Archie Bunker's Army

23:41 GST, I'm plugged in to the Mets going to bat, 8th inning, Santana exactly 100 pitches. 6-2 lead. I've erred. Forgot about the time difference, went out to see a band and on the way home, pop! It dawned on me that the bloody Mets were already well into the heat of Game One...so I ran past the long boats and scattered the seagulls in all directions, three flights of stairs up and slid into the seat for the WFAN broadcast. What was I expecting against the team that absolutely humiliated the Mets in the final game of the season when we last saw them? Well, certainly the hype and warp speed of expectations with the signing of Santana meant hmmm....the last time the Mets debut of a big name offseason acquisition pitcher, the he-man of the rotation came a few years back against the Reds, Pedro's debut demolished... I'm sorry, I couldn't help remembering Looper's Pooper before Mike Jacobs pops out a three run homer in the 8th...but no, a nightmare that we are...

With the season neigh upon us, time for a quick look at 5 Things In Favour of the Mets Winning The NL East and 5 Things That Might Prevent The Mets From Making the Post Season. 5 Things That Might Prevent The Mets From Making the Post Season : 1. Age of the Pitching Staff : We all know that age kills over the course of a 162 game season. Having top line starters or the meat of your order pushing 40 is an open invitation to breakdown and disappointment, unless of course, a plucky bench and a depleted farm system can come to the rescue. Of the pitching staff, Pedro , coming off a season he pitched less than a half dozen games in, Scott Schoenweiss and Billy Wagner are all either 35 or older or will turn 35 this season. The 80 year old El Duque is already on the 15-day DL and will require yet another force majeure, a miracle of age and wonder, to avoid the physical collapse that would fail every other senior citizen in his position. When you consider that he contributed 24 starts and n...

Seeing as how Opening Day is a day away (or yesterday's today, tomorrow's yesterday ?) in Japan and doesn't feature the Mets or even an NL team, we aren't considering this official in the traditional sense. Accordingly, rather than recount the deeds being done so far, far away or write some baseball satire, eyeball-popping headline like Pedro Loses Right Arm In Bar Brawl , I've chosen instead to regale yea fortunate readers with a little baseball poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, writer and founder of the infamous City Lights Bookstore . Ferlinghetti, for those of you unfamiliar, was jailed in those dark and evil days or yore when publishing "obscenity" was punishable by jail terms. Just imagine what they'd regard the majority of non-political blog content these days, or 90% if the internet these days... Baseball Canto Lawrence Ferlinghetti Watching baseball, sitting in the sun, eating popcorn, reading Ezra Pound, and wishing that Juan Marichal ...

"It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like." Jackie Mason Having recently reviewed the cause for cautious optimism for the prospects of the Mets pitching staff in 2008, we now turn our weary eyes to the dilemmas facing us in the field and at the plate. Catcher and Outfield When perusing the Mets potential starting lineup in the field let me make one thing abundantly clear for the 1000th time. Yes, brilliant job getting Santana, Omar but I'm still picking the shit sandwich out of my teeth every time I see Brian Schneider and Ryan Church running around in a Mets uniform and Lastings Milledge in a Nats kit. I've put this unusual combination first because considering the vacancy in right field (ok, the Jesus Freak is out there when he isn't concussing himself but that's only to provide cheap entertainment on windy day middle outfield pop-ups and an easy bull's eye for the Army when frustration set...

"The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror." Oscar Wilde , The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 There are two ways to approach Spring Training: 1. Hysterical with joy or misery with every meaningless victory or loss regardless of whether or not your team fields its starting 8 on the field or a loose collection of minor league hopefuls getting some seasoning, OR 2. Complete indifference to results provided that at least one near-nobody comes out of nowhere to make the roster in impressive and unexpected fashion, possibly filling in a hole, and none of the guys you will expect to rely on throughout the course of the season suffer some serious injury before the games even begin to matter. And where hysterical meets indifference, that's where you'll find the Army marching in place waiting out these miserable days on Optimism Boulevard, waiting for the penny to drop and sniffing the pa...

"It's delightful, it's delicious, it's de-lovely" - Cole Porter I have to admit, when I first saw this photo and the nearly gushing article that accompanied it, I could nearly feel myself, as though in a preternatural dream of Spring Training, reaching for a little brown paper bag to hyperventilate into. "So please be sweet, my chickadee And when I kiss ya, just say to me "It's delightful, it's delicious, it's delectable, it's delirious, It's dilemma, it's de limit, it's deluxe, it's de-lovely" Because yet again we are reminded not only around us, as the winter's bleak veneer slowly cracks, but also in baseball, as through those cracks makes way for the promise of renewal, the warmth of summer days slowly grinding in to long, hot Augusts and mind-numbing Septembers where seemingly insurmountable leads evaporate... "You can tell at a glance what a swell night this is for romance You can hear dear Mother Nat...

Some reasons we know Spring Training has arrived: "I dominated that era," Pedro began in the most succinct yet typically cryptic hilarious early moment of the Steroid Spring. "And I did it clean." Leave it to Pedro, of course, to cut through the rubbish and get to the heart of the Cheat Clemens Controversy . Everyone's Happy: Rick Peterson seems to be allowing his excitement to verge on the obscene - hope Willie's got something to clean the side of his pants off with later... "This year, tell Jimmy Rollins WE'RE the team to beat." An early surprise after only a day was not the rapid recovery of Duaner Sanchez , who we commend from afar for reporting in a semblance of shape this season, eager to prove and eager to put a miserable past behind him, but El Capitan, Carlos Beltran who took the unusual step not only of speaking, but speaking in bold and flagrant terms, albeit slightly unoriginally given the comments of NL MVP Jimmy Rollins last S...

Manager or Court Jester? In a way, I'm starting to feel nauseous already about the prospects of Willie at the helm of this Titanic Championship craft. Especially when he makes idiotic comments like he did at the All Hail Johan Press Conference and General Giddiness Buffet when he said, straight-face and all: “We felt good about ourselves going into spring training as it was,” Sorry? What was that? Willie needs a psych evaluation? Willie is out campaigning for the Championship of Absurdist Statements? What was there all that good to feel about exactly? No consistently palatable starters other than Pedro ? A bullpen too full of question marks? A left fielder destined to play about 30% of the team's games? Mediocrity patrolling right? A first baseman who spent most of last season struggling to hit his weight? The 20 man platoon of catchers waiting to be unleashed? A Spring Training full of nothing but talk about your historic choking collapse? I don't see how a...

What does this mean? This Tolstoy cold dead winter is over. No one can piss on Omar any more.

After a long, bleak and dark winter Omar Minaya finally emerged with Prize, Johan Santana . Oh, Johan! And after a long, bleak and dark winter of worries that Omar would surrender the entirety of the Mets farm system for a shot at The Magic Mojohan , in the end, in the eyes of those in the know, Omar pants'd another GM . Well, perhaps this is a bit over the top. Outfielder prospect Carlos Gomez and righthanders Deolis Guerra , Philip Humber and Kevin Mulvey one might argue, represent the future of the Mets pitching staff and a potential All-Star outfielder but in reality, who the fuck cares about the future, we've got Johan Santana, the best pitcher in baseball now! According to Baseball America: "The two best prospects in the trade, Guerra and Gomez, come with high ceilings but also lack a lot of polish and have a long ways to go to reach their potential. The odds that they both will do so are slim. Guerra has an 89-94 mph fastball and a promising changeup and he’s o...

These kids will say anything these days to get past the doorman blocking entryway into the Gimme My Mets Fantasy Now Goddammit, Bring Me My Johan! Club . They will even pretend they know how to play to get my Magic Mojohan on. The Magic Mojohan So they pushed me up on stage and about a hundred tiny little Mets prospects, some of them even future pitching stars projected into the forever with every itchy trigger finger wondering whether or not they will burn out before they hit their prime, the future of the World for crissakes, the Mets World anyway, just waiting for their moment of truth, stepped up and handed me the multi-string Mojohan, the magic one, and I commenced to a playin' it, one foot stamping loudly on the hardwood floor of the stage, the smell of steroids and cigar smoke thick in the air, the laughter of baseball bimbos as they shadow danced with overweight, greasy fingered Moneyball addicts twitching in place as the attempted to look nonchalant in front of the baseba...

Belated New Years greetings, au fait readers... Still sleeping off the remnants of the beaten track yet the first thing I did upon returning home after a fortnight without newspapers and rumours or internet access was naturally to seek out all the breath-taking breaking news, the wheelings and dealings of Omar as he turned the Mets back from laughingstocks into serious contenders. The Answer Is: Glad I didn't hold my breath . Now, I'm not going to go all bitter and bile this time around. It's a new year and although there is no new perspective on the dithering and all-round lack of action from Omar , well, lack of productive action it should be clarified...anyway, no news is sometimes good news considering I might instead have come home to something like Mets Trade Heilman, F-Mart and The Peoples' Pelfrey To Philadelphia for Mike Lieberthal . So instead we can be comforted by notions such as Keeping An Eye On Joe Blanton . The only sentence of consequence I could pi...

I read the morning's baseball deal headlines and I have to admit, I'm beginning to get a little pissed off. Is Omar Minaya awake out there? Trades to be made he's nowhere to be found and when he DOES make a trade, he embarasses himself. Let's take the Tigers getting Cabrera and D-Train for what amounts to a few coupons from the National Food Allotment Program . Seriously, in return for an All-Star third baseman and a proven ace, the Marlins received only a young lefty who was 5-5 with a 5.63 ERA last season (the Mets don't have an equivilent?), a third string catcher (We CERTAINLY have a third string catcher by now), a talented but unproven CF (we have two of them in waiting) and ok, a host of other very low level names with alleged upside...what did the Marlins get in return that Omar couldn't have easily given??? Ok, I hear you saying oh, we don't need the best hitting fattest third baseman in the National League we've already got David Wright . Agre...

Ok, calm down. Calm down. Lastings Milledge has finally been traded. YEARS we've been fucking hearing about Lastings Milledge getting traded in a package deal somewhere, usually for a front-line starting pitcher like Barry Zero , hell, half the A's starting rotation at one time or another, occasionally for a Hall of Famer like Manny Club Cancer Ramirez , for D Train , you name it. If there was a starting pitcher to be had, rest assured the Mets needed him and Lastings Milledge was rumoured to be the fucking lynchpin with Aaron But I Wanna Be A Starter Heilman getting dumped with him, like the Imperial fleet's pre-light speed garbage dump Han Solo once escaped out of. I was always torn about these rumours. Sure, it always been very hip to bash Lastings. He's immature at times, struggles with his own personality in a big media spotlight, the Management rubbished him because of potty mouth rap lyrics, he's too bling, blablabla. The point is he's a 23 year o...

Passport photos reveal remarkable difference... 10. Discovery of forged Venezuelan birth certificate indicating Yorvit's actual date of birth was 1998 meaning he wasn't old enough to legally sign a contract. Met's officials insisted they were "never fooled" by the magic marker goatee Yorvit had drawn in to "make himself look older." 9. A cymnical tactical ploy in the difficult, ongoing negotiations to sign Mike Defelice as the new starting catcher because "two passed balls in 16 games" is a marked sign of defensive improvement. 8. Omar wanted to call him Yorvit Torrealba but Jeff Wilpon insisted he be called Yorman Bazardo . 7. Andrew Mongelluzzi's touching revelation that the Mets never even offered a one year contract to Paulie gave the Mets brass a guilty conscience. 6. Endy Chavez, a fellow Venezuelan, revealed that in Venezuela slang, "Yorvit" means "no arm, no bat" as in "El tiene yorvit" 5. Me...

Right. Now I'll be getting excited about the 2008 season. The Mets are announcing they've agreed to terms with Yorvit Torrealba to be their new starting catcher. Yeah, but you're no Yorvit Torrealba, baby... This is like someone telling me they've set me up on a blind date with a famous fit English actress and instead of Keira Knightley , it's bloody Joan Collins showing up at the front door. Right, call me back when it's 1950 again, Joanie. In any event, let's also put it this way: Not an Upgrade . It's too early in the offseason to start spitting sunflower seeds of bitterness but what, history of shoulder problems, absolute shite at throwing out runners, miserable batting average away from Coors...where's the bloody upside to this - that he's younger than Paul Lo Duca ? The real pisser about this is that, you just watch now, the Rockies will go ahead and sign Lo Duca who will hit like 40 homers at Coors Field next season where the high alt...

There are quite alot of former Mets masquerading as free agents at the moment. It makes you wonder which of them would be of the most use to the Mets if they were to suddenly reappear in the auld Orange and Blue and what a wonderful send off for Shea down Memory Lane: Kris Benson : What's not to like? Mets need starting pitching, Kris Benson is a starting pitcher. Sure, a right handed starter coming off right shoulder surgery. He'll be available on the auld cheap-ola, we can all hold vigil whilst he tests it out in Spring Training, averting our attention from waxing nauseously on that 7 game lead into the sticky, mosquito-scented Florida twilight and give us Anna Benson Headlines , the greatest comic in the history of baseball player wives. Met career: 39 starts, 14-12 record, 242 innings pitched, 130 earned runs surrendered. Kenny Rogers : Just look at all he's done since he left the Mets in that fabled NLCS 1999 meltdown: The 2005 shoving the cameramen, kicking th...

Now that one of the more disappointing baseball seasons in my recent memory is finally over it appears we have a sudden bout of indigestion or perhaps slowly formulating gout to deal with and that is the likes of Hackmaster Flash waxing poetic about "going after" A-Hole now that he's given the auld two finger salute to the Yankees and is free to fuck over another franchise with the delusional demands of his meglomaniac agent Scott Whore-Ass blending in nicely with his own impressive When They Don't Count numbers. Firstly, let me say that I just know auld Wally is simply taking the piss. He must be. NOBODY is that fucking stupid. He had a column to write and nothing provocative came to mind so he decided to cheat and write the sports page equivilent of a Dolly Has Tits tabloid headline and send us all puking into our deskside rubbish bins with the idea of moving Kid Franchise to make room for the Cancer Franchise Kid in the hot corner. Signing A-Hole is not j...

Well, now that my fantasy ending to the Mets season, which, we can now reveal, was created using completely random box scores from the 1970s and 1980s September Mets games, is over, reality can set in. What's it been, two, three weeks now? The Latest Spin is that the adversity of the Worst Collapse In the History Of Mankind is a "character builder". I don't know if anyone has actually said or written that but it's the typical sort of rubbish slogan supporters will stand behind to justify another season of mediocrity. I have several different spin angles available to stand by in the event you are dissatisfied with searching for farthings in steaming piles of horse manure: The Dubito, Ergo Cogito, Ergo Sum Spin : This method requires an anatomically correct Willie Randolph doll with a Billy Wagner head and involves knowing instinctively at the season's onset that any remote element of belief will slowly be eroded by the reality of the underperforming and inju...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E - - - - - - - - - - - - Rockies 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 2 5 0 Mets 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 3 Out-dueled in Game One, Jeff Francis was not to be denied in the decisive Game Five The once-vaunted offensive juggernaut of the New York Mets is no more. For the second consecutive game the Mets were shutout by the pitching staff of the wild card Colorado Rockies, an embarassing display at Shea Stadium to cap an early end to a once-promising 2007 season and to fill fans with disillusionment, vitriol and biliary disgust. Reyes contemplates titles for his new Spanglish Gangsta Rap CD planned with Lastings Milledge this winter "Willie should be fired," one fan spat, exiting Shea Stadium among the thousands of others herded towards the #7 train home. "Perhaps first he should be disemboweled and THEN he should be fired..." Mr Met Prays For Guillermo Mota Corpses To Fa...