Friday linkfest

1. Top ten calamities for which global warming was blamed. (via HotAir)

2. Get your Koran on your cell phone, courtesy of . . . an Israeli company?

3. Yankees offer bleacher seats for 25 cents for exhibition openers. Scalpers begin drooling immediately.

4. The only thing better than a huge foul-smelling flower is its Latin name. (via Ace)

5. Indicted lawyer was "the Houdini of impersonation and false documents." Bonus: I met the guy back in the early 1980s but haven't seen him since then.

Click here to read more . . .

Grow up!

I have a joke for you that I just made up.

Q How many Phillies players does it take to screw in a light bulb.

A Two. One to install the light bulb and one to talk trash about Jose Reyes.

The Phillies finished first in the NL East this year over the Mets, went on to beat the Brewers, followed by the Dodgers. In the World Series, they beat Tampa Bay. OK, congratulations. Nice job.

Now, what's the deal with this?

PHILADELPHIA (AP)—Jimmy Rollins made the most of another opportunity to take a dig at the New York Mets.

Speaking at Friday’s celebration for the Phillies’ World Series victory, the shortstop mentioned Mets left-hander Johan Santana and the crowd booed. But Rollins was loudly cheered after saying New York forgot one thing. As he put it: “It takes more than one player to bring home a championship.”

Let me get this straight. The regular season ended a full month ago, and the Phillies finished ahead of the Mets. The Phillies won three post-season series in a row to take the world championship. There's a celebration for them, and Rollins takes the opportunity . . . to "take a dig" at the Mets? WTF?

Look, this year, the Phillies won 92 games. The Mets won 89. Last year, the Phillies won 89. The Mets won 88.

Fine, you won, fair and square. But the fact is, your team is only one step above mediocre. The Mets are 3/4 of a step, maybe only a half a step, above mediocre. But powerhouse teams don't win a mere 92 games. These world champions won only 92 games. So let me put this a different way: If the Mets suck, the Phillies suck plus three wins. What's with the trash talk?

Seriously, there's something borderline pathological about this. As Matt Cerrone points out at MetsBlog, the Phillies are "obsessed" about the Mets:

Speaking of Reyes, during today’s broadcast on Comcast SportsNet of the Phillies World Championship parade through Philadelphia, host Michael Barkann asked his co-host, Mitch Williams, “I wonder if Jose Reyes is watching,” continuing, “Do you have anything to say to Reyes.”

Williams responded by saying, “This is what happens when you shut up and play.”

Did I say bordeline pathological? Make that full-bore pathological. It goes from the lowly fans to the broadcasters to the players all the way up to General Manager Pat Gillick (third item).

Phillies general manager Pat Gillick, in an interview with SI.com, expanded on his belief that the Phillies were aided by the animosity other NL East teams felt for the Mets. "I think sometimes it's good to be celebratory, but sometimes it reaches the point where they're taunting the other the team," Gillick said. "Everyone should have the opportunity to celebrate. But there's a fine line, and sometimes they tend to go over the line and taunt the other team."

Rollins agreed with Gillick's original assessment in the New York Daily News that the Phillies benefit in their division battle with the Mets by the hatred other NL East teams have for the Mets.

"Yes," Rollins said succinctly in answer to a question about whether the others in the NL East -- the Marlins, Braves and Nationals -- detest the Mets.

For those of you who live outside New York, you probably think we have a lot of palookas among our fans. And you're right. But there's nothing like Philadelphia fans in the realm of palookadom. In the 1960s, the Phillies brought up a great power hitter named Richie (later "Dick") Allen. It was said about the Phillies fans that if Allen hit three home runs and struck out his fourth time up, when he came to the plate for his fifth at-bat, the fans would boo him. I think little has changed.

Check out this photo (linked at MetsBlog). Better yet. check out this video of a fan who climbed onto a lamppost in downtown Philly, only to be knocked down by another fan throwing a bottle (via DPUD).

Really classy stuff.

And speaking of classy, check out what Chase Utley had to say:

Utley says he didn't even know he was going to address the crowd until 10 minutes before.

Utley smiled as he approached the microphone and proclaimed "World Champions!" The crowd cheered.

Then he smiled wider, leaned in and repeated the phrase, inserting an F-bomb between "World" and "Champions." The fans erupted and cheered for several minutes.

Later Friday, shirts and caps featuring Utley's phrase were offered for sale on the Internet.

Phillies Nation has more, including a video, if you give a [expletive]. Personally, I don't. When either the Phillies or the Mets climb out of mediocrity -- my not so arbitrary cutoff is 96 wins, minimum -- then let's talk again. Without expletives.

Meanwhile, I have some advice for the Phillies and their fans: GROW UP!

Or, as Chase Utley might put it, GROW [EXPLETIVE] UP!

Click here to read more . . .

2008 Mets, R.I.P.

I'm sorry to say this post-mortem is becoming an annual feature. (See last year's far more morbid post-mortem.)

The Mets entered the final game of the season today tied with Milwaukee for the wild card slot but lost ignominiously, while Milwaukee won.

I could say more, but I won't. I'll leave you with this description (hat tip: Right Hand Son) of the post-game ceremonies bidding farewell to Shea Stadium (1964-2008):

Nearly 30 minutes after Ryan Church made the last out at the stadium, most of the fans were still in their seats. They booed when Florida players came out to collect dirt from the basepaths. They booed every time the Mets announced anything over the public address system — “Our Shea Goodbye ceremony will begin in five minutes,” was particularly unpopular. And they booed Mr. Met.

Mr. Met had a particularly poor season.

Click here to read more . . .

A Met-aphor?

Being a Mets fan is a little like, well, being a Mets fan. If you're a fan, you know what I mean. At some point, something is going to go horribly wrong. Sometimes you can predict it. Sometimes you can't. But it will go wrong. Trust me on that.

With a handful of games left this season, the Mets, having fallen from their narrow lead over the Phillies (like the Mets, a team just above mediocre) in the NL East, have been trying to get back, or at least to make it to the wild card slot. Last night's game was, for me, a miniature of the entire season. I've called it a Met-aphor in the post title, but that's a pun and it's not technically correct. You lit majors, please help me with this. One part stands for the larger whole? Synecdoche?

Playing the Cubs, who this year have been about the only really good team in the National League, the Mets opened a 5-1 lead against Carlos Zambrano, their ace. But Oliver Perez and members of the Mets' fragile bullpen blew that lead. The Mets tied it in the 8th at 6-6. In the bottom of the ninth, rookie Daniel Murphy led off with a triple for the Mets. No one out, winning run at third base. The Phillies had already lost to Atlanta.

But David Wright struck out; the Cubs walked Delgado and Beltran intentionally; Ryan Church forced Murphy at home; and Ramon Castro struck out. The winning run at third with no one out failed to score. Needless to say, the Cubs won in the 10th inning.

This has been the Mets' season in a nutshell.

Click here to read more . . .

The "inside baseball" on the candidates' VP picks

We know almost nothing about the presidential candidates' vice presidential picks, with the possible exception of the fact that Obama says he's going to announce his pick by text messaging.

So I've come up with the top three "inside baseball" choices for each of the candidates.

John McCain:

1. Home Run: Henry Aaron.

Pros:

* Greatest non-steroidal home run hitter ever

* Tremendous dignity

* Neutralizes race issue

Cons:

* Alabama already solid for McCain

* Republican affiliation doubtful (but see Lieberman, Joe)


2. Triple: Joe Torre

Pros:

* Highly popular in large blue states (New York, California)

* Four World Championship titles as manager

* Calm in a storm (see Steinbrenner, George and Hank)

Cons:

* Almost as old as McCain

* Five-o'clock shadow shames Richard Nixon


3. Texas-League Double: Gary Carter

Pros:

* Solid throwing arm

* Could be popular with evangelicals

* If asked, he'd be there tomorrow (see Randolph, Willie)

Cons:

* Too exciteable (see Quayle, Dan)


Barack Obama:

1. Home Run: Steve Carlton

Pros:

* One of greatest southpaws ever

* Mean slider

* Nickname "Lefty" will wow Kos Kids

Cons:

* Won't talk to press


2. Triple: Manny Ramirez

Pros:

* Hits everywhere with power

* Appeals to Hispanics

* Will be available early if Dodgers don't make post-season

Cons:

* Not natural-born citizen

* Manny is Manny


3. Texas-League Double: Phil Rizzuto

Pros:

* Decades of experience

* Popular among the "cling to guns and religion" crowd

Cons:

* Repetitive catch-phrases ("Holy cow!")

* Deceased


Bob Barr:

Foul ball off his foot: Mark "The Bird" Fidrych

Pros:

* Good mesh with Barr (totally nuts)

Cons:

* Totally nuts

Click here to read more . . .

Up to mediocrity

As I've told you before, I'm an eternal pessimist when it comes to my team, the Mets. Last fall, when the Mets collapsed, I saw it coming. It wasn't a collapse, after all; it was a return to where the Mets should have been all year long: at mediocrity.

You would think that signing Johan Santana in the off-season would have changed things, but you would have failed to take into account the general aging of the otherwise already aged squad.

With this weekend's 3 wins out of 4 against the first-place Phillies and last night's shutout of the Giants, some people are starting to get excited. The Mets are only 1-1/2 games out of first.

Wake up! The Mets are also only two games over .500, at 46-44. That's called mediocrity. You don't strive for mediocrity; you want to be good, if not great.

I still remember the Mets' 11-game winning streak in June 1969. It was the first time they went over .500 that late in the season. Ever. But Tom Seaver, then in his third year in the majors, said that being .500 is nothing to celebrate. The goal was to win. (I recently searched the NY Times for June 1969 and couldn't find anything resembling this quotation, but I distinctly remember it. Maybe it was reported by the Mets' announcers on TV.)

So the goal is for the Mets to win. If they can't do that, and I suspect they're a few position players and a few starters short (to say nothing of the bullpen), it's time for them to recognize as much and build their farm system. Santana was an excellent acquisition, but if it takes two or three years to develop some players in the minors, that'll have to happen. New York is a win-now kind of environment, but the Mets have been trying to win now for years, with only a rare visit to the playoffs. The time to build is coming soon, and maybe it's already here.

UPDATE (7/13): I think I'm going to have to take credit for the fact that the Mets have won four more in a row since I wrote this (at 8 in a row now). I guess I provoked them, or else they wanted to make me look like a whining jerk.

Click here to read more . . .

Fourth of July linkfest

For the Fourth of July, instead of re-posting old July 4 posts, I'm going to bring you a linkfest. OK, I'll re-post one old post, too, but here's the linkfest.

1. While we're appreciating our independence and our freedom, some of our fellow Americans are not. Two years ago, I wrote about one such individual. And this week, a peculiarly repellent column out of the City of Brudderly Lub by a dude named Chris Satullo, who wants to cancel the celebration because "we have sinned." (via Stop the ACLU, via Ace) You already know the rest. No reason to read the column.

2. From last week: At the Seattle Mariners' ballpark, love is dead. (via Baseball Crank)

3. Mars, Saturn, and Regulus are converging in the evening sky.

4. "Police suspect giraffe in circus breakout."

5. Drink to Obama's victory? The tee-shirt.

6. Speaking of Obama, Jennifer Rubin explains his problem with Jewish voters in a single word, er, number: 1973.

7. If you're a white dude in England, whatever you do, don't call a white security guard "Honky!" (via HotAir)

8. Finally: A definition of torture.

9. It's hard to believe, but Maryland is only the 19th most corrupt state in the union. Should be higher.

10. David Wissing says you are what you Google. Anyone who's read my "Visitor of the day" series would have to agree.

11. New York dude moves to Atlanta and finds that "New York style" pizza in the South exemplifies major suckitude, so he returns to New York to "reverse engineer" real New York pizza. (via Fark)

12. Last but not least, for the woman concerned about "pelvic fitness," your own spa. (via HotAir) In case you don't understand, the New York Times article explains: "And now comes the first medi spa in Manhattan wholly dedicated to strengthening and grooming a woman’s genital area."

Click here to read more . . .

Reason #326,441 why baseball is great

This is probably the all-time most absurd statistical record I've ever seen, but ya gotta love it.

"Padres Become First Team Ever To Win Four Straight 2-1 Games."

Even if the final three of them were at the expense of the Mets.

Click here to read more . . .

Backstop for the children of fallen soldiers

I sometimes get frustrated with the catcher on my fantasy baseball team, Jason Varitek, but the guy seems to have his heart in the right place.

On Memorial Day, Varitek wore specially designed camouflage equipment in support of the troops and is auctioning the equipment to raise money for the Massachusetts Soldiers Legacy Fund, which raises funds to allow the children of fallen soldiers from that state to attend college.

There's a fan site for Varitek, called Jason-Varitek.com, where you can see some terrific photos. Try this and this for starters.

And be sure to check out the auction site, in case you have a hankering for some slick catching gear and want to help a good cause.

Click here to read more . . .

Sunday evening linkfest

Passover has (finally) ended, and now, once again, it's time for a linkfest of links that have been forming plaque on the walls of my intertubes for the past two weeks or so. Some of them are seriously OLD, but I want you to have them, anyway. Please stay with me till the end, because way at the bottom of this post, I have a couple of future classics from the Sunday New York Times that are almost worth the price of the paper.

1. In the past couple of weeks, the biggest issue in politics, in case you're a Japanese World War II fighter who's been holed up in the Pacific until yesterday, has been whether Obama flipped the bird at Hillary while speaking to his supporters following the final debate in Pennsylvania. The Hillarosphere demands to know. And Baseball Crank has another photo that may provide circumstantial evidence.

2. The Democrats' Nightmare Scenario (via Instapundit)

3. More popcorn, please!

4. McCain goes to NOLA, and an African-American participant at a town-hall meeting says this: "I want to inform you that everybody in the camp here is not a Republican." Does he mean (a) literally no one is a Republican, or (b) colloquially, not everyone is a Republican? Who cares, anyway, besides anal-retentive grammar wackos like me?

5. As Warner Wolf might have said, if you studied math in school since about 1961 . . . YOU LOST! On a related topic, Hillary Clinton does some math trolling for delegates and votes from Michigan.

6. Gov. O'Malley calls a special session of the legislature to pass a law declaring the official state dessert of Maryland. (Only kidding about the special session. Beats the hell out of raising our taxes, though.)

7. The man-cave: "Like most stories that end up with a man mowing his friend's lawn in a dress, it started out innocently enough." (via Fark, of course)

8. Sometimes it pays to test your personal machinery before reporting its theft by voodoo to police. As the police chief himself put it: "'I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke,' Oleko said.
'But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, "How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it",' he said."

9. Public Service Announcement: Be careful when eating in Canadian restaurants.

10. "Le Petit Singly is a farm that specializes in making cheese from women's breast milk." (via Ace)

11. This one's so old, it's already been overtaken by events. You remember the McLean school that banned tag in the schoolyard? Well, tag's back, but not before a week of "reorientation lessons on playground safety." I swear I'm not making that term up.

12. Patch (for women) aims to make you (not you, you) feel sexy. (via Ace)

13. Rick Monday saves the flag. In 1976. But now, there's a video.

14. American expat in Paris whines about the falling dollar. My heart bleeds.

15. False advertising from Moron Pundit: a very non-moronic defense of the tax deduction for child dependents.

16. Doubleplusundead on more misery with McCain. For me, if you want to know why McCain hasn't sealed the deal with conservatives -- I'm going to vote for him, anyway -- read George Will's column this morning. Two words: campaign finance.

17. The Children of Israel were enslaved in Egypt by a Pharaoh who took great pleasure in persecuting gays, who were brutally forced to arrange flowers for the Egyptians. Hence, the orange on the seder plate. Funny, I had always heard that it was supposed to represent Pharaoh's fear of the vagina.

18. And finally, the moment you've been waiting for -- the two classics from today's New York Times: (a) In the travel section: "In 2007, nude recreation represented a $440 million industry — up from $400 million in 2001 and $200 million in 1992." (b) In Sunday Styles: A family adjusts to the father's sex change -- "Through Sickness, Health and Sex Change."

Click here to read more . . .

Mets botch an easy one

Last night, I had a chance to see my first game at the new Nationals' Park in Washington. The Mets were in town, and since I'm a fan, I took a friend for his birthday, along with my sons. This photo is taken from the plaza in left-center field, where you arrive if you come in from the Metro.


I bought the tickets online about two weeks ago. Although it turned out there were many empty seats at the game, for some reason the only seats they would sell me two weeks ago were up in the Goodyear blimp, if you know what I mean. At least I had a partial view of the Capitol dome.


It seemed as if most of the people there were Mets fans, at least up in the Mets Ghetto, where I was sitting in nosebleed territory. Whenever the few Nats fans would start a cheer, we'd shout them down. My own contribution was to shout, "Boring! Boring!" We used to do this in college, when the other school's marching band was performing at half-time. This, I want you to know, is called highly mature behavior.

The seats may have been in the stratosphere, but they were otherwise not too bad. For example, if you wanted an aerial, bird's eye view of the Carlos Delgado shift, we were in exactly the right location. This is a picture from the fifth inning, showing the infielders on the right side of the diamond. (The third baseman was slightly to the left of second base.) Delgado grounded into a fielder's choice at second base -- 6-5, shortstop to third baseman. Seriously. (Considering Delgado's hitting below the Mendoza Line these days, the whole shift is a waste of time.)


The worst thing about the seats was that people kept coming and going, forcing the folks in front of us to stand and block our view.


The Mets blew a 3-run lead with abysmal pitching and failed to catch up with lackluster hitting. Totally pathetic. But we saw Felipe Lopez hit a grand slam for the Nats. Yes, THE Felipe Lopez. (Earlier this week, the Mets gave up a grand slam homer to THE Ronny Cedeño of the Cubs.)

Here are reports on the game from Yahoo and MetsBlog. I can't stomach any further description myself.

Click here to read more . . .

The obligatory "How'd your baseball fantasy draft go, Attila?" post

All winter long, I've been inundated with emails telling me that if I order some pills, I can strengthen and prolong my fantasy . . . baseball team. One ignores this type of email at one's own peril. I ignored it. And I drew the 12th pick in our 12-team league.

We have a straight 5 x 5 league, with no salaries. You just pick any guy who's available when it's your turn. I call it "wussy rules," but it's all anyone in my league is willing to do, and really, it works perfectly well. It's just not for alpha males. With us, the order of selection snakes around, which means that in Round 1, the teams pick 1st through 12th, but in Round 2, it's 12th through 1st. For me, as the 12th man, that means I pick back to back. I get picks 12 and 13, 36 and 37, 60 and 61, and so on.

There's something very mellow about this. When you have someone picking in between -- say, you're 11th and you pick 11th and 14th -- it can be stressful. Which of your two guys do you pick first? If you wait for one of them, will he still be there three picks later? But when you're 12th (or 1st), you just make your two picks and grab a beer while the others are sweating.

The other thing about picking last is that you don't have to sweat your first-round pick. Obviously, A-Rod won't be around, and you don't have to worry about David Wright vs. Jimmy Rollins vs. Matt Holliday. There'll be someone pretty good still around when you pick, and it'll be pretty obvious who it is. Me, I picked Prince Fielder, 1B-Milwaukee, who led the NL last year with 50 homers, to go with 119 RBIs and a .288 average. Not bad for last pick.

My strategy, as I've written before, focuses on pitching, and specifically on WHIP (Walks plus Hits per Innings Pitched). So for each of the first four double picks I got, I would take one pitcher and one hitter. My own preference list for pitchers was based in large part on WHIP, so with Johan Santana going in the 11th pick, I chose Fielder followed by Jake Peavy. My next three pitchers were C.C. Sabathia (pick 36), Takashi Saito, a reliever (pick 60), and A.J. Burnett (pick 96). I added Clay Buchholz in Round 13 and Shawn Hill in Round 19. All in all, I did pretty well in pitching for a last-pick guy.

As for hitting, it's hard to complain too much. Everyone I picked has pretty good power and most have a decent batting average. I didn't get the cream of the crop, because I was focusing on pitching, but everyone has some pop in his bat. I got Chipper (Larry) Jones and Dan Uggla for my infield and Brad Hawpe, Aaron Rowand, and Ken Griffey, Jr., for my outfield, with probably Pat Burrell playing utility (essentially a DH). Each had at least 27 homers last year and 88 RBIs. (Hawpe had 116 RBIs.) Even my two most mediocre starters (Varitek at catcher and Peralta at shortstop) are passable.

I failed in two ways, both of them from lack of preparation. First, in years past, I'd made a list of players in order of preference at each position, and I'd noted how many stolen bases each one had. I didn't pick Juan Pierre types -- all steals, little else -- but I was able to piece together a team where most players had a decent number of steals. I didn't bother this year, and it hurt me. If I don't do something quickly, I'm going to be dead last in that category.

My second failing was with relief pitchers, who are mostly useful for the saves category. Instead of bringing with me a list of likely closers, as I've done in the past, I used last year's list. Two relief pitchers I drafted won't be closers this year. I discovered this when I drafted them and everyone else laughed at me. (These in-person drafts with people you know tend to involve the mockery gene that's attached to the Y chromosome. A couple of guys mocked me for picking Lastings Milledge -- in the 16th round. I said, "Yeah, I guess I wasted my 16th-round pick on him.") I ended up with two real closers, getting Brian Wilson of the Giants in my final pick, but I'm going to have to fix things.

The final thing I should mention about picking 12th is that this lowers the bar for success. As the last-place guy, I can invoke the survival rule that seems to operate in the Middle East. Remember the 1991 Gulf War, when we destroyed almost the entire Iraqi military with overwhelming force? Well, Saddam Hussein personally survived that onslaught, so in his own eyes, he won. The same will work with me this year in fantasy baseball. With the 12th pick, I should finish dead last, but I plan to be in contention, anyway. At least, if I can get some steals and a better second closer. And if I don't finish dead last, I've won.

Click here to read more . . .

Flushathon update

I complained the other day about missing out on the flushathon at the new Nationals Stadium, where they tested the plumbing by repeatedly flushing the toilets at the same time.

But a guy who was there wrote about it, and if you read his report, you'll know why he was there and I wasn't. Not a single stupid joke about synchronized periods. (via Baseball Crank)

And by the way, one of his commenters suggests selling the naming rights to Hebrew National, which would be pretty cool, given the name of the team and the fact that Ted Lerner is a big supporter of Jewish institutions.

Click here to read more . . .

Taking the Green Line, not the 7 Train, to Flushing

When I was in college, you probably will not be surprised to learn, some of my friends were pretty immature. One of them used to make cracks about synchronization among the female students. At "that time of the month," he'd say, there'd be a mass simultaneous flushing of toilets, putting the entire plumbing system of the college at risk.

This was actually one of the less immature versions of the stories I heard. Supposedly, it's a common college prank to have the guys engage in coordinated flushing of the toilets, with the goal of actually breaking the system. My buddy's joke was a lot less destructive, I'd say.

But all of this was brought back to me by an article in the Washington Post today. I am very unhappy that I was not asked to participate in this project, which would have been a blast. And you couldn't even call it immature, because it was part of a planned testing program to ensure the plumbing in the new Nationals Stadium can handle 30,000 or so beer-sodden fans (assuming they ever get that many).

The project I'm referring to is this: "A Test of 7th-Inning Stretch Proportions, Flush by Flush."

It was an important, if not highly skilled, job required of 175 volunteers yesterday at Nationals Park. They were present for a synchronized swooshing, a choreography of commodes to test whether the new stadium's plumbing could handle the nearly steady flushing of more than 500 toilets and urinals.

Synchronized, eh? Did they invite the women from the college dorm?


Just as with the immature pranks I described above, you have to test the system to the max. How often would each urinal be used during a game? Every 30 to 45 seconds, perhaps? Well, you have to test it with a shorter interval.

"Please instruct your people: every toilet every 10 seconds, every urinal every 15 seconds," Howard reminded over the radio. "No more, no less."

The trouble is that when you let the women get involved in a project like this, which is really saturated in male immaturity, they don't quite get it right.

And the volunteers took their jobs to heart. Inside a ladies' room on the 300 level, Emily Harris, 24, kept a steady eye on her watch. "Five, four, three, two, one," she counted off as she and her mother, Kit Harris, 54, and another volunteer, Morgan Dodd, 56, alternated their way down the row of stalls, flushing one toilet every 10 seconds.

Ladies, it's not one toilet every 10 seconds; it's every toilet every 10 seconds. If they had invited me to participate, you can be sure I wouldn't have screwed that up. And I would have earned my commemorative tee-shirt.

"We were nowhere near straining the system," Kirlin project engineer Tony Giampapa said happily as he handed out commemorative T-shirts after the test.

I'll bet I know what the tee-shirts said. "My brother flushed more than 500 toilets and urinals, and all I got was this lousy tee-shirt."

I hope the Nationals realize it'll be a long time before I get over my bitterness about having been excluded from this.

Click here to read more . . .

Soccer Dad: Different Directions

Posted by Soccer Dad

While Attila's away, I was invited to guest post here. Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance until now.

Attila and I have a lot of shared interests, such as sports. Tennis playing bison for example. Another sport we both like is baseball. Truth is we don't discuss it much because, for me, it is quite painful. Since we've gotten to know each other, his team, the Mets has been pretty good and my team, the Orioles, stink. (Yes, I know that the Mets suffered a historic collapse last year and that can't have been fun to suffer through. But at least they collapsed from the top of their division to second place; the Orioles collapsed from barely adequate to positively hopeless spurred by a historic 30 - 3 drubbing.)

To make matters worse the Mets traded Kris and Anna Benson to the Orioles for John Maine. Benson provided the Orioles with one perfectly mediocre season before suffering an injury and Maine has gone on to be the Mets #2 or #3 pitcher.

Another sign about the relative strengths of our teams are the blockbuster trades they've made recently.

The Mets, with apparently fond memories of the Frank Viola trade, traded five prospects for Johann Santana of the Twins. Now Baseball Prospectus thinks that the Mets might be the best team in all of baseball.

The Orioles though - and still in that seeming passive aggressive mode - traded their best pitcher, Erik Bedard to the Mariners for five prospects. On one hand the team did the right thing. The Orioles were not going to be very good this year even with Bedard. Instead of attempting to reach .500 by signing the likes of Jay Payton or Aubrey Huff, the Orioles finally realize that they need to blow things up and start from scratch.

And that's what bugs. Sure it was correct to trade Erik Bedard and acquire a guy who might well be the second member of a top notch outfield. But there's something frustrating about a team that hasn't been able to operate competently for so long that it becomes necessary to trade someone like Bedard instead of keeping him and giving the fans someone to cheer about. Like Mike Mussina. (Whoops, they didn't keep him either.)

Click here to read more . . .

The meaning of is, etc.

"Clemens denies drug use during testimony." I'm glad, because if he can't keep his hands off the stuff during his congressional appearance, he's in bigger trouble than I thought.

Sounds like when Bill Clinton parsed the meaning of the word "is" at the grand jury, and the prosecutor asked Clinton whether his position was that his testimony was accurate because he was not engaging in sexual activity at the time of the deposition.

Click here to read more . . .

Baseball for the Arabs

Would learning baseball help the Arab world get rid of a harmful aspect of its culture? Ocean Guy seems to think so.

His basic idea is that in baseball you're a successful team if you lose only 40% of your games. You're a successful hitter if you're out only 70% of the time. Failure is built into the game. If you fail, it doesn't mean you're humiliated; you pick yourself up and try again.

He links his own pithy statement from four years back:

If the Arabs could learn that lesson maybe they’d be less inclined to pronounce themselves humiliated at every bad break or whenever something doesn’t go entirely their way. And if they’re not humiliated quite as much… maybe they’d stop exploding themselves.

Ocean Guy's reason for revisiting this matter is that a young Bahraini blogger has posted similar thoughts -- not about baseball but about failure: "It is high time that we [Arabs] disassociate ourselves from old ideals. From this church of stagnation. And push forth with new ideas and embrace failure. Without which no success could ever come forth."

It's actually mildly encouraging to read these sentiments. And after baseball, I think self-mocking comedy should come next.

Bonus: Baseball in Iraq, Sept. 2005

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Wednesday mini-linkfest

1. Headline of the day: "Police say woman pinned boyfriend to wall with buttocks" (via BOTWT)

2. Everything you always wanted to know about "natural" breast enhancement but were afraid to open those spam emails to read about. This is a real article from a real site (featured at MSN). The article is actually written by some chick named Martica Heaner, who claims to have some degrees at something or other. To give her some cred, I'll tell you she is quite a bit less than 100% behind the various techniques. And there are more of them, by the way, than I had ever realized. Exit question: Why did the husband write to Ms. Heaner, instead of the wife, if it's the wife who allegedly wanted enhanced breasts?

3. If you play baseball, you might actually be interested in a cup that will "protect your boys" which, in case you're wondering, does not mean your sons. But even if you don't play baseball, you might just be interested in watching some dude who used to be a pitcher in the majors take a fastball in the nuts (to demonstrate the toughness of the cup he sells). I got the video at HotAir, where I'm sending you to see it. Also, after you watch the video, don't forget to click through to the Nutty Buddy website (which speaks of protecting the boys) and to the Fox News video at the "Update" link.

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Speeding up the game

There were two interesting newses out of the baseball circuit today, neither of which had to do with the Mets' infuriating refusal to tell Scott Boras and Alex Rodriguez to take a hike.

The newses I'm referring to are that baseball's general managers have voted to recommend the limited use of instant replay:

General managers recommended for the first time Tuesday that instant replay be used to help umpires on boundary calls -- whether potential home runs are fair or foul, whether balls go over fences or hit the tops and bounce back, and whether fans interfere with possible homers.

The proposal was approved by a 25-5 vote. There was no specific time frame on when such a system might be put in place.

Although I'm a traditionalist, I guess I can see the argument here. A ball is either fair or foul as it leaves the stadium. We're not dealing with quantum mechanics here. Checking a series of replays on a potential home run down the line makes some sense.

It's a little more problematic to use the replay on bounce-backs. Say the ball bounces back, and the umpire rules it's a home run. How does the fielding team mount a successful protest? It's too late to continue the play with the ball in play. The batter and runners have already slowed down and run the bases. You can't have a do-over. In contrast, if the umpire says it's in play, as with Todd Zeile's non-homer in the 2000 World Series, everyone finishes the play. The batting team's protest that it was a home run would work. If the replay showed the ball was a home run, everyone would be waved around the bases.

The other interesting news, found at the bottom of the same article, is that baseball is considering ways to speed up the game:

Solomon also said that to speed up games, baseball was considering limiting when a hitter could step out of the batter's box between pitches, restricting the number of times a player could visit the mound, and limiting the number of players allowed to visit the mound.

What??? I'd like to see the stats on the amount of time taken up by batters stepping out and players (not the manager or coach) visiting the mound. My guess is that it's negligible. I also think stepping out to interfere with a pitcher's rhythm is a minor but important part of the game between pitcher and batter. I still remember a duel between Al Hrabosky and Ed Kranepool in the late 70s, in which Hrabosky did his "psych up" routine before each pitch and Kranepool stepped out to rattle him. It was a classic.

Here are the two biggest sources of unnecessary wasted time in baseball (and that's not redundant):

1. TV Advertising. Reduce ads by one minute between each half inning, and you've shortened the game by nearly 20 minutes. Yeah, I know advertising pays today's high salaries. My plan won't happen. But that doesn't mean I'm not right.

2. Too much hitting. Baseball has appealed to today's ADHD crowd by focusing on home runs, bandbox hitters' parks (like the one in Philly), and other means of high scoring. High-scoring games take longer than low-scoring games. Is it worth it? Not to me. Personally, I'd be much happier watching a display of excellent fielding than sitting through a slug-fest. Top-notch pitching duels are more fun, too. Watching a Hall of Fame pitcher in his prime, like the Pedro Martinez of a few years ago, is much more enjoyable than watching some steroid-addled palooka uncork one into the ether. Restoring some balance by, for example, expanding the strike zone would help, but it won't happen.

Meanwhile, baseball will go ahead and prevent hitters from stepping out of the box and third baseman from going to the mound. And we'll all wonder why it doesn't speed up the games. Just in time for the next useless rules change.

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Another Wednesday linkfest

Some days are good days for drive-by links. Some days are bad days. Today was a good day.

1. If you really want to become a millionaire, don't bother following these rules. You'll become a millionaire in about 40 years, which doesn't really count if you adjust for inflation. Better advice: To become a millionaire, start with $2 million.

2. Why Heidi Klum fell for Seal. (via HotAir, with lots of comments) Hmmm, I wear bike shorts when I ride, and this never happens to me. Back at my high-school reunion, some people were talking about padded bras -- you know, the usual topic of conversation at high-school reunions -- and the gay "partner" of a classmate of mine explained to me that gay men often pad the areas that others are interested in. Not that this explains the Heidi Klum situation.

3. The math of teenage sex: "If you do the math—worthy of an SAT prep course, with fractions and large numbers—you'll find that early sex plus the Pill equals sexually transmitted disease and maybe even pregnancy."

4. There's something peculiarly Japanese about this: "Cell phone message warns train gropers." Huh? Well, read this: "The application flashes increasingly threatening messages in bold print on the phone's screen to show to the offender: 'Excuse me, did you just grope me?' 'Groping is a crime,' and finally, 'Shall we head to the police?'" The only thing more Japanese would be robots.

5. Does this campaign photo of the month remind you of this one -- I mean, the evil grin? (via HotAir, where Allah says, "Mitt should fire his advance team")

6. With the World Series finally underway, we have this year's best baseball injuries from Ken Levine (via Ace). Line of the day: "Somehow in June Washington reliever, Jesus Colome suffered an 'abscess on his right buttock'. The team's General Manager, Jim Bowden is quoted in the Washington Post as saying, 'We pray for his buttocks and his family.'" There's no link to the Post, but I've verified the Bowden quotation here. My own personal favorite baseball injury story was related in Lindsey Nelson's book from the mid-60s called "Backstage at the Mets." Grover Powell, a young left-handed pitcher who'd made a great splash for the abysmal Mets, injured his pitching arm while combing his hair. Casey Stengel quipped: "Greasy kid stuff."

7. If you're a kid who lives in Boston, they want to teach you how to duck to protect yourself against gunfire. (via Fark)

8. You might not want to meet this Australian barmaid in a dark alley, although rumor has it that she's very entertaining in the bar. (via about a million sites)

9. Yiddish makes a comeback in Lithuania, as demonstrated by this syntax: "I feel a very rich person by knowing this language." (via Fark)

10. I just had my 100,000th visitor at Pillage Idiot this evening. Needless to say, it was someone who had been searching for images of the Thai transvestite pageant, which I wrote about two years ago. Somehow that seems appropriate.

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2007 Mets, R.I.P.

The 2007 New York Mets never gave me great confidence, even when they were well ahead of Atlanta and Philadelphia. And I want you to know, I foresaw their untimely demise a few weeks ago, while it was merely a perverse fantasy of the baseball commentatorship.

But then again, I'm an eternal pessimist when it comes to the Mets, and only my brother, who makes me look like a mild optimist, is worse. I'll be watching a game and say to my son, "Delgado's about to hit into a double play." Or -- this actually happened not long ago -- the Mets will have come from behind in the top of the 9th against the Marlins, to take a three-run lead, and the Marlins will have put the tying runs on base. And I'll have said to my son, "They're going to lose this. You realize that, don't you?" In the game I'm thinking of, the Marlins tied the game in the bottom of the 9th and beat the Mets in the 10th.

When your team disintegrates before you in historic fashion, and finishes a mere one game behind the division leaders, you can look to many "what if's" to find one or two that would have changed the bottom line. Now, obviously, the Mets' pitching was a disaster on wheels in the second half, and just as obviously, Jose Reyes became a head case. But I look to August 29, in the middle of the Mets' four-game sweep at the hands of the Phillies in Philadelphia. In the 9th inning, down 3-2, the Mets had the tying run on third with one out, and Marlon Anderson on first. Shawn Green hit a weak grounder that should have been a force play at second, scoring the tying run. For some reason, Marlon Anderson, who was a fantastic bench player for the Mets after he was picked up late in the season, made a rough slide outside the basepaths. The umpire called interference, making Green the third out. Game over. And as far as I'm concerned, season over, too.

I have nothing against the Phillies, whose late-season surge brought them up to the border line between mediocrity and respectability. They legitimately won the division with 88 victories after the team in front completely imploded, though in fairness to the Phillies, they would have finished about 10 games behind if it had not. Last year's World Series showed that mediocre teams have a great chance to become World Champions, so it's fair to say the Phillies, likewise, could win it all.

If I said "May the best team win," that would obviously exclude them, so let me just say this: "Who cares?"

UPDATE (10/2): In April, the Mets team ERA was 2.96, in May 3.69, in June 4.20, in July 4.50, in August 4.93, and in September 5.11. Says it all.

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At the top of their game

The Yankees and the Red Sox and their fans always make their rivalry out to be some sort of epic struggle of good versus evil. But it's becoming clear, in case it wasn't already clear, that it's really a battle of stupid and stupider.

Exhibit A: Yankees outfielder Shelley Duncan signs an autograph for a 10-year-old Red Sox fan. (Check the photo of the kid displaying the autograph.)

But not to worry: The Red Sox are busy with what apparently is a tradition with them, making all their rookies dress in drag. (Link goes to video.)

Both links via Fark.

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20 years of the potato

Twenty years ago this past Friday, Dave Bresnahan, a minor-league catcher, pulled off what's considered one of the top baseball pranks ever. He took a potato, sculpted it to look like a baseball, and deliberately threw it over the head of the third baseman in an effort to pick a runner off third. When the runner ran home, Bresnahan was waiting with the real ball. Everyone thought it was funny, but he was fined by the manager and released by the team, dropped like a (dare I say it?) hot potato.

The other day, he was back at Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to commemorate the event. An article describing this in more detail is here.

I once used this incident to illustrate the problem of statutory gaps, situations that seem to be not covered by the statute although similar situations are. I quoted Bresnahan, who said he'd checked the rule book first. It said that if a pitcher threw anything other than a baseball, it was a balk, but it said nothing about a catcher, and that's what he was.

If Dave Bresnahan happens to be checking his press in the next few days and discovers this, I hope he'll be amused.

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That sickening feeling

After having gently mocked the Orioles for losing 30-3 last week, I have only one word about my own team, the Mets:

Gevalt!

They just finished a four-game series in Philadelphia against the second-place Phillies and ended up with a grand total of NO wins. And boy, was it a painful series.

I've been a Mets fan all my life, and I enjoy following them, but in some sense, I've emotionally distanced myself from them. Sure, if they make the playoffs, I get really into it, but for ordinary games, I tend to adopt an attitude of "que sera sera." But this awful series has caused me a great deal of psychic and gastroenterological pain.

Last night, down 3-2 in the top of the ninth, the Mets had the tying run on third and the go-ahead run on first with one out. The runner on first was Marlon Anderson, a recent pickup for the Mets who's been outstanding as a pinch-hitter and occasional sub. Shawn Green at the plate -- a guy my sons call "The Jew" -- hit a slow roller to short, and he probably would have beat the relay throw from second on an attempted double play. That would have tied the game. But Anderson indulged in a little irrational exuberance and took out the second-baseman. The umpire called interference, meaning Green was out at first. Game over. (Video here.)

Today, the Mets were down 5-0 but rallied to tie it at 5-5. Immediately, the Phils got three runs to take an 8-5 lead. In the eighth, the Mets scored 5 runs to go ahead, 10-8. Then, in a move for which Willie Randolph is getting some grief, Billy Wagner was brought in with the intention of keeping him in for two innings. He's almost strictly a ninth-inning closer. Wagner allowed one run in the eighth, and it was 10-9. In the bottom of the ninth, Wagner fell apart and allowed two runs to lose, 11-10. Did I mention that Wagner used to pitch for the Phillies and left on less than amicable terms?

Boy, that was painful! And I haven't even mentioned Tuesday's 10th inning loss.

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Ouch!

So if you're the Baltimore Orioles, who by the way are by far the best major league baseball team located in Maryland, and you blow a 3-0 lead after 3 innings, that's not so bad, I guess.

But if you then allow the second-worst team in the American League to score 30 runs -- yes, 30 runs, a modern major-league first -- to beat you 30-3, that really stinks. (More here.)

And to make it worse, you have to play a second game the same night.

(The pregame preview said: "The Rangers hope their struggling offense can get back on track Wednesday when they face the Baltimore Orioles in a doubleheader at Camden Yards.")

On a happy note, the Orioles are owned by Peter Angelos, and no one deserves this debacle more than he.

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Beating the scalper?

This weekend, through yesterday, I was visiting the old homestead in the New York area. I took my mother and my kids to see the Mets on Sunday. My sister and two of her kids joined us. Even though my nephew has been going to see the Mets since the 1980s, he had never seen them win a game in person. I didn't discover this fact until too late, or else I would have told him not to come. Fortunately, we ended his losing streak at approximately 18, when the Mets beat the Marlins, 10-4.

On Monday night, I was going to take my own kids to Yankee Stadium for the game against the Orioles. I'd bought some $17 upper-level seats at stubhub.com, but at almost the last minute, two of my kids couldn't come. I decided I'd just go with my younger son and see if I could unload the two extra tickets with a scalper for whatever I could get.

We drove down the Major Deegan, but a rush-hour accident caused us bumper-to-bumper traffic for miles. We didn't worry about getting to the game on time, but I realized that once the game started, my plan for selling my extra tickets would go up in smoke. Not a really big deal, but I still hoped I could manage it.

I didn't exactly know where I was going, and I ended up parking in a lot nearly a half mile east of the stadium on 161st Street. It was about 5 minutes after the game had begun, and my son and I walked quickly toward the stadium. About a block before we got there, someone called out, "You need any tickets?" I ignored him. He was persistent. "I said, 'You need any tickets?'" I turned and told the man, "I have a couple of extras. You want them?" "What ya got?" I showed him. "How much will you give me for 'em?" I asked. He replied, "Ten each" and handed me a $20 bill.

At this point, after the game had begun, I figured it was free money and didn't try to haggle. I pocketed the bill, and we went into the stadium.

But now, my competitive side kicked in. I started paying attention not to the game but to whether anyone was coming in to sit in our extra seats. Because I really wanted to beat that scalper.

No one ever did.

I figured out early on, of course, that he might have sold the tickets to someone who used them to get in the stadium but sat in better seats elsewhere. But I still enjoyed the thought that I'd gotten the better of the scalper.

What happened in the game? You really care? I told my son it was a lot like a Harlem Globetrotters game, in which the opposition Generals play tough, make a good showing, and always lose in the end to the Globetrotters. Same with the Orioles, who at least made it exciting in the 9th inning, when they tied it at 6-6, with first one runner thrown out at the plate and then the second runner scoring by a hair on the next play. (Poor Chad Bradford, a former Met, gave up the game-winning run in the bottom of the 9th on a pathetic but perfectly placed infield hit by Derek Jeter.)

Bonus: Since I've mentioned the Globetrotters, you'll be interested to know that you can hear their theme song, the Brother Bones whistled version of Sweet Georgia Brown, at this link (in mp3 format) hosted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

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Linkfest

1. We all know that dogs eat grass, but a Ph.D. on the subject? (via Fark)

2. Arlen Specter is a fool. But you already knew that. You also knew that there are some cool anagrams for his name. Arlen Specter = clear serpent = lepers recant = rectal preens.

3. Don't be shy, Granny! Keep a couple of 'em in your purse. Just in case you get lucky. (via HotAir)

4. Homeowner attacks mailbox vandals. The best thing about the story is the Fark tagline: "Men playing mailbox baseball find out it's not as much fun when the homeowner comes up to bat in the bottom half of the inning."

5. Paging O.J. Simpson! A geezer in an electric "mobility scooter" takes Brit police on a highway chase at 8 MPH. And they lose him. (hat tip: fee simple)

6. The new demographic of the New York Times: 20-something "men" who buy expensive (male) fragrances. "I've been in the business for 20 years, and I can't believe how many young men are spending hundreds of dollars on fragrance."

7. Someone's stalking your house. Your house, not mine.

UPDATE (7/27):

8. A late entry from fee simple. Please avert your eyes, you dignified readers, because it turns out there's something called a "gPod," not to be confused with the iPod (Apple litigation to follow): "The 'gPod', a phallic-shaped vibrator, is designed to respond automatically to sounds picked up by an accompanying handset, which can plug into anything from a telephone to a music player to a television."

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Fantasy baseball update

I've been inundated with mail asking me to do an update on my fantasy baseball team.

Actually, when I've opened the mail, it's turned out to be mostly sales pitches for pills that will let me expand my roster, if you know what I mean. I deleted those offers, so I'll have to keep this update short.

I've explained before why I give so much attention to WHIP, so I'm pleased to report that until the weekend before the All Star Game, I was leading in the WHIP category in my 12-team league. My argument is that paying attention to WHIP lets you gain points in a tight category, and that good WHIP leads to good ERA and often to good strikeout totals. So how was I doing in those categories? I was third in ERA and fourth in Ks.

I started the season with Johan Santana (my first-round pick) and Jake Peavy (my fourth-round pick). Figuring Peavy had peaked in May, I "sold high" and traded him for Carlos Beltran. Poor move. Beltran has been mediocre since that time. Anyway, I've made up for the loss of Peavy (except his Ks) by using a whole bunch of second-stringer pitchers, like Jeremy Guthrie (who had a horrible start Thursday), Jeff Francis, Jorge Sosa (since dropped), Shaun Marcum, and Sergio Mitre. I haven't been bowled over with wins, but the WHIP and ERA have been good. These guys have their bad days, but overall, their WHIP remains solid.

Now, you might get the idea from this that my team is doing well. Au contraire, mon frère! My hitting has been atrocious and is only now starting to pick up. My second-round pick, David Wright, was basically 0-for-April. My third-round pick, Paul Konerko, who hit 43 HRs last year, was lethargic. I picked up J.J. Hardy and Mike Lowell off the free-agent list in April, and that's probably why I'm not in last place.

Current position: 8th of 12 teams. My goal is realistic: 4th place or bust.

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Caution: Low-flying pizza

A day at Fenway. (via Baseball Crank)

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Worth reading

The New York Times has an article in the sports section called "The Short and Happy Career of Ron Wright," a baseball player who played in one major-league game five years ago:

Five years ago, in an otherwise forgettable baseball game between the Seattle Mariners and the Texas Rangers, a 26-year-old rookie named Ron Wright struck out, hit into a double play and hit into a triple play.

“Best day of my professional life,” Wright said.

There aren't a heck of a lot of feel-good stories about ballplayers these days. This is one.

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Cracking the WHIP another year

This is a great time of the year. Spring is under way, and baseball is about to begin. I haven't followed spring training very closely this year, but I do read MetsBlog nearly every day, which is almost like following it.

The only thing that comes close to this level of excitement is the start of the fantasy baseball season. So I'm here to make the following public service announcement: Don't listen to anything I'm about to say if you have a team in my league.

Last spring, I wrote why I choose my fantasy baseball teams by focusing heavily on WHIP (walks plus hits per innings pitched). WHIP is only one of the 10 basic statistics for so-called 5X5 leagues, but it correlates well with other pitching statistics in the sense that a good WHIP typically means a good ERA, often but less so a high number of strikeouts, and also a good number of wins. It doesn't work the other way around. For example, you can be a major strikeout stud and have a crappy WHIP. (Exhibit A: As I mentioned last year, Scott Kazmir. In 2005, he had 174 Ks in 186 IP, along with a WHIP of 1.46. In his defense, he improved in 2006, and I even picked him up for a while.)

A second reason I focus on WHIP is that by the end of the season, the teams in a fantasy league will often be very close in that stat. There could be 6 or 8 teams in a 12-team league in the 1.19 to 1.25 range. Since the variation in WHIP is relatively modest, a slight lowering of your team's WHIP can grab you several points in the standings.

I posted one update last spring, about a month into the season, when my team was doing pretty well. I never reported what happened later. My hitting completely fell apart. I guess my guys were batting way above their ability in April. My pitching was wiped out by injuries (Pedro Martinez and Ben Sheets, two classic great WHIP pitchers). And I made a few mistakes. I ended up 6th out of 10 teams.

We held our 2007 draft last night with 12 teams in the league. Having 12 teams in the league is a challenge. That's the highest number in the 5 years I've been playing. What it means is that by the fifth round or so, there are really slim pickins. So fortunately, I drew the second overall pick. The first pick was Albert Pujols, no surprise. I chose Johan Santana. Normally, I would have chosen a slugger in the number two slot, but excellent pitching is very hard to find this year, and Santana is totally in a class by himself.

Using the four out of five stat categories applicable to starting pitchers in our league, Santana's line from last year was this: 19 wins, 245 strikeouts (in only 233.2 innings, or 9.44 strikeouts per 9 innings), 2.77 ERA, and 1.00 WHIP.

For my other starters, I ruled out anyone with a WHIP from last year over 1.25, even relatively well known starters. At least until the lower rounds, when I started stockpiling starters and chose Kenny Rogers in the 19th round, a guy with a WHIP of 1.26, who's now on the disabled list, anyway.

Now, obviously, players' stats and their success generally tend to vary from year to year. (That's not so true of the big stars, but you run out of those after only a few rounds.) Still, I'm very comfortable going into the season with a rotation headed by Johan Santana.

Only time will tell, of course. But I'm totally ready to starting cracking the WHIP.

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Most talented Mets ever?

MetsBlog links to the New York Post's sports blog, which has an entry entitled "Most Talented Met Ever." Without a question mark.

Mike Vaccaro says: "Carlos Beltran reported Monday morning, and it begs the question: who is the most talented man to ever wear a Mets uniform?" He's got his list, which you can view if you click the link above, but let's try to deal with definitions first.

First: Does talent mean raw ability or statistics? If it's raw talent, Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry have to be near the top. But both succumbed to vices and ruined their careers. For talent plus a successful career, I don't see how you can top Tom Seaver. Most people who put him lower than first are simply too young to have seen him pitch.

Next: Ever wear a Mets uniform? If you take this literally, you have to go with Willie Mays, who played part of 1972 and all of 1973 with the Mets. But he was finishing out his career at the time, and no one would argue that he was more than a shadow of his Hall of Fame self. I would normally dismiss this interpretation, but Vaccaro ranks Carlos Beltran first, who's played only two years with the Mets. That makes no sense to me.

Related: How long does the player have to have played for the Mets? Nolan Ryan pitched his first four-plus spotty years with the Mets but went on to pitch Hall of Fame baseball for 22 more years with three other teams. So Ryan shouldn't count. But what are we to make of Vaccaro's inclusion of Jose Reyes and David Wright, two young stars, in his top 10 list? He's basing his ranking as much on a prediction of their abilities as on their showing in the limited time they've been in the majors. To a lesser extent, I think that explains his ranking of Beltran as well.

The only thing I get out of Vaccaro's post is that it's another parlor game. It might be a lot of fun if we only knew what the rules are.

UPDATE (2/21): Since everyone's clamoring for my picks, let me first define my terms. I require that the player have spent at least five years on the Mets, and I lean toward performance over raw ability.

1. Tom Seaver.
2. Dwight Gooden.
3. Mike Piazza.
4. Darryl Strawberry.
5. Keith Hernandez.

I don't think I'll go any farther than that. Yes, I've put Gooden and Strawberry in there at the top. I guess I wouldn't have mentioned it yesterday if Vaccaro had given Seaver top billing, as I have.

Honorable mentions go to Jerry Koosman, Gary Carter, David Cone, and Tommie Agee (who's a sentimental favorite as much as an actual "most talented.")

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