Evans has been up since May 18, in which time the Mets have played six games. He has seen two plate appearances.
Maybe that wasn’t just a Jerry Manuel thing
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Category Archives: Words
Baseball is awesome sometimes
I play in a pickup baseball game in Brooklyn on weekends. I’ve mentioned this before a few times, at greatest length here.
I’m a terrible defender but a decent hitter, at least for level. I usually manage to put the ball in play, and since errors abound, I often end up on base. I don’t have much power but I handle fastballs pretty well. There aren’t many regular pitchers in the game who can blow one past me, and I’m usually patient enough to lay off or foul off offspeed stuff until I get something straight to hit. Plus I got off to a hot start this spring — seeing the ball well, driving a couple legit extra-base hits to the gaps in the first few games, poking some singles over infielders’ heads.
On Sunday, though, I guess I came in to the game with a little too much confidence. We switch up the teams every week, and I wound up facing the game’s lone lefty junkballer, a shrewd musician with a frustrating array of breaking stuff.
I’ve faced the dude enough times to know how I should approach him — wait and wait and wait and wait. Don’t bother trying to drive the ball because it’s not going to happen. Just take pitches until he’s forced to throw a strike, then try to go with a pitch or work out a walk.
But screw that, I roped a double last week! I’M BIG-TIME POWER BRO! So in my first at-bat I dug in and crouched deep like a fool, prepared to put a hurting on one, eying that 320-foot left field wall as if I’ve ever hit a home run in my damn life. On my third huge, awful swing, I tapped out to the pitcher.
Humbled, I decided to adjust my approach the second time up. I stood up a little straighter, trying to use the wrist-hitting style I honed in years of dedicated backyard Wiffle-ball play. Still couldn’t hit him, though. I managed to foul a couple off and wound up walking, but the whole time I felt generally uncomfortable.
Before my third plate appearance, the southpaw grew wild and got pulled from the game, and our opponents turned to a hard-throwing righty that I’ve hit OK in the past. He got ahead of me quickly, though, and after five straight fastballs he struck me out swinging on a 2-2 curveball that fooled me so thoroughly it had me laughing out loud before it reached the plate (and somewhere midway through my flailing off-balance whiff).
I came up for the fourth and final time with one out, nobody on and my team down 7-3 in our last licks at the plate. Another new pitcher was on for the bad guys, a guy who throws almost exclusively fastballs, mixing in the occasional curveball that he struggles to control.
By now, though, I’m lost in the batter’s box. The first pitch waes a pin-straight fastball down the middle, and I just looked at it. The second was a fastball low and inside, but I swung anyway and fouled it straight down into the dirt. The third pitch was obviously a wild curveball from the moment it left his hand, spinning toward my front knee. For some reason, as I stepped out of the way I took a godawful hack out of it. But the barrel of the bat made solid contact with the ball, smacking it down the third-base line for a single.
A few batters later, we wound up with a walk-off win. Baseball is awesome like that sometimes. Most times, really.
Yeah, what he said
Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.
Following the discussion around the Mets since Fred Wilpon’s media blitz has been nearly impossible. Every pundit and columnist and blogger and fan has an opinion on Wilpon’s comments themselves, the team’s response, and what the comments mean for the future of the club. But it seems like everyone’s sort of taking snippets of quotes and running with them, drawing conclusions without context and not necessarily based on fact, then assuming those conclusions and advancing in conversation.
We are, to paraphrase Alderson, getting too far ahead of ourselves.
The Mets lost last night and looked miserable in the process, and it’s tempting to go all post hoc ergo propter hoc and assume Wilpon’s comments distracted them into terrible play. Maybe it did. Probably not.
Memorial Day approaches. If you haven’t been following, that’s the arbitrary cutoff point used here and elsewhere to determine when the early returns on a baseball season can be deemed meaningful.
And so we beat on…
Dawn of the Zubaz
When we think of Zubaz today, “utilitarian” probably isn’t the first word that pops into our heads. However, friends Bob Truax and Dan Stock actually had a practical purpose in mind when they created the garish pants. Truax and Stock owned a Minnesota gym that was popular with bodybuilders. The bodybuilding clientele had a problem: the hardcore weightlifters couldn’t find pants or shorts that comfortably fit their massive thighs while offering the flexibility they needed in workouts.
This link comes from our man @dpecs, and man, there’s a lot here. First things first: How is it possible that the dudes responsible for Zubaz are named “Truax and Stock”? Why did they bother coming up with a name for their pants besides “Truax”? To me, the name Truax perfectly befits wide-legged, zebra-striped pants with elastic waistbands aimed at weightlifters. In fact, I think if they’d have gone with a slightly different approach, Truax and Stock could be as synonymous with competitive bodybuilding as Abercrombie and Fitch are with lacrosse. Totally failed business opportunity there, if you ask me.
You should click through and read the rest of the Mental Floss piece. It turns out the history of Zubaz is precisely as fascinating as you’d expect.
I myself owned a pair of L.A. Raiders Zubaz in the early 1990s. They had silver lightning bolts on them and they were totally sweet. I can’t find a picture online. I should note, I guess, that I played pee-wee football for the East Rockaway Raiders, so even though I was always a Jets fan I had a ton of Raiders gear when I was a little kid. I must have looked pretty badass for a fifth grader, decked out in black and silver all the time. Probably not, actually. But I sure thought I did.
Anyway I’m pretty sure I trashed the Zubaz with the rest of my sweatpants when I hit sixth grade. For some reason — and chime in here if this happened in your town too — there was some strict but unwritten rule that you were absolutely not to wear sweatpants to middle school. It sucked. Sweatpants are great, and in fifth grade I must have worn sweatpants to school every day from October to April. But apparently if you ever dared show up at middle school in anything besides jeans you’d be forever ostracized. I never took my chances.
Sandwich-related items of note
First, Zane reminded me of the great tumblr site Scanwiches today. I hope you check it regularly. It’s beautiful.
Second, Josh passed along word that the long-rumored, much-delayed Candwich is finally on sale. If you’re unfamiliar, the candwich is exactly what it sounds like: a sandwich that comes in a can. Only it turns out the sandwich does not come pre-made; you get a roll, a packet of peanut butter, a packet of jelly and a small knife and they expect you to make your own damn sandwich.
That’s a little disappointing, to say the least. But I guess it’s the only sure way to prevent the jelly from getting the bread all soggy. And I know if I’m confined to a fallout shelter and forced to live on canned sandwiches for decades, the last thing I’m going to want to deal with are prefab sandwiches not constructed to my own high standards. I mean we’re living in a 10′-by-10′ concrete cell waiting out nuclear winter for heaven’s sakes; all we’ve got is time.
Chris Bosh super emo
Late start
I spent the morning taking care of some routine medical nonsense that occupied way more time than I figured it would. I’m back in the office now and ready to start firing, but if you want to help me out by sending along something awesome from the Internet today, that’d be huge. You can get at me via the contact form above and to the right, or email me at tberg@sny.tv.
Sandwich of the Week
Another delayed Sandwich of the Week. Feeling like the back is now appropriately rested and we can be back on the weekend schedule next week. Only next week is Memorial Day Weekend, which really throws the whole system into flux. So we’ll see how that all plays out.
The sandwich: House-roasted turkey, fresh mozzarella, broccoli rabe, hot peppers, olive oil and balsamic vinegar on a roll from Milano Market, 89th and 3rd in Manhattan.
The construction: See “the sandwich.”
Important background information: Everything about Milano Market practically shouted that it would serve delicious sandwiches. In the window sat piles of fresh-looking loaves of bread and inside hung various cured meats.
I saw no list of specialty sandwiches so I began mentally concocting something pork-free (as per my promise) while a couple of experienced looking deli men took orders from the people on line in front of me. A kid with a wispy mustache, no older than 18, asked if he could help me. A prodigy perhaps?
Apparently not. When I listed the ingredients I wanted on my sandwich, he was incredulous. I needed to repeat every one. Some of them twice. “Broccoli rabe… on the sandwich?” he asked. “Hot peppers… on the sandwich?”
Look, bro: We can work together and create a great sandwich here but I can only take you halfway. Yeah, I recognize this might not be some plain old ham and cheese but excuse me if I’m trying to conceive something new and special.
Oh, what? You thought I was content to just sit back and write about this sandwich game? No way. I’m in it.
What it looks like:
How it tastes: Maddeningly inconsistent.
I’ll get back to that in a sec, but first off, this sandwich could have been aesthetically improved if the broccoli rabe were placed on the bread before the turkey. Its hunter green clashes with the olive green of the hot peppers. Plus I think that could’ve helped the young sandwich artist eyeball the hot-pepper placement a little better, since it was problematic on this sandwich.
On the bites when there was an appropriate proportion of turkey, mozzarella, bread, pepper, broccoli rabe and vinegar, this sandwich was amazing. Transcendent.
The turkey itself was a little dry and nothing really to write home about, but it gives meaty bulk to the sandwich and prevents the rest of the flavors from overwhelming the mouth. And the combination of creaminess from the cheese, spice and crunch from the peppers and tang from the vinegar with the moisture, texture and subtle flavor of the broccoli rabe — damn.
Only I got maybe three bites like that, tops. There was too much turkey on the sandwich, and way too few hot peppers. And nothing was evenly distributed.
Keep working, kid.
Oh also I’m pretty sure there was no olive oil.
What it’s worth: That’s the other thing. Somehow this sandwich cost $12. Could that be right?
How it rates: 81 out of 100. I urge you to try out this same combination of ingredients, though. There’s potential for a great, great sandwich here.
Wilpon’s curveball
I listened to most of this weekend’s Subway Series while driving. And because my car has terrible AM reception, I suffered through a whole lot of the Yankees’ broadcast on XM radio. I wanted to hear what was happening in the games, but I was instead treated to the mostly uninformed thoughts of John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman on the various complicated decisions facing the Mets in the coming months.
(Is it me – are my ears and brain just not accustomed to their broadcasting style – or do Sterling and Waldman often just ignore what’s actually going on in the baseball game? I felt like they’d often be in the middle of a conversation and Sterling would casually note, “the 2-0 pitch,” without having mentioned the first two pitches in the at-bat or even the name of the batter. How can that happen? They call the game like it’s television and the listener can also see the action. It’s baffling.)
Anyway, I came to the office this morning planning to write again about how, though the opinions of many members of the media – and many of my fellow Mets fans for that matter – can be difficult to bear sometimes, it is easier to ignore all the negativity this season because we can take comfort in the hope that the Mets’ front office, for once, seems to be run by people that understand the nuances of the team’s situation better than the sensationalists writing and reading the New York Post.
I thought I would briefly recount a ridiculous Twitter spat I had on Friday in which someone accused the Mets’ front-office of “cronyism” for selecting Brad Emaus in the Rule 5 Draft – as if 51-year-old executive J.P. Ricciardi and 25-year-old career Minor Leaguer Emaus might be cronies, smoking cigars, drinking scotch, chuckling about all the other obvious second-base options the Mets had coming into the 2011 season. And I’d have tried to explain the screwed-up way in which defending the club that partially owns the TV network that signs my paychecks knifes at my punk-rock soul, the messy self-consciousness I feel doing it even when I’m confident that what I’m writing is correct and, in my best judgment at least, not biased by anything more than the ways I watch and understand baseball.
Then I read “Madoff’s Curveball,” Jeffrey Toobin’s profile of Fred Wilpon for the New Yorker, in which the Mets’ owner declares David Wright “not a superstar,” alludes to Carlos Beltran striking out to end the 2006 NLCS, speaks candidly about Jose Reyes’ contract status and calls the team “shitty” and, worse, “snakebitten.”
Well that doesn’t help anything.
But it’s probably important to put the quotes in context. As Adam Rubin pointed out on Twitter this morning, clearly Wilpon spent lots of time with Toobin for the feature and at some point let his guard down. The profile is otherwise a sympathetic piece about Wilpon’s financial saga, and the game Wilpon was watching with Toobin was the April 20 loss that left the team 5-13 – inarguably the low point of the season.
Does that make it right? Of course not. Understandable? Maybe a little bit.
Still, in a season when it seemed the ship had finally been set back on course, it’s disappointing to hear the owner of the team resort to the same blame-Mighty-Casey rhetoric bandied about by WFAN callers screaming to send Wright packing.
Each one of the quotes can and will be turned inside out and debated, and though it’s tempting to join in, I’m not really eager to do so here. The most troubling one, I think, is “snakebitten.” Though in context – “we’re snakebitten, baby!” – it sounds like Wilpon is being at least a touch sarcastic, it’s the type of purposeless woe-is-me defeatism seemingly so prevalent among Mets fans these days, and something I waste an awful lot of words railing against here. There is no curse in baseball that cannot be overcome with smart management and a little bit of good fortune.
As for the short- and long-term fallout from all this? I don’t know. Seems like people have already determined conclusively that Wilpon’s words will a) create a distraction for the current club and b) make it so future free agents will not want to join the Mets. Both seem possible, but also quite possibly overblown.
Twitter Q&A type thing
Dude, c’mon. You’re just going to lay the slices out flat on the bread so you end up biting into a lunchmeat steak? That’s amateur-hour stuff. You definitely want to maximize surface area by, as you suggest, making sure there’s texture to the distribution of the meat.
But that doesn’t mean rolling or folding the meat on the sandwich either. It takes a delicate touch. Let one end of the meat hit the bread and sort of droop the rest of it on top of it, slightly shaking your hand as you do so. You need to put each slice of meat on there individually. You might think I sound crazy but it’s all in the name of the best possible sandwich. This is serious business.
Well, I like to imagine I’ll be laying in a comfortable bed, surrounded by family — hopefully some grandkids, maybe even great-grandkids — still conscious, listening to beautiful music, watching that Asdrubal Cabrera play over and over again.
Oh wait you mean tomorrow, like because of the rapture? Oh, I don’t know. Hadn’t really thought about it. What time is that happening anyway? I’ll probably play some Madden in the morning. If it’s nice out, maybe I’ll go for a bike ride or do some gardening, then I guess if I have time I’ll get about repenting before I am forever judged.
I didn’t skip an answer in here; I put these two questions together because they struck me as somewhat similar. Here’s a pretty straightforward question OH AND A QUALIFIER THAT MAKES IT MUCH MORE DIFFICULT.
I’ll still take Hanley Ramirez for the first, though — even if Heyward and Stanton are in play. Yeah, he had a down season last year and he’s off to a brutal start to this one. There are probably cases to be made for Heyward, David Wright, Ryan Zimmerman and maybe Jose Reyes, but Ramirez has the best combination of youth, health, and evidence of awesomeness.
As for the chicken, I guess that’s got to be fried but not breaded chicken, then. I mean like Buffalo wings. Those count, right? But smoked chicken is delicious too.
All of them had their moments, but I go with the UCB. I’ve linked this here before, but this is my favorite comedy sketch of all time. Vaguely NSFW. Note that it’s all one take:
Ass Pennies – watch more funny videos
Tedquarters 