Blue For You

You know, we like to have a lot of fun here at the Musings and Prophecies of Metstradamus. And I hope you have fun here too. Like the time we joked about a rotunda for Angel Berroa. Oh, those were good times, weren't they?

But I also hope that somewhere along the way, in the last four+ years that I've been with you, that you learned a little something, no matter how insignificant a fact it is (c'mon, when have I ever written anything of any significance), I hope you took something from this url that has positively enriched your lives and prepared you to deal with the big bad world out there.

I know who hasn't learned anything by reading this, or any other blog, and that's the Wilpon family. They are notorious for never learning anything that involves putting their finger on the pulse of the fan. Proof? It came in an e-mail I received today from the Brooklyn Cyclones:

Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda is a baseball icon, and perhaps the most prominent ambassador of the game. His major league career began in 1954 when, as a 26-year-old lefthanded pitcher, he made his debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

On Sunday, August 16th, Lasorda will return to Brooklyn, and will be honored by the Cyclones in a special pre-game ceremony, starting at 4:30pm, in which he will be inducted into the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame. In addition, the first 1,500 fans (ages 15 and over) in attendance will receive a Tommy Lasorda photo baseball.

I'm lucky my head hasn't exploded at all the things wrong with this scenario.

First off, since when is it the responsibility of the New York Mets to induct players into the Brooklyn F&%$ing Dodgers' Hall of Fame? Because we have a farm team there??? Heaven forbid we make an addition or two to our own Hall of Fame, dormant since 2002, probably because it's too much work ... like an oldtimers game.

But organizing Tommy Lasorda day, complete with photo baseballs for crissakes, isn't that much work at all ... naaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Also, if this organization is the keeper of the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame, couldn't we find a more deserving candidate than Tommy F&%$ing Lasorda? What was Tommy's great contribution to the Dodgers while they were in Brooklyn? Someone want to answer me that? It certainly had nothing to do with what he actually did on the field. Here are his statistics:

G - 8
IP - 13
ER - 11

And it took two seasons to put those numbers together. Thirteen innings, Hall of Fame. Makes perfect sense to me!

And my last point, which is really a continuation of the previous point ... TOMMY LASORDA?????

How is it that a team that is worried about image to the point that they'll have three press conferences in two days for the pure sake of damage control continue to feed the paranoia regarding this damn Dodgers fetish they have??? And it's one thing to yearn for the good ol' days of black and white newsreels and the sym"phony" and wait 'til next year and all that junk, and want to honor actual Brooklyn Dodgers that contributed something of note. Not that they don't already have their own franchise to do that for them but whatever. I get the point ... baseball in Brooklyn, bla bla bla. But Tommy Lasorda pitched thirteen freakin' innings for the Brooklyn Dodgers!!!

But he sure as hell did plenty for the Los Angeles Dodgers, didn't he? Sure, I saw it! I saw Tommy from the upper deck at Shea, Game 4 in 1988. Yup, there he was, dancing around on our field in the 12th inning, hugging Kirk Gibson, hugging Orel Hershiser, while I was in the upper deck wearing three coats in 15 degree weather wondering how the hell Darryl Strawberry couldn't hit Jesse Orosco's sweeping curveball three thousand miles.

MLB Network showed some Dodger retrospective the other day, and one of the first shots they showed was Tommy Lasorda in the lockerroom after the '88 series shouting at the top of his lungs "THEY SAID WE COULDN'T BEAT THE MIGHTY METS", and I shut the damn thing off. Couldn't watch another frame of that. These are the memories that I have of Tommy Lasorda. Not that he's an "ambassador to baseball", or a "baseball icon". My lasting memory of Tommy Lasorda is "THEY SAID WE COULDN'T BEAT THE MIGHTY METS". I'm sure Met fans born before say, 1976, have similar memories. And I'll go a step further: Game 7? Hershiser's 6-0 shutout? That happened on my 18th birthday. My welcome to manhood was getting eliminated by a team that had no business beating the Mets ... a team managed by Tommy Lasorda.

So what do the Mets do? F&%$ing honor him with photo baseballs!!! Are you kidding me???

The next promotion day should read thusly: "Fans attending the Brooklyn Cyclones game will be tied down and have their mouths peed in." Because that's what the Mets are doing. No wonder Mets fans feel like second class citizens. Not enough that fans are somehow still being separated by one another via the caste system printed on the tickets, but now they're inducting Tommy Lasorda in the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame for thirteen innings of pitching so stellar that it prompted the Dodgers to give some kid named Koufax a shot? (And even Koufax wasn't that good in Brooklyn.) Hell by that logic, they should be building a statue of Rich Kotite outside the new Jets stadium in Jersey for burning so many timeouts in the first five minutes of every half he ever coached that the Jets were basically forced to hire Bill Parcells.

TOMMY LASORDA???!?!?!??? I mean, is anybody home? Is this part of the acknowledgment of Mets history that was promised to us? Is anybody out there keeping track of all the comments that red-blooded Met fans are making about this Dodger obsession? Seriously, go to any blog ... go to this blog and type "Brooklyn Dodgers" in the search box. You'll see all of the comments that the paying customers are making regarding the Dodgers. Check the rest of the blogs and message boards and articles that talented people are writing about how Citi Field doesn't feel like home. And now their farm team is honoring Tommy Lasorda? Who's next, Tony La Russa? Nobody in the front office sees this as a problem? Does anyone even hear it? Or are the glass walls in the Acela Club soundproof?

Will they hear you if you all go to Brooklyn on August 16th and boo Tommy like there's no August 17th? How's that for an idea???

Ooh, I know, let's induct Kirk Gibson into the Brooklyn Dodgers H.O.F. next season! He only played 8 less games than Lasorda, yet teamed up with him in 1988 to beat the Mets! Another splendid idea.

P.S. Gibson is now a coach for the Diamondbacks, who beat the Mets on Tuesday. Unfortunately, I have very little fury left for Livan Hernandez, Snoop Manuel, and the rest of the crew. I'm still wondering how Frankie Rodriguez could walk Kyle Blanks ... and, uh, how Tommy Lasorda could be honored by a Mets farm team.

Breathing a Tad Easier

When I look at the three victories that the Mets have had over the last sixteen games, none of those victories gave me the impression that they were out of the woods.

Two wins were shutouts where the lineup was dead. The other victory was a blowout with John Maine on the hill and Johan Santana looming. Tonight, however, felt different. Tom Glavine looking sharp in a blowout has a different feeling than John Maine looking sharp in a blowout, for this reason: the Mets need Tom Glavine to be successful to feel better about themselves.

And it sure looked like the Mets felt better about themselves. This game had all the hallmarks of a slump busted. It had Shawn Green driving in three runs and hitting his first home run in about the time it took for Glavine to get win number 296. It had Carlos Beltran getting his average up to .272 with two hits, two runs, two RBI's, and a long home run. It had a opposing rookie pitcher treated like...well, an opposing rookie pitcher. It had Jose Reyes making a dynamite play on a double play ball in the fourth inning, and more importantly, looking like he's still having a whole lot of fun on the bench which you don't normally find on a team winning it's fourth game in seventeen.

And I can't be sure, but I can swear I saw Aaron Heilman smile.

But Glavine is the big deal here. This blogger was disgusted by Glavine's performance on Saturday against the Yankees. This blogger is now happy after hearing Glavine say in his post game interview that he was also disgusted by that performance (I believe the word was "embarrassed"). Still, after all these seasons in the sun, Glavine still has the honest introspection to make his game better, and the competitive fire to want to go nine innings even with a 9-1 lead tonight (not to mention the extra batting practice to get himself two hits and two RBI's).

And now, Tom Glavine can discover all over again what a post game spread tastes like after a win. It just tastes different.

***

And speaking of Oakland, if Omar Minaya went and acquired the recently DFA'd Milton Bradley for a mere bag o' shells, let's just say it totally wouldn't suck.

(Editor's note: Scratch that, as Bradley has already been traded to...Kansas City? Kansas City? Boy you have to really hate somebody to trade them to Kansas Ci...Kansas City? Are the Royals like those guys who buy houses on foreclosure and then fix them up and sell them at normal market value? Kansas City? Really? At least Bradley will help the Royals get past the White Sox in the standings.)

(Kansas City???)

***

Maybe it was my minor league rehab assignment that did the trick for the Mets tonight.

Yes, my minor league rehab assignment. They sent me down to the farm on Thursday...

Despite rain delays of over two hours, a train ride home of over two hours, and being present with a Yankee fan, all was well as the Cyclones pulled one out over the Staten Island Yankees, 6-1. Of all the people still there when the game ended at midnight, I wonder how many of them were from Queens? Well, actually there was at least one more, as Cow-Bell-Man made the trip, and even let two other fans take control of the cowbell in the top of the ninth. I apologize that there's no evidence of this as my battery ran out during the second rain delay, but the camera did catch this ominous shot right before the rain delay:

Then this happened:

And because that happened, the Cyclones were nice enough to offer us free tickets to another game after waiting until 10:15 PM to start the fourth inning with the Cyclones leading 5-0. You can understand why I thought God really was a Yankee fan looking at the above picture. But dollar sodas the rest of the night allayed that fear.

(P.S. For real analysis on this game and all things Cyclones, check out Matt Himelfarb at Cyclones Nation.)