J-Man's Crew are Giant Killas

The resurgence of Mike Pelfrey (pictured above) and the Mets offense leads to good things.


Holyfunkinwoopdiewow!! The Mets have now won 4 (four) in a row. I had wondered what a streak of good luck felt like.

Although the Mets got some bad news about the extent to which Church got his bell rung, it was hard to ignore the rash of swell happenings yesterday. Mike Pelfrey continues to develop, this time giving us 7 scoreless, walk-less, curvebally, 3-hit innings. Who knows if its just Mets new pitching coach Whatshisname propaganda, but media reports that Rick Peterson had made Pelf abandon the curve ball--a thus far effective addition to his repertoire--might end up bestowing Professor Rick with a new nick: "The Straitjacket." Hard to tell so soon, but Peterson's regime might have become stale, not allowing the pitchers any personal growth.

The streaky Carlos Beltran and the Mets awfulfense seem to have finally turned the corner, just in time for a week lay off!! (I do have to retain healthy skepticism). In the process of bashing the Giants brains in, the Mets schooled babyface pitcher Tim Lincecum, an event which certainly could not have been predicted. Too much could be made of this pasting of the Washington Generals-like San Francisco club* but the Mets need to beat the bad teams. They climbed a mammoth two games above .500. And they put the fear into the Philmes, who lead them by a margin small enough that the Mets could end up in first place going into the All Star break. So shovel up what's left of your exploded head and root these guys on to a San Francisco sweep!


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Chastened by a statistically astute reader of this blog, I went to the MLB site to cast as many votes as possible for Davey Boy. A few comments. First, baseball and democracy are supposed to go hand in hand, no? Well, then, it's unnerving that one can "vote" as many times as one likes. You can no longer legally vote "early and often," even in countries who just adopted the practice, so why can you do this for an all star team? What's that you say? The MLB probably realized they couldn't stop people from voting multiple-wise and figured they'd just institutionalize the practice, giving in to the vicissitudes of technologically-based mob enablement. Not good enough MLB. This is like giving in to state trooper harassment of the black vote in Florida, or unreliable voting machines with no paper trail. America has enough problems, Bud Selig you bastard, we don't need corporate baseball to undermine the only decent thing we ever came up with (besides jazz and chipwiches, of course).

Second, according to the scroll down bar, if you were born this year, you can vote. Um, voter fraud anyone?

Finally, honest multiple voters will inevitably forget to uncheck the boxes whereby MLB can spam your email boxes with bullshit. Sneaky bastards.


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Pathetic!

Although the media has yet to carry an emotional statement by Jose Valentin, this time the Yankees have gone too far. First, their closer steals our closer's entry music, and we forgave and forgot. But then they build a new stadium next to the old one just like us, and now they are trying to take the stash?? The pinstripe line needs to be drawn.

To make matters worse, Jason Giambi, a player who just three years ago the Spankers wanted to unload after he was caught with the roids, is the vessel for this unholy campaign. The Yankees,

who ban facial hair below the lower lip, will celebrate hair above the upper lip with an impromptu promotion on Wednesday afternoon. The first 20,000 fans to arrive at Yankee Stadium will receive replica mustaches, complete with a wire for shaping, according to the package.

Further examination of the dubious proposition that gay porn-style mustaches are a slam dunk indicator of manliness aside, the Yankees want us to believe that a shrunken testicled, admitted drug using, man who faces competition by cheating should be celebrated with a tongue-in-cheek (or hair on lip) promotional giveaway as a a fun guy to emulate? If they just want to distract us from the philandering of their bazillion dollar third baseman, who for all his bucks can't find anyone more discrete to fool around with than Madonna, then there has to be a better way. What message does this send to the future arrogant, entitled, battery throwing douche bags that will become the Yankees fans of the future?

For young, uncommitted, pubescent NY-area baseball fans, the correct path is clear. If you want to revel in all that is masculine facial hair, then the Mets are your team. If you want to hide your insecurities by nurturing labial growth, your team is the Mets. Let history be your guide. The fact that Keith Hernandez' stash is legendary while so-called Donnie Baseball's is just an afterthought is of course mostly due to the wide gulf in abilities between the greatest fielding first baseman that ever lived, and some Yankee that never won anything. But we also have to factor in the simple truth that the stash tradition--handed down from Keith, appropriated briefly by Bobby Valentine, and carried on with preternatural panache by Jose Valentin--is a true Met tradition.



*For you youngsters, the Washington Generals were the exhibition basketball club known for losing to the Harlem Globetrotters. So "Washington Generals-like" as in, yeah, they show up, but you really ought to beat them. The Generals' wikipedia page has a great story about the time the Generals--at the time called the New Jersey Reds-- actually (and inadvertently) beat the Globetrotters:

The Reds defeated the Globetrotters 100-99 on January 5, 1971 in Martin, Tennessee. It ended a 2,495-game winning streak – and was Harlem’s only loss between 1962 and 1995. Klotz credits the overtime win to a guard named Eddie Mahar, who was team captain. Harlem's captain, Curly Neal, did not play in this game.

While the Globetrotters were entertaining the crowd that day, they lost track of the game and the score. They found themselves down 12 points with two minutes left to go. Forced to play normal basketball, they rallied back, but couldn’t recover.

The Reds secured their victory when Klotz hit the winning basket with seconds left. Then Meadowlark Lemon missed a shot that would have given the game back to Globetrotters. The timekeeper tried to stop the clock and couldn't. When the final buzzer sounded, the crowd was dumbfounded and disappointed. Klotz described the fans' reaction: "They looked at us like we killed Santa Claus.