about him, what kind of free agents are ever going to want to sign with this team? I'm not a fan of assembling a team full of overpaid guys on the down side of their careers anyway, but successful clubs are a mix of young talent and proven veterans who can mentor the kids along. That's what made the Mets of the 1980's successful (until they decided to trade everyone who didn't get along with Gregg Jefferies before realizing it was Jefferies who was the problem).

The Wilpon family may be the stuff of Shakespearean tragedy at this point -- a self-made man in the person of Fred Wilpon whose fatal flaw was trusting his old friend -- et tu Bruté indeed. But the fact of the matter is that the Wilpons will forever be wearing the Scarlet M of Madoff. And it is against the interests of Major League Baseball for them to continue to own a franchise. A 25% sale isn't enough. The entire organization must change hands.

Labels: Baseball, New York Mets

The department in which I work is largely populated with Yankee fans. This of course makes even our management look askance on those who dare to support other teams, particularly that dysfunctional mess in Flushing. People who support the finely-honed machine that operates out of the Bronx can't understand why anyone would stick with the Mets when one had such a stellar in-town alternative.

One thing about being a Mets fan is that you often have two choices after the regular season -- either forget baseball exists until next year (and this year, until you find out whether they're going to give Sandy Alderson the job or another lackey who's just going to be cover for Jeff Wilpon's ineptitude, Mr. Wilpon not having learned from George W. Bush that ownership of a team should not make the player decisions, see also: Sammy Sosa), or pick another team as short-term good guy. Office politics prevent me from doing this with anyone other than the Yankees, but now that the Yankees' aging on-field presence proved not enough for the younger, hungrier Texas Rangers, the choice is now clear. And as happy as I am that Jeff Francoeur, who was treated pretty shabbily by the Mets, is in the World Series, that's where it ends. Because what we now have is the delicious allegory of a San Francisco vs. Texas World Series, which in this election year, is further proof that baseball really IS a metaphor for life. New York may have not one but TWO pretty damn good football teams this year, one of them boasting a smokin' hot quarterback whose love of musical theatre makes me wonder if he'll show up in the doldrums of February on Glee. But if it's going to be seventy-five degrees on October 27, I want baseball.

None other than Joan Walsh takes a break from MSNBC appearances to wax rhapsodic about the Little Team That Could, led by its flaxen-haired pitching phenom:

So real Giants fans know the truth: It's possible to love the Giants of 2002 and 2010, to see the differences -- and some similarities, too. Leaving aside Bonds and the great Jeff Kent, that earlier team had guys who were (almost literally) left for dead; catcher Benito Santiago hadn't been expected to play baseball again after a devastating car accident in 1998; he was NLCS MVP. Career .257 hitter David Bell, who played for six teams, scored the series-winning run against the Cardinals; washed-up ex-Cub Shawon Dunston (now a Giants coach) hit a two-out single to set up that win. The postseason wasn't all about Barry.

Still, it's not giving into the cheesy media narrative to admit this is an extraordinary team that wasn't supposed to be here (don't believe anyone who said they picked these Giants to win back in the spring). First baseman Aubrey Huff had no offers when the Giants signed him; Pat Burrell had been flat-out released by Tampa Bay; NLCS MVP Cody Ross was claimed in August when the Florida Marlins put him on waivers. Center fielder Andres Torres, clutch in that wild AT&T outfield as well as at the plate, is 32 and never before played a full season in the majors.

It is possible that no Giants team in my years here has been embraced so thoroughly. I just know we've got swag that celebrates this funky team accordingly. You can buy hats with long Lincecum-like locks attached, as well as T-shirts saying, "Let Timmy smoke" (the Cy Young winner was arrested in the offseason for marijuana possession) and most recently, "Fuck Yeah!" commemorating the star pitcher's recent NSFW comments on national television.

You can buy panda hats to honor Pablo Sandoval. There are fake black beards everywhere, thanks to the increasingly strange (and dominating) Wilson. I've even seen a few rally thongs, made famous by Huff, who put on a red, rhinestone studded thong to bust a slump in August and claims to have worn it ever since. You can listen to fan-made musical tributes to Huff's rally thong (to the tune of Elton John's "Your Song" -- that's right, it's "Your Thong"), to clutch pinch-hitter Travis Ishikawa ("Ishikawa da vida, baby") and the entire team: A video using Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" has had more than a million views on YouTube. The outpouring of creative fan-made Giants tributes makes it seem as though these overachieving everymen have brought out the dreamer in everyone.

Tim Lincecum is easy to hate when he's shutting out your team, but in the abstract, when there's no loyalty-since-childhood to deal with (although my father WAS a Giants fan before they packed up and went to San Francisco, leaving him pining for a National League team until the Mets came along), his retro-hippie sensibility makes him exactly the kind of player that gives wingnuts (and Philadelphia fans) fits. Because if there's one thing they hate, it's a pot-smoking, long-haired pitcher who bears a striking facial resemblance to figure skater Johnny Weir, has the kind of weird delivery that makes him injury-prone but has this year developed a truly nasty slider to replace the lost velocity on his fastball, and isn't at all fazed by things like Philadelphia fans' boorish speculation on his sexual orientation simply because he has long hair.

Next year I hope to see a third-place Mets team dominated by a young group of hardworking players, with a front-office determined to take the time necessary to build a system, not patch together a bunch of has-beens. Next year, when Tim Lincecum comes to town, I will hate him again. But for now, as he goes against Cliff Lee the Terminator and Inevitable Future Yankee, it's all Timmeh! in this house.

Labels: Baseball

The easiest thing to do in New York is to be a Yankees fan. I mean, here you have a team steeped in tradition, which for most of its history has offered up a product that when it wasn't excellent, was often colorful. That wasn't because of the baseball offered up on the field, which like most American League baseball, is devoid of the zaniness that seems to come naturally to National League teams. My father, a Giants-turned-Mets fan, used to say that watching the Yankees was like watching a bunch of guys from IBM in suits, white shirts, and briefcases play baseball. Of course you have to realize that this is a guy who used to take me to a 3/4 empty Shea Stadium during the Great Suck Years, when Jane Jarvis played the organ, Ed Kranepool played first base, and the usher chomping a cheap White Owl cigar would come up to you in the cheap seats and say "You don't want to sit there. You want to sit down here." He'd move you down to field box seats, wipe them off with a dirty rag in a bizarro foreshadowing of squeegee men, and Dad would tip him a buck.

For most of the time I can remember anything about the Yankees, they have always been about two things. Bob Sheppard and George Steinbrenner. Just as something will be lost to the Mets forever when the ancient-but-still-full-of-stories Ralph Kiner shuffles off this mortal coil, the Yankees have lost their voice with the death of Bob Sheppard. You know the voice, they called it the "Voice of God." As mannered as it was, it was always the voice of the Yankees. Now, Yankee fans are left with nothing but the repulsive John Sterling, who makes me want to kill myself every time I hear a game recap in which he does that "THUUUUUUHHHHH....YANKEES WIN!!!!!!!!!!" -- as if this was some kind of miracle like Jesus and the fishes. I mean seriously. Was there any doubt? This is a team that eats opponents like Pac-Man, and when they win, the appropriate response is to shrug and say, "What did you expect?"

There was a time when the Yankees were colorful too. It was the says when someone was always feuding with Steinbrenner. If it wasn't Billy Martin (and wasn't THAT one of the most dysfunctional relationships in baseball history) it was Reggie Jackson, or Dave Winfield, or even =tokke= Yogi Berra, who at one time vowed to never go to the Stadium again as long as Steinbrenner owned the team.

In recent years, Steinbrenner wasn't seen much, as his health failed. Instead, it took TWO Steinbrenners to do what ONE did when George was in his prime. One son, Hal, does the quiet operation of the organization, leaving the day-to-day stuff in the capable hands of the smart baseball man known as Brian Cashman. The other one, Hank, has the job of being the Asshole Steinbrenner. But without the side that cares about quality baseball, all you have left is the asshole. George did both, and did it well:


Far away from the Glittering Dome of Yankee Stadium lies a city that despite the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has always exemplified futility. And that city is Cleveland, Ohio. And it is there that Harvey Pekar, a man who became famous for being a crank, died on Monday. But Pekar was no ordinary crank; he had a kind of zen wisdom as he observed his own life and the world around him, aided by cartoonists like R. Crumb, who put his thoughts into picture. But outside of the geekerati, Pekar is best known for being the subject of one of my favorite movies of recent years, American Splendor. Here, Paul Giamatti as Pekar asks, "What's in a name?"

As I observed when the film came out:

I am Harvey Pekar. And so are you, or you wouldn't be reading this. And because of movies like Crumb and Ghost World and now AMERICAN SPLENDOR, we are no longer misfits. We are now cool. Is this an improvement? Is this supposed to make us feel better?

Well, yes. Because Harvey Pekar was the patron saint of all of us who have always felt that we were put here by mistake, that our worldview is completely and utterly out of sync with the rest of the world. We observe the world around us and wonder why it seems to completely, utterly mad. The difference between those of us who blog, and Harvey Pekar, is that he was doing it long before we were. And he found a way to make a career of it, such as it was.

There's something intrinsically lonely about those of us who analyze everything, who see a world in which we never quite fit. Sometimes we luck out and find similarly iconoclastic friends. If we're very lucky, as I've been and as Pekar was, we find a life partner who by some strange karmic coincidence, lives on the same slightly off-kilter plane of reality that we do. But it doesn't change the fact that we struggle every day to live in this strange alien place.

Here, in another clip from the film, the real Harvey voices over an oddly appropriate clip of Giamatti, talking about loneliness:

Keep going, Harvey. Someone's bound to turn up.

Labels: Baseball, comics, geekery, obituaries, pop culture

As any longtime Mets fan (or Mets victim, if you prefer) knows, July 4 weekend is fraught with peril. Yesterday's game was no exception, and today's promised to be no better. Saturday's game saw the Mets facing the hapless Washington Nationals -- and Stephen Strasburg, the 6'4" hype-machine phenom.

I don't know what it is with the Mets and the Nationals. Even when the Mets are great (and this year they still only qualify as "pretty good at times"), the still can't seem to figure out one of the worst teams in baseball. They can take two out of three from the Yankees, and then lose two out of three to The Team Formerly Known As The Montreal Expos. I'd say it's a question of concentration, but yesterday saw one great infield play by David Wright, aggressive baserunning, an ability to lay off enough Stephen Strasburg fastballs to make the young phenom look like Nuke Laloosh after five innings, scratching out a few runs on almost no hits, a great outing by the crafty pickup-off-the-scrap-heap R.A. Dickey, and what should have been a satisfying 5-3 win.

Until Frankie Rodriguez came to the mound in the 9th.

I remember when there was such a thing as a closer. I remember when Jesse Orosco was good enough that if he came out, you could turn the game off and go get dinner. I remember when Randy Myers would come out and you could turn the game off and go to bed, confident that the game was in good hands. Those days are long gone. It all started with "Heart Attack Johnny" Franco, and it's been downhill ever since.

They call him "K-Rod", as if giving him a moniker similar to the third baseman in the Bronx will somehow turn him into a similar kind of machine. But with now five heartbreaking blown saves this year, one wonders how anyone could think he's a stopper, and where one can find the factory that produced Mariano Rivera -- the real stopper across town who at 40 shows no signs that he's ready to relinquish the role.

It must be something about 4th of July weekend. I can hardly bear to watch today.

But of course I have to, because today is the fourteenth anniversary of the greatest, looniest, craziest Mets game ever played. And remember, this is the team that took sixteen innings to take the pennant against the Houston Astros and Bob Knepper in 1986 and went on to take the World Series the day after Bill Buckner entered the same Hall Of No Fame as Ralph Branca. It was The Infamous July 4 Game Against Atlanta.

Mr. Brilliant and I had gone into the city for the Macy's fireworks, and then to get something to eat with friends. We came home, watched a few extra innings, and fell asleep, only to wake up around 3 AM to hear broadcaster Steve Zabriskie say, "If you're just tuning in now, write in and tell us why." Of course we stayed up to watch the rest of it, and sure enough, there were fireworks after the game ended. At 4:00 AM.

But what I remember most about that game is this, described brilliantly last year by Chris Jaffe, who called that game "MLB's greatest game ever":

In the 17th inning, home plate umpire Terry Tata ejected Met star Darryl Strawberry and manager Davey Johnson for arguing a called third strike. When asked about it after the game, Tata responded with the words later engraved at the Tomb of the Unknown Umpire: "At three o'clock in the morning, there are no bad calls."

Next inning, a light appeared at the end of the tunnel. The Mets capitalized on Brave reliever Rick Camp's throwing a would-be double play ball into the outfield, and scored the go-ahead run for an 11-10 lead.

Atlanta had the bottom of their order due up. The hitters looked as weary as they must have felt. In a handful of pitches, the first two batters each feebly grounded out. At 3:30 a.m, the Braves were down to their last man; not only was it the pitcher's slot in the order, but they had no more position players left to pinch hit.

Thus Rick Camp strode to the plate, representing Atlanta's last and least hope. Even for a pitcher, he was never much of a hitter in his decade-long career. A few years earlier he'd gone 1-for-41 on the season. Now a reliever, he rarely even hit. This would be his eighth plate appearance on the year, and he hadn't had a hit all season. As he faced Tom Gormon at 3:30 a.m. on what was now July 5, 1985, his lifetime batting average was .060.

Gorman, now in his sixth inning of work, saw no need to mess around with Camp. He quickly got two quick strikes on the hapless "hitter." Brave fans still in attendance—and one truly had to be a fan to stay in attendance this late through all that rain and time—could at least console themselves that it had been a hard fought battle, even if Atlanta was doomed before the better team.

Ah, but here is where the game became something for the ages. Part of the appeal of sports is that you never know what will happen next. What has just happened and what ought to happen merely serve as indicators for what could and should happen, not what will. The next moment was so ridiculous, that it defied all logic and a damn good chunk of all illogic. An ape on a typewriter would have a better chance typing out the complete works of William Shakespeare by sheer happenstance than a repetition of this at-bat.

When Gorman threw his third pitch, Camp went for broke on the 0-2, two-out offering and took a mighty swing. Crack! He made contact, and the ball floated out past the infield, into the outfield, beyond the wall and to the stunned horror of the Mets, landed in the bullpen for a game-tying home run. The Met outfielder in pursuit was so shocked he fell to his knees and grabbed his head with his hands. The fans were ecstatic, as well they should be, for if any fans deserved to see something great, it was the small band still in the stadium. Suffice it to say, it was not just Camp's biggest career home run, but it was his only one. The game went on, tied 11-11.

You know the Braves were in trouble when Camp left the dugout to pitch the 19th inning. Fresh from his first and last homer, he had an unstoppably huge grin on his face. Upshot: he was not in the best frame of mind to pitch. In the space of three singles, a double, and two intentional walks, the Mets had a 16-11 lead, putting the game away.

Or was it out of reach? As difficult as it might be to top a five-run lead in the 19th inning, that would be nothing compared to what happened in Atlanta's previous turn at the bat. The Mets weren't leaving anything to chance, putting in star starter Ron Darling to pitch.

By all rights, it should've been an easy 1-2-3 inning. Two of the first three batters made simple outs. The inning stayed alive because Keith Hernandez, normally a superlative fielder, made an error to put a man on. With two outs, Atlanta went into its surreal clutch mode: two straight walks loaded the bases, and a single scored two runs. 16-13.

Not only that, but incredibly the tying run came to the plate. Again. Surely enough—you could not script it any better—the batter was the very last man on planet Earth the Mets would want to see represent the tying run with two outs in this Twilight Zone of a game. That's right, up there stood the god himself: the man, the myth, the legend, Rick Camp, only now he stood tall with a whopping .065 career batting average. Though the rain had long since stopped, I like to think a dramatic thunderclap occurred when he stood in the batter's box and faced Darling.

Just like last time, Camp fell behind quickly, and he stared down the barrel of a 1-2 count. At 3:55 a.m., Camp was in a perfect position to certify his position as the all-time grand master of the fourth hour of the morning, game-tying homer.

Darling threw his pitch and Camp swung. Somehow, someway, the ball miraculously sneaked past the uber-fearsome batter. Strike three. Game over. Camp, the most disappointed hitter since Mudville cut Casey, slammed down his bat on the plate in frustration. One can only assume in his previous 168 at-bats he had never been nearly so upset by any of the 83 earlier times he'd fanned.

The fans weren't disappointed. How could they be after witnessing a game like that? Even the players in the Brave dugout stood and applauded as the game ended.

However, many others would soon be very upset. You see, like all games scheduled for the Fourth of July, this one advertised a fireworks display. And sure, even though the sky was beginning to lighten, the Braves began exploding their picturesque bombs promptly at 4:01 a.m. The noise woke up many in the neighborhood, causing many frightened souls to call the police, claiming Libya was bombing Atlanta!

In his book "If at First", Keith Hernandez described how the next day, Tom Gorman (I wrote about this in 2006 and erroneously said it was Terry Leach) received a call in his hotel room from a caller who simply said, "Rick Camp? You gotta be shitting me!" -- and promptly hung up. And the player Jaffe refers to was Danny Heep, who last time I saw him at the closing of Shea Stadium looked like he could still play.

July 4. Hot dogs. Baseball. Everything that makes America great. Except that these days, it doesn't feel so great. And watching the Mets reminds us that no matter how well you think you're doing, utter futility is just around the corner.

Labels: Baseball, FUBAR, New York Mets

My old buddy Shimes from my movie reviewing days was a voice sorely lacking for a few years while he attended taxidermy (law) school. But recently he's back, and not just talking about movies, either. You see, Shimes has the singular misfortune of being a Kansas City Royals fan, so he's in a unique position to examine the video of The Blown Call Heard Round the World as if it were the Zapruder film.

While you're over at Movie Day at the Court, bookmark it. Because when he really gets souced, Shimes writes like, well, James Joyce. No, the OTHER one.

Labels: Baseball, friends

For nearly two decades, "pitchers and catchers" was a far more vivid harbinger of spring than Groundhog Day, or the first snowdrops trying to peek through the ground, or the fact that on the rare occasions when I actually leave the office at 5 PM (I never seem to actually leave "work", since most nights I'm working after dinner until bedtime) it's still light out.

This year, for us Mets fans, "pitchers and catchers" is mostly a time to sigh at what used to be and realize that it's become yet another "so what?" in our lives. If I'd had any stirrings at all about the approach of yet another season of Mets futility, the organization gave me a reminder this week when they demoted the longtime journeyman Omir Santos, who did nothing other than play his heart out, hitting .260 in 281 at bats with 7 home runs including one grand slam, on a team that was dropping like flies from injuries or showing appalling ineptitude, to AAA.

The Mets, who in recent weeks have been signing what looks like anyone still standing at the corner bar before last call, have brought no fewer than six catchers to spring training. The leading candidate for the starting job, and what passes for a Big Signing™ is Rod Barajas, a 35-year-old journeyman (Santos is six years younger) whose highest average was .254 in 2006 with the Texas Rangers, and who hit a sizzling .226 last year. As Bill Madden notes, 2010 is starting to look an awful lot like 1962. If the Wilpons want us to believe they didn't really lose $700 million to Bernie Madoff, they sure aren't doing a good job of it.

So, if you find American League baseball boring, and you simply feel that spending 2-1/2 hours or more every weekend on an organization that's so shitty it's enough to make one remember Marge Schott's Cincinnati Reds fondly, the only pleasure to be had from baseball this year is the writings of another former journeyman, Doug Glanville, who's been writing gorgeous prose about the sport he loves for the New York Times for over a year. If you, like me, just can't bear another season of craptacular baseball in Flushing, you could do worse than to just read.

Labels: Baseball, bloggers

...along comes Rachel Maddow with a baseball story to let us long-suffering Mets fans, many of us going through a crisis of confidence as to whether we should at long last join the Dark Side of the Force which inhabits the Bronx, something basebally to smile about:


(h/t)

Labels: Baseball, You can't make this shit up

Somehow I get the feeling that not one of the people who are screeching about "death panels" and "taking our country back" were involved in achieving this:

Hearts and minds, baby!

Labels: Baseball, Iraq, Rachel Maddow, warm fuzzies

Unless you're enough of a geek to pay attention to the sidebars, which are only marginally less cluttered than my abode, you've probably missed a new blogroll category, CeleBloggers. Ordinarily I'm not one to link to blogs written by Famous People unless there's a good reason to do so, or unless their names are Sam Seder and Marc Maron, whose work we have adored lo these last five years.

But over the weekend I posted links to blogs by Roger Ebert and Lost's Jorge Garcia (Hurley). Ebert was a no-brainer. I wrote movie reviews for seven years and then took up blogging; Ebert has been writing movie reviews since seemingly the dawn of time, and then took up blogging -- and already he's better at it than I ever will be. Garcia was a whimsy pick, his blog being, well, Hurley-esque. And there's something just weird about a guy who plays a character who was marooned on an island -- twice -- in plane crashes (one seemingly deliberate) being pulled aside at the airport for additional security screening.

But tonight we add another CeleBlogger. I was considering reviving the "Brilliant at Baseball" box for the New York Mets, but after Mike Pelfrey fell off the mound for no reason last night, the Mets crawled back into a tie, Pedro Feliciano balked in what turned out to be the winning run and two ex-Mets, pitching far better for San Diego than they did for the Mets, proceeded to shut the Mets down for three innings, I just don't have the heart to do it. And that's not even mentioning the cat. So for now, we will just tuck Baseball Nerd, a.k.a. Mr. Keith Olbermann, away to knock back a few with Rog 'n' "Hurley". Call me a fair weather Mets fan if you must, but there's only so many times you can go through this.

Labels: Baseball, bloggers, New York Mets

I'm usually not one for inspirational, uplifting stories about the triumph over adversity. For one thing, they tend to be made into movies starring Robin Williams at his teary smarmiest. For another thing, they tend to paint a picture of a world where good people can triumph over anything, which is, of course, not the world we live in. But every now and then, a story cuts through even my cynicism and gives even me the warm fuzzies.

So since it's Easter Sunday, and there's bright sunshine here in New Jersey, I'd like you to meet Bryan Sullivan:

All Sullivan wanted was the chance to take the mound and play the game he watched on television, and he was willing to do whatever it took to live out his childhood dream.

He was 6-years old and a long way from becoming the winning pitcher for Paramus High School on opening day, which he was 11 days ago.

He never gave any thought to how daunting the realization of that dream was going to be.

“I watched two games and I fell in love with the game,” said Sullivan, a senior. “I was going to be a pitcher; I remember asking my dad, ‘Can I learn how to play baseball?’Ÿ”

The only promise his father, Steve, made was that they were going to try.

There were going to be challenges, considering Bryan was born with cerebral palsy and suffers from hemiparesis, or slight paralysis or weakness that affects the right side of his body.

He would be forced to learn how to catch and throw with only his left hand.

The Sullivans hoped for the day all Bryan would have to worry about was earning playing time, keeping his ERA down and adding a few miles per hour to his fastball, but they knew his quest would involve so much more.

“His determination was there from the very beginning,” said his mother, Donna. “He always believed that, with hard work, he could achieve anything.”

Bryan certainly has achieved something special, and not only with what he has done, but how he’s gone about doing it.

Today, the 18-year-old is a pitcher and a remarkable one at that, one of the greatest examples of what perseverance and dedication can produce, yet not without talent and an uncanny ability to master technique despite obvious physical limitations.

Bryan was not given the ball as Paramus’ starter April 1 against Kennedy – he earned it.

[snip]

To think this whole baseball thing started when Bryan was inspired by former Yankees one-handed pitcher Jim Abbott, whose presence on the mound – and his television screen — struck an emotional chord.

“I saw him pitch twice and it was like, ‘Maybe I can do that,’Ÿ” Bryan said.

The Sullivans started playing catch in their back yard with a Wiffle ball before moving onto a tennis ball, with Bryan attempting the glove transfer from his right to his left hand after throwing.

It took two years before Steve felt comfortable enough to move onto an official baseball.

Once they did, it was time to bring in outside help, and the list of coaches who have helped in the process is extensive. From Mike Rooney, the pitching coach at Rockland County College, to the Gilligan brothers, Lar and Dan, at the Academy of Pro Players, Bryan is grateful for the tremendous support he has received along the way.

“Nowadays every parent thinks they’ve got the next Babe Ruth, but Bryan never had that kind of pressure put on him,” his father said. “For him it’s always been about trying to be successful, and you don’t get to be successful without hard work and dedication, whatever challenge you might face. No one has worked harder.”

So you can imagine the pride Bryan felt against Kennedy when everything came together. He threw 59 pitches, 44 for strikes, and gave up one base hit in five innings en route to the Spartans’ 15-0 victory by mercy rule.

“It was exciting, but I wasn’t nervous,” he said. “I was having fun, doing what I always wanted to do.”

And make no mistake: this was not a one-time thing.

Bryan will pitch again for the Spartans, and he is expected to make an impact as Paramus continues its pursuit of league supremacy and County and State tournament berths.

His career on the diamond won’t end with high school graduation, either.

Rutgers-Newark coach Mark Rizzi was so impressed with what he saw from Bryan, he offered him something he’s always wanted: an opportunity to pitch, this time in college, and he was thrilled to accept a spot within the Division III program.

Labels: Baseball

With the new Mets ballpark being named by a Saudi-owned bank using our money, and these recent signings by the Pittsburgh Pirates, it may be time to start rooting for the team that plays at the confluence of the Allegheny, the Monongehela, and the Ohio rivers. Because this is pretty cool:

On Monday, the Pirates signed two young Indian pitchers, 20-year-old right-hander Dinesh Patel and 19-year-old southpaw Rinku Singh, as non-drafted free agents. Both will participate in the team's Minor League Spring Training next year.

"The Pirates are committed to creatively adding talent to our organization," general manager Neal Huntington said in a statement. "By adding these two young men, we are pleased to not only add two prospects to our system but also hope to open a pathway to an untapped market.

"We are intrigued by Patel's arm strength and Singh's frame and potential," he continued. "These young men have improved a tremendous amount in their six-month exposure to baseball, and we look forward to helping them continue to fulfill their potential."

The story of Patel and Singh is one that is made for the movies. Both were discovered while participating in India's Million Dollar Arm challenge that began last December. The event was designed to find the country's most powerful and accurate arm and had more than 30,000 participants.

The contest was the idea of JB Bernstein, a marketing agent best known for representing Barry Bonds. The contest was simple: The winner would be the person who could throw 85 mph or higher and consistently for strikes.

In addition to handing out a $100,000 cash prize to the winner of the contest, organizers also promised the winner training in the United States to prepare him to be scouted by Major League clubs.

Singh emerged as the winner of the country-wide contest despite having no previous baseball experience before entering the competition. However, a Major League scout was also intrigued with Patel, who threw harder but with less accuracy. As a result, Patel was offered the chance to come to the U.S. to train as well.

After the competition ended, Singh and Patel came to the U.S. to train with University of Southern California pitching coach Tom House. All that work built up to a Nov. 12 tryout, when both players threw in front of approximately 20 Major League baseball scouts with the hope of earning a Spring Training invitation. The two pitchers both reportedly threw in the low-90s at the tryout.

"They still have to learn how to play the game," House told MLB.com after the tryout. "Their talent is the upside, but it's going to take them a while to learn how to play. It's not going to take much to get them to sign, either. If you're looking at it as an organization, you can really develop these kids.

"I know they can pitch, but we have to teach them how to play the game. It's well worth the risk."

Singh and Patel were javelin throwers in high school. They have begun to learn English by watching Baseball Tonight since arriving in the U.S. They are also taking online courses to continue their studies of the language.

When it comes to the scouting reports, the 6-foot-2 Singh throws 89-90 mph and has a split-finger changeup pitch. The 5-foot-11 Patel throws a circle change and can reach 91-92 mph with his heater.

Monday's signings mark the Pirates' third international signing this offseason. Pittsburgh inked South African switch-hitting shortstop prospect Mpho Ngoepe, 18, earlier this fall. Ngoepe is expected to begin playing in the team's Gulf Coast rookie league next season.

In terms of language, what they really need to focus on learning is their clichés:

Labels: Baseball

Preznit "I'll Drop Nukes On Iran If I Have To In Order To Show I'm Still Relevant" was the target of boo-birds last night at the Nationals/Braves opener at the new Nationals Park. When you consider how Carlos Delgado was booed for going back into the clubhouse instead of coming out for the National Anthem in the early years of the Iraq War, this is an astounding change of fortunes for this sniveling little man (who looks even smaller and more sniveling in the caverns of a baseball stadium:



As difficult as it is watching Lastings Milledge introduced in a Nationals uniform, it was worth it to see booing this loud. After all, they can't throw half the fans out of the stadium. The announcer tried to put lipstick on this pig by admiring the throw, but there's no getting around it: Americans simply detest this guy. And, Mr. Bush, THAT is going to be your legacy.

Labels: Baseball, George W. Bush

Mets. Cardinals. At Port St. Lucie. 1 PM. Today. On SNY.

(h/t and photo: Metsgrrl)

Labels: Baseball, New York Mets