A-HEM....

...not to gloat or anything, but I thought this one was worth a second look.

So much for the opinion of the masses as concerns one Gary Sheffield.

This only proves that every once in a while, even this blind squirrel finds a nut.

P.S. Gawd, I just HATE gloaters, don't you?????

Fra-GI-le

...yep, much like the pictured lamp from the wonderfully charming and heartwarming movie, A Christmas Story, this team is fra-GI-le. Only, unlike the movie, the fragility of this team is anything but wonderful, charming and/or heartwarming. They are fra-GI-le in so many ways, it's almost, well...let's count some of the ways, shall we?

They have a manager who seems to have an overly fra-GI-le ego. He seems to think he's better, smarter, faster than he really is; a manager who can barely put a coherent sentence together, let alone have a coherent thought; a manager who by hocus pocus, sheer affability, likeability and trickery has bamboozled many into thinking he actually knows what the hell he's doing; a manager who has made an art of the schmoozily breezy delivery of his long winded, poorly conceived sentences devoid of originality, any real content or any real coherency...which come to think of it, is probably as good a metaphor as any for this whole entire fucking team we call the New York Mets.

They have players who cannot seem to adapt, EVER, to the usual pratfalls and pitfalls that all teams incur during the long, 162-game marathon that is the baseball season; players who cannot adjust to changing roles, changing habitats, and just plain change; players who cannot seem to stay off the disabled list; players who don't know the first thing about the basics of the game; with a manager who while talking out of one side of his mouth, spouting his partially incoherent gobbledygook about stressing fundamentals, in reality continues to field and tolerate a team that does anything but.

Gee, Jerry, did you think we wouldn't notice... or did you think you could get away with this shit forever?

I guess you did.

And maybe you are.

The Strangeness Continues....

...and watching Mets baseball, lately, is kind of like watching The Twilight Zone; only you wanna change that channel, and touch that dial, and do something to get the strange and somewhat unreal Met team this year off of your cloud....!!!!!

In what has to be the strangest play of the year thus far, Ryan Church, while running the bases in the top of the 11th inning, scoring what everyone assumed was the go-ahead run, apparently failed to touch third base, a fact which an extremely alert Joe Torre happened to pick up immediately, appealing the play to the third base umpire by having his infield throw the ball to the third baseman, Mark Loretta, who was standing on the bag; the umpire then promptly calling Ryan Church out.

Sorry for the run-on sentence, but really, that's how it happened. Just like that. And if you think the sentence was confusing, cumbersome and poorly constructed; well, just take a good look at this team.

And frankly, that's the only excuse I can think of to explain why it appears that Jerry Manuel doesn't have a brain in his fucking head.

And if you think MY sentences are run-on and going nowhere in the pursuit of trying to convince you that I'm having a real thought or two, and have any clue at all that I know even a smattering of what the hell I'm talking about -- well, I offer you any pre- or post-game press conference, or for that matter, ANY press conference, featuring the aforesaid Jerry Manuel.

These not only make you scratch your head; they also make you wonder how the hell a guy who can barely utter a coherent thought, much less have one, could have possibly captured the reins of a major league baseball team in the largest city in the world.

Have we really regressed this far?

Seven Stolen Bases...

...in last night's game.

SEVEN.

And here's a question for you kiddies out there. And that question is, how many of those do you think Jose Reyes got?

And the answer is, of course - NONE! It's a trick question! Jose didn't play last night due to a sore calf, but as I said in my Quick Recap, one wonders if it it's his calf, or his ass, wherein the problem lies.

Or perhaps in his head, which is woefully devoid of good baseball instinct. While some of Jose's faux-pas can be attributed to the condition of humanity (i.e., we all make mistakes), and yet others can be attributed to lack of maturity, while yet others can be blamed on "injuries," there lies a huge pool of errors, bad judgments, mistakes, dudley-do-wrongs, foibles, potent poopables, gaffes, miscues and just plain bad baseball that goes on with Reyes that simply cannot be explained any other way.

Or perhaps, like the man in the picture, he is just confused.

Yikes.

Here's another thing - the Sheffield thing. Now, today I've listened to WFAN, and I'm hearing some of the show hosts talk about David Wright's taking of the reins of leadership last night, and Beltran's clutch hitting, and the team playing like a team, with focus, with thought, with something resembling (at last) good, or maybe just decent, fundamental baseball, and my thoughts turned to Gary Sheffield.

You guys remember him, right? The Fifth Outfielder, The Extra Man, The Man Without A Team, The Man Nobody Wanted?

And I'm thinking, not only is the game of baseball surrounded by and made up of a bunch of fools, but this is the kind of guy who could really make a difference in the clubhouse and on the field by the way he plays the game.

And last night, he did.

It's not Wright, dummies. Or maybe it is, but it isn't ONLY Wright. Nobody seems willing to credit the presence of Sheffield, with his quiet professionalism, his knowledge of the game, his desire to play it right, and his willingness to get down and dirty.

I'm going to be very interested to watch what happens to this team with Sheff on the field now that Delgado may be down and out for awhile.

Bizarro Jerry....

...and NO, I ain't talking about THIS Bizarro Jerry; I'm speaking, of course, about our very own Bizarro Jerry Manuel. Honestly, I kind of blame myself for his el stupido last night, because I should never have started the whole Bizarro Mets thingy, but, well...anyway...

Someone please explain to me why everyone in the ballpark, including the bugs, the stands, and the food in the concessions, knew that Pedro Feliciano, a lefty specialist, should NEVER have been left in (no pun intended) to pitch to a right handed hitter who, according to the announcers, absolutely kills left hand pitching...except, of course, the lovely Bizarro Jerry.

I swear, sometimes Bizarro Jerry leaves me scratching my head and other various and sundry assorted body parts, all of which I won't mention here out of good taste.

Even though Wright and Reyes made key errors (especially Reyes' error in the later innings, which opened the door for Bizarro Jerry to make his Bizarro non-move), lay this one at the foot of the Bizarre.

Or should I say, The Bizarro Jerry.

Welcome To The World Of The Bizarro Mets....

...as in, who are these guys, where have they been, where are they going, and WHAT HAVE THEY DONE WITH THE NEW YORK METS?????

Because, man, the team you and I have seen in the last week bears little or no resemblance to what some of us know to be the REAL Mets, except they play in CitiField (or is that Bizarro CitiField???), they wear Mets uniforms, and.... they even LOOK remarkably like the REAL Mets, man for man.

Bizarro.... totally bizarro!

Some of you may remember that Seinfeld episode, "The Bizarro Jerry," where Elaine meets up with three guys named Kevin, Gene and Feldman, who are eerily, oddly, freakily and bizarrely like Jerry, George and Kramer? Only they're not.... they're like polar opposites of the three, being everything Jerry, George and Kramer, aren't, and won't ever be, and all co-existing in a bizzare almost zen-like state of consciousness?

Well, that's how I feel about this current version of the New York Mets.

The Bizarro Mets.

And what's even MORE bizarro, is that in another strange and crazy twist, the New York Yankees are suddenly the former New York Mets, the REAL Mets, the hapless and hopeless and can't-get-out-of-their-own-way Mets.

The Bizarro Yankeemets.

Freaky.

And bizarro.