In An Alternate Universe

In an alternate universe, if Pedro Martinez was a Yankee, Joe Girardi would be complaining that it's not good baseball etiquette to work so many high counts on his pitcher during spring training ... breaks some sort of unwritten rule or something.

In an alternate universe, the flying bat shard that gave Carlos Delgado four stitches (and the equipment manager some nasty blood stains to practice on) would have been thrown by Roger Clemens, providing the smoking gun that would put him in jail for something once and for all (attempted murder).

In an alternate universe, a Molina brother (or non-brother like Gustavo) could get a green light from first to third without people screaming "Noooooooooooooooo!"

In an alternate universe, Fluff Castro would be durable, and there would be no chance of a Molina surname on the Mets.

In an alternate universe, Brian Stokes would be getting everybody out ... but nobody else in the bullpen could strike out their grandmother. So sometimes, the grass is greener in our own universe (kind of like the green on this blog today ... hey, if the Mets can wear green uniforms and throw off my retinas every March 17th, I figure I can do the same thing.)

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Hey, have you ever had a completely off the chain spring training trip much like the one I had a couple of weeks ago? Better still, have you had a spring training trip that made mine look like a walk around the block? Perhaps you shared a beer with Bruce Berenyi, or you rode the Tower of Terror with Eric Valent in Disneyworld. Maybe when you were a kid Charlie Puleo showed you how to throw a change-up at Al Lang Field, leading you to take up baseball in high school and get lit up for four years (maybe you should have learned a split fingered fastball from Mike Scott instead, eh?)

You get the picture. If you've got a story like that, then Kathy would like to hear from you. E-mail her at chasingmets@verizon.net with your story, which will be included in her next project if it's wild enough. (One caveat: if your story involves Dave Kingman blowing you off for an autograph, don't bother. Dave Kingman has blown off everybody for an autograph. Kathy's looking for happy stories involving autographs, pictures, and perhaps a game of catch with Gary Rajsich.)

Molina Sauced

Think of the most disgusting thing you've ever seen.

All right...now think about it again.

You have Monday night's Met game.

A 9-4 loss, where only three of the Giant runs were earned, was not exactly the way to show Barry Zito that he made the wrong decision in signing with the Giants instead of the Mets. No, instead Zito laughs at the Mets, and rightly so after his own fifth inning two out base hit, ugly errors by Damion Easley and Shawn Green (boys and girls if you haven't seen those errors, trust me they were ugly...like your brother after a bender...all right, like my brother after a bender) paved the way for a Rich Aurilia home run, and a second Bengie Molina home run...not in the game, in the inning, off of Lino Urdaneta who had just taken over for a flustered Oliver Perez.

Now don't get me wrong, Easley and Green deserve to sleep in their swanky San Francisco hotel rooms while hanging from their ankles after those awful plays. And it's a lot to ask Perez to be focused after not only those plays, but the earlier Bengie Molina home run, which may or may not have actually gone out, but it was so close to the fan in the front row, and I'm not as convinced as Gary Cohen that it didn't touch him, so I'm not going to get on the umpires for that one. But Ollie pulled an El Sid, as in Sid Fernandez, after that Green error. I've explained a typical Sid Fernandez game before, which is five innings of one hit, ten strikeout baseball...but a walk and an error in the sixth would cause him to lose his concentration and give up a bomb.

That is Oliver Perez. When he's on, he's on. But he has to stay out of trouble. Because if Oliver Perez gets in a jam, then run for cover because the roof is caving in and you need to be under a table or a hard surface. It's hard to really throw a lot of blame his way, because Easley and Green really let him down. But Perez has to toughen up a hair and bail out his teammates, because unfortunately, this isn't the last time a Met is going to make an error...so the situation is going to come up once again. And Perez can't afford to have the ghost of Sid haunt him too many more times. If Perez gets Aurilia out at 3-1 down, it's still a winnable ball game. Instead, the fifth inning ended at 9-1, and I was strongly considering watching a Superman special on the History channel instead of torturing myself at the prospect of watching four innings of meaningless baseball.

I...of course...chose self-torture.

(And by the way, if I never see another Molina brother catching again, it'll be too damn soon. Unfortunately, there's actually a fourth Molina brother catching in the major leagues. And Gustavo Molina isn't even related to the other three...he's just guilty by association.)

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The crack staff has uncovered some breaking news...in response to Roger Clemens' announcement from the owner's box that he is returning, the Mets planned a similar announcement upon their return home on Friday, as Bobby Bonilla was going to fly from Diamond Vision to home plate on a suspension wire to announce that he is making a grand return to the majors to boost the Mets lineup. However, during today's practice run at Shea, the wire couldn't hold Bonilla's weight, and somewhere around the infield it snapped, sending Bonilla crashing to the ground and dislocating both of his knees, shredding his calf, and knocking the smile off his face in the process.

According to inside sources, if this had happened during an actual game, Jose Reyes would have been flattened by Bonilla's massive weight, and equally massive ego. Reyes may not have made it.