Carlos and David's catch, up close

I've written here plenty of times about how I love Carlos Delgado and David Wright's tradition of having a catch out in front of the Mets dugout before home games, after the National Anthem, while the starting lineups are being announced on DiamondVision. Our seats under the net behind home plate afforded me the best view I've yet had of their ritual ball toss.




they start out pretty close to each other, just lobbing the ball.



slowly, they move further apart, making the tosses into throws.



Carlos keeps moving back toward first, and David keeps moving back toward home, until they're really throwing the ball and shagging the throws.



the game winds up with David throwing running shots at Delgado, and ends quickly when they get the sign that they're about to be called onto the field and scamper back into the dugout, just to run out again with their team when we start cheering for our 2007 New York Mets.

I don't know why I love minutiae like this, but I bet it has something to do with my father, who rightly pointed out once Mota came into the game that David was firing the ball back to him on the mound after outs, a departure from the normal toss from third baseman to pitcher-- and then rightly pointed out that now, for the rest of my life, I'll pay attention to the way third basemen throw the ball to the pitcher after an out.

so close

...and yet so far.

one of the things you see when you're a mere 30 feet from the on-deck circle is how close they all are to each other. on TV, it looks like the guys on deck are miles from the plate, but when you're right behind them, it's obvious that they can see quite a bit about how a pitcher's looking from that vantage point. they're right there.



in the bottom of the 9th (when I realized I had little time left to take pictures!), Ramon Castro watched Damion Easley at bat. you can tell that Castro is big on TV, but in real life, it's even more self-evident why his clubhouse nickname is Shrek.

Easley flew out to left field.



Shawn Green swings the bat on deck as Castro takes his turn at the plate.


Shawn Green always watches a pitch or two leaning on is bat that way in the on-deck circle. he also goes through a series of stretches in pretty much the same order every time, just like almost every other major league hitter.



Castro struck out, and Green took his place at the plate, but suffered the same fate. Ruben Gotay never got to bat in the 9th.

as you can see, we had great tickets to Thursday's day game against the Pirates. though I'll recount the very annoying loss in a traditional game day post, the seats afforded me the opportunity to take many more pictures than usual-- more, I think, than should go in one post!

the problem with digital point-and-shoot

I love our Nikon D600. I love the immediacy of digital photography, the ability to edit on the spot, and to record many of the smaller events in life where I wouldn't have bothered to take a film camera. Never the less, shutter delay makes it not the best choice when you want to take many shots in a short period of time.

Like when you have seats so close to home plate you can snap the players coming back into the dugout after an inning in the field.



for instance, you might press the shutter release when Oliver Perez and David Wright are looking up, but not have the image captured until they've looked down at the grass.



you might try for Jose Reyes and Ruben Gotay and end up only with the latter, and blurry at that, because you were trying to catch the both of them looking up and didn't pause for focus.


of course, the inability to really control light and the angle of the sun might make it difficult to see Damion Easley's face anyway.



but you can count on Shawn Green to look up when he hears a nice Jewish girl calling his name!

.500

at the beginning of the season, it felt as though the Mets couldn't lose when I was at Shea-- they won the first four games I went to, and five of my first six. The team couldn't seem to win in June, and I saw four straight losses. At that point, M and I decided that it would be a good idea for me to stay away from Flushing for a while, and I didn't go to a game from June 26th until July 15th, my Mom's 60th birthday. My mom was (as usual) good luck, and Oliver Perez pitched a great game against the Reds. But we lost again when I was at the park this week.

so I'm now 6-6 for attendance this season. I'm not sure whether that means I should go to more or fewer games when they come back from the Midwest to play Atlanta in August.

Irony, Part II

the newest volume of Mets Magazine, the one that is new for this home stand, has an article about Jose Valentin. It's titled "Good to be Back."

Ouch.

don't get attached to pitchers

Especially not young ones. They'll break your heart.

Joe Smith is on his way to New Orleans right now. He's allowed 19 of his last 24 inherited baserunners to score, and you can't pitch like that and throw relief in the major leagues.

I believed that Rick Peterson would be able to fix whatever was going wrong with Joe, but it looks like it's going to take a stint in the minors. I feel badly for the kid.

But I'm looking forward to seeing him again soon.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Mr. Met style.

surprise, surprise

After John Maine hit his home run on Tuesday, MLB.com asked several players what they would have to do to surprise Shea Stadium as Maine had. One of those players was Wright. But he had no response.

But, as a public service, two of his teammates offered suggestions for Wright:

Paul Lo Duca: "David [would] have to get rid of all the mirrors at his place."

Wagner: "Be seen with something less than centerfold material on his arm."

--Marty Noble at MLB.com

condolences

Damion Easley's father, Raymond, passed away yesterday at the age of 63. Damion is still on the BL, and still at home in Riverside with his family.

I'm a sap, I know, but I sent Damion a condolence card this afternoon. I can't imagine the pain of losing a father so young, and I want Damion to know that lots and lots of people who don't know him are thinking about him and his dad today.

Rick Peterson, Psychiatrist

Joe Smith-- the side-arming, relief-pitching phenom who was playing college ball just a little over a year ago-- has been struggling recently. It looked for all the world like he had lost his confidence after a couple of tough appearances on the mound.

But Dr. Peterson was on the case. After another bad outing last week, Peterson sat Smith down in front of a TV, and showed the kid tape of himself getting Albert Pujols out, getting Alex Rodriguez out, getting Derek Jeter out. Reminding him of what he can do. And the next time he was on the mound, on Saturday, Smith was on the offensive again.

It's too bad for the kid that it the grounder he was trying to get the batter to hit got by Reyes, but he went right after Jeff Kent, and on another day the same ball would have been a 6-3 out. If he stays aggressive, Joe will be back in his best form soon-- and like we do with John Maine and Oliver Perez, we will have Rick Peterson, Psychiatrist, to thank.

a game of contrasts, this is

Game 96: Mets 4, Dodgers 1
54-42 for the season
1st place in the NL East, 3.5 games ahead of Atlanta

The way one game played between two teams can be the practical opposite of the game those same teams played the night before is one of the best things about baseball-- it's what makes it fun to watch, every time it's played. These last two games between the Dodgers and the Mets have been a shining example of this Fact of Baseball.

Last night: 22 total runs.

Tonight: 5 total runs.

Last night: at the end of the 7th, 20 runs had scored.

Tonight: 2 runs scored at the end of the 7th.

Last Night: Glavine saw 4 batters in the bottom of the 3rd before being taken out of the game, having given up 6 runs on 10 hits.

Tonight: Oliver Perez struck out 8, and went 7 and 1/3 innings, and allowed only 1 run on 6 hits.

Tonight's game was a beautiful display of National League baseball, in contrast to last night's slug-fest. While I enjoyed watching as the hits kept on rolling last night, I enjoyed watching tonight's very good starting pitching and good relief (for the Mets, anyway) much more. This isn't at all surprising, of course. I'm a National League fan, and so it's a chicken-or-egg situation: do I prefer the defensive, pitching-centered game to the offensive, hitting-centered game because I've been a Mets fan all my life, or have I been a National League fan all my life because I prefer the defensive game? I suspect it's the former, but there's no way to prove it.

intelligent design

After a reporter finished with chatting with Joe Smith on Friday, John Maine chatted with the reporter and asked "What was that all about?"

"The evolution of a rookie," the reporter said.

To which Maine said: "Oh, I didn't know he'd evolved."

--via Marty Noble at MLB.com

Mustachio is out

Jose Valentin hit a pitch off his right shin, fractured the tibia, and will be out for a long time. It's a tough break, no pun intended, though in truth Jose hasn't been playing all that well since he came back from his first stint on the DL this year.

While I love Valentin as a personality and influence on the team, and for the great role he played on last year's team and at the beginning of this year, but the Mets this season are rich from having second basemen. Ruben Gotay has been really hot, hitting .354 going into today's game, and Damion Easley is having a good year too, hitting .257 with 20 RBIs. Easley is right now on the Bereavement List (the BL-- which I didn't know existed until Damion was placed on it earlier in the week), at home not far from Dodger Stadium in Riverside, CA with his ailing father. This means that Gotay has had to bat righty tonight, which he hasn't done much of this year, but that won't last when Easley comes back. Never the less, this could be Ruben Gotay's lucky break, and a good thing for Easley too.

I wish Ruben good luck in his newly important role, Jose best wishes for a speedy recovery, and Damion and his whole family my hope for their healing.

there, I said it.

Oliver Perez with a goatee is very, very attractive.

that is all.

injury report

Omar Minaya just joined Gary Cohen and Ron Darling in the booth at Dodger stadium, and gave an update on the DL:

Moises Alou will be back next week. Given that the Mets batting slump coincided with his injury, I'm hoping his return will have the opposite effect. Endy Chavez, on the other hand, had a second-degree tear in his hamstring, and is still three to four weeks away from returning to the team. I thought it was especially sad that he missed playing in the game on his bobblehead night last week.

When asked about Pedro Martinez, Minaya hedged: late August at the earliest, he's on doctor-recommended rest in the DR right now but it's part of the rehab program, etc., but with Pedro we're really looking forward to 2008. This is a contrast from earlier in the season, when Pedro himself was saying he wanted to be back by the beginning of August and Minaya was expressing nothing but confidence, but of course you never know anything until a guy starts pitching again.

though I was looking forward to seeing him pitch this year, I can wait until next year if it means he's Pedro Martinez again.

flickr searches are fun!

here are my favorite finds from a recent search on flickr:

Green fields of the mind by DC Products.

shea security by redperm

the creepy flushing fog by minicloud

Mets clinch the Division by joshbousel

west coast travel

is a friend to the East Coast dwelling insomniac. when I go myself, I can fall asleep by the very reasonable hour of midnight without trouble, and when the ballclub goes, I have live Mets games to watch deep into the night. there's also the bonus of knowing exactly how Atlanta's home game turned out before the game even starts in California.

I loved going to games at Dodger Stadium, in large measure because I felt like the only one who was there from start to finish-- Dodger fans tend to arrive between the first and third inning, and start leaving by the seventh. It's also got a gorgeous view, up in the hills in East LA. A great place for a ballpark, a great place to watch a game.

highest offensive output of the season

Marlon Anderson, in his return to the Mets, drove in the eighth and ninth runs with a single.

Teammates told Anderson that the Mets now generally score a dozen or so runs every day and urged him not to screw up the average.

"That a lot of pressure," Anderson said.

--Marty Noble at MLB.com

Quotable Darling

"No! No innings! You gotta stay with the scorecard, man."

--Ron Darling on Mets Post-Game Live, responding to a request from his interlocutor to be honest, and admit the inning in which he gave up on his scorecard during tonight's 13-9, 35-hit game.

welcome back, Marlon Anderson

Game 95: Mets 13, Dodgers 9
53-42 for the season
1st place in the NL East, 2.5 games ahead of Atlanta

Anderson played for the Mets in 2005, and loved playing for Willie Randolph. but the Nationals were offering a two-year contract and the Mets were not, so off he went to Washington. He was with the Dodgers in the first half, but played in only 20-some-odd games, and was at home for two weeks before the Mets picked him up. He had a great combination of enthusiasm for his new club and something to prove to his old club tonight, with two hits and two RBIs and a fantastic catch for the first out in the 9th, as well as the last out on a more routine fly to left. Sad though everyone in my family is about the loss of Julio Franco and his coming out music at Shea, I have to say that it was really nice to see such great play from the guy in left field.

"I loved it when I was here, and I still love it now," Anderson told Kevin Burkhart after the game. We love having you, Marlon.

It was for the most part a sloppy game, with the exception of Aaron Sele's great three innings to stem the tide of unending runs for both sides. In the end, it was fun to watch the Mets hit and hit, since once Sele came in, the Dodgers never again got too close. It also felt a bit like a Bull Durham moment-- after being swept the last time they were in LA, the Mets wanted to announce their presence with authority. The message was perhaps obscured in the 9 runs the team gave away, but the 13 runs were certainly authoritative-- every Mets starter not only touched base but also scored a run.

I love you, HoJo

oh, yes I do.

Howard Johnson, the star third baseman of the World Champion 1986 New York Mets, was appointed batting coach after Minaya fired Rick Down for the team's failure to hit at the All-Star break. Since HoJo has been in the position, the Mets have scored 39 runs in in eight games (so far-- it's only the 8th inning in Los Angeles, and it's a slugfest). They'd scored 29 in the eight before the break, which was itself three better than they'd done at the beginning of June.

He's doing more than the numbers show. The guys look confident at the plate again. The guys who really needed to all hit on Tuesday night (Beltran, Delgado, LoDuca, Valentin, even El Duque, who obviously didn't need to hit, but sure wanted to). Though they didn't end up winning last night, it was the bullpen's fault. That was so rarely the case in the first half that hit's hard to get upset about it, especially when Wright hit a three-run homer to tie it up in the 8th. Even though it didn't produce a win, that has been so rare an occurrence that it merely happening is good news.

(photo from metsgrrl.com's flickr)

oh, how I've missed you

it's hard to know where to start when you want to get back on the blogging horse, but El Duque made it easy to know where to start on Tuesday night. he's had the green light to run when he's sure he'll be safe all season, and he sensed that opportunity in the top of the 5th against San Diego, after singling to get on base, and then cantered all the way home on Jose Valentin's double. the man is 40-something, was kept from playing in his prime by Castro's fear that he'd defect (effective strategy, huh?), and still looks like he's having so much fun playing baseball. he goes for it. it's inspiring.

the Mets have certainly played in an inspiring manner since the All-Star break, and because of my age and history with the Mets, I credit all the hitting entirely to HoJo. Johnson has been the hitting coach since the season resumed a week ago, and he's clearly having an effect-- even last night, when Wright's three-run game tying homer wasn't protected by the bullpen and the Mets ended up losing. the guys are hitting. they look more confident.

here's to the second half.