Category Archives: Words

What he said

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Here’s the thing I don’t get: why say this at all? Mejia’s own performance will dictate where he will land eventually. That and the organization’s evaluation of his performance. There’s just no question that a top-line starter is more valuable than a short-reliever….

Warthen was being honest, and I suppose he deserves our approval for that. However, sometimes, tact is as important as honesty. I don’t know what question from what reporter prompted this discussion. Nor do I really care. The issue here is that there are other people with the Mets who think Mejia has the potential to be a starting pitcher and he is being developed with that goal in mind this season. Warthen, while expressing a personal opinion, is essentially publicly expressing disagreement with others in the organization.

– Toby Hyde, MetsMinorLeagueBlog.com.

People seem to be making a lot about Warthen’s comment that Mejia profiles as a Major League reliever, but I’m with Toby: It doesn’t really matter much. If we’re assuming that decisions about the way the team’s top prospect is handled are now the dominion of the front office — sigh! — the Major League pitching coach’s opinion probably doesn’t much impact the way the team develops Mejia.

(Oh man, remember all that last year? Holy hell, did that happen?)

Anyway, it might be better if Warthen kept opinions like this one to himself, just for the sake of public relations. But though I’ve ripped Warthen for things he has said in the past, Mets pitchers publicly and privately rave about him, so he must be doing something right. It’s probably not fair to judge him just based on what he says to the press.

(Very little) about the nanshiki ball

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With red wristbands and a thick mane flowing out the back of his helmet, Nishioka was standing on second base in the eighth inning of a quarterfinal game against the United States in the inaugural World Baseball Classic in 2006.

Japan’s batter had just been hit by a pitch when time was called so the trainer could come out. Nishioka seized upon the lull to fulfill a dream. He stepped off the bag, walked over toward Derek Jeter and introduced himself.

– Brad Lefton, N.Y. Times.

Good read from Lefton and the Times about the Twins’ newest infielder, Japanese import Tsuyoshi Nishioka. Nishioka briefly used only one name — Pele-style — and had only “Tsuyoshi” on the team roster, which I imagine could not have gone over well with our hero.

Anyway, this article seems like as good a segue as I’m going to find to bring up something I’ve been thinking about in terms of Japanese baseball, and which I can’t find a whole lot about online.

Toward the end of the fall, as numbers started dwindling at our weekly pickup baseball game in Brooklyn, we found ourselves with only enough guys to field one team. We sought out competitors, and found a few rogue teams from other leagues that themselves weren’t yet ready to shelve their bats for the winter. We played against a team of Mexican dudes called the Aztecs from a Red Hook league, and then a couple of games against the Cubs from the New York City Metro Baseball League, a wood-bat league that plays in Central Park.

For our last game of the season, we played a group of Japanese guys that play in a Japanese league spanning the Tri-State area. Unlike the Cubs and the Aztecs, though, these guys used some different equipment than we did. Most notably: The nanshiki ball.

I can’t find much about the nanshiki ball online in English, but one of the guys told me it’s essentially the standard for every amateur-level league in Japan, Taiwan and Korea. It is slightly lighter than a regular baseball, and made of rubber. It has raised “seams,” but they’re the same color as the ball. The guy said it is used for safety, but also to save space — because the ball doesn’t travel as far, fields where it is used do not need to be as large as they would with a harder baseball.

Our pitchers were unwilling to use the nanshiki ball and theirs were unwilling to use our ball, so we agreed that they would use the nanshiki ball when they were in the field and we would use ours.

Because the ball compressed when it made contact with the bat, it was very difficult to drive. And since it was impossible to read the seams on pitches, it seemed to reward the slap hitters over the more powerful guys.

The opposing fielders, for their part, seemed way more eager than we were to use their bodies to knock the ball down, perhaps because the cost in pain is less (or perhaps because they were generally better fielders than us).

Anyway, I wonder if this in any affects the development of Asian players. I have no idea how long the nanshiki ball has been in use and at what levels exactly, so it could be that no current Major Leaguer has ever used the thing. But as younger Japanese players like Nishioka start switching leagues, it’s at least an interesting thing to consider, I think.

Oliver Perez shows up early

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Well there’s this: According to David Lennon of Newsday in a subscriber-only piece, Oliver Perez showed up to Mets camp a couple days early yesterday, only to find the complex locked. Perfect. Lennon reported that Perez then picked up some workout clothes and left to exercise on his own.

In the grand scheme of things, the report means very little, of course. But for some reason fans seem to use the date a player reports for Spring Training as a barometer for his commitment. If he is there a week early, he is focused and prepared, a dedicated team player. If he only arrives the day he is contractually obligated to show up, hellfire and sanctimony, fire and brimstone.

Of course, there’s some confirmation bias at play. Fans note when Perez is not listed among the players that arrived early to camp because they have already decided that he is lazy and unfocused. No one even notices that Mike Pelfrey’s not there — hey, he’s got a young kid and another on the way; maybe he wants to spend time with this family!

Neither Pelf nor Perez nor anyone else should be faulted, ever, for failing to show up before the mandatory reporting date. For one thing, no one has any idea what type of work a player does on his own time, in his home gym or with his personal trainer or whatever. Second, showing up early is voluntary. I rarely come into the office on weekends. I could, and I’m sure my bosses would appreciate the extra effort, but I’ve got lots of other stuff to take care of.

Maybe some players determine that showing up a couple days early will help them get a leg up on the competition or earn good standing with the team, but maybe others want time to get in the best shape possible before they show up to camp so they can make a good impression when they do. And maybe some really just don’t want to put in the extra work. Who knows? I don’t.

Point is, we can knock “not showing up early” to camp off our list of complaints about Oliver Perez. We’re going to have to instead focus on the big ones: “Owed $12 million” and “Not very good.” The former is certainly not his fault. The latter might be.

There have always been mixed reports on Perez’s work ethic, and it’s difficult to tell to what extent they’re true and to what extent he’s simply an easy punching bag for media because he’s a) already disliked by fans and b) not a great quote. The only concrete evidence we have of his selfishness is his refusal to go to the Minor Leagues last year, something well within his rights as a Major League veteran. Of course, as fans, it’s well within our rights to boo him for occupying a roster spot.

Sandwich of the Week

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Here’s another sandwich recommended by a reader like you. This particular sandwich has been endorsed many times over, but first by Carl. He actually emailed me about it back in May, before I was even writing about sandwiches on this site with any regularity.

Please, if you know of an exceptional or exceptionally interesting sandwich — especially if it’s easily accessible via subway from Midtown or by car from Westchester — let me know about it. You can email me at tberg@sny.tv or use the contact form above.

The sandwich: Spicy pork meatball hero with spicy red sauce and mozzarella, from The Meatball Shop, 84 Stanton St. in Manhattan.

The construction: Several (three?) spicy pork meatballs smashed and spread out onto a baguette with fresh mozzarella cheese. Then they toast the whole thing so the cheese is melted.

Important background information: As I’ve noted several times, my mother is Italian and I am fiercely loyal to her meatballs. Though I love meatballs in concept, I rarely order them from restaurants because I know they will not match the ones I grew up enjoying. Mom’s are a bit less bready than most, I’ve found, so they’re more coarse: delicious hunks of well-seasoned ground beef. And I guess she fries them at a hotter temperature than most people do, because they maintain a bit of a crispness on the outside that I rarely find in other meatballs. Superb, honestly. The showpiece of her very impressive array of culinary delights.

But the Meatball Shop is all the rage in the trendy Lower East Side, and though I’m not what you’d call trendy myself, I figure when trends overlap with sandwiches I should probably get on that. Plus a bunch of people whose opinions I respect told me I must eat this sandwich.

I trekked down there on Thursday and the place was packed. No open tables and people stacked about three deep at the bar. This is sort of pathetic, but since I was alone and starving I wound up ordering the sandwich to go, hopping in a cab to Grand Central and eating it in the dining concourse while waiting for my train back to the suburbs.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Hell and yes.

Believe it or not, the thing that first jumps out at you on this sandwich is the baguette. As mentioned, it’s toasted so it’s got a great crispness on the outside, and it’s sturdy enough to withstand a 10-minute cab ride’s worth of grease accumulation from the meatballs and cheese. That’s impressive.

And the pork is excellent. Since the meatballs are smashed up the experience is more akin to eating a sloppy joe (the ground-meat kind, not the Jersey kind), only if the sloppy joe were made with loose sausage meat from a spicy Italian sausage. That’s about as best as I can describe the seasoning, I think — it’s a melange of flavors, though principally it is spicy in the red-peppery way that things can be spicy.

Next time I venture to the Meatball Shop, though — and this sandwich was good enough to guarantee there will be a next time — I might try something different than the spicy pork meatball and spicy sauce combination. The Meatball Shop’s sandwich offerings are fully customizable: pick a meatball, pick a sauce, pick a cheese.

And though the spicy pork with spicy sauce was recommended by the Grub Street sandwich list, among others, I wonder if the sandwich might be a little more interesting with one of the other sauces. I won’t dismiss it as a one-note sandwich because there were too many good flavors in the meat itself, but I found myself wondering which flavors were coming from the meat and which from the sauce, and it seemed like there was some overlap there.

And due to the spice and the powerful meat flavor, the mozzarella served more as a binding agent to hold the meatballs near the bread than an additional source of flavor. Not that I’m complaining — this thing was messy enough with the cheese and would likely have ruined my shirt without it. But I do think fresh mozzarella loses something when it’s fully melted. Don’t quote me on that because it’s a theory I’m going to have to revisit, but I feel like all my favorite sandwiches incorporating fresh mozzarella pile thick slices on top and don’t mess with them.

What it’s worth: Cost $9, and it was a lot of food. It was a good enough sandwich that I kept plowing through it even after I was stuffed, which happened about 2/3 of the way in. Cleaned the plate. Came with a small but pretty decent footnote of a salad, too.

How it rates: I struggled with this one. Again, a reminder that all these ratings are completely subjective and I might very well rate any sandwich differently if I ate it at a different time, in a different mood or whatever. It’s three days later and I’m still thinking about how great the meatball hero was, but at no point did it feel quite like a Hall of Famer. I’m going to give it an 88 out of 100, and remind you that this might be a Hall of Fame sandwich to anyone who didn’t grow up with a mother that makes unbelievable meatballs.

Twitter Q&A-style product, part 2

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You can’t see it, but I’m shrugging my shoulders right now. Here’s a story: The day before the Super Bowl I spent some time with a rabid Steelers fan. Obviously the non-Steelers fans among us brought up Ben Rothlisberger and his alleged habits, and the Steelers fan just kept defending Big Ben, insisting that nothing had been proven, maintaining that the quarterback hadn’t done anything wrong.

So while, in my eyes, what Sanchez supposedly did cannot compare in any way to what Rothlisberger allegedly did, I also realize that I am hopelessly biased toward the Jets’ Taco Bell-loving quarterback and unlikely to see fault in any of his actions until they somehow impact his ability to contribute to the Jets, and maybe not even then.

I’m sure some people probably take issue with Sanchez bringing a 17-year-old home, and perhaps rightfully — I’ve known enough 17-year-olds (and interacted with enough of them when I was myself 24 [not in the way Sanchez did, I just mean I worked in a high school]) to recognize that most of them aren’t really ready to be making grown-up decisions, even if they think they are. Hell, I’m not really ready to be making grown-up decisions and I’m 30.

As for Deadspin posting it, more shoulder-shrugging. Is it manufacturing a controversy, as @JoeBacci asked? Perhaps, but who am I to judge what they do? I still read the site with some frequency, and it gets about a billion times more traffic than this one. The Sanchez story is not the type of content that draws me to that site, so I suppose if it became entirely dedicated to exposing athletes’ affairs I’d stop reading. But until it does, I probably won’t.

I strongly advocate more Taco Bell, but I don’t think anything could guarantee 200 innings from Johan Santana, in 2011 or anytime beyond, really. It seems like Santana’s recovery is becoming a pretty big story in Mets camp, and, at the risk of sounding like Debbie Downer I’ll say this: Don’t hold your breath.

Shoulder injuries are very, very, very bad news for pitchers. As a Mets fan and a Santana fan (the pitcher, not really the band), I hope the lefty can recover and soon. But I’m pretty sure — and I can’t find the quote now — that at the press conference to announce Santana’s surgery, he listed other pitchers that had the same procedure and included Jorge Posada, Kelvim Escobar, Chien-Ming Wang and Mark Prior. Tell me which of those names sounds like a promising comp for a pitcher.

I’m not asking this rhetorically, I’m straight-up asking: Does anyone know of a pitcher who has fully recovered from surgery to repair the anterior capsule in his throwing shoulder? It’s entirely possible Santana’s condition and surgery were less severe than those of Escobar, Wang and Prior, but I’d love to be able to cling to an example of a guy who made it all the way back when I’m looking at that targeted July return.

Twitter Q&A-style product

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Kind of a long story that I might touch on later, but I don’t have my phone, which had the audio of the interview I intended to transcribe today. So in lieu of that, here’s some Twitter Q&A-type stuff. Actually, these ran long so I’m breaking them up into two posts.

One of the inevitable downsides of a sports reporter’s affecting or achieving disinterest in his subject is that readers will perpetually speculate which team he or she favors. I am lucky in that I am able to come right out and tell you I’m a Mets fan so there’s no doubt where my rooting interest lies, and even so I have been accused of being a “fake” Mets fan — though it was never clear if those people meant I was faking my favoring of the Mets or just a fake human, perhaps some sort of bot developed by SNY to forward the company line.

Anyway, I’m reasonably sure that in 90% of cases, the fan guessing at the journalist’s rooting interest is wrong — either it’s simply a matter of confirmation bias on the part of the fan, or the journalist quietly roots for some team the fan hasn’t even considered, or the journalist unknowingly favors the players and teams that make his job easier, or the journalist really doesn’t care. But Stark, here, lends credence to the common Mets-fan theory that he’s a big-time Phillies fan, formed partly because of his past as a Phillies reporter and partly because he dedicates thousands of words to trumpeting the Phillies’ grit and hustle and greatness.

The section about the Mets’ offseason in Stark’s column is so silly it doesn’t even really merit a response. It starts with a joke about how Sandy Alderson probably didn’t know what a Ponzi scheme was before this offseason (with no mention of how he went to Dartmouth then Harvard Law), then goes on to… oh lord, it’s not even worth my frustration. Basically every single thing he writes in the section is wrong or poorly considered.

I was actually thinking about it, so here’s a good excuse. It doesn’t often happen to me — usually I check for my phone, watch and wallet before I leave anywhere. But today I had a small notebook in my coat pocket, and I must have mistaken that for my phone. I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning so I took the train into the office in the middle of the day.

When I finished the Daily News and reached in vain for my phone, my reaction to not finding it wasn’t disappointment or annoyance, but something closer to terror. Then when I realized I was terrified by not having my phone on me, I grew even more terrified because of the implications of that response. What the hell is wrong with me? It was only a little over a year ago that I got a smartphone, and now I’m so dependent on the thing that I completely panic when I don’t have access to it.

I mean, granted in this particular situation I had work I wanted to be doing that required the phone, plus it was technically in the middle of my work day and I work on the Internet, so I have a couple of excuses. But still. Kinda got me thinking of the Matrix, and wondering if the first people that plugged into those pod things did so on a voluntary basis.

I am generally of the mind that the technology that enriches our lives makes us smarter, and I have no doubt that the awesome breadth of information now almost perpetually available at my fingertips has better prepared me to succeed on Jeopardy. But I do wonder sometimes if the constant distraction affects the depth of my thoughts, and if I wouldn’t be better off putting the damn thing on the shelf for a few days every so often to better convene with whatever the hell is out there that’s not on Twitter.

BREAKING: Rich guy could buy the Mets, probably won’t

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With his excellent seats at Citi Field, Michael Bloomberg says he won’t upgrade to the owner’s box.

The billionaire mayor was asked Thursday if he was interested in purchasing the 20%-25% stake the Mets’ current owners, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, are selling off to raise cash for potentially crippling litigation involving their ties to Bernie Madoff’s collapsed Ponzi scheme.

“I don’t think I should own a baseball team,” answered Bloomberg, smiling.

– Nathaniel Vinton, N.Y. Daily News.

So is this how it’s going to be now? We’re just going to start speculating that every single rich person with even vague ties to baseball or New York might purchase the Mets? Because that’s going to get tedious.

First of all, it seems likely that anyone with $250 million lying around to invest in a baseball team didn’t come into that money without being pretty careful about his or her investments, so outside of a few outlying eccentrics I imagine most billionaires aren’t going to come out and be all, “HELL YEAH I WANT THE METS! TRADE DAVID WRONG!”

Second, there are a ton of extremely rich people who aren’t celebrity rich people, meaning that there are prospective buyers beyond Bloomberg and Mark Cuban and James Dolan and Derek Jeter and whoever else. It might not make for an interesting story if some hedge-fund manager from Chappaqua that no one outside the financial world has ever heard of emerges as a candidate to buy all or part of the team, but I can’t imagine it makes much of a difference to the Wilpons or, for that matter, to the Mets in the long run.

Speaking of: The 20th richest man in America, per Forbes, is a New York hedge-fund manager named John Paulson (Ed. note: His name is John Paulson). Forbes says Paulson is worth $12.4 billion, and yet I had never heard of him until right now. What’s up with that, Mr. Paulson? What’s the point of making $12.4 billion if your name’s not going to ring out through the streets?

Anyway, I’ve got an easy solution for you, John Paulson: Give me a billion dollars. That’s less than 1/12 of your riches. I keep a sports and sandwich blog of moderate repute, and if you made me rich, I’d probably dedicate half my posts to writing about how awesome you are. Think of the publicity! Sandwich of the Week: Lobster and Caviar on saffron-infused brioche with diamond aioli. And bacon. All thanks to Mr. John Paulson, billionaire philanthropist and patron of the sandwich-oriented arts.

Long story short, guessing that the rich people you’ve heard of will buy the Mets is probably a fool’s errand, because there are likely way more rich people you haven’t heard of. And it’s certainly going to take a while before anything concrete gets done, so it’s probably fruitless to spend the interim picking billionaires out of hats and assuming they might be interested in investing in a baseball team supposedly carrying considerable debt.

Bonus sandwich!

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This may disappoint the great kendynamo.

The sandwich: Turkey Joe from the Millburn Deli, Millburn, N.J.

The construction: Sliced turkey with Swiss cheese, Russian dressing and cole slaw on sourdough rye bread. There are three slices of bread in all — I believe it goes bread>turkey>bread>cheese>cole slaw>dressing>bread — and the sandwich is cut into thirds.

Important background information: The Millburn Delicatessen is a beautiful place, and something of a sandwich oasis. It’s also not terrible far out of the way when traveling from Westchester to DC, assuming you’re circumventing the five boroughs by starting on the Tappan Zee Bridge.

There are bright colors and delicious-looking meats and pre-made sandwiches everywhere. Everything in there says amazing deli. Only thing is, I struggled to figure out their system — they had a red take-a-number thing with an LED sign, but as soon as I came in one of the deli men asked for my order. But I wasn’t ready!

This happens to me sometimes: I panic. As a former deli man myself, I want so badly to accommodate my brethren behind the counter that I just sort of blurt out an order instead of carefully considering what it is I really want. I remember it being something of a pain in the ass when I would have to wait on someone who couldn’t make up his mind, so I overcompensate and often wind up costing myself.

That’s how I came to the Turkey Joe. It seemed like the Sloppy Joes are the thing to get at the Millburn Deli, and turkey was the first one on the list. Sort of a choke-job on my part.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Like cole slaw. There’s turkey and cheese in there somewhere, and if I think about it I can kind of pick out the creamy sweetness of the Russian dressing, plus the bread is soft, fresh and excellent. But the overwhelming flavor here is unmistakably the cole slaw that’s dripping out the sides of the sandwich and onto my pants.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s really good cole slaw — I’m guessing it’s housemade, and it’s definitely not the soggy shreds that come out of big plastic jugs at many delis. The cabbage maintains its crunch and its got a nice, sweet, vinegary flavor to it.

But someone tell me: Is the big revelation here just that cole slaw is really good on a sandwich? Because I knew that already. And beyond that, it’s hard to figure what’s special about the Turkey Joe here. Again, that’s not to say it isn’t tasty; it is. I guess I’m just eager to know why it’s considered a destination sandwich by so many in Jersey.

Dividing the sandwich into three is a nice touch. Creating triangles rather than squares gives the eater better angles at which to bite into the sandwich, a concept I toyed with way back in Sandwich Week.

I suppose I should note something about the extra slice of bread in the middle of the sandwich — club-sandwich style — which I support in principle because screw Atkins. But the bread was thin enough, and weighed down enough by the massive heap of cole slaw, that it was difficult to distinguish on the inside of the sandwich.

What it’s worth: I think it cost $7.25, and there was a lot of sandwich here. I was only able to eat two of the three sections in my first sitting, which meant I was able to eat more — and get more cole slaw on my pants — around the time I hit Baltimore.

How it rates: 76 out of 100. A tasty and well-constructed sandwich, but static in flavor. Needs bacon.

Raymond Felton’s sad party

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Tuesday night, TR Luxury and Get It Done Entertainment sponsored a “Welcome to the New York” party for the Knicks’ new point guard, Raymond Felton. According to the event’s invitations, it would be hosted by “the New York Knicks and Amar’e Stoudemire.” This was not so.

Stoudemire never showed up for the Tuesday night bash at Taj – and with fair reason, it seems. He had no idea it was happening….

Felton wasn’t drinking and appeared uninterested in the scantily clad ladies who flanked him. He did pose for photos with rapper Freeky Zekey of Dipset, and afterward the two exchanged numbers. But that was as edgy as things got. During a brief chat, Felton sounded like what he really wanted to do was just hit the couch like Amar’e.

“Stay home,” he replied when asked what he likes to do in the city. “I like to stay home and watch movies because it’s too cold to go out here. I’m not used to this weather.”

– Gatecrasher, N.Y. Daily News.

You really need to click through and read this full article because the excerpt doesn’t do it justice. It reads like something out of The Onion.

Essentially, the party was billed as an Amar’e Stoudemire-hosted “Welcome to New York” bash for Felton, only no one told Stoudemire about it and he was home watching Californication and Tweeting about it.

And Gatecrasher describes it as if the party sucked and Felton was essentially despondent, uninterested in scantily clad women or alcohol, and telling everyone he’d prefer to be home in front of his TV like Amar’e.

Gosh, such typical NBA players. Just a bunch of homebodies.

Later in the article, the party is described as “sad,” and Felton defends Justin Bieber from the M.S.G. fans that booed him.

File under: Not-cool things to say to someone

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I went to the Georgetown-Providence game on Saturday. Every time I go to a Hoyas game in DC, I have to scramble to find a ticket in the young-alumni section, where my friends all sit. Usually it involves a bunch of emails to people I don’t really know and a whole lot of scrounging.

This time, I was able to score one off a friend of a friend. Long story short, I had to meet his roommate outside the Verizon Center to get the physical ticket. It was cold and drizzling and the roommate didn’t show up until about 10 minutes after tipoff.

So when I finally get to my seat I’m reasonably wet and a bit flustered, trying to figure out which row I’m in and what seat I have and keep an eye on the game at the same time. When I identify my correct row and spot my seat, four seats in from the aisle, the guy on the aisle says, “TED!”

It turns out it’s a dude I know pretty well and hung out with a bunch in college, but I haven’t seen him in years. And in the interim, he’s lost some weight, grown a beard, and lost all of the once-longish hair he used to have on top of his head. Like I said, I’m a bit discombobulated as it is, so it takes me a second to recognize the guy — just long enough that he has to remind me who he is (exactly as I’m putting it all together), something that makes me feel like kind of a jackass since I know this guy pretty well and he’s an extremely nice dude.

Then to make matters worse, when trying to excuse myself for not instantly recognizing him, I say: “Dude, I didn’t recognize you without all the hair!”

Yikes.

His friends got a pretty good laugh out of it and he seemed to think it was pretty funny too, especially since it was immediately clear I didn’t mean to behave like a comedy villain. Plus he pulls off his baldness pretty well, so hopefully it’s not something he’s all that self-conscious about.