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.

Never Forget The Ice Cream

This one was one for the annals.

This past trip was so jam packed that I needed more than a day to process everything and put the words down on paper. The three day spring training trip that we just embarked on was truly a Johnny Cash song.

Sunday started with a two-hour drive from the Disney Complex to Vero Beach. How do you know you're leaving Disney? When you see billboards that read "Vasectomy.com: It's Easier Than You Think!" or other gems that advertise an "Lunch Buffet/Adult Cabaret". See, Florida can be fun even outside of Disneyworld!

We got to Dodgertown at about 11AM and immediately pulled over to take pictures by the sign (like the one you see above) on the way in ... all the while thinking our rent-a-car was going to get plowed by somebody on the side of the road. Luckily, the closest thing to a catastrophe occurred when the zipper on my bag ripped apart my finger and caused me to bleed all over my Todd Zeile jersey.

Yes, you heard me, I own a Todd Zeile jersey. But more on that later.

After two days of mingling amongst Braves and Dodgers and Tigers and Indians, it was nice to be surrounded by my own kind, and that included incomparable Mets bloggers such as Matt Cerrone, Zoe Rice, and "The Coop" who I was fortunate to run into just in front of the walkway into Dodgertown, along with Stefi Kaplan later in the game. The four of them were on their own spring training odysseys, and you can read all about their adventures here and here.

Here's the thing about Dodgertown: It's freakin' awesome. Disney and Tigertown both provided unique experiences in terms of watching a ballgame. Disney provided, well ... Disney, along with the opportunity to heckle Larry Jones (yes, that loud voice you heard during the bottom of the fifth with a 1-2 count on "Chipper" was, in fact, yours truly). Tigertown provided the oldest spring training home in the majors, and the opportunity to sit on a hill of grass with about 1,000 other people. Dodgertown didn't fail in providing yet another unique experience in terms of fan enjoyment. For example, how many people can say they were almost run over by a golf cart being driven by Mariano Duncan, with Don Mattingly and Larry Bowa riding shotgun? Not many.

I, am one of those people.

But such is the experience of Dodgertown, where players walk right past you and give you high fives if you ask nicely. And if you go to the practice fields, you never know who you're going to run into. And that brings me to the story of the weekend:

It actually started on Friday, when my buddy was wearing the hat you see to the right, a St. Andrews Old Course hat, while trying to get Tommy "Come Down From The Tree" Lasorda's autograph. Lasorda was in the stands that day, willing to sign autographs but only between innings. At the end of the game, he failed in getting Tommy to sign his ball, but asked Lasorda's handler if he'd be around on Sunday when we got to Vero. The guy basically told him that if he wore that hat on Sunday, he would be recognized and given an autograph.

Fast forward to Sunday on that Vero Beach practice field, where Tommy was about to be driven away by the handler when my friend starts waving his hat yelling "Old Course! Old Course! Old Course!" True to his word, Tommy's handler stops the golf cart, takes my buddy's ball and gets it signed by Lasorda (and afterwards, drives Lasorda away, making everybody who had failed to get an autograph before even more angry that the guy who just shows up in a golf hat gets a signature at their expense.)

But fear not, there were plenty of autographs to be had ... as for one day only, fans got to go on to the field and get autographs from basically every single Dodger on the team (except Jeff Kent, who was nowhere to be found when I got there. Gee, what a surprise! Oh, and Nomar Garciaparra left early too.) I told Andruw Jones that I was happy that he wouldn't be killing the Mets nearly as much from the N.L. West. Everyone else got a laugh out of it, but I couldn't wipe the smirk-like smile off Andruw's face.

Andre Ethier even remembered it was a sinker that he hit off of Ryan Dempster to win a game in Wrigley last September. Weird.

After the scrum, I have to admit that I was too exhausted to make my way to right field to see if any Mets were doing some signing ... and considering that pretty much every big player either stayed in Port St. Lucie or was injured, there weren't a lot of players available to autograph (but one guy who my buddy was able to get was Fernando Martinez, which was pretty cool.)

Then the game started, and it started with a whimper as Martinez, Ruben Gotay, and Angel Pagan played "I got it you take it" on a pop fly which should have ended the inning but instead put two runs on Ollie Perez's spring ERA. But I couldn't be too upset over that, because I'm sure those players all saw what could happen when you pursue a pop fly too hard in spring training ... you get knocked out with a concussion.

I'll say this: I hope that Carlos Delgado's injury isn't serious ... because I could swear I saw Michel Abreu swing at everything thrown to him, including a hot dog wrapper that was thrown across home plate. In fact, when I got home, I threw an empty cup at a garbage can, and I could swear I felt the breeze of Abreu's bat swinging at it. Here's a sampling of Abreu's greatest whiffs from Sunday:



But speaking of hot dog wrappers, Dodgertown provided me with the fulfillment of a lifelong dream: I ate a Dodger Dog. I'm still not sure that it was the authentic Dodger Dog that's sold at Chavez Ravine, but as I told the vendors: If you're not sure, just tell me it is and don't destroy the dream.

And while on line for that dog, a guy who was with ESPN ... no, I don't know who ... gave me props for being the only guy he's ever seen with a Todd Zeile Mets jersey. I don't know if that means I'm special or insane. Probably the latter ... but I got a warm feeling inside much the same.

Update: Lest you thought I was kidding about the Zeile jersey, it looks like the lens of justice caught me for Straight Cash Homey, a website dedicated to finding unsuspecting folk sporting obscure jerseys, or as they put it: "an international ridiculous jersey scavenger hunt". The funny thing is, I have about 10-15 jerseys that would qualify for this website, and always thought that one day I might make this site. Alas, this is the one that gets me on the site. To whoever snapped the shot, great catch. And thanks to the anonymous tipster that found me on the site. I hope the jersey doesn't make my butt look big.

By the way, did I mention the other oddity about Holman Stadium in Vero Beach? Stadiums like Wrigley Field have pillars to obstruct your view. But Holman obstructs your view while going green at the same time: with trees right in the middle of the stands!

There was a guy at the game behind the stands who could have used a tree as took a foul ball to the head ... it hit him with such ferocity that it bounced back towards the stands and rolled under the seat next to me. It was pretty bad, but he wound up getting the ball as a souvenir.

The game ended with three Met runs in the ninth, capped by Pagan's two -out two-run single (captured below). Before the game, I wasn't convinced that there was a roster spot for Pagan. After the game, I started to come around. And now with the various injuries to Ruben Gotay, Ryan Church, Marlon Anderson, Moises Alou (especially Moises Alou), Joel Youngblood, George Theodore, and Amos Otis, Pagan may be as big a lock for a roster spot out of camp as Jose Reyes is.

But Sunday, like the rest of the weekend, really wasn't about who won or lost. It was about drinking beer, throwing down hot dogs, and experiencing baseball in an entirely new way ... not necessarily in that order. It was about getting a tan in February. It was about chatting with major leaguers. It was about acquiring a whole new appreciation for games that don't count in the standings. It was about appreciating the fact that some people go through their whole year living off the money they make for six weeks out of the year. Unfortunately, that money runs out as the Dodgers move their spring operations out of Vero Beach for good as of the 17th. It runs out for the people that served my ice cream in a plastic helmet, imploring me to think of them, root for them to get a new team so they could make a living, and never forget the ice cream.

Not anytime soon, I promise.