Appetizing

Some of you have been offended by the puking pumpkins and the ugly fish. Never let it be said that I don't listen to your concerns. So to find the picture that truly speaks 1,000 words about the Mets 4-1 victory over the Marlins, which included a key hit by Carlos Beltran, another gutsy ... if not crisp ... outing by Oliver Perez, and a huge cushiony home run by Carlos Delgado, one must go to what they know. And that win was tasty.

Better than puking pumpkins, eh? I mean, who doesn't like cheeseburgers?

Oh, right ... vegetarians. Don't worry, I have something for you too.

Whichever way you want to order, this win was appetizing ... mouthwatering even. And before you start thinking "you know, Metstradamus is reaching here with the food references. There's no way that food can be relative to Tuesday night's victory, can it?"

Well, food is relevant not just to be pleasing to your eyes, but it plays on the words that Chris Russo gave us on Tuesday during his ... "show". I paraphrase:

"You know, when a team like the Marlins plays for its dinner, they can be dangerous."

But when a team like the Mets play for their dinner, children go hungry? What does that mean?

It's simply more of the same negative slant that our friends at WFAN drive time deliver. When the Mets win a game the tone is "Yeah, good win, let's not get crazy." Marlins win, it's "Oh, they're scrappy and hungry and they like food. Shame on the Mets for not liking food. The Mets don't care about starving children."

(Come to think of it, that sounds like some of our esteemed commenters. Hmmmmmm.)

Next, Mad Dog will tell you that Oliver Perez must hate food because he hadn't won a game in a month before Tuesday night. He must stink. No wonder he's so skinny.

***

They say that John Maine has a mild strain in his rotator cuff. I guess that's good news since he may go on Sunday. But I tend to think that where rotator cuffs are concerned, no strain is mild.

***

The final nine games against Atlanta will be Teixeira-less, as the great Atlanta sell-off has begun. How are your World Series picks looking?

Teixeira can now channel his energy towards beating the Yankees in the playoffs.

Touchdown Jinx

Excellent. Sports Illustrated's jinx is alive and well.

It figures that the Mets would celebrate the return of the New York Jets by putting up a touchdown against the team formerly known as the New York Giants ... and more importantly, against starter Tim Lincecum.

There's probably something perverse about saying that this win might be just as important if not more so than the three wins against the Phillies. Tuesday night was a classic letdown game for the Mets, first home game after an important and/or successful road trip. To have this version of that game go against a pitcher such as Lincecum would normally spell double trouble. It's kind of like when a pitcher coming off injury would throw seven innings, but the real test is how he feels the next day.

This next day, the Mets felt fine. Mike Pelfrey felt more than fine (think how good he would be if Rick Peterson was fired last year). And coupled with another Phillies loss, the Mets are all of a sudden just three half games behind the division lead. Best part: Carlos Beltran (three run dinger in the first inning) is slowly simmering and looks like he could be at the starting gate of his latest hot streak. There's no better time for Carlos to rev up with Ryan Church on the DL again with persistent migraine headaches (sounds better than concussion symptoms, doesn't it?)

And speaking of which, this latest run has basically clinched what Omar Minaya is going to do the rest of the way ... he may not buy, but he's certainly not going to sell. There really isn't much that Omar can do going forward with the bulk of the AA and AAA prospects gone in the Santana deal. If Carlos Beltran stays hot, he may not have to get anybody. But if Omar really wants to up the ante with the Phillies, who were denied in their pursuit of CC Sabathia, then he has to at least kick the tires on somebody like Adam Dunn. Because if Omar really has learned from his previous ways, then he's not going to continue to trust that Moises Alou all of a sudden has a healthy streak in him.

But I digress, for now. For now, the Mets are hot, Tim Lincecum is not, and Chris Russo is crying tears. This is a man who said on Tuesday that he'd rather win one out of three from the Mets and have Lincecum be a dominant winner than win two of three and have Lincecum get tagged. Hopefully, he gets neither.

***

Unfortunately, I need to note that the night started out with a fumble, as "Jets Night" wound up as a small disaster. The "meet and greet" with former Jets players, which was to celebrate the Jets time at Shea Stadium, was due to start at 5:30. At 5:40, the line to get into the tent at the picnic area hadn't moved, and wouldn't move until about 5:45-5:50. The Jets then signed autographs until about 6:30, when they had to go to the field for their pre-game ceremonies ... introductions, the removal of the number, and the first pitch.

Here's where whoever was handling the event blew it: When the players left the tent in the picnic area, everyone still waiting on line were told (via megaphone) that the players would return after their on-field ceremonies to continue signing autographs. The wait lasted 45 minutes, but instead of the players returning, it was official looking people with stacks of stuff and a big jar full of pins.

Needless to say, people were pissed. And Jets fans are not the people you want to get pissed off at you. I kept asking the officials if it was "bad news" ... they gave me that look that said "yes it is ... we just can't verbalize it yet".

The Mets did their best to appease the people who waited the 45 minutes only to not get any autographs, by giving everyone four free tickets to a future Met game, and a pin. Okay, but they were giving them out in two different lines, and one of the guys tried to kick me out of the tent after getting my tickets because I wanted to go to the other line to get a pin, like I was going to keep going from line to line so I could get 60 tickets to this game and sell them on eBay and then get my own infomercial on how I got rich and you can too. I just wanted a freakin' pin!

They relented. I got my free pin to go with my free tickets. Would you believe the Mets had loads of these pins lying around for just such an occasion?

It's hard to say who exactly was to blame for this ... usually in these autograph situations, there are always some people near the end of the line who are going to go home unhappy. And four free tickets is a pretty decent way to say "we're sorry". I just wish there was more information on the Mets/Jets websites to begin with on when picnic area seating opened, and exactly what was going on and what time the thing was going to start (and it would have helped to have it start on time) instead of just saying that it was a "meet and greet". I wound up neither meeting, nor greeting, anybody. But I did get to sit in the Shea picnic area for the first (and probably last) time.

I'm only hoping that it isn't a sign of what the Jets' actual season is going to be like.

Former Super Bowl winning Jets John Schmitt and Emerson Boozer, who for some reason was wearing a Blair Thomas era jersey. Blair Thomas never played at Shea Stadium.

Don't Give This Sucker No Statue ... Give Him Guts!

All right, break it up you two.

Remember when Clubber Lang crashed the statue dedication for Rocky Balboa in Rocky III, and he let loose Mickey's secret that he was setting Rocky up with set-ups and bums to protect him? And Rocky didn't want to believe Clubber, but it was true?

That's what this Reyes/Hernandez tiff reminds me of.

When Hernandez (playing the role of Clubber) said on the air: "enough babying of Jose Reyes", he was right. When Jose Reyes (our Rocky Balboa) got pissed off, he was right too. So everybody's right and there's no need to take sides.

Look, Snoop Manuel came out and said that he wanted to Luis Castillo to be a more positive influence on Reyes. So some of the evidence of what Keith is saying is out there for us to see. And I'm willing to bet that Keith, as a broadcaster, sees other things behind the scenes with the team that we don't see ... it's that simple. And as a former player, he interprets things in a way that we have we have no chance of knowing. That's why he was hired, and that's why he's regarded as one of the best at what he does. Think about it: what do you think everyone has been talking about when Reyes slumped last season: "Oh, too bad Jose Valentin isn't around like last season", and other things to that effect. So, Keith basically spoke the truth ... just the same way he spoke the truth in '02 when he said that the team had quit. The team did quit! But Hernandez was made to apologize because Mike Piazza got all sensitive (it remains the one thing on Piazza's Met career I have an issue with). So Keith is absolutely right on this.

Besides, if Jose Reyes is indeed being babied, and I think there's enough evidence out there to prove he is to some extent, then you can't blame Hernandez, who lived through the Gregg Jefferies saga, for disagreeing with that tact. The Mets hired Keith to provide not only an ex-ballplayers' perspective, but his perspective. If people don't like that, then maybe we should get automatons to provide color commentary.

Jose Reyes? He's right too. Reyes should reject the notion of being treated like some sort of child who constantly needs a baby sitter or a mentor. He's 25 years old. And while 25 doesn't mean that you know everything (Look at me: I'm 37 and I know nothing), 25 with five seasons in baseball should mean that you have to be allowed to make your own mistakes and own up to them at some point. Reyes has generally done that. I don't mind Jose Reyes throwing tantrums. Reyes should be allowed to throw tantrums after plays like that, like most ballplayers have done at one time or another. I've thrown some doozies with a plastic bat and a metal chair, and again: note that I'm 37 years old. Here's the difference: I don't throw these tantrums in front of 57,000 like Reyes did against last Sunday ... I go to an office, shut the door, and have at it. When you don't wait until you go to the dugout or clubhouse to throw your tantrum, you give the New York media carte-blanche to make any assumptions they want ... and when you're a New York Metropolitan, the assumptions from the media are generally going to take the form of the worst one possible, like say the one about showing up Carlos Delgado.

Deserved? In some parts yes, because of what happened last year and so far this year. In some ways no, merely because even Mets deserve the benefit of the doubt until the facts come out, whether the team is in a winning streak or a losing streak. I don't subscribe to the Chris Russo school of "nothing you do is right unless you're winning ten in a row." (Can't Snoop Manuel be correct for going out and defending Carlos Beltran even though the Mets lost the game 11-0?) But that's the way it is in this city: When you're 10 games ahead, stories like this don't come out until years later as an anecdote to illustrate how intense Jose Reyes is. But when you're five games behind, stories like this make the front page that week and get talked about on ESPN round tables as fodder for the contrarians like Skip Bayless. It's just the way it works.

Oh by the way, playing the role of Mickey is Mets management, who are the ones that are taking great pains to make sure Reyes is comfortable. And you know as well as Keith does that babying and favoring fosters resentment. And that's the best reason not to baby a player: because resentment and division are exactly what the media hopes for to go and write the obituaries and win their Pulitzers.

I realize that by merely writing about this, I give the story more legs than it deserves (not that anyone actually reads this). But I truly believe that all parties are right on this and should continue to believe that they are. If anything, I would say that Jose needs to realize that Keith is merely doing his job, and would never be the announcer he is if he was worried about feelings or self censorship when it comes to team matters. And Keith probably needs to accept that in sports parlance, 22 years is a long time in baseball when you're talking about attitudes and mindsets of major league players. In other words: They don't make 'em like they used to. But I have a feeling that if Keith looks deep down that he'll realize that Jose Reyes, tantrums and all, is more like Keith Hernandez than we all think.

Murder Is Never An Answer

I swear to you that this is a direct quote from the Mike and the Mad Dog show at about 5:35 PM today:

"There's not a solution in sight first half of the season ... Maybe there is in July, maybe in July they can get a first baseman, they could kill him, they could bench him, they can do a million things then." -Chris Russo, on what the Mets can do regarding Carlos Delgado and his slump.

They could kill him?

Damn, I know baseball has an anti-trust exemption but I don't think it covers murder.

They could kill him?

Really?

Gee, I guess that first day that Delgado gets a rest, the SNY announcers will have something to speculate about besides "Is he hurt" or "Is he fatigued" or even "Is he stuck in traffic". No, now the boys in the booth will actually have to wonder if he's dead.

They could kill him?

Where exactly would they hide the body?

And if the Mets are in fact allowed to use this option, how many of these type of transactions are they allowed in a season? Would the Mets have to put Delgado on waivers before they take him out back and kill him? In that case, Ruben Gotay should be relieved that the Braves picked him up off of waivers before the Mets resorted to the "Chris Russo Rule".

Somebody who's not as technologically deficient as I am needs to be a You Tube Hero and get this quote to the masses ... stat! Meanwhile, I'll be busy laughing my head off. Thanks, Dog.

In True John Franco Fashion...

Boy, that ninth inning scared the Orosco out of me.

Somewhere, the ghost of Randy Myers is having a good chuckle as Country Time decided to pull the ultimate escape act, as he loaded the bases only to get the next two batters to provide three outs in a 4-3 Mets thriller.

Maybe, as much as Chris Russo gets on my nerves, maybe he's right when he says that there's been something missing from the 2007 Mets as opposed to the 2006 Mets. While it's hardly a fair statement considering that the 2006 Mets were like that perfect regular season storm that comes once in a generation, it may have been true up until tonight.

You see when Orlando Hernandez was victimized by a two out walk to Willie Harris that turned into three Braves runs, it seemed that that something missing was going to remain missing, with Atlanta winning yet another series from the Mets.

But in the battle of trade deadline acquisitions set in the backdrop of National League East battle, Castillo defeated Mahay to get the Mets even with the Braves at three apiece in the seventh. You must understand how much pressure was packed in that at-bat...the difference between John Schuerholz being anointed a genius for all time, and Omar Minaya saying "Ha, take that you Liberty Media Slut!" (Honestly, I don't even know what that means.) And considering my admitted Luis Castillo man crush, it held higher stakes than even that. If Castillo strikes out, it's my butt on the line here.

Wrong again. Castillo ties the game, and takes the first step on the road to Brave slaying.

Then there's Moises Alou...the walking conundrum. Sure, we want David Wright and Carlos Delgado to hit. But we also want Moises Alou to hit with the bases empty, where he stood at .338 this season with three of his four home runs coming in...and not with runners in scoring position where he is at .167 entering Wednesday, including a rally killing double play on Tuesday. It's the catch 22 of life, and we're stuck with it. Even when he does hit a home run his reward is Jose Reyes making fun of his swing. What a drag it is getting old.

Billy Wagner pulling one out of the John Franco playbook though, is no drag. Loading the bases with nobody out and still coming out on top is exciting, exhilarating and exhausting at the same time. Maybe that's what we've been missing...a mind-blowing escape act that you can put in the win column.

And on your cardiology report.

He Called Keith A Bum

The fan that took his anger out on Keith Hernandez tonight (you know, the one that Keith pointed out via SNY's cameras and basically made him a star) and called him a bum had some misguided anger issues.

He should have been facing the field when he made that comment.

Many things went wrong for the Mets tonight, not the least of which was Oliver Perez, who was hit hard and knocked around in Tuesday night's 7-3 shellacking by the Braves. Certainly not a good way to start this huge series. But here's a question: Does it worry you in the least that Perez has had his velocity drop 3-4 miles an hour as the announcers pointed out tonight? Eh tu, dead arm?

I don't know what on Moises Alou is dead. He's certainly been killed lately...whether it be in the outfield miscommunicating with and crashing into Lastings Milledge, or banging into outfield walls. But I don't appreciate that Alou returns the favor by killing Mets rallies...first in the fourth inning grounding into a double play with runners on first and third, scoring a run but wiping the bases clean in front of Shawn Green's single which Alou rendered harmless, and then again in the sixth with Carlos Delgado on first base, killing a rally which would have blossomed after David Newhan sparked a two run fifth inning rally with a triple. When a David Newhan RBI gets wasted, and he has...like...five all year (that was just a guess, but when I checked that total to be accurate, lo and behold he actually has five RBI's this year), you're not doing your job. And Moises Alou didn't get the job done on this night.

But whether they're hurt or not, they get no sympathy from me because not only of the magnitude of Tuesday's game, but because the worst part about this is that you know that the Met bashers (Chris Russo and the like) are going to have a field day on Wednesday "Oh, the Mets can't beat the Braves, they stink". Just another reason to put "Air Bud" in your DVD player instead of watching the YES Network during afternoon drive time.

But if you didn't see the game, if you just heard about it somewhere and read the score, you missed this classic exchange between our announcers:

Keith: "I don't drink anymore."

Ron: "You mean during the broadcasts, right?"

Of course, when the announcers providing commentary on their alcohol intake and pointing out heckling fans provide the largest smiles of the night, that's a problem.

***

Congratulations are in order for Barry Bonds' record breaking home run. Not necessarily for Bonds, but for the guy who caught the historic ball who, among a sea of Giants supporters who have been waiting for a chance to not only see the big home run, but catch it and make some money, came down with it. He deserves a lot of credit for his accomplishment.

He deserves a lot more credit because that fan was wearing a METS JERSEY!!! (And a Mets t-shirt underneath. Great job making sure the Mets were a part of two milestones this week.) Great job, Matt Murphy...who by the way is from Queens, NY! Queens! Giants fans invested their whole lives in following Barry Bonds' career, and the guy who catches the money ball is a Mets fan from Queens! He was on his way to Australia, he buys a ticket to this game on the way down, and the money he will probably get for selling that ball just paid for his trip.

Barry Bling

I guess we'll just have to rotate one set of karma at a time.

The Mets finally have Armando Benitez's number. And after all that Met fans have been through with Blow-nitez, the Mets owning him is just right.

The Mets, if justice were to come all at once, would have Barry Zito's number already. And not because he took more money to sign with the Giants. Because it really doesn't matter that he chose the money and the short move over the immediate chance to win the pennant and World Series. That's his prerogative and I'm not going to begrudge him that.

But this nonsense that Zito came out with regarding the Mets being "arrogant", and spinning it to sound like that was a main factor in him signing with the Giants is so ridiculous that if it Barry was to do any more spinning I'd have to tie myself to the couch to keep from hitting the wall. Sure, I wanted the Mets to open the checkbook as much as anyone, but the Giants blew the Mets out of the water. And maybe the Mets were arrogant, although I thought that the Mets dragging their heels on the negotiations was a more deciding factor than any arrogance (and considering the performances of John Maine and Oliver Perez this season, turns out that Omar Minaya and the Wilpons had every right to be arrogant).

But the largest factor started with a 1 and ended with a 26...as in the number of millions in Barry's bank account after these seven seasons are up. For him to pretend that it's not reaks of some major hypocrisy on his part...and some major spin doctoring as well. He took the money, so bless his heart. Honestly, if I was left-handed and could pitch like Barry Zito, I don't know what I would do. What I hope that I wouldn't do is insult everyone's intelligence and make something like "arrogance" a factor more major than making enough money to add a movie theater or a regulation size hockey rink to the back of the house.

So in that respect, if karma was one hundred percent right this season, the Mets would have hit Barry Zito as hard as say, Zito's former teammates did when he faced them. Instead, Zito twirled seven scoreless as the Mets were shutout for the first time all year. Instead, karma will just have to come one step at a time. So we'll take solace in the fact that the Mets have the best record in the National League, and Zito's team is not only a game under .500, but still employs Armando Benitez...although you wouldn't know it from his conspicuous absence in a save situation tonight.

***

(Editor's note: "The Met Fan" booed Guillermo Mota upon his return, before he threw two scoreless innings tonight. Happy, Chris? Probably not.)

Balk Balk! Like The Chicken You Are!

The real Carlos Delgado is back. The one we all know and love.

The real Armando Benitez is also back. The one we all know and love...to hate.

Combine the two, and you have a recipe for a sweet night. And oh, how sweet it is.

Sometimes, karma lies dormant for a while. We had all hoped for this the minute Armando left the Mets...hoped for the Mets to have his number from the start. Instead, he went 12-for-12 in save opportunities against the Flushing Nine in 2004, and we all wondered what the Mets did to deserve that.

Oh that's right, they hired Art Howe, signed Shane Spencer and Karim Garcia instead of Vladimir Guerrero, and traded Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano. Now I remember.

But that bit of karma has been in someone's hip pocket for a long time, just waiting for the right time to be played. And between Lastings Milledge, and a gaggle of walks, it has indeed been well played over the past couple of seasons. But if there was a quintessential way to defeat the man we affectionately call "Blow-nitez", two balks and a walk-off bomb by Diesel was it. Especially after Armando threw his infield under the bus after a recent game against the Rockies:

"I'm doing my job, I got three groundballs and what happened?" Benitez asked. "We had an opportunity to win the game. How many times we got somebody on base and nobody moved him? Somebody had to pay and the person that paid was me. He hit a good pitch, a slider away, and a sinker."

Amazing that when it's someone else's fault, our friend Benitez is willing to expound to reporters afterwards. Not like when he was here right?

Oh, here's Armando's pearl of wisdom tonight...after he had nobody to blame but himself:

"I lost the game."

Yes, you most certainly did. Here's what Omar Vizquel should have said afterwards:

"I'm doing my job, I dive and rob Julio Franco of the game winning hit in the ninth, and Kevin Frandsen makes a great play on the barehand stab of my flip and what happened?" Vizquel asked. "We had an opportunity to win the game. How many times we got somebody on base and nobody balked him all the way home in the first eleven innings? Somebody had to pay and the person that paid was me."

Maybe Vizquel can put that in his next book whenever he decides he wants to piss off another teammate.

Tonight, for the first time since his departure, I can truly say I'll miss Armando Benitez when he leaves Shea Stadium. I'll miss his karma.

***

Speaking of members of the Hall of Hate, I had high hopes for one of them today, as Mike Francesa started out the "Mike and the Mad Dog" show at Shea Stadium by warning about revisionist history regarding Roger Clemens, and how people are making him out to be this savior after making his appearance in the owner's box at Yankee Stadium announcing his comeback. And how Clemens has never been a savior in his Yankee history, only a mercenary.

Loved it. Francesa was making sense.

Then, inevitably of course, he blew it.

Somehow, of course, he and his partner Russo called Met fans hypocrites for booing Barry Bonds and holding protests while cheering Guillermo Mota.

To clarify, Mr. Francesa, a group of fans at Boycott Barry organized the protests with the blindfolds. Somehow, Francesa associated this with "the Met fan" as Francesa liked to refer to us as repeatedly, as our protest. It wasn't our protest. The fans in the park on Tuesday played along (as evidenced by the crowd being somewhat subdued until Bonds came to the plate in the tenth), but it certainly wasn't organized by Mets fans. But hey, why let a little research get in the way of painting "the Met fan" with a broad brush.

And by the way, if you gentlemen are going to get on "the Met fan" for cheering Guillermo Mota upon his return (and if you see the small sample on my current poll question, it's basically split down the middle between cheers and boos...although I'm surprised more people didn't click the chicken and beer option), then "let's be fair", as you like to say Chris, and get "the Giant fan" for cheering Barry Bonds the way they do. Why not get on them, even though Giants fans actually have good reason to love him, because steroids or not, he saved your franchise from being moved to Tampa Bay in the early nineties.

Go ahead Chris, be fair.

Oh who am I kidding, this is a guy who's good friend Mike North got a shot at the Imus time slot on Tuesday morning, and according to someone who actually heard his show this morning, responded by calling the Mets "red-headed stepchildren". In reasoning that only proves that he's Russo's friend, since the Yankees got all the coverage in the morning newspaper, while the Mets got none, "nobody cares about the Mets."

...

...

THE METS DIDN'T PLAY ON MONDAY THAT'S WHY THEY WEREN'T IN THE NEWSPAPER YOU NASAL DISCHARGE!!!

I know, I shouldn't care what any of these people say or do, but I can't help myself. Watching these guys are like a drug, or a relationship that's a bad idea but somehow you can't break free from. Besides, restraint is no fun...for me, or for you.