Idiots and Maine Meltdown Cost Mets The Game

My name is Marty Foster and I am the bête sauvage of incompetence.

If I were John Maine I would be completing Marty Foster's application for lifetime membership with the American Council of the Blind, have his union card revoked and kick him penniless and humiliated to the kerb for demonstrating such an inexorable ineptitude umping from first.

Indeed, it was Foster's failure to make a simple out call at first base that precipitated the meltdown of Maine in yesterday's demoralising loss to the Cubs, led to the wildness, walk after walk after hit batsman after run-scoring hits and sent Maine to an early shower in the 3rd inning with a 6 run deficit hung around his neck.

Why?

Because Foster blew the call that would have ended the inning and did so just a few batters after the third base umpire almost blew a call at third base which forced David Wright to tag out a runner he'd already forced out in the first place.

The only consolation a viewer might have found in the wuthering heights of hopelessly inane umpiring was that it temporarily distracted one from the banal, mindless chatter of Tim McCarver and Joe Buck who are, in essence, the baseball broadcasting equivalence of Mutt and Jeff, captains of unparalleled stupidity.


Behind the scenes of the Fox Channel baseball broadcast booth...

And while we're on it, who is Ken Rosenthal blowing to keep his job giving sotto voce discourses on self-inflicted moronity masquerading as "insider" knowledge and insight, Mistress of the Painfully Obvious?

And when Fox isn't carpet bombing you with the insipid slow-wittedness of its painfully untalented staff it is giving you the Chinese water torture of corporate junk food sponsorship. What the hell does the Burger King Hot Zone or the Pepsi Clutch (Performer) really have to do with baseball?

Sweet eff all, that's what. Just more mind sewage gobbing up the works of baseball, that's what. Thanks, Fox. You've almost made baseball ugly.

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And yes, of course it all distracted one from a Mets loss. John Maine was certainly the engineer of his own demise growing wilder by the pitch and perhaps had he been a little steadier fielder in the 3rd inning it never would have come down to the blind incompetence of the umps but why blame oneself when there are such blatant scapegoats setting themselves up there as targets?

Quite frankly, Moises Alou's sweet pair of homers were almost lost in the swill of frustration. The fatuous bile oozing from the lips of McCarver and Buck distracting to the depths of temporary insanity, almost caused us to overlook Aaron Sele's three innings of scoreless pitching. How often have scoreless and Sele been in the same sentence this season?

But all those rotten things put together still doesn't explain Ted Lilly and the Mets' inability to score runs on Saturday. It doesn't explain Lastings Milledge's ugly E8 in the 7th.

Ugh, blech.

Let's hope Tom Glavine has better luck than his two predecesors, Roger Clemens in 2003 and Greg Maddux in 2004, at winning number 300 at Wrigley Field. Clemens lost his chance and Maddux received a no decision. Glavine's might be the last 300 put up for a long, long while.

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The only mildly uplifting episode was the discovery of Lastings Milledge Facts which I credit BMF for pointing out.