Sunday, June 10, 2007

No Birds Were Harmed In The Cooking Of The Mets' Collective Goose

In my younger days, we used to play softball in a magical place named Hoffman Park, tucked away behind the Boulevard of Death.

The problem that we often faced as softball players on the hard top surface was that every once in a while, some yahoo with bread crumbs would sit on the first base bench spreading bread crumbs and attracting every single seagull in Queens to have breakfast. So here we come to play and there would be birds everywhere. Fly balls were a problem, because you would look up for the ball and would have to dodge bird excrement instead.

How did we get rid of the birds? You never really got rid of them completely, but enough running around and pings off the bat usually did the trick. The same yahoo must have been at Comerica Park (or should I say Audubon Society Park today) with his bread crumbs making playing baseball in Detroit akin to playing catch on the Atlantic City Boardwalk.

Or playing softball at Hoffman Park.

But it's ironic that a stadium with big statues of scary Tigers all around (some with baseballs in their mouths depicting what would happen if a bird would get too close) could be prone to having birds just wander in and make themselves at home all over the outfield...or in somecases, across the infield. But I guess if birds were scared by mere statues, Alfred Hitchcock would have never had a career.

Speaking of irony, during a ball game that looked like an Alfred Hitchcock movie, the Mets came to the mound with a guy who looked more like Sterling Hitchcock today, as Tom Glavine waited until the fourth inning until a frame where he didn't even give up a run. I think we can safely assume that if one were to count the birds that roamed the outfield during today's ballgame, it would be a safe bet that the count would go not one higher than 295.

There's no reason for Glavine to be irritated at anybody but himself today. There's been talk about Glavine getting his jock in a bunch about bad defense and the like, but this was all on Tom today. The Mets are starting to fall into that pattern where they pitch well, but they don't hit. They hit, but they don't pitch well. Glavine had no excuses today, with Magglio Ordonez on the shelf as a late scratch, and Carlos Guillen leaving the game after the third inning with an injury. Instead, he gets beaten by Placido Polanco, and a protection-less Gary Sheffield. And another weekend comeback by the bats in the late innings (with help from Carlos Gomez's first major league home run) gets laid to waste.

And although the Mets scored seven runs today, they always seem to be one hit short these days. They seem to be leaving a ton of runs on the bases...including runners on third with less than two men out. One of those hits here and there would might have made this a winnable game. Instead, it was a football score on the wrong side as the Tigers scored more today than the Detroit Lions normally do.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've done wonders for the 2007 Mets. I let Bradford go and signed--knowingly--a damaged player called Schoenweis. I signed an old cripple--Moises Alou. I retained a fossil called Franco. I resigned a known steroid user who threw at Piazza's head during spring training 2004--Mota. I thought we could snooker the fans further by pretending Newhan was a legitimate ballplayer. Why are you complainin'?--ain't you snookered?

Anonymous said...

glavine is now stuck on 295 wins and that 300th is looking closer to coming in September.

Hopefully this team will carry Tom over that magical mark and he will announce his retirement (effective end of season) after the champagne.

alou was signed to protect DW, is it any wonder then that without Alou the middle order is exposed.

Re: Last September, Humber debuts in relief against Atlanta.....HINT!!

Anonymous said...

Ah, good old Hoffman Park ... I stopped by there to check on it on my way to visit you last month. They closed that back entrance near the handball courts, the bums!

Anonymous said...

I know they'll eventually regain their stellar form but, right now, I have no confidence in either Beltran or Delgado in a big situation.

Anyone remember when Dave Winfield accidentally hit a bird with a throw, and he was later arrested for some violation of a humane treatment to birds? Pretty funny stuff.

Anonymous said...

Hey, it's debmc from FU.

Lately, the Mets' play is what's for the birds, so to speak. So it was quite appropos for the critters to be parking their collective critter butts at Comerica Park this weekend, lol.

And I LOVE your title. Did a little birdie tell it to you? LOL

I'm telling you, lately, our guys are a bunch of bird brains.

They need to learn how to feather their nests a bit better.

They need to get out of their gilded cages and.......

stop me, before I make ANOTHER BAD BIRD REFERENCE!!!!! Aaaarrrghhh!!!! LOL

Metstradamus said...

Deb, step away from the rotisserie...step away from the rotisserie! LOL