Pre-Off Season Thoughts

What explains my light posting? Waking up every day with this image in my mind:

[well there should be an image of a certain light hitting preoperative sex change catcher hitting a certain homerun, but nooooooooooo Blogger doesn't want no pictures tonight! Anyhow Yadier Molina raises the question, just how fast do steroids work?]

I think I've even lost my taste for "HOT STOVE" cooking. At least temporarily. I mean, Omar Minaya already went out and got everything I wanted the last few years. And to some extent, I only really wanted those things because I thought I couldn't have them. It's too soon to tell, but this year? Screw it, find a decent bench, sign Soriano, Lee, and Zito, and trade for Dontrelle, and I'll be charmed.
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Why does Marty Noble have to be such a dick? Not a shitbag of Wallace Matthews proportions, mind you, but...
Assuming those "mailbag" letters are genuine, imagine writing in, your heart bursting with pain, you eyes still a little weepy, writing your letter just so you can get the small satisfaction of having a real Mets beat writer with inside info and years of experience answer your wittle question. Then...BITCH SLAP!!
I guess I kind of like his attitude in a way, but even the most innocuous questions get snappy comebacks. My guess is MLB forces him to do a "mailbag" feature, and he loathes people because it takes away from his eating babies time.

Here's a few gems from his latest column which is comparatively mild:

"You may be free to watch football next October if a proven starter isn't acquired. ...And don't think about Aaron Heilman. "

"But the cost in dollars is their concern, not yours."

"There was no reason to address the situation[Randolph contract extension] in September or until the team's season was over. He's less anxious about it than you seem to be."

"Take a breath, stop listening to drive-time radio ranting, consider Beltran's body of work this year and prepare your retraction."
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Well, he probably missed a few things, but Noble is right when he pinpoints the ways in which the Mets blew the NL pennant:

"Game 7 was lost in the sixth inning when the Mets had the bases loaded with one out and didn't score to take the lead against a pitcher, Jeff Suppan, who had thrown 83 pitches; not in the ninth when they faced a fresh Adam Wainwright trailing, 3-1. The game was lost when the six Mets batters saw merely 15 pitches in the fourth, after Suppan had pitched around Delgado, through the second out of the fifth.
And the series was lost in the seventh inning of the second game when Guillermo Mota shook off the changeup sign from Paul Lo Duca and threw a fastball to Scott Spiezio. Result: a game-tying two-run triple."

Yes, the Mets lost, and thereby opened the flood gates of hell, setting in motion a sequence of events that would lead to the worst possible conclusion--the MVP bestowed on David Eckstein. The "Black Sox" scandal. Bud Selig calling off the All-Star game. The 2006 Yankees. And now, the most annoyingly overrated low talent plugger in baseball has snuck off with the most coveted award. Fire Joe Morgan is on to something about David Eckstein, but I can't quite pinpoint it.

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Major League Baseball is now marketing what is arguably the worst thing to happen to baseball in the modern era (besides David Eckstein of course). Play along at home. Go on, I bet you can do better than Steve Phillips.
What's next, an internet game where fans guess which post-steriodal lunkhead will assume designated hitter duties for which AL team?

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Since I'm quoting sportswriters a lot lately, let's just get into Wallace Matthews a little bit here. Check out how Wally masterfully blends the literary conventions "meanness" with "just plain wrongness" in his account of the Mets' downfall. I ask you, has anyone ever done it better?

That is the way things went for Willie Randolph last night. The Mets manager guessed absolutely wrong on his starting pitcher, Oliver Perez, who gave up a home run on the very next pitch after Randolph had visited him on the mound with one out and a man on first in the sixth inning of a tie game being played for the privilege of some National League team getting swept in the World Series by the Detroit Tigers.
Oh, Perez surrendered a home run to Rolen, all right. The ball was on its way to LaGuardia with a ticket stamped "Visitor's Bullpen," but Chavez, who stands all of 5-9, canceled that ticket when he suddenly became 10 feet tall and pulled the ball back, then fired it to the infield where it turned into an inning-ending double play.
Whether Perez argued Randolph out of pulling him - highly unlikely, given his difficulty with the English language - or Randolph was just going with his trusted gut, the point remains the same. The manager made the absolutely wrong call and it turned out astonishingly right.
...
Ultimately, it wasn't going to matter because if this NLCS demonstrated anything, it is that neither the Mets nor Cardinals stood a chance of beating the Tigers, who are sitting back at home salivating like real tigers awaiting a shipment of young sheep.

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That is all for now. Need to rest up so I can type "Get player X" onto blogs and chatrooms some 3,000 times over the next 5 months.