Little Mac Hangs Up His Little Macs

You've probably heard by now of the official retirement of Joe McEwing, known for being one of the positive influences in the career of David Wright, and for being all-around good guy. I knew more than one Met fan had an obsessive man-crush on McEwing.

Others know McEwing as the Randy Johnson killer, but in his career, Little Mac only hit .250 against Big Unit. Do you know (without looking it up like I did), which two pitchers McEwing have the highest batting average against with a 20 at-bat minimum? The answer will shock you.

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Thanks to all that voted in the "What do Metstradamus and Gene Simmons have in common poll." It's now an appropriate time to answer the question. Here were your choices:

• Both were thrown out of the same Ontario bar for refusing to drink. It only received 20 votes, but with Simmons a noted non-drinker, and me having been in a Toronto bar once in my life, it could have happened. But the closest I came to ever getting thrown out of said bar was when I ordered a Labatt's and pronounced it wrong. (For future reference: if you're ever in a bar with me, buying me a Labatt's will make you a friend for life.) The waitress, who was a Shannen Doherty lookalike gave me hell for it all night (or maybe it was Shannen Doherty ... 1998 seemed to be a down year for her).



• They were both refused an autograph by Dave Kingman. 22 votes. To the best of my knowledge, Dave Kingman hasn't so much as met Gene Simmons let alone refuse an autograph for him. And I never had the displeasure of having been screwed over by Kingman for an autograph. Now Pedro Guerrero ... that's another story for another time.



• Metstradamus once dated the daughter of a woman that Gene Simmons dated twenty years earlier. This received 37 votes. How cool a story would that have been?



• Both have received B-12 shots from Brian McNamee. The 47 of you who voted for this option are just plain silly.



• Both attended the same high school AND junior high school. For the 45 people that voted for this (most of which were friends and family I'm sure), give yourselves a round of applause.

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You might be missing the Australian Open for the simple fact that live action begins at 11PM on most nights. But it's an appropriate time to bust out a very special "Separated at Birth":


That would be John Maine on the left. His twin is Novak Djokovic, a U.S. Open finalist last year. When he's not busy looking like Maine, Djokovic also does a mean impression of Maria Sharapova.

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I have a solution to this Johan Santana mess: If Omar can't trade for him, just tie Santana by his ankles and put a Met jersey on him.

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Trivia answer: Joe McEwing's most successful groups of at-bats came against Tom Glavine (.348 in 23 at-bats) and, oddly enough, Greg Maddux (.318 in 22 at-bats). McEwing will now be a coach for the Charlotte Knights, a role that we all knew would probably come.

Changing The Minds Of Pretenders

"Ba de ya - say do you remember
Ba de ya - dancing in september
Ba de ya - never was a cloudy day"
-Maurice White, Charles Stepney & Verdine White

The Mets are 8-1 in September. And even that one loss was marked by a temperature of 105 and great seats.

Nope, hasn't been a cloudy day yet.

There were no clouds on Monday, a night where there were supposed to be thunderstorms. Instead, there was only thunder from the bat of David Wright, whose batting average against Tim Hudson was a whopping .226 going into tonight's game. But the emergence of Sugar Pants from the cocoon of "young player" and into the beautiful plumage of "team leader" is littered with small steps, like home runs off of not only Altanta pitchers, but good Atlanta pitchers like Hudson (tonight) and John Smoltz (last week). Wright has always been good. But the lessons learned from guys like Joe McEwing, Cliff Floyd and Carlos Delgado have been taken to heart...and good is slowly becoming great. Sure, Delgado is going to be out longer than expected, but he has passed the torch of leadership to a guy that people have been hoping would take it all along. I don't think anyone's getting that torch back.

Oliver Perez also was ringing in the key that our souls were singing with seven strong innings, blemished only by Brian McCann's two run HR in the seventh. Aaron Heilman (trust Metstradamus...trust) and Billy Wagner slammed the door with help from a sliding catch by Carlos Beltran for out 27, putting the Braves 9 & 1/2 back of first place.

It's a chop free September. Only blue talk and love.

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For your reference...

How to make a comeback:

How not to make a comeback:

Remember, NyQuil and the VMA's do not mix.