To Be Continued

Apologies for the short post tonight. I don't even know what to say except that when the first two runners got on off Frankie in the ninth, my thought was "how are we going to lose this one?" Sure enough ...

I got to witness it all ... six rows from the Mets dugout. And they heard plenty of me by the time they retreated to the dugout. The words: "back up the truck" were prevalent.

It was misplaced frustration. I probably shouldn't have yelled at the players, some of whom put their signature on a baseball for me before the game. You should know that none of those players who were nice enough to provide signatures were responsible for what happened on Wednesday. For the rest of you ... well, back up the truck. Since I can't yell at Snoop, or Omar, or the Wilpons, the players had to feel the brunt of that.

But Frankie, hows about a strike once in a while? Is that a lot to ask?

And Wilson, I thought you were some sort of defensive wizard. Isn't that the only reason you're in the majors? Oh that's right, I forgot about the 34 tears that Jose Reyes has in his hamstring. There's that. (Way to go, medical staff.)

Oh, and even though the only person I should blame for all of this is myself for wanting to travel all the way to Washington, DC to see the Mets lose two meaningless games in spectacularly horrendous fashion, I want my money back. I want a refund for Tuesday's and Wednesday's tickets, my one night in the hotel, my round trip bus tickets, the 3 Musketeers bar I bought at the vending machine, everything. The invoice is in the mail, headed to 126-01 Roosevelt Ave. Send my refund to Metstradamus at Wysteria Lane.

See you at our own Fan Appreciation Day. Oh wait ...

To be continued.

Baseball's Antarctica

Kristina Horner is one of a handful of bloggers who have entered a contest to be able to blog from Antarctica. Certainly, it's a unique and interesting experience, as although people are stationed there at various times, only "cold-adapted plants and animals survive there."

I don't need to enter a contest to enter a desolate region. Definitely not tonight, for at this very moment, I'm in Washington, DC. Where the locals distract themselves from the latest foible from their beloved Redskins in many ways ... beer, politics, talking politics over a beer, stalking Alex Ovechkin, and the like. For a few, brave souls, they forget about a loss to the Lions by turning to baseball in the beltway ... the Washington Nationals ... as they combine with the New York Mets to form a rivalry with a long history, fierce competition, and 193 losses combined. There may or may not be more losses in the building then there are actual fans. But for the Nationals' faithful who've arrived, they do so because they love their baseball, and they know that a bright future is just around the corner.

For the Mets' faithful who've come all the way from New York City, they do so because they need acute mental observation. Nevertheless, I'm here ... nine innings, 193 losses, one deranged blogger.

This ...

is Baseball's Antarctica. Only broken hearts and long festering angst can survive there.

Tuesday's game featured all of the broken hearts and long festering angst you're used to seeing live, except with gray uniforms. It really was a microcosm of the season: Mets have a chance to break the game open in the first inning with bases loaded and one out but only score one run instead of the three or four they should have scored. Mike Pelfrey has his bad inning. Mets have a chance to take the lead back with, again, bases loaded and nobody out in the seventh, but score nothing. ("Ooh, we have the bases loaded, who's up? Brian Schneider! Oh, let's get on that Five Guys line.") Stellar defense featuring Anderson Hernandez and Luis Castillo (and by "stellar", I mean "stellar is to abominable as Gold Glove is to Anderson Hernandez and Luis Castillo". And these are the defensive specialists, no?

Then top it off with a heartbreaking ending in which Elijah Dukes (who's defense is also "stellar" at times), makes a spectacular wall crashing catch on a ball which, if it had ten, maybe fifteen more feet on it, would have been in my lap. Seriously ... I'm the guy in the Mets jersey in the front row standing up and stopping my camera because I think this projectile his headed right for me. Seeing that a Metropolitan hit it, I should know better ... I probably would have had the youtube video of the year. Instead, I have a drunk guy in a suit putting his arm around me screaming "Meeeeeeeeets Loooooooose!!!" after saying nothing for nine innings. Awesome.

Oh, and the pointless "Let's put Frankie in down by one" move by our fearless leader which only served to keep the game close so that Dukes can win the game right in front of my nose. Rub it in, why don't ya.

The expedition continues on Wednesday.

***

Some other oddities:

A Topps lineup? Where have we seen that before?

A helmet garbage can, where have we seen that before? (I'm guessing we ripped them off on that one.)

Hey, Ray Knight! Where have we seen him before? (I'm guessing they ripped us off on that one.)

The Mets aren't the only team to honor other franchises. Never you mind that the Nationals have only been around five years.

Hey, he hasn't even played for the Nationals! Then again, Tommy Lasorda never played for the Mets yet they honored him with his own day, so what do I know?

The Best Trips Are Those Not Taken

I was going to be there this week.

Yup, Pittsburgh. It was on my calendar.

Thankfully, scheduling conflicts, booked up hotel rooms and most of all, general laziness kept me home for the Mets four game trip in Pittsburgh. So as down as I am about this team, the good news is that I could have been there to see it in person. Score one for laziness.

Because what would I have seen in Pittsburgh? J.J. Putz get hammered? Johan Santana getting no run support? Mike Pelfrey get hammered? J.J. Putz get hammered again? I could see all of that with a 20 minute train ride.

And a rainout to boot, which means that this baseball series, that the God you pray to has clearly forsaken, isn't going to end until July 2nd. A month long hell ride? Great. At least I wasn't there.

• Airplane tickets on Jet Blue: $80.
• Tickets to four games: $80.
• Four games worth of Primanti Brothers burgers: $30
• Scalped ticket to a Stanley Cup Final: $300
• Not spending any of that money and missing out on all the fun and misery of the Mets getting their carcasses beat like rented mules? Priceless.

(Y'all probably would have loved it if I was on that trip. If I had witnessed that mess personally, it might have produced the angriest, best, and probably last blog post ever on this site. I wouldn't have just died, I would have disintegrated right on the spot. Puff of white smoke so pronounced you'd have thought we had a new Pope. Carlos Beltran's post game rant? That would have looked like a Mother Goose rhyme compared to what you would have seen here.)

You know what else I would have seen? Jason Jaramillo drive home every single person on the LaRoche family tree. I believe Jaramillo's bat is on its way to Cooperstown after setting a record for driving in more family members in one game than anyone in history. It was fun listening to Gary Cohen: "Base hit for Jaramillo. Adam LaRoche scores ... Andy LaRoche scores ... Dave LaRoche scores ... Jennifer LaRoche scores ... they're waving around the crazy uncle who stuffs his bell peppers with chocolate mousse, and he'll score! And the Pirates take a 48-5 lead."

At least all this nonsense about adrenaline and roles and hand placement will stop as it looks more and more like it's a physical problem with Putz, as he's going back to New York to have his elbow checked out. That's not to say that it's a relief that he's injured, but at least he isn't going to be thrown out there anymore with a bone spur. As much as I had hoped that it was mechanical, it became increasingly clear to me that it wasn't. How it's clear to me and yet the team kept throwing him out there is, once again, amazing to me. Maybe the people that make the medical decisions were doing so on the basis of what they've seen on ER. Think about it: the show's run ends, and the Mets can't keep anyone healthy. Can we send them old episodes of Chicago Hope on DVD?

Postcard From Florida: Blasts From The Past

Two interesting happenings at Lakeland on Saturday from the Tigers 3-3 tie with the Indians at the oldest spring training facility in the country. The first one involved old friend Vance Wilson:

As he was signing autographs (and taking pictures with the likes of yours truly), we had this exchange of loose quotes:

MD: Hey Vance, we miss you back up in New York.

VW: Hey thanks man, I had some great memories up in New York ... if not the greatest years.

MD: We enjoyed having you much the same, hope you come back one day.

VW: Thanks a lot.

Nice to know Vance thinks fondly of his experience with us, yet was realistic at the same time. Wilson was ... easily ... the nicest of the autograph signing Tigers.

The second happening was during the eighth inning, when one of the multitude of Tigers fans in attendance spotted the two of us wearing our Mets gear and pointed and said:

"Hey, Mets and Tigers in the series this year!"

From your mouth to the ears of whatever deity you pray to.

Off to Vero Beach for today's Met game ... the next time you hear from me I'll be back at home base in the NYC. Enjoy the game.

Postcard From Florida: Behind Enemy Lines

Hope you're enjoying the snow back home in New York City.

Here, it reached a high of 78 in Sunny Florida ... a stark contrast from the 19 degrees we dealt with on Thursday night back at White Plains airport. That walk from the gate to the plane outdoors almost froze us before we got on the plane. I'll take 78, thanks.

I was excited when there was a good handful of Mets fans at the airport, thinking they were all coming to Orlando with me. I had thoughts of leading a chorus of "Meet the Mets" on the plane. But all the Met fans got on the plane to West Palm while we took the last flight out to Orlando for leg one of "Metstrapalooza: The Spring Training Tour".

Game one was spent behind enemy lines: Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex (at the newly christened Champions Field) for the Dodgers and the Braves. You probably missed the Braves taking advantage of the Dodgers' porous middle relief for a 10-3 victory. You also missed Dodger third baseman Andy LaRoche being the nicest guy in the world. He gave autographs to anyone and everyone. If LaRoche wasn't a third baseman I would demand that we trade for this guy right now! There were two Dodgers that were nice enough to sign baseballs for the crowd. Would you believe the other one was Rafael Furcal?

You also missed me chanting "Laaaaaaaa-rryyyyyyyyyy" at every opportunity (including the two ground balls he bobbled). I was texting people back home telling them to put on the ESPN game to try to hear me yell at him. Did any of you hear me by chance? (I think Larry himself might have heard me, right before his base hit in the fifth which signaled to me that I should probably knock it off before he gets madder).

And you just missed a conversation in the hotel room regarding Hank Steinbrenner's bitching and moaning about this being a Yankee World, to which I replied: "If this is a Yankee World, where's my spaceship to Mars?" (And now at this point, the Yankee fan in the room is talking about guest blogging for me. I'm not stupid enough to do that a second time.)

Well, it's a long drive to Lakeland tomorrow for leg two: Indians/Tigers at Lakeland, so I should probably get some sleep. It's all leading up to a reunion between me and the Mets at Vero Beach on Sunday. Hopefully, whichever star pitcher is on the hill will refrain from giving up a three run dinger to an 84-year-old man. I hate Juan Gonzalez.

In the meantime, enjoy more photos from Day One, and stop shoveling so much snow:

No, I Haven't Abandoned Ship

No, I'm not out for two weeks with a strained elbow.

No, I'm not hurting from head to toe.

No, I'm not searching for the magic scripture that will cement my status as "the blogger to beat".

Because how can I be the blogger to beat when the very thought of getting on an airplane occupies my mind to the point where I can't even center a post around a simple "Orlando Hernandez is old" joke. Right now, I'm the blogging equivalent of Rob Deer ... I can't seem to be able to put the bat on the ball. All because I've gotta ride on an airplane. I don't have a phobia or anything, I just plain don't like it very much ... especially those take-offs.

And I've got two trips this month!

But here's the good news: The first airplane ride, which is later today, is a good ol' fashioned spring training trip, culminating in a Sunday jaunt to see the beloved Mets take on the Dodgers in Vero Beach. And most likely, I'll have the trusty laptop with me. So at the very least, they'll be pictures galore to check back and check out (that is, if I still can't think of anything worth while to say.)

Enjoy. And if you're in Vero on Sunday, and you see a guy in a ratty looking Mets hat, say hello.

Bon Voyage.

Episode 555

"Sports is the toy department of human life." -Howard Cosell

Yeah, a bit off topic tonight, but the end of a 555 episode run deserves some sort of half baked solliloquy by yours truly. And I promise there will be a tie-in or two to our Metropolitan friends.

If you haven't already figured it out, tonight is the last Monday Night Football game on the American Broadcasting Corporation. Next season, the entity moves over to it's cable partner whom you might have heard of, the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.

Monday Night Football started as an experiment to see if football could make good television. It now moves over to cable because thirty six years later, television is trying to make good football.

The shift was inevitable. It was inevitable because all you started to hear about was "why are there bad games?" and flexible schedules and Dennis Miller in this new ratings driven culture that television has been pigeon-holed into ... the never ending quest for the casual fan. On September 21st, 1970, "Episode One: Jets/Browns" was competing with Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In". Now, television executives are trying to figure out ways to combine the two concepts...not just MNF, but all varieties of football and sports coverage.

Football fans didn't have to be told that Monday Night Football was an event ... it was just so. Football made it so, just as Howard Cosell and Dandy Don Meredith and Frank Gifford made it so. But it was the games that gave Cosell and co. fodder to become the show. The game and its fans made it an event. Bo Jackson, Earl Campbell, Randall Cunningham, Joe Montana, the guy who leaped from the stands to catch the extra point in Chicago, and on and on ... they made it so.

October of 1998 saw Metstradamus take a trip that included a train, two buses, a stop in a hotel that had stains on the walls and no door leading to the bathroom, and a hitched ride on the back of a pick up truck to see the Jets play in Foxboro. It was not only Vinny Testaverde's first start as a New York Jet, but the 24-14 victory was widely regarded as the game that propelled the '98 Jets to the AFC Championship game. What better place for a trip like that than Monday Night? (And imagine if the Jets had lost!) Heck it was a big enough event for the Patriots game day staff to sell t-shirts commemorating the game, a regular season game! Yet it was a Monday Night Event.

It was also on Monday Night where the Jets made the most miraculous comeback in their history. You remember that the Jets were down 23 in the fourth quarter and came back to defeat the Miami Dolphins at 1:30 in the morning. I remember having the most excellent seat in the house on the 36 yard line, 7th row behind the Jets bench, watching rookie Chad Pennington play cheerleader as Vinny led the charge to victory (and that's where I remained until the last John Hall kick). I also remember that the "Monday Night Miracle" was played in the throws of the 2000 Subway Series. And even though that was the most important sporting event that week, Monday Night Football was enough of an event that it warranted the presence of Al Leiter, who circled the field and gave an interview to whoever the sideline reporter was at the time, while his Mets were still in the throws of the Series.

My question to you is this: would as many people remember the Monday Night Miracle if it didn't take place on a Monday night?

But now, television has decided that they are going to dictate what the real "event" is, as they will no doubt hype the Sunday Night NBC game as "the game" to watch (in part because Sunday Night Football isn't going to push back Leno to one in the morning). But we've seen what can happen when television execs try to force classics instead of letting them happen. You get Dennis Miller. Now I for one loved Dennis Miller. But after the first pre-season game that he called, the higher ups got nervous and advised Miller to be more of a football announcer and less of a comedian. Great idea considering the fact that Miller was hired to be a comedian, and was a comedian by trade, but hey I don't get paid to be a consultant (I wish, they make boo koo bucks). Dennis worked his ass off throughout the season to become a more knowledgable "football guy", but sadly the experiment didn't last.

But Dennis Miller did prove that fans will watch football no matter if the announcers were trained chimps. Now the chimps would have probably done a better job than Joe Namath and O.J. Simpson did in 1985, but consider that MNF's highest rated game ever was during that season...the Miami Dolphins stopping the Bears' perfect season with a 38-24 victory. I wonder if anyone decided not to watch that game because of the announcers?

Now there was Monday Night Baseball (no doubt a response to Monday Night Football), and it lasted longer than I thought it did ... from 1972-1975 on NBC, and 1976-1988 on ABC before it was moved to Thursdays. I only remembered Warner Wolf and Mark Fidrych. But there was also John Candeleria's no hitter. There was Pete Rose breaking the National League's hit record. And there was Keith Jackson, who in the process of becoming Mr. College Football, also found time to be there when Monday Night Football started, and was also there for ABC's baseball coverage ... Game 6 of the 1986 NLCS (you remember that, don't you) being the last baseball game he ever called.

There was also ABC's reluctance to televise regular season games, some thinking that they paid extra money to baseball not to televise games before October. And yes, there was Howard Cosell...

"No amount of description can hide the fact that this game is lagging insufferably."

"The man's bigger than the game, bigger than the team, bigger than the league, bigger than the sport. They talk about a new commissioner, if I had my pick, it would be you, Bob Uecker."

And now it's FOX that is trying to re-invent the wheel by televising baseball ... and in many ways, the success of Monday Night Football was a precursor to the way FOX presents baseball, with its incessant exploding graphics, intolerable celebrity cutaways, and endless shots of fans carrying the expression of a person who is watching their spouse sink in quicksand ... all of course in an attempt by television to make great baseball.

And now once again, television tries to create great football by shuffling around the networks, and an American institution goes by the wayside. Sad, but the sports consuming public will live on ... and no doubt decide on it's own what the next classic shall be. And when it does, it will most likely spawn many ripoffs and be flooded with more advertising and branding than an episode of The Apprentice. But life goes on, and we'll adjust. Hey, if we can adjust to corporate sponsored stadium names, this will be a breeze in comparison.

Joe Willie and the Jets lose the first ever Monday Night Football game by a score of 31-21, and Vinny closes out the series (and his career) as his Jets also lose the last one by a score of 31-21. Life comes full circle.

And if you close your eyes and listen, you may hear Wayne Chrebet...a major player in episodes past but merely a spectator in Episode 555 ... perhaps arm in arm with Episode One's Joe Willie, as they're strolling down the tunnel humming the tune with many meanings to many people:

Turn out the lights
The party's over
They say that
All good things must end
Call it tonight
The party's over
And tomorrow starts
The same old thing again