Making A Difference

Funny that January is National Mentoring Month.

That explains why Darryl Strawberry was in Port St. Lucie to help mentor the rookies at the Mets mini camp.

The rookies...and David Wright.

Wright was the only major leaguer to attend the mini camp, which exists for minor leaguers, and injury rehab. He took advantage of his time with Straw and Howard Johnson to ask about being on the '86 team.

Now if Darryl really wants to be a mentor, then the best thing he can tell David Wright is that "drugs are bad...mmm'kay?"

If Mr. Mackey was around when Darryl Strawberry was a young wide-eyed rookie, Straw would be on his five year wait for the Hall in a Mets cap, now wouldn't he? Which is nice to see that Straw is around camp as a reminder of what your career can be if you fall into the trap of choosing to throw away immense talent. But I seriously hope that he answers any questions that a young player would have for him regarding that. Because Mark McGwire, for all of his blustering about being the best role model there is regarding steroids, has not done one PSA or attended one Cardinal rookie camp since. He does not embody the spirit of being a good mentor. "Daaaaaaaaar-ryyyyyyyyyyyl" can be that role model. And it would be the best thing he's ever done for the Mets organization.

But the fact that Wright is down in Florida one month early has me wondering if David Wright even needs a role model. For example, here are a couple of quotes for your consumption:

"Sometimes I sit back in New York, look at my locker and just seeing my name right there on a jersey...and it's such a privilege to put that jersey on."

"I know there have been a lot of blood and guts and sweat and tears that went in...To see some players come without that respect and without that regard for the people that played before them was tough...You should take a tremendous amount of pride in being in that position and playing for this city and this organization."

The first quote belongs to David Wright, from his recent stint at Port St. Lucie.

Do you know who's responsible for the second quote?

Why none other than Mark Messier, who had his number retired by the New York Rangers on Thursday, during National Mentoring Month. Fitting.

If the quotes make the man, then I only hope that David Wright Night is half as momentous and emotional as was Thursday night. And it will be, as long as Darryl Strawberry is as good a mentor as he was a player.

Redemption: Thy Name Is David Cone

I don't know what got me thinking about David Cone lately. After all, he's been out of baseball for a good three years now. Maybe it was all that reading about redemption. Maybe it's all the hating I do on a daily basis that got me thinking about who I actually like. Yeah, David Cone wore the uniform of the toxic sludge team out in the Bronx. And yeah, perhaps I have allowed myself, briefly, to grow a soft spot. But I have to confess this to you all...

I like David Cone...and I always did.

Well, almost always. Before the David Cone for Ed Hearn (and others) trade was considered one of the few lopsided trades to ever go the Mets way (maybe the only one) the trade read something like this: "Greatest backup catcher in the history of baseball traded for schlub."

With the pitching quintuplet of Gooden, Darling, Ojeda, Fernandez, and Aguilera setting high standards for starting pitching at Shea Stadium in 1986 (and perhaps spoiling us for the rest of time when it comes to depth), David Cone to making his Met debut in 1987 amidst a good amount of fanfare was met with a bit of skepticism and high standards. When the headline in the paper read "Cone Creamed" the next day after a 10-0 loss to the Houston Astros, David Cone was seen as an intruder to me. David Cone should not be taking starts from anybody.

I remember the game where Cone turned gave us the first bit of hope that he did indeed belong. It was during that '87 season...and Cone had been struggling so bad that the only game Davey Johnson felt he could trust him in was an exhibition game at Shea against the Red Sox. It was a completion of the "home and home" charity series started at Fenway Park during the '86 season. You could hear groans rise from the crowd when it was announced that Cone would indeed start the game...even though the game meant nothing in the standings. Fans wanted Sox/Mets in '87 to be Game 8...they wanted to see 1986 on the mound instead of the future...me included.

When Cone responded with a strong outing in the 2-0 Mets victory, the relationship between Mets fans and Cone started to thaw...and in retrospect it almost was the first game of the 1988 season for Cone, when he went 20-3 and fell short of the Cy Young award to the 59 straight scoreless innings of Orel Hershiser.

Cone got himself in trouble during the playoffs that season against L.A. when he agreed to pen a special column chronicling the playoffs for one of the local papers. He wrote (or more accurately, said to a columnist for the paper who then crafted his words for print) that the Mets looked at Jay Howell's curveball like a "high school curve ball". I for one loved it...kept the column in my wallet for years. With one snarky comment, whether intended for print or not, David Cone proved that he would have fit right in with the 1986 Mets.

The Dodgers did not love it as much, and as luck would have it, Cone was the game 2 starter in that playoff series and got killed. Afterwards, Cone stopped writing the column. Too bad. I wonder what he would have said after game 3, where Jay Howell got thrown out of the game for enhancing that "high school curve ball" with pine tar in his glove.

What people forget about that series is that Cone bounced back mightily from the column debacle to pitch a complete game in the sixth game with the Mets down three games to two before the Mets ultimately lost the series the next day. Obviously the Mets brass also forgot about that when they traded him for Jeff Kent and Ryan Thompson in 1992.

Was that trade the ultimate result of David Cone's alleged unnatural act in the bullpen (think "Williams" from "Heaven Help Us") just a day or two before his nineteen strikeout game against the Phillies on the last day of the '91 season? Who knows. Cone probably thought so. He would have been in the upper half of the morally upstanding citizen section of the clubhouse in 1993, so bad miscalculation there. But it did produce one of the more memorable Howard Stern quotes ever, when he interviewed Cone on his radio show after the 1992 Blue Jays world championship season:

"Hey isn't it ironic that David Cone plays on a team called the B.J.'s?"

If the Len Dykstra/Roger McDowell trade was the beginning of the end for the mid 80's Mets, the Cone trade was the end of the end. Between Dykstra, Nolan Ryan, and now Scott Kazmir, Cone to Toronto gets lost in the pantheon of disasters emanating from the Mets front office. But it was every bit as atrocious. Besides, it was the only trade of the four to be directly linked to a second disaster known as the Kent/Vizcaino for Carlos Baerga trade...talk about interest from hell which is compounded daily.

In many ways, all of Cone's success with the Yankees...the four rings, the perfect game, even the one out that Cone got in game 4 against Mike Piazza when it seemed the Mets had the Yankees on the ropes...the Mets deserved it. They deserved every twist of that knife for pulling off the unthinkable trade. So unthinkable that the Mets had to bring him back in 2003 for an excorsistic cleansing of the soul. Of course, Art Howe was the priest so there was many an evil spirit left after Cone hung 'em up for good in a Met uniform.

Redemption is a wonderful thing. It was good for Cone. Maybe I need to be redeemed for the fact that I still hold a place in my chicken soup-less soul for a man who wore the battleship gray of the New York Yankees. I don't know. I do know that many a man who traded him away could use a little redemption themselves.

Changing The Game

Bruce Sutter was nasty.

There really isn't any other way to say it when you talk about Bruce Sutter and his split fingered fastball. And when you realize that it was Sutter that was the guinea pig for a unique pitch that would soon be a staple in the baseball world, you understand why Sutter is in the Hall of Fame.

Most players in the hall of fame had stats that were not to be ignored. Others changed the game towards a different direction. King Kelly originated the hit and run. Players like George Wright, Oscar Charleston, and Jimmy Collins revolutionized their position. And Edd Roush was the forefather of the salary holdout.

Bruce Sutter brought the split fingered fastball into the fold...long before Roger Craig taught the pitch to every Tiger pitcher in 1984 which was probably the driving force behind that championship (and the staff's subsequent arm problems later in life), and long before Mike Scott hid behind the beauty of the pitch for a darker calling. And for that, Sutter is a worthy candidate to be the Hall of Fame class of 2006.

Now if you played word association with me, then in addition to finding out that I need extensive therapy, you'll learn that "Bruce Sutter" equals "Gary Carter".

Huh?

Sutter came to the Braves in 1985 as a free agent, hoping to bring the Braves back to the right side of .500, and to give them one dominant closer, rather than the three headed monster of Donnie Moore, Steve Bedrosian, and Gene Garber. Meanwhile, Carter also changed teams for the '85 season, being traded to the Mets for Hubie Brooks, Mike Fitzgerald, Herm Winningham and Floyd Youmans. And while Gary Carter's opening day dinger against Neil Allen signaled his New York arrival, his hall of fame matchup with Sutter signaled the change of direction in two baseball entities.

On May 7th, Sutter was brought in to face Carter with the bases loaded in the 8th and a 1-1 tie after an intentional walk to Keith Hernandez. Now Neil Allen was OK and all, but this was Bruce Sutter we were talking about here. Nobody hit Bruce Sutter. And the Mets didn't have the built in euphoria of opening day to fall back on. Something special would have to happen for Shea to rock...and rock it did.

Gary Carter hit a grand slam.

And there it was...finally, a Met acquisition getting a big hit off of a legitimately nasty pitcher in a big spot as the Mets went on to win the game 5-3. Finally, proof positive that Carter wasn't Ellis Valentine or George Foster or Jim Fregosi. Proof positive that the 1984 Mets weren't the ultimate tease...a flash in the pan. And unfortunately for Sutter, well, instead of his infamous split finger fastball falling like a penny off the Empire State Building, on May 7th it was the 1985 Braves (66-96), and Sutter's career that went downhill.

But today, it's Sutter's hall of fame career that Carter sent downhill.

Undertenants Forever

It's hard to write a blog about the New York Mets during the winter months, and not tie it in to the Mets football brethren, the New York Jets. After all, the Jets were undertenants to the baseball club at Shea Stadium from 1964-1984. You see the Jets have had plenty of practice being the undertenants. For years the Jets played the first six games of their schedule on the road because the Mets did not want them to chew up the baseball field (the pourous infield of the early Mets did a great job of that by themselves, thank you.) The Jets even had to practice in Flushing Meadow Park, with the rocks and the gravel and the trees for goal posts.

Jets owner Leon Hess wanted a better facility (and cleaner bathrooms), so he went from being the Mets' tenants, and actually became the little brother of a competing football franchise, the New York Giants, as they moved into the Meadowlands. They did this, like Felix Unger, with the promise that one day they would return. Years later, after a failed attempt at a West Side palace, the Jets signed a deal with the Giants to build a new shared stadium and play as "partners" for ninety nine years.

The New York Jets...Just Renting For Over Forty Years, And Counting!

Of course, the Jets picking up shop and moving the whole operation to the Garden State means that the Met fan base will no longer be automatically linked to the Jets fan base, as it was from the 60's and 70's, all the way up until now. Way back when, if you were a Mets fan, more than likely, you were a Jet fan. Geographically, it just made sense. Now of course, it's all gone. To be a Met fan growing up now is to be a Met fan no longer automatically linked to another football team.

But with head coach Herman Edwards leaving the Jets (because the Jets can't seem to fire anybody fast enough before they leave), they're once more linked to the Mets. Because the last time the Mets were involved with a head coach (they call 'em managers in the summer) it was Lou Piniella who was angling his way off his employer, and Jose Reyes playing the part of the fourth round draft choice.

This resulted in Art Howe.

We know how that turned out.

Today, Jim Haslett visits with the Jets to talk to them about their vacant head coaching position. Jim Haslett...a coach with one less win than the coach who's leaving.

Jim Haslett: Autumn's Art Howe.

So how about hiring Art Howe to coach the Jets? How about being the Mets' little brother one last time and reaching towards the baseball world for their next head coach? It certainly would be a more prudent choice than Jim Haslett. Art Howe will come cheap and we all know that's what Woody Johnson wants. What? You say Art Howe doesn't know football so that would be silly? He hardly knew baseball! And he lucked his way into a good 65 wins a season. So what exactly is the difference here?

Because with Art Howe, you know the Jets will battle...because Howe will tell you so.

You play...

to keep...

it close.

Hello?!?

Low Risk, No Reward?

What we've learned so far this offseason is that Omar Minaya is extremely adept at making the moves that are no-brainers, with a high level of difficulty. Carlos Delgado and Billy Wagner were must haves, but not slam dunks. And he got them.

We are also learning (not that we weren't warned) that some moves that aren't necessarily no-brainers...you know, the ones that can be classified in the "shrewd" category, aren't shrewd at all, but more in the baffling category.

Which brings us to Bat Flip Boonie.

Yeah sure...low risk, high reward blah blah blah. But you think Bret Boone was signed to play for Tidewater?

Wait, Brian Daubach...Benito Santiago...Jose Offerman...Mike DiFelice...mmmmm.

Boonie might like Norfolk in the summer.

But with the lineup you have, and at the one position that you have two decent if not sure-fire prospects, along with the "elephant in the punch bowl" known as Kazuo Matsui, why oh why is there a need to get not only an old second baseman, but an old second baseman who is fried? Oh, and there's those pesky steroid accusations.

Maybe Omar is proving to be a distant descendant of Jeff Van Gundy...who refuses to play rookies under any and all circumstances.

***

Now on to the other Met transaction of the day.

If Jae Seo's value had indeed risen to the height where he and Kazuo would have been able to get Danys Baez, then you would have called Omar Minaya a genius, and the deal would have been a steal. So it's dissapointing when after hearing about Danys Baez, Seo is wheeled to the Dodgers for two lesser lights (than Baez) for the bullpen. But it says that Seo's value really was never that high to begin with. And that will teach me to take too much stock into rumors.

The deal lessens the glut at starter and fills out the bullpen with younger guys. But it doesn't fulfill the need for a lefty set up guy for the pen...instead one goes the other way (albeit a guy who's been in the minors for 32 years but that's a minor detail). Sanchez pitched well in big spots for Los Angeles. His overall numbers in 2005 are ordinary in terms of WHIP but he does have close to a strikeout per inning. He could be the eighth inning guy for the Mets and the good part about him is that he'll be more comfortable and accepting in that role than Baez would be. The downside: not only does he have a funny name, but last May he threw his glove at a high chopper and forced the umpires to award the batter third base. Good to know the Mets' baseball IQ skyrockets.

And as for Steve "Sub" Schmoll...aren't sidearmers and submariners supposed to be a change of pace? Well, add Schmoll to Chad "Blueback" Bradford and that's not changing the pace. That's setting the pace, isn't it? If the Mets played their home games in the Indian Ocean that would be nice. But Shea Stadium, last I checked, is at sea level.

***

The Mets have offered the Kansas City Chiefs a draft choice and a ham sandwich to put Rick Down on the same outbound train as Herman Edwards.

The Trade Expands

It seems that this alleged trade involving Miguel Tejada, the Mets, Manny Ramirez, the Orioles, and Danys Baez has gotten out of hand.

So here's what my sources have been able to ascertain: The Devil Rays would get Aaron Heilman and Jae Seo, The Red Sox would get shortstop Miguel Tejada from Baltimore and center fielder Joey Gathright from the D-Rays. Baltimore would get Julio Lugo from Tampa as its shortstop and possibly starters Kris Benson from the Mets and Matt Clement from the Sox. And then Manny Ramirez would go to the Mets.

But it doesn't end there.

The Red Sox would then deal Tejada to the Cubs for Mark Prior and Rich Hill, and then the Mets would trade Manny Ramirez and Lastings Milledge to the Angels for Vladimir Guerrero. The Angels then would turn around and wheel Ramirez and Darin Erstad to the Kansas City Royals for a package including Jeremy Affeldt, Mike MacDougal, Zack Greinke, Billy Butler, the fountains, and George Brett's consulting services.

The Royals, not being able to afford Ramirez, would then trade him to the Texas Rangers for Brad Wilkerson, Adam Eaton, and Gerald Laird. The Royals would then trade Eaton and Laird to the Nationals for Alfonso Soriano, granting Soriano's wish to return to the American League, filing it under the category of "be careful what you wish for". Texas would then wheel Manny to the Milwaukee Brewers for Carlos Lee, Derrick Turnbow, and the Miller Brewery. But league sources say that Bud Selig would veto that trade due to the fact that it involves too much beer. So in the next part of the trade, Manny would then go to Arizona with Orlando Hudson and Shawn Green going to the Rangers, and Conor Jackson going to the Twins for Torii Hunter.

Here's where it gets complicated.

The Diamondbacks would then turn around and trade Manny to the Astros for Adam Everett, Chris Burke, Andy Pettitte, and the foghorn. Houston would then trade Ramirez to the Phillies for Bobby Abreu and Tom Gordon, righting a wrong they committed many moons ago. The Phils, in a three way trade would then trade Manny to the Philadelphia Eagles, with Terrell Owens going to the Indiana Pacers, and Ron Artest going to the Phillies, (where he will no doubt proceed to get himself suspended for the season after he beats Santa Claus to within an inch of his life). The Eagles would then trade Manny to the Houston Texans for the number one draft pick and the rights to USC running back Reggie Bush. The Texans would then trade Manny to...



The New England Patriots...for Corey Dillon, Troy Brown, and three fifths of the offensive line.

So everybody wins. Manny can stay in Boston, and get his wish to go unnoticed because nobody in Boston pays attention to the Patriots until Super Bowl week anyway.

My sources tell me that this trade could be announced within the week...except if it's not.