Jeff Francouery Sullivan!

That's what happens if you see the 2009 NY Mets two games in a row: everything becomes a bit of a word game. After all, you won't have to worry too much about things like, oh, scoring to get in the way of your enjoyment. Amy's folks kindly bought us tickets to see the Mets at Petco both this Saturday and Sunday, and despite the doldrumy Metsness that is a team missing 3 of its 4 best hitters (and best hitter #4 went 0 for the two games), we had a great time. And my father-in-law only kicked me in the nuts once. Therefore I have this advice, offered in my new high-pitched whine: Don't ever try to pick up the check when Larry's around, folks.

We got there a bit late Saturday night, delayed by the goodness that is O'Brien's, the place with the oddest pleather green chairs and the yummiest of beer lists. They were celebrating Alpine Beer Company, so had 7 varieties on tap, and I got to drink a homer short of a cycle: an Alpine Duet IPA, an Alpine Bad Boy, and an Alpine Exponential Hoppiness (it is). That's a single, double, and triple IPA, in order. The Expo is fiercely hoppy and I wish I had one right now. Of course, getting there late means we missed the Alex Cora homer, the only run the Mets would tally for the evening. Instead we got to enjoy the rookie stylings of the very talented Mat Latos (gotta love that missing "t" that led me to heckle, "is that like welcome mat?"). He does this funny bit in his motion where it looks like he sticks the ball in his back pocket. Clearly, he kept the Mets off balance all night. And then Heath Bell came in, got the save, and I turned Padre fan, as Bell is on my fantasy time. Yes, I'm that kind of fan.

Sunday was mighty warm for San Diego, especially in the terrific behind the plate about 10 rows seats Larry got us. (I didn't even offer to pay for these, figuring they cost so much he'd probably have to kick me in the nuts 10 times to stop me from doing that.) It looked like this, only closer, and in 3-D, but my blog doesn't have the java script for that yet, sorry.

Here we see pre-game David Wright warming up with the traditional "Peg the Friar" toss. True to his weekend, he missed. (OK, he played good D both games, but hit nothing, ending Sunday, in fact with a dramatic 6-3 double play to close his 0 for 5 day).

Right here you can see Wright giving strike 3 a really good look.

The best part, though, was I finally got to see Johan Santana pitch live. And live he is. (We're all allowed a man crush or two, right?) He also pitched the classic Johan game of late, not too many strike outs, but practically nothing but strikes. He didn't throw his 10th ball until his 40th pitch. He just had excellent location and kept the Padre line-up, which, truth be told, is about as pitiful as the Mets', guessing. Here he is delivering a pitch as shortstop Anderson Hernandez practices his look for that bad hop he's sure will happen soon.

Mets won Sunday, 5-1, with Johan even going 2-3 with a walk, run, and RBI. Good thing he gets paid so much.

My Mets stats for the year: Overall 2-2. Home 1-0. Road 1-2. Keeping score 2-0. So I guess I gotta keep doing that. I didn't know the team cared.

P.S. It's fun, if theologically confusing, to shout "Angel Pagan" at the top of one's lungs.

Paging Joe S-Torre to Re-write

I've liked what David Ulin has done with the book review section at the incredibly shrinking LA Times and I'm a fan of his The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Faultline between Reason and Faith, as if you're going to get poetic about anything, it's that huge acreage can go mushy. But there is a reason that a man of letters shouldn't write a review of a baseball book. This Sunday he wrote about the new Joe Torre blab-all The Eddie Stanky Years, un, I mean The Yankee Years, and more than tell us anything about the book he lets us know that his own love of story is how he wants to read baseball.

Here's the passage where he begins to suggest a drive for narrative is more important to him than a drive for clarity:

[Torre's] terrific on the day-to-day dynamics of the Yankees, the way the selfless, win-at-all-costs culture of the championship teams dissipated with the departure of Paul O'Neill, Scott Brosius and Tino Martinez after the 2001 season, leaving a void filled by selfish superstars.

Such a trend began with the 2001 signing of Jason Giambi -- a move Torre opposed in writing, so he couldn't be held responsible if it didn't work out -- and it's personified by the contradictory figure of Rodriguez, perhaps the most talented and least endearing superstar in American sports, an insecure stat machine utterly unable to hit when it counts.

I'm no huge A-Rod fan, as for all his immense skill, he does seem joyless--give me a Jose Reyes any day. But this bit about Rodriguez being unable to hit when it counts is a bit of a myth (just ask Madonna, ba-dum-bump). Seriously, lifetime he's hit .274/.403/.486 with two outs and RISP, which is down from his usual performance, but still damn good and you have to assume if there's any time a pitcher is going to bear down, it's in that situation. His OPS in innings 7-9 lifetime is .911 (his career OPS is .968). Yes, he's stunk as a Yankee in the playoffs, but the whole team has stunk. Think back to Barry Bonds' brilliant (perhaps chemically assisted) 2002 postseason. Now recall who won the World Championship that year. One monster bat does not a winner make.

Ulin then goes on to write/quote:

"There's a certain free fall you have to go through," Torre says, "when you commit yourself without a guarantee that it's always going to be good. There's a sort of trust, a trust and commitment thing that has to allow yourself to fail. Allow yourself to be embarrassed. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. And sometimes players aren't willing to do that."

That's the key to Jeter, who has always done anything to help the team.

Except surrender shortstop when the Yankees signed Rodriguez, although Rodriguez was known as a far better fielder. Of course, the Yanks never even thought of asking the Captain move, as he was Jeter, the guy with 4 rings in his first 4 years. Seems everyone reads the game through its grand stories, and it was Jeter who made that Jeremy Giambi play against the A's that one year, which somehow made questions about his fielding impossible (and let's not bring up Tim McCarver's worship of the man).

But this really isn't about A-Rod or even Jeter, it's about perpetuating a myth that men of character beat men of talent, and that the talented who fail to win are characterless. Brosius is one of the patron saints of this view, as he was seen as the scrappy heart of the late '90s Yankee dynasty. But if we look at his stats, we find this: postseason .245/.278/.418, career .257/.323/.422. So he was a better hitter when the chips weren't on the line, after all, despite what Torre, Verducci, and Ulin want to remember, or reconstruct. For there's this:

Compare this with what Torre and Verducci cite as "the quintessential championship Yankees at-bat": O'Neill's 10-pitch walk in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 1 of the 2000 World Series against the Mets. The Yankees were down to their last two outs, but O'Neill refused to give in, working the count, fouling off pitches, driven by a "desperation to win."

Ulin is self-admittedly a Yankee fan, so he reads the moment through pinstriped glasses. As a Mets fan, I see it through a different frame--goddam Armando F-ing Benitez, the man driven by a desperation to blow all crucial games. But my wanting to knight Benitez a choke artist is just another story we tell ourselves trying to make sense of what, after all, is a game, where the random is truly the 10th player on the field. Let's assume Benitez gets one more strike past O'Neill. The Mets win the first game of the World Series. But do they win the Series itself? If they don't even after winning the first game, does anyone remember this at bat? The Mets playoff run that year opened with a win against the Giants, a game in which Benitez gave up a tying 3-run shot to J.T. Snow. But they won the game in extras--Benitez even got the win after that. That's baseball.

Sure, writing isn't as much fun, and our memories aren't as satisfying, if we have to shrug our shoulders and say, "Meh, it could go any way." but it could--except for Pirates fans, as your team is going to keep stinking for awhile.

Sunday Observation

Oh, btw, the Mets suck.

My Kingdom for a Bullpen

Hey, guys, thanks. It's so nice of you to get your suckage out of the way in August, and thereby save us another heartbreaking September. Seven game leads, seven run leads, it's all the same to your fine ability to crumble.

The Game's Exciting -- Wake Up the Announcers

Not to be bitter or anything, but does it seem like an insult to have to watch national baseball on "Braves Superstation" TBS to anyone else? I kept waiting for that damn chop chant to start in back of the deadly droning of Joe Simpson and Don Orsillo last night.

Then again, the paranoid part of me keeps thinking that Tom Glavine was an Atlanta plant, and Braves general manager John Schuerholz was just waiting to detonate him and the Mets' season when it would hurt the absolute most. After all, Glavine almost did go back and sign there the last off season. I'm just saying....

Muddle Relief

A tale of two seasons--imagine the line below on the Mets and not on the Padres:

91 ip, 98 k, 28 bb, 6-4, 2 saves, 34 holds, 2.08 era

Might have been nice, huh? Less Schoenweiss, less Mota. Maybe just one more lousy stinking win.

That means the Mets lost their shot at 2007 on November 15, 2006, when Omar Minaya sent Heath Bell, owner of the fine line above, and Royce Ring to the Padres for Ben Johnson (no, not the sprinter) and Jon Adkins. Johnson had 30 abs and Adkins pitched in one game for the major league club. Bell did everything he could to get the Padres to a play-in game today (alas, he can't play outfield and didn't get to Milton Bradley and tackle him before Bud Black did).