Archie Bunker's Army

Ah yes, secretly, I knew it would work. With the Mets in a terrible tailspin; four consecutive losses, swept and humiliated by the hated Atlanta Braves and wallowing in an 18 inning scoring draught with a four game series against the then-NL East-leading Florida Marlins on the menu next, Archie Bunker's Army decamped to the canals of Utrecht with the hope that four days of sin and fun would somehow, magically perhaps, reverse Mets fortunes. And of course, it did. Three of four from the Florida Marlins with only a late inning meltdown from the bullpen between them and a full four game sweep puts the Mets right back on the map and confirms that this is not a team that is willing to die with it's tail between it's legs. This is a team that can hang in there for the duration and perhaps, with a few masterful touchups by Omar in the Department of Trade, a team that can well bank hope on a possible future this postseason. Of course, we are getting ahead of ourselves with enthus...

If we were waiting for the patient to begin showing the first signs of the disease, wait no longer. The classic early signs of a dismal season are already begin to show up on the Mets: inability to beat quality teams, errors which cost games or hand the momentum over to the opponent, injuries, spotty starting pitching, once-hot-hitting now cooling with two consecutive shutout losses... This isn't a matter of bad luck or a temporary dip in play, it's a matter of a far more deep rooted and sinister problem: the Mets plain ole Can't Beat the Better Team Syndrome . Consider that against the Cubs, Cards, Yankees and now the Braves over the several weeks, the Mets are 3-9 and with a four game series looming ominously on the horizan against the NL East-leading Florida Marlins, it isn't likely to get better anytime soon. Not until the Cincinnati Reds come up on the schedule again. Last night was another dollop of the same miserable miscues that have plagued the Mets for the ...

It wasn't enough that Tom Glavine pitched well better than his traditional disasterous outing against his former teammates because a new Brave pitcher threatened to become the most recent Met nemesis and the Mets lost their second in a row to the Braves this time 4-0. Tim Hudson, the man the Mets might have been able to go after this offseason if they hadn't already traded their blue chip young arm, Scott Kazmir to the Devil Rays for the likes of Victor Zambrano last summer in a panic, held the Mets to nothing whilst he was on the mound: 8 innings of shutout pitching in his debut against the Mets and going on three days' rest. The kind of pitching performance the Mets only sometimes see from Pedro, let alone the rest of the ragamuffin starting rotation. It's an old story, this Tom Glavine not beating his former team. It's a story we're all tired of hearing, tired of feigning enthusiasm for. Your number two pitcher, the guy who you paid untold millions to co...

Thanks to second-base umpire Jeff Nelson who inexplicably ruled that the game-tying slide by David Wright into second base to break up a potential double play and force Rafael Furcal to throw low and wide to first was actually a slide out of the baseline, the Mets rally of the ages was crushed like the hopes of Uzbeki protesters. Actually it wasn't even a call, it was a reversal of fate so intrusive and misguided, it cost the Mets their rally and the ballgame, 8-6. Ok, maybe it wasn't really Jeff Nelson's fault. It was a wide slide and out of the basepath nearly into right centerfield in an effort to throw off Furcal, and a justifiable call but maybe just the kind of call you don't normally see made at the most crucial point in the game. "He showed no attempt to reach the bag safely and stay on it," Nelson told a pool reporter of Wright's slide and his subsequent call. "It was an intentional act, and it's automatic that the batter/runner is ...

"They need to stop booing Matsui and these guys when they miss balls, they should just give them a standing ovation when they catch one." - Derek Jeter following his two errors in Game One, blaming the grounds crew for his woes. There are alot of ways that you might chose to look at yesterday's loss to the Yankees and Eight of Flubs by Morrissey in the Post probably puts it as best as anyone today. A gem of an article which unlike Pedro's performance, was not crumpled up and thrown into the rubbish the minute he finished it. Is it odd that the two most important flubs were both created by the Mets two youngest and most hyper-enthused players on the field, Reyes and Wright? Or Wright and Reyes, however you want the slogan to go? And say what you will about Manager Willie going to the Hernandez well for the fifth straight game in lieu of letting the guy who is supposed to be making his living by closing , The Looper Stupor Experience, actually close out the game, b...

If this was a battle of free agent pitchers, the Mets definately won. If this was a battle for redemption after being criticised all winter long for artificially inflating the starting pitcher market in paying Benson to stay with them, the Mets won that too. Randy Johnson, $48 million for three years versus Kris Benson, $22.5 million for three years. Randy Johnson surrendered 12 hits and four runs over six and two thirds innings and Benson allowed only 3 hits over six shutout innings. The Mets won this one almost easily, 7-1. There were tense moments of course. No Subway Series game is ever a laughter, not with drunken Bronx bums starting fights in the stands and Yankee Yobs spreading around the stadium like some sort of communicable disease. But the Mets, led by Benson, who appears to like the big stage and the pressure, and by their hitters, including the token Korean lefty reliever KooKooKachoog, who smacked a Randy Johnson offering 400 feet over Bernie Williams' head to t...

Let's play the old favourite, you guess the outcome: The Scenario: The Mets can only manage three singles and a pair of doubles all night long in support of the Victor Zambrano, the man with the anarchistic arm who has more walks than strikeouts and more hit batsmen than anyone else in the league. Bing! You guessed it! Mets lose. It started off bad enough when The Oak Ridge Boys performed Friday's National Anthem. The Oak Ridge Boys for gawd's sake! In Queens. For all those country and western fans living there and for that matter, all three fans around the world who claim to love both country and western music AND the Mets. Oak Ridge Boyz In Da House. Will there be a more memorable moment in Shea this season? For the first three innings anyway Zambrano looked perfectly capable, as though it was Good Victor day instead of Evil Victor day, walking only one batter and inducing the next into a double play. Then in the 4th, he walked one, allowed an RBI double, then w...

"I didn't get a toy train like the other kids. I got a toy subway instead. You couldn't see anything, but every now and then you'd hear this rumbling noise go by." - Steven Wright There are purists out there who want to save the precious term Subway Series for moments when it "really" matters, like a World Series, but let's face it, the fans ride the subway to the goddamned games whether it's October for all the marbles or late May with little more than local pride on the line, so Archie Bunker's Army is calling it the Subway Series. Rather than inundating you with every little nuance; the steroid-goiter waiting to sprout on Giambi's scrotum, the Yankees leading the Major Leagues in players who have had beer dumped on them (Sheffield in Boston and Giambi in Oakland), the pupil versus teacher managerial rubbish they will force feed you ad nauseum over the next several days, the $300 million or so worth of salaried players that will ta...

Ah, but for a season of Cincinnati Reds. Although Tom Glavine was far from convincing, throwing 101 pitches in 6 innings whilst giving up 9 hits, two walks and hitting a batter, because this performance came against the Reds, it was sufficient to allow him to earn his third win against four losses and the first time he's won consecutive starts in more than a year. He twice got of bases loaded jams. In the 5th, after a double and a hit batsman, he loaded the bases by allowing a single to Reds pitcher Eric Milton and then saw a fortuitously double play go his way on a poor call at first base which frankly, was a bad call and probably should have meant an earlier exit for him. Then, as if to tempt fate, he followed this good fortune by walking Felipe Lopez to load the bases again in the same inning and allowed Sean Casey to collect an RBI single to make the score 4-2 before finally getting Junior to ground out to end the inning. An inning later, Glavine was again lucky although th...

Just imagine what the Mets will do on Hispanic Heritage Night... A pair of Kaz's; Kazuo and Kazuhisa, led the Mets in their celebration of Asian Night at Shea Stadium last night and to victory over the Cincinnati Reds, 2-1. Kazuhisa Ishii, absent from the club since mid-April and fresh off his turn on the disabled list pitched well enough to prevent the appearance of Victor Zambrano from the bullpen and Kazuo Matsui hit an uncharacteristic two run homer in the seventh inning to lift the Mets last night and yes, it "really" was Asian Night. Ishii threw what must have been well over his intended pitch count, with 96 pitches, but was effective for 6 1/3 innings, allowing only three hits and an earned run although he left the game down 1-0 and didn't earn the victory. Better still, he went 2 for 2 at the plate to raise his batting average to .333, better than everyone on the Mets except Mike Cameron and PH specialist, Marlon Anderson. Matsui, the scourge of many Met fa...

"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another." -Charles Dickens You might not have known it to look at how the season started, with this same team from Cincinnati appearing like a harbinger of doom on the horizon of the Met season with three straight victories, yes these same Reds, now approximately six weeks older, these same Reds who pounded Met pitching for 22 runs in the first three games, appear now to be a different team altogether; infinitely meaker, less consternating and, let's face it, the kind of team the Mets should be beating, the kind of team that lightens the burden of their disappointing three game series against the Cardinals. The Mets did their job last night unlike those first dreadful trio of games to start the 2005 season with: Kris Benson, on the DL back then was on the mound last night working on his third start and looking all the better for it allowing only 4 hits, striking out 8 whilst appearing momentarily domineering ov...

It wouldn't have been hard to guess that after the first two games against St Louis both teams would have taken a game. You would have looked at Game One and saw that Glavine was pitching and you could think to yourself, ok, there's one loss for the Mets. Equally you could have looked at Pedro taking the mound for Game Two and thinking to yourself, ok, there's a win for the Mets. Although you'd have been wrong both times in this series, when you looked at Game Three, the formula seemed there for another victory for the Cardinals. All you really had to look at was Matt Morris taking the mound against the predictably mediocre Aaron Heilman and figure to yourself, looks like the Cards will take two out of three. They did. Mastering the concept of playing just well enough to lose and led by Aaron Heilman's 5 2/3 innings of Tragicomedic pitching, moving from Jose Reyes' leadoff pop up in the bottom of the first all the way to Doug Mientkiewicz's strikeout in th...

It was meant to be an afternoon of imported aces, former Expo and Red Sox ace Pedro against former A's ace Mark Mulder. It was meant to be a pitcher's duel, a nail-biter, the kind of arm action Shea Stadium hadn't seen since Game 5 of the 1986 NLCS , Gooden against Nolan Ryan. But yesterday's fizzling drama was not a pitcher's duel at all. In his first start against the Cardinals since Game 3 of the World Series, Pedro was not vintage Pedro (88 pitches over 6 innings for four earned runs and meagre four strikeouts and two two-run homers surrendered) that had the Mets in a 5-2 hole by the time he was finished. And unlike his last start against the Brewers, this time Piazza was on the bench where he belonged and "unofficially designated" catcher Ramon Castro was behind the plate so there was no official doorstep on which place the blame. Then again, neither was Mark Mulder anything exciting as he too was sandblasted on the mound, giving up 10 hits and 6 e...

"I didn't want to be in position where I had 290 wins and I was looking for a team in three years to get 10 more wins. I wanted this to be my last contract and have the opportunity to win 300 games," - Tom Glavine, hyper-optimistic upon signing with the Mets in 2002 . Well, it's taken nearly three years but Tom Glavine finally pitched for the Mets as he once did in the wonder years of his Braves Hall of Fame past. At the very least, finally shedding the contemptible post-2004 All Star Game Tom Glavine skin and bursting through with a newer, more loveable version which, if repeatable, might give the Mets the edge in the NL East race. Glavine pitched seven-plus scoreless innings against the most productive lineup in the National League last night and emerged almost as...guess what? the winning pitcher for Mets in a valient 2-0 victory against the NL Central-leading Cardinals. In a way, you had to wonder, "who's this?" when you saw someone out there in t...

"Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism; the way you play it is free will." -- Jawaharlal Nehru Fresh off taking three of four from the NL West front-running Dodgers, the St Louis Cardinals make a visit to Shea Stadium for a three game series. What we should know about the Cardinals in anticipation: At least two former Mets, neither doing particularly well this season, are on the Cardinals roster: Roger Cedeno and Bill Pulsipher . Scott Rolen was recently placed on the DL after running into Choi Hee-seop, who if I recall correctly, was run over by Kerry Wood once when Clemens was pitching in Wrigley for the Yankees a few years back. In any case, Rolen won't be playing against us which is a pity since he was only hitting around .200 the last week before he was injured. In his place is a probable platoon between Scott Seabol, (who was called up from AAA Memphis where he was hitting .325 with 8 homers and 24 RBIs) and John Mabry. Also mi...

All anyone seemed to be able to talk about for the majority of the game was the bitter, somewhat unpredictable wind blowing in from left field and the blustery conditions. Granted, 14 mph gusting is no ideal condition for a baseball game but in the end, it was more the tremendous 11 pitch at-bat of Cub star Derrek Lee against Met reliever Heath Bell in the bottom of the 10th that proved the undoing of the Mets yesterday. His walk off homer gave the Cubs the victory and their first series victory since April 25-27. The Mets went home the losers for the third time in their last four games. Bell should not be the scapegoat though as he did get the Mets out of a Mike DeJean and KooKooKaChoog-induced jam in the bottom of the 9th when he entered the game with the bases loaded and one out and after nearly hitting batter Neifi Perez to knock in the winning run, induced him into a short and sweet 1 to 2 to 3 double play that ended the inning. Perez was was booed by Cubs fans for not trying...

An old nemesis dropped down into the visions of sugarplums dancing in the collective Met heads last night. HOF probable Greg Maddux, now 34-16 in 60 lifetime starts against the Mets, shut them down for nearly seven full innings allowing only 3 hits and no runs whilst striking out 10 and the Cubs bullpen, only the day before on the verge of laughingstockdom, finished the job by holding the Mets hitless the rest of the way to give the Cubs an easy 7-0 victory. Maddux has more wins than ANY other pitcher in Met history, ahead of other Hall of Famers Steve Carlton (30), Bob Gibson (28) and Juan Marichal (26). So perhaps this loss can get chalked up to, well, certainly not bad luck. And they certainly didn't do much against Maddux. The only time they mustered an even marginal scoring threat was when they loaded the bases against Maddux with two outs in the seventh after Chris Woodward, replacing David Wright who was out with what is being optimistically called a bruised foot, walked ...

For the first time since April 2002 season, the Mets beat the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Two Mets with .238 batting averages knocked in six of the Mets seven runs including all three runs over the final two innings against a rancid Cubbie bullpen to lead the Mets back to the path of righteous twice-rain-delayed victory. Doug Mientkiewicz hit a homerun over the 368 mark in right centerfield in the 8th off the newly annointed set-up man LaTroy Hawkins and then an RBI single off newly annointed closer Ryan Dempster in the 9th. Mike Piazza, another .238 hitter, had a three run homer in the first inning and an RBI single in the 9th. Kaz Matsui managed a one run homer as well to give the Mets three for the night and an NL-leading 43 homeruns on the season. What ever happened to Willie Ball ? The go-ahead run and the two insurance runs were even enough for Bradon Looper to earn another save without causing undue heart palpatations, profuse sweating and sporadic bouts of nausea, save for the l...

"I don't know what Piazza's percentage is throwing runners out, but I don't think it's very high, so you try to be more aggressive when he's down there." Junior Spivey, who stole second base on a one hop Piazza throw in the bottom of the 9th that led to the Brewers winning run. The first question that leaps to the mind is why was Piazza still behind the plate in the 9th inning with the score tied in the first place? Normally, Manager Willie replaces him with Ramon Castro -- but Ramon Castro started the game and was pinch hit for by Cliff Floyd in the 9th leaving only Piazza back as a defensive liability. Cliff Floyd struck out, negating any possible advantage there may have been to replace Castro with Piazza defensively and you'd have to say, it was just one of those games the Mets were bound to lose: Glavine starting, Piazza catching in the 9th out of necessity. In short, a disaster waiting to happen. We should be happy with winning the three gam...