Archie Bunker's Army

Oh, this is getting good. Now it's four of the last five taken from the Braves and Victor Zambrano is headed for a lengthy DL visit. Are we really very sorry for Zambrano's elbow? Zambrano was thought to be seriously injured when, after striking out Andruw Jones for the first out in the second innings, he ran from the mound to the dugout and toward the runway that leads to the clubhouse. "He was crying when he came in," coach Sandy Alomar said. "The pain had to be extensive." It was further reported that others saw Zambrano holding his right arm straight down and rigid. "Like something was broken," an anonymous teammate remarked. Something has always been broken about Zambrano. If this facilitates him finding his misery elsewhere, all the better. Yes, it comes at a time when both Brian Bannister and John Maine are on the DL but let's face it, watching Jorge Lima perform his strange little acts are going to be far more interesting albe...

Say good bye to our little friends the Atlanta Braves. Though resilient as they may be, they were served noticed nearing dawn when David Wright's walk-off 400 foot double finally ended a 14 inning, 4 hour 47 minute marathon battle and gave the Mets their third win in the last four games against the Braves, this time by an 8-7 margin. One wonders, if we recall the infamous Larry Jones quote of 1999, if the Braves can now go home and put on their Falcons stuff... It was a game that saw 32 hits and 16 pitchers. Is this the Kazuo we signed, finally showing up two years later? It was a game that saw the Mets, behind the wishy-washy pitching of Steve Trachsel , fall to a 6-2 deficit by the bottom of the 7th inning, only to rally back to tie the game at 6 ironically, with a Kaz Matsui RBI single. Billy Boy, Blowing Bubbles As Easily As He Blows Games It was a game where yet again, the Mets won in spite of Billy Wagner giving the game away in the 12th. He did manage a scoreless 10th, ...

This is what the lads are supposed to do if they're planning on going places. Beat the crap teams and keep the losses to a minimum. Last night, Glavine and the Mets beat the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates again, this time a little more easily, 6-0 in nine innings. Tom Glavine. Three hits and 10 strikeouts. In fact, striking out more than a third of the 27 batters he faced, impressive, even if they were only Pirate batters. If he gets six strikeouts in his next start in Philadelphia next week he will move ahead of K-Legend, Sandy Koufax at 2,397. Not 300 wins yet, but pretty big stuff. Damn near Hall of Fame. This is what they call the "K Position". Lettuce Pray. Glavine's brilliant pitching was supplemented, among others, by Xavier Nady's three-run homer. Nady, after a night off, had four RBIs The three-run homerun payback is just around the bend... In addition to Nady's heroics, David Wright had a night of his own, bursting out of a miserable slump to get...

"It was a dark and stormy night..." Pedro Martinez, pitching in a game punctuated by sweeping rains, frequent dashes onto the pitch by the Diamond Dry brigade, won his 6th game of the season against no losses with a typically dominating, 6 inning, 3 hit, 9 K outing, the sole flaw being the 1st inning homer surrendered to Freddy Sanchez That doesn't mean Billy Wags didn't cock it all up a mere strike away from victory for Pedro and the Mets by blowing the save, his first blown save of the season, allowing a pair of walks and then a pair of singles in the 9th to tie a game that was heading for certain victory. Ok, let's not lose our heads - after all, even with this debaucherous outing, his ERA is still hovering at the 1.80 mark. For a change, David Wright couldn't be blamed for Wagner's flailing. How do you think Pedro feels? Of course the real pisser for The Army was that this game should have been over by 2:30 ayem, UK time allowing an early nap be...

Oy! Let's have a bat that works! Ahhh, this is what we yearned to see all of last season: the Mets spitting and fighting and arguing like a real team scratching and kicking for every victory, taking every loss as an insult. It took the majority of his inaugural season to pass (153 games or thereabouts) last year before Willie finally showed enough passion as the Mets manager to get tossed out of a game. Perhaps he's a little more comfortable, perhaps a little less satisfied or perhaps he's just expecting a little more from his team and the season but last night, barely a month into the season, Willie was ejected for the dreaded offence of arguing balls and strikes with a tempramental umpire who had a very liberal outline of the strikezone when the fancy struck him. Just after David Wright , mired in an 0-14 slump, struck out looking on an inside fastball that was nowhere near a strike, the third consecutive Met strikeout, Willie was ready for a proverbial fight. Wrigh...

Chavez's excitement is too palatable for words. When you think pitcher's duel you tend to think something along the lines of Pedro against John Smoltz , or Pedro v Livian or whomever. You don't tend to think any sentence with the world "pitcher's duel" will also contain the name Victor Zambrano in it. It would have been hard to foresee a pitcher's duel emerging out of a matchup between Russ Ortiz and Victor Zambrano yesterday, but a pitching duel it was with Ortiz, winless in five starts, throwing 6 innings of nearly scoreless ball save for Carlos Delgado's homer into left field in the 6th which tied the game at 1 and Zambrano, pointless in his first three starts, pitching with uncharacteristic verve. For one start at least, no longer a piñata... Zambrano lasted longer (six innings) and allowed fewer hits (five singles) than he had in his first three starts of the season. He surrendered one run, struck out four and walked two before leaving for a pin...

Only two other teams have held a seven game lead in April. The 2001 Mariners , who were 20-5 in the cruelest month and the 1977 Dodgers , who went 17-3. The Mets ended their 2006 April with a record of 16-8, and although they won't join the record books, they still hold a six game lead over their mortal enemies in the NL East. If you'd have been told of this scenario in Spring Training, you'd not only have taken it, but you'd have taken it with the unbridled enthusiasm normally reserved for flipping through SI's annual swimsuit issue. Not only that, but by taking 2 of 3 at Turner Field, the Mets paid the Braves back for Shea, changed the psychology of momentum with an even more impressive road trip, face the pasty Nats and Pirates before returning to their nemesis yet again with a chance to put the final distance between the Braves and immortality. Yesterday should probably just be forgotten. Steve Trachsel demonstrated he could be equally ineffective on regular...

Despite David Wright's clumsy efforts to help bobble another game for Billy Wagner, the Mets took their second straight victory at Turner Field, this time 1-0 and this time, to widen their lead over the Braves to an incredible seven games and to clinch their first series victory in Atlanta since August 26-28, 2003 . It often gets lost in the shuffle of pitching performances and homeruns, but Cliff Floyd saved at least two runs and probably the game with his fantastic, diving catch in the gap in left center in the 4th inning with two outs and two runners on, and then made a sliding catch an inning later to save Glavine's skin. The Mets team character is officially stated. On the heels of overtaking the Giants despite Bonds' dramatic 9th inning homer in SF, the Mets have now won two straight games at Turner Field, two games, if we're being honest, the Mets would almost certainly have lost last season. Instead, Paul Lo Duca's homer in the 6th inning, his first of th...

(Thank you very much for two homeruns instead of three errors) Does this make up for the three errors now? Before we all step into the giddy machine and start talking about winning the NL East let us not forget that the last series against the Braves started with a Met's victory too. Pregame the WFAN broadcast booth couldn't contain their excitement, quoting Davey Johnson's infamous "I don't want to just win this year, I want to dominate," speech, indoctrinating the listeners with a fevered sort of expectation. This is the series where we can expect vindication. This is the series we will point to in the offseason, hey, remember when the Mets dismantled the Braves at Turner Field and knocked them out of the race by May? Pshaw. Hand on to your hats, fellahs. I'll be impressed with a sweep and nothing less. Two out of three is a prerequisite. But for one day anyway, let's sing the praises of David Wright as hard as we lamented his bone-headed, g...

Interesting stat about to be turned on it's head? Since it opened in 1997, the Mets are 20-51 at Turner Field. They went 1-8 here last season, 2-7 in 2004, 3-7 in 2003. In all, the Mets have not won a season series against Atlanta since 1997. Pedro Martinez will face John Smoltz for the sixth time this evening, followed by a Tom Glavine-John Thomson matchup tomorrow. Steve Trachsel squares off against Kyle Davies in the Sunday finale. The verdict? Wishful thinking or not, Wednesday night's improbable comeback victory over the Giants to conclude a winning road trip shows just what this team is made of. The Army notes that the Braves domination over the Mets cannot go on forever and now is just as good a time as any to begin driving the stake into the heart of it's worse nemisis. Mets will take two of three from the Braves and silence alot of doubters by the beginning of May.

It took either alot of guts or alot of stupidity to pitch to Barry Bonds when he represented the tying run at the plate in the bottom of the 9th inning and first base wide open, waving her arms frantically and alluringly. Then again, Billy Wagner was on the mound, and pitching out of a situation like this to preserve a two run win is precisely why he was hired. Not to mention the fact Bonds had been only 2 for 12 against him in the past. Steroid Beats Sandman Result aside, it's the type of classic baseball theatre you yearn for: fireballing closer against beleaguered homerun king, mano a mano, no cowardly intentional walks in the making. Wagner pumped fastballs of 97, 96 and 96 miles an hour whilst the crowd chanted Bonds' name, the atmosphere pregnant with hope and anticipation before Wagner threw one high and outside at 99 m.p.h. and Bonds yanked it out for the game-tying homer. Classic all the way. "My strength is his strength," Wagner said afterwards. "I ...

This was pretty much how it was drawn up in the offseason planning room this season. Steve Trachsel's back holding up and pitching brilliantly, Xavier Nady for Mike Cameron and the addition of Duaner Sanchez and Billy Wagner to keep things shut tight so victory couldn't escape out the barn door and run wild into the night until it became another frustrating loss. In the end, this game was about homers and Steve Trachsel's brutally efficient performance: six innings of three hit, one-run, low rent ball. Trachsel shows his moves in scoliotic dance masquerading as a fielding gesture... Homers, homers everywhere. Bonds hit one to lead off the second inning and tie the score 1-1 and pulling within four homers of Babe Ruth , who had a diet of hotdogs and beer instead of steroids for pretty much the same result. Shouldn't Bonds' homerun trot be followed by an army of Feds with Writs and Warrants in their sweaty paws? The rest of the game was quiet with Trachsel and Jam...

Moises Alou poses a funny question. Should you walk the steroid-scandaled human controversy Barry Bonds who is hitting .222 and looking as though he's had enough both of the media and baseball, or should you pitch to him and try to avoid filling up the bases for Alou, who is hitting .327? Willie chose to follow history, walking Bonds 3 bloody times making the Mets pay when Alou drove in 5 runs on 3 hits and virtually single-handedly defeated the Mets, 6-2. Normally Willie couldn't be faulted for such a strategy because Bonds has killed the Mets in the past as he has most teams, but this isn't Bonds' season just yet and the respect afforded him by Willie was almost absurd. Especially as it continued inning after inning and Alou made him pay. Let's hope Willie learned something out of this. Let the .222 hitter swing, no matter what his history. Bonds has a larf with Beltran and Julio Franco as he tells the story of how stupid Willie is for walking him three times...

One remark: If Carlos Beltran is ever healthy again, why not make him the lead off hitter and bat Jose Reyes second? Beltran loves walking. His OBP is a testament to that. Reyes love swinging. Hit and run or no double plays, either way - a good way to solve Reyes' recent impotence as the lead off hitter. Actually, two years running. Time to try something different. ***** Keith Hernandez should check his eyeballs - who wouldn't want a fit bird like that in the dugout? Kelly Calabrese, massage therapist. Fitting. Of the remarks, she says: "It is amazing that somebody can be that ignorant to actually voice that opinion if that is the opinion that he holds." What's really amazing is that anyone cares.

You begin to get the idea that without Victor Zambrano in the rotation, the Mets might still have MLB's best record. Even with him they aren't far off the mark at 12-6, one game behind the defending NL Champion Houston Astros at 13-5 but whilst having what amounts to a probable loss every fifth day isn't decimating to a team with pitching like the Mets, it certainly takes the fun out of things. And, you might also say, with Jorge Julio throwing another scoreless inning of meaningless relief to drop his ERA down to 7.45, that Victor Zambrano has become the worst Met pitcher on the staff and has gained the distinction with dedication to mediocrity, consistently poor outings and relentless adherence to meaningless post-game phrases like "I'm not frustrated," as though that could turn him into Cy Young material in and of itself. Our Pot-bellied Pitcher Sucks The Mets have beauty and greatness when Pedro pitches and the Mets have hideousness and mediciocrity whe...

I suppose it was meant to be a nice tribute to honour the military serving in the San Diego area but really, when the Padres came out for a game last night dressed in camouflage baseball uniforms, you had to wonder how humiliated they must have been looking so ridiculous and so un-baseball like. Enough to lose the game, 8-1. Back to back homers by Nady and Ramon Castro in addition to yet another by Carlos Delgado, his third consecutive game homering which now puts him one shy of the Mets record for April, were more than sufficient to help give Pedro and easy and dominating victory. Pedro struck out 11 and allowed only 4 base runners over seven innings. I know Mike Piazza's supposed to married to a really fit bird and all but you can't deny the comical dandism of this man, hands on hips as he is, styled in a hideous camouflage baseball kit. Piazza scored the Padres lone run with a moon shot off Pedro in the second inning which did little to slow Pedro or the Mets. The Mets have...

"Well, if you're going to make outs, make 'em fast." - Cliff Floyd spouted this after noting how quickly the Mets played through five extra innings of work. Maybe that's why Cliff Floyd is hitting .208 this season. He's in a hurry to get out and go home. Delgado's homer was the sole Met run in 14 fruitless innings A night after battering what was allegedly the best bullpen in baseball the Mets produced only two base runners in five extra innings of play and not surprisingly, the first team to score were their opponents and the Mets lost an uninspiring game, 2-1. Together, the Mets and Padres accumulated 18 hits and struck out 24 times. Brian Bannister? The skeleton in his closet appears to be the yearning ache for walking batters. He gave up only 4 hits but walked six, making that 15 walks in 23 innings pitched. Whilst that might be sufficient against the likes of the Padres, what do you think a team like the Braves or the Cardinals would do with tha...

See what happens when you don't pitch a complete game against the Mets and you've got a Padre bullpen? After two consecutive losses to the Braves with two consecutive pitchers tossing complete game victories against them, an ugly feeling of deja puke was creeping up along the backs of our throats like a vengeful, twisting snake as inning after inning against Jake Peavey proved equally fruitless and the body count of futility mounted to a mere 3 runs over 25 innings. For seven innings, Jake Peavey baffled Met batters much as Davies and Hudson had done for the Braves before him but mistakenly left his 4-hit one run gem to the "best bullpen in baseball" after a dazzling seven innings which proved to be a fatal mistake. In the top of the 8th, rallied by a double from Nady and then a pinch hit homerun by Julio Franco , the Mets suddenly and inexplicably seized victory from the jaws of defeat to grab a 3-2 lead off of Scott Linebrink, ruining Peavey's gem and opening ...

Telephone Call From Shea All night long we sing this song on the broken glass of the bottle of vintage Mets we dropped from the airplane flying overhead, as Jorge Julio mops up again. Some nights we get Pedro in a glass, shots of Wright and Reyes on the side feeling large and wonderful, the fat man who never pays the bill, and can't squeeze his ass into those tiny box seats. I got a telephone call from Shea the Mets are gonna to win today who knows, who knows, if it's just the third base coach waving another Castro home just to get thrown out again. Will you sell me one of those tickets if I shave my head into oblivion singing and chanting the newest Mets song as though we were wonderful all along? All game, all gone, we sing this song on the broken glass of the bottle of vintage Mets we dropped from the airplane flying overhead as the Mets lose to the Braves again. Get me out of hell on the number seven never trust a team that inflates your dreams only to puncture them again. ...

The first pitch for tonight's game at San Diego is scheduled for 3 am, my time. Frankly, it'll be easier getting up at 3 to listen than it would be staying up until three for a home night game... In any event, whilst there is time to kill, shall we point out for the trillionth time that not only is Piazza facing his auld team but so is Xavier Nady? Nady, who never found a permanent niche in San Diego, is batting .373 with four homers and eight RBIs, ranking among the National League leaders in batting and slugging. Piazza is batting .231 with 1 homer and 4 RBIs in 10 games. Mike Cameron, acquired for Nady, starts his rehab assignment at Class A Lake Elsinore on Friday night. And looking even further ahead, Armandogeddon is coming off the DL just in time for the Mets visit to Steroid Stadium . Other bits and bobs: The Onion had time to pan Pedro on Pedro's Success ... A review of the Brief History of Closer Music ...(complete with audio for the unfamiliar tunes...) Tonight...