This came up on the Mets Interactive thing today. You’ll see what I (haphazardly) answered later, but I’m curious to see your take.
[poll id=”12″]
Out of curiosity
8
Category Archives: Words
Some glory-days stuff
This column in the Daily News got me thinking about some glory-days stuff:
In 10 years of playing organized football, I played for a lot of bad teams. Outside of one notable blip in eighth grade, every single club was somewhere between crappy and downright terrible.
And perhaps none sucked as much as my high school team in my junior year. Our starting quarterback broke his arm two weeks before practices began in a drunken backyard incident. Our backup quarterback struggled with ankle problems all season. Multiple players missed multiple games with legal troubles. The average weight of our offensive linemen was probably around 175 pounds. We had a few decent players, but holes pretty much everywhere.
We finished the year 1-7, our only win coming against perennial conference patsy West Hempstead. But it almost wasn’t that way. We were quite nearly 2-6.
Some odd Saturday in the middle of the season we were scheduled to play New Hyde Park. The Gladiators, as they were known, never quite pulled out a conference or Long Island-championship in those years, but we could never figure out why. Every season they embarrassed us, even more than we were normally embarrassed.
We were playing at home that afternoon, and we were warming up in a light drizzle when the New Hyde Park team filed off the school bus.
They were, to a man, tremendous. Later, players on our team would half-joke that the district must have been distributing steroids. Every single dude was like 6’2″ and 220 pounds, and most of them had their jerseys tucked up under their shoulder pads to show off their six-pack abs. Oh, and most of them had dark visors and sported neck-roll pads, which never seemed to really protect against anything but served to make already frightening dudes look intimidating as hell.
The drizzle turned to hard rain and eventually a full-on downpour, so our coaches led us back into the locker room to dry off and get focused in the 20 minutes before game time. The room, in the dark basement of the school, reeked of 40 years worth of sweat spilled mostly in vain. We sat on long benches and spoke in hushed tones. Everyone was drenched. A couple guys were visibly terrified.
As the storm continued, our head coach went out to meet with the referees and opposing coaches to discuss the conditions. In the meantime, the assistant coach emerged from his office to address us.
He spoke for about 15 minutes straight, and I can’t now remember a word he said. All I know is this: It was the most inspiring and perhaps very best motivational speech of all time. Honestly. Dude made Patton look like Ben Stein.
There must have been stuff in there about the rain and our pride and our home field and all the stuff that gets high-school football types fired up. It built in a slow crescendo, coach yelling about what we were about to do to them and how we were going to do it. Even those few terrified scrubs started looking mean, determined, excited.
He ended abruptly and told us to line up by the locker room door to march out to the field together. I remember standing there in electric silence with my heart racing, feeling as connected to my teammates as I could ever be to anyone at that age. Every guy in line knew we were about to walk out on the field and promptly beat the piss out of the biggest, baddest team in the conference.
We could hear the rain splashing outside as we prepared to file out. Finally the door swung open.
Our soaked head coach stood in the doorway.
“Game’s canceled, boys.”
New Hyde Park came back on Monday afternoon and beat us handily.
Don’t miss a thrilling opportunity to talk to me by phone
Matt Cerrone and I are trying out a new video feature today, based on the popular Islanders Interactive series Chris Botta has been doing over at IslandersPointBlank.com.
Essentially it’s like talk radio, except Cerrone and I are sitting there talking on video. It’ll probably run about 20 minutes, only you don’t have to watch it the whole time since there’s not going to be a whole lot going on, you know, visually. So basically a podcast, only with a video streaming so you don’t have to forge a mental image of what it looks like when Cerrone and I sit around and talk about the Mets.
Anyway, we need Mets-related phone calls to make this happen. Please call (212) 246-0416 between 1 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. ET. You’ll talk to the producer first, then eventually get patched through to Matt and me. Unless you turn out to be a crazy person, your question will air on the video, which will be up here, at MetsBlog and on SNY.tv sometime in the afternoon.
Mine’s not a high horse
Jackson, of course, was stunned. “I’m just sitting back there thinking, ‘They’re really not going to kick it to me’,” said Jackson. But he took the gift and, after first fumbling the ball and then recovering, he avoided a tackling attempt by receiver Duke Calhoun, put a move on tight end Bear Pascoe, and out-ran a diving Dodge before showboating his way into the end zone as time ran out.
– Ralph Vacchiano, N.Y. Daily News.
That’s not all — the Daily News actually dedicates a whole section of the game notes to Jackson’s showboating, and after CBS showed the play during the Jets’ game, Jim Nantz called it “disgraceful” or something equally sanctimonious.
First off, there’s nothing worse than a bunch of sports-media types getting all hot and bothered about players celebrating. Sports are entertainment. We watch sports to be entertained. End-zone celebrations are immensely entertaining. Unless they come at a downright terrible time — with the team way down and out of the game or something — they’re awesome.
Second, and most importantly, I’m not sure what Jackson did even constitutes showboating, like, at all. He took a hard left when he reached the goal line to make sure the clock expired. To me, that counts as smart football.
Maybe, I don’t know, the way he slowed up and held his arm up before finally going in was some minor celebration. But even if I were someone who gets broken up over Ochocinco’s end-zone jigs I don’t think I’d find anything too offensive about Jackson’s jog across the end line. He was afforded the opportunity to make sure he ran out the clock by the Giants’ miserable punt coverage on the play, which left him with some 20 yards of wiggle room at the end.
And not for nothing, the play was a last-second punt return touchdown that marked the culmination of a massive fourth-quarter comeback in a game between divisional rivals with major playoff implications. Given the circumstances, I’d say the celebration was pretty reserved.
Sandwich of the Week
Fun fact: Before last Saturday, I had eaten at five of the eight places surveyed on the Travel Channel’s “Sandwich Paradise” show. Nardelli’s, a small Connecticut chain, was the only reasonably local one I hadn’t hit.
So a week ago yesterday, I set out to rectify that. The nearest store is about 45 minutes from TedQuarters in Westchester, but with my wife entrenched in studying for finals and the weather too cold for a baseball game, I figured I’d make the trip.
The sandwich: Italian combo from Nardelli’s, several locations in Connecticut.
The construction: Pruzitini, capicola, salami and provolone on a hero roll with lettuce, Nardelli’s “classic mix” of veggies, olives, mayo and hot sauce.
Things labeled “capicola” in this country vary pretty wildly. Maybe in other countries too, but sadly I’ve only enjoyed things labeled “capicola” in this country. Also, near as I can tell Nardelli’s is the only place on Google selling something called “pruzittini.” I’m going to assume that the cured, chewy meat on the sandwich was the capicola and that Nardelli’s uses legit capicola, not ham cappy. And so then I’ll figure that the ham on the sandwich with the peppery outside — which could probably be mistaken for ham happy — is the pruzitini, since prosciuttini is, near as I understand it, the old-school Italian name for pepper ham, one of my very favorite deli meats.
Important background information: As I may have mentioned, I have very high standards for Italian heroes. At DeBono’s, it was damn-near sacrilege to put mayo on an Italian combo. We would do it, since the customer is always right and everything, but we’d quietly judge the crap out of whoever ordered it. And never, ever would I suggest mayo on any sort of specialty sandwich involving a lot of Italian meats. That’s what oil and balsamic vinegar are for.
Also, being an Italian guy and working in a deli where people frequently come in and order Italian heroes sets you up to make a lot of sort of mock-sleazy jokes like, “I thought I was your Italian hero.” I was the only one who ever made Giuseppe Garibaldi references. No one ever got it.
Oh, and furthermore, heroes are called “grinders” in Connecticut apparently. That’s b.s. They’re heroes. We’ve been through this before.
What it looks like:
How it tastes: Good. Good enough to be among eight places featured on a show about the best sandwiches in the country? Probably not. But then, really only one of the places on the show that I’ve been to — Primanti Bros. in Pittsburgh — seems worthy of that honor.
The highlights of the sandwich are the soft, fresh bread and the “Classic Mix.” The bread tastes great — just a little sweetness to go with all the savory flavors inside the sandwich — plus is the perfect consistency to contain all the meats and cheeses. It didn’t, incidentally — there’s a lot of stuff on there, so you’ve got little hope that it won’t turn into a sloppy mess. But the bread made a noble effort to keep everything together, and I can’t really think of any bread that would do a better job.
The Classic Mix, which is actually trademarked, is a bunch of peppers, cucumbers, onions, and who knows what else marinated in something vaguely pickly. Mixed into a big gooey glob with the mayo and hot sauce, it gave the effect of a crunchier, heartier cole slaw with a little heat. It was good, a worthy condiment.
The actual bulk of the sandwich, though, left something to be desired. People on the Internet raving about Nardelli’s write about how much better their meat is than Subway’s or Quizno’s, and that’s undoubtedly true. But I don’t think it would hold up in quality to what you could get at an A&S or a good Italian deli around the five boroughs. It was tasty, no doubt, but greasy — and yeah, I know salami is supposed to be greasy — and left me, long after I had finished, just a tiny bit queasy. Still, it was certainly more enjoyable than not to eat — a nice melange of peppery meat flavors.
And one more quibble — and this could easily be a small-sample size hiccup — one half of my sandwich had nearly all the meat. You can’t see it from the picture, but the meat on the side facing the camera tapered off quickly, and by the outer edge of the sandwich it was nearly entirely bread and veggie goop. It still tasted good, of course, but the sandwich’s maker did not evenly distribute the elements of the sandwich, a personal pet peeve.
In all, the Italian Combo from Nardelli’s sort of reminded me of the very best of the six-foot Italian combo heroes we’d get for football dinners and such in high school. I’m not even sure I can explain why. It was good, but inevitably messy and uneven.
What it’s worth: I got the half-grinder because I also wanted to try their chicken parm (which proved unspectacular) and figured I could handle a full grinder, so I’d get two halves and call it a day. Turns out two half-grinders were too much food for me; there’s a lot of meat here. And price was right: The half-grinder would be more than an adequate lunch, and cost less than $5.
The rating: 82 out of 100.
A partial year in Tweets
I’ve got Christmas shopping and an upcoming vacation on the mind, and I’m struggling a bit to come up with anything to write about. But I’m vain enough to reprint things I’ve already published, and I figured revisiting the year via a selection of my own Tweets would make for a decent year-in-review post. Problem is, I can’t find a way to see any Twitter before May 26. So indulge me in a partial year in Tweets:
May 26: Oh thank god. I was concerned Fernando Nieve wouldn’t get in this game. #youhavetwomopupguysforjustthissituation
June 1: I am embarrassed and terrified by how few of NY Mag’s 101 Best Sandwiches in NY I’ve had. Looks like I’ve got a long night ahead.
June 3: ROBBLE ROBBLE ROBBLE JIM JOYCE!
June 4: An A-ball team is now calling batting practice “hitting rehearsal” to avoid calling it “BP.” That’ll teach ’em.
June 7: Prediction: Some guys drafted tonight will turn out good and others will suck.
June 11: You can scold Lady Gaga for wearing a bikini bottom to the Mets game, but you’re just jealous she can get away with never wearing pants.
June 15: Painter Thomas Kinkade was arrested for DUI Friday on an idyllic cobblestone road by the charming old lighthouse at dusk.
June 18: Campbell’s is recalling 15 million pounds of SpaghettiO’s. In a related story, there are 15 million pounds of SpaghettiO’s.
June 24: Obviously Johan Santana sucks now because he had extramarital sex with a woman on a golf course eight months ago.
June 30: Me, after filming five intros: “Does being introduced as ‘Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner’ ever get old?” Kiner: “How could that ever get old?”
July 4: Jeff Francoeur, who has a .718 OPS, said all the Mets OFs deserve playing time upon Beltran’s return since none is “flat-out sucking.”
July 8: Funniest outcome: LeBron James announces he’s signing with Olympiacos then suffers career-threatening finger injury while flipping everyone off.
July 16: Source: The Yanks would like to have Joakim Soria, distinguising them from all those teams that would not like to have Joakim Soria.
July 20: When managing an MLB roster, the most important thing to know is never, ever risk losing Fernando Nieve on waivers. Too risky!
July 23: Jason Bay has struggled all season, presumably because of something Carlos Beltran did.
July 29: Source: Adam Dunn is lazy, but won’t DH because he hates baseball so much he wants to torment it with terrible defense.
Aug. 5: Are we discounting the possibility that Brett Favre’s photos were actually aimed for his wife and intercepted?
Aug. 6: Why do crappy baseball teams lack the confidence that the good ones have? The world may never know.
Aug. 9: According to Alex Cora, if a team is committed to winning now, it should hang on to Alex Cora.
Aug. 12: Heath Bell leads the National League in saves, but he’s dead last in old men beaten up.
Aug. 16: Jerseyites always get all dodgy when you ask them about Taylor Ham, a local meat product. Be honest, Jersey: Is it people?
Aug. 21: I saw Wyclef Jean in concert once. It was awful. I left thinking, “I hope that man is never a head of state.” #votepras
Aug. 25: Look I know Jeff Francoeur hasn’t had a hit in two months, but please, give him credit: He’s had some really long at-bats.
Aug. 31: Will the media hordes follow Jeff Francoeur and his pursuit of 100 home runs to Texas?
Sept. 1: Don’t forget: Tommy Hanson and his longtime family friends will deny it, but he’s totally cousins with the band Hanson.
Sept. 5: Mets steaming as clubhouse cancer Mike Pelfrey draws ire for fantasy football grandstanding. “Thinks he’s John Madden,” grumbles one.
Sept. 5: My biggest regret is that I lived nearly 30 years without knowing about the sandwich I just ate. Holy hell. Everything is different now.
Sept. 10: Carlos Beltran should not have torn Johan Santana’s left anterior shoulder capsule.
Sept. 13: Paraphrasing Daily News: Jets should not have objectified this extremely sexy bombshell reporter. WITH SEXY PHOTOS!
Sept. 15: Pretty sure every single person at Citi Field is on the line at Shake Shack.
Sept. 20: I’d like to score a role as the drunk in an action movie who sees something crazy then looks at his drink like, “whoa, that’s good stuff.”
Sept. 27: Jets overcome injuries, penalties, widespread charges of moral turpitude to beat Dolphins, 31-23.
Oct. 3: Not sure why people are so fired up about Dickey pitching here. Doesn’t crack the top 1000 dumbest Mets moves this season.
Oct. 6: I think maybe Cee Lo Green is going to unify the planet in utopian harmony the way we thought Wyld Stallyns would.
Oct. 9: Knowing that Mariano Rivera has been to Taco Bell is like knowing that the Beatles met Muhammad Ali. Historic confluence of awesome.
Oct. 13: An errant dart just struck an unopened soda can and sent a stream of ginger ale shooting across the office. It was awesome.
Oct. 16: Jeff Francoeur’s rocking a historically great 3:1 FA:PT in the ALCS. That’s feature articles:pitches taken.
Oct. 18: Fox vs. Cablevision is like the Yankees-Phillies World Series of corporate disputes.
Oct. 19: Listening to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver guarantees you’ll appreciate the broadcast you hear next. It’s like taking the donut off the bat.
Oct. 28: ALERT: Man in suit proceeding south on 5th ave. on a Segway.
Nov. 1: Will Tim Lincecum’s performance tonight help sway the vote on Prop 19?
Nov. 8: Even though the Giants debunked Moneyball, the Mets have hired Paul DePodesta.
Nov. 16: Charlie Samuels fired today? Dammit, I had Nov. 16 in the pool. Wait – noooooooo!
Nov. 17: It’s laughable that Bud Selig still thinks Abner Doubleday invented baseball. Everyone knows it was Wally Backman.
Nov. 21: Mets hire manager at 3 a.m. Pakistan Standard Time.
Nov. 22: It’s bizarre to me that many Mets fans who argued that Wally Backman has changed seem certain that Terry Collins cannot.
Nov. 28: What kind of party is it, exactly, that could prompt a man to defile the mashed potatoes?
Nov. 29: Apparently a WEEI caller today suggested that the Red Sox pay Derek Jeter $20 mil and bench him behind Marco Scutaro.
Dec. 3: In Colonial Williamsburg, everyone wore tight, tapered knickers and stayed ironically detached from the whole revolution thing.
Dec.6: OK Jets fans, this is awful. But we need to remember one thing: Tom Brady wears man-UGGs.
Dec. 7: Heard this: A mystery team has made a bid for an unspecified player. Terms not disclosed.
Dec. 9: To me, what the Mets are doing this offseason *is* exciting. Extremely so. I could hardly care less what makes headlines.
Dec. 13: Sandy Alderson is so much cooler than Mike Francesa.
Dec. 14: From the Internet today you’d get the impression that the Phillies won’t lose a single game in 2011. C’mon. They’ll lose at least 5.
Dec. 15: Most amazing thing about tonight’s Knicks game: I’ve now watched three straight Knicks games.
Very important poll
Subtle savvy
One of the overlooked stories concerning the impact Sandy Alderson has already had on the Mets’ roster concerns the values he’s managed to pick up. Saving money at the margins is vital, and quite different from failing to address issues of secondary talent and depth. Indeed, spending less for the same player affords a team the chance to add both depth and a big-ticket item worth signing when one hits the market.
So let’s compare Matt Guerrier, who agreed to a three-year, $12 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and D.J. Carrasco, who Alderson signed for two years, $2.5 million last week.
– Howard Megdal, New York Baseball Digest.
Howard makes some good points here. Guerrier has been a very good reliever in five of the last six seasons and Carrasco has only been doing it for two and a half, so certainly the Dodgers paid for certainty. But given the deals given out to Guerrier and Jesse Crain this week, Carrasco looks like a bargain.
I think for now, optimistic Mets fans like Howard and myself will have to point to Sandy Alderson’s more subtle savvy moves. I spent the last several years bleating on about the way in which the Mets were wasting money and roster spots at the margins of their roster, with the Marlon Andersons and Julio Francos and Abraham Nunezes of the world.
But, as I was discussing with Will Davidian this morning, Alderson has an opportunity to create a pretty fearsome bench on the cheap if he uses the right mix of in-house options and free agents. Ronny Paulino gives the Mets a backup catcher that’s actually a useful hitter against lefties. Likely Brad Emaus or Justin Turner (or perhaps both) will be on the squad, reserve middle infielders that might get on base now and then.
If the Mets pursue and acquire Fred Lewis, with whom they were linked earlier this offseason, they’d have a useful fourth outfielder that wouldn’t be a hole in the lineup when one of the starters needed a rest. Throw in a one or two of the Mets’ young power hitters and corner players from the Minors — Lucas Duda and/or Nick Evans, say — and you’ve got a bench full of guys that present real offensive value. And they’re guys that, unlike Alex Cora and Gary Matthews Jr., show at least some promise that they can be more than bench guys if everything falls in their favor.
So there’s that. They’re still going to need some guys to start games though.
Well there goes that
Craig Calcaterra points out that rumors of Pedro Martinez’s comeback were probably just rumors, as Pedro sure sounds like a happily retired man.
Too bad.
My 200-word post about why I think the Mets should sign Pedro Martinez inspired a shocking amount of vitriol, considering the content. I thought I explained pretty explicitly how the Mets don’t make a ton of sense for Pedro and Pedro doesn’t make a ton of sense for the Mets, and that I just really like Pedro Martinez so I want to see him back. It’s an emotional thing, not a rational thing.
When Pedro was Pedro — from his last year with the Expos through his first year with the Mets — his performance was about as special as anything we’ll ever see on a baseball field in our lifetimes. Do you remember it? Lineups of meatheaded mashers, muscles testing the constraints of their uniforms, terrified at the hands of a tiny little jheri-curled righty.
It was nuts. He put any pitch anywhere he wanted it. Guys ducked out of the way of his curveball before it fell into the zone. They couldn’t catch his fastball and couldn’t wait on his changeup. Crazytime. It looked unfair.
And Pedro brought a certain joy to his dominance, or at least I read it that way. Not just the weird and hilarious off-the-field stuff. Even when he was staring guys down, posturing like he did, there was something in his countenance that suggested he knew exactly the magnitude of his accomplishment. You can see the same thing in Orson Welles if you watch Citizen Kane close enough, like he was thinking throughout the filming, “I am absolutely killing this s@#!.”
That’s why I want Pedro back on the Mets; I want to watch him pitch again, and to try to remember how amazing it was to watch the first time.
The Mets should sign Pedro Martinez
Yeah, I said it.
Rumor says Pedro is open to pitching again in the 2011 season. I have no idea how much he’ll cost, and last time he pulled this all the reports said he was prohibitively expensive. Plus if he’s coming back he’s probably going to want to come back to a team likely to win, and that conservatively puts about 10-15 teams in better position than the Mets. Also, he’s 39 now and hasn’t pitched a full season since his first in Flushing in 2005. And he doesn’t seem any more apt to stay healthy and contribute to the Mets in 2011 than Jeff Francis or Chris Young.
But every single time Pedro makes noise about a comeback, I will argue that the Mets should oblige him. Pedro Martinez is one of my favorite pitchers and humans of all time, and though I recognize that any future Major League incarnation of Pedro would likely appear a shell of his former self, I’d be thrilled to watch the shell again.
Plus, not for nothing, he was pretty good in his small-sample return for the Phillies in 2009, and it’s not like the Mets have a glut of starting pitching.
Tedquarters 