Joe Namath: The O.G. Mark Sanchez

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My colleague Mike Salfino pointed me to this bit from Joe Namath’s Wikipedia page:

He was born and raised in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, twenty miles from Pittsburgh. He was a standout in football, basketball and baseball. In an age where dunks were still uncommon in high school basketball, Namath regularly dunked in games. Upon graduation, he received offers from six Major League Baseball teams, including the Yankees, Mets, Indians, Reds, Pirates and Phillies, but football prevailed. Namath has told interviewers that he wanted to sign with the Pirates and play baseball like his idol, Roberto Clemente, but elected to play football because his mother wanted him to get a college education.

That’s right. Not only was Joe Namath a stud baseball player, he dunked in high school basketball games long before it came in vogue. That’s because Joe Namath is completely and utterly awesome, kind of like dunking. Man, I so wish I could dunk.

Anyway, lots of people threw around “next Joe Namath” talk during Mark Sanchez’s rise to prominence this year, but I think fans of my generation never fully grasped what that meant.

Luckily, the Internet is positively rife with photos of Joe Namath that help shed some light on the comparison. Here are a select few:

Items of note

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I can’t believe this is starting up again. Good lord, it never ends.

Stop the presses: Johan Santana is confident in his abilities. Here I was expecting him to say Garrett Mock is the best pitcher in the NL East.

Ross Ohlendorf interned at the Agriculture Department this offseason. Seems like an interesting dude, definitely an interesting article.

This picture from the Daily News is tremendously awesome. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Namath playing softball under the 59th St. Bridge in some downright amazing pants:

Donnie Walsh: Cool

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Donnie Walsh kind of looks like Earl Milford, founder of Arrested Development’s Milford Academy, but he has made his intentions both seen and heard since he took over the Knicks in April of 2008.

Walsh has worked tirelessly to dig the team out from the under the giant stinking pile of muck Isiah Thomas dumped all over it in his epically terrible tenure.

Today, Walsh pulled off a three-team deal to ensure that the Knicks will be able to sign two max free-agents this offseason, when, among others, LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade hit the open market. He had to give up a couple draft picks and Jordan Hill to do it, but it was, as Marlo Stanfield might put it, “some Spiderman s@#!.”

It strikes me that, only a few paragraphs deep in this post, I’ve already referenced two of the greatest television shows of all time. It wasn’t intentional, but maybe it had something to do with the subconscious knowledge that the Knicks, for the past several years, have been nearly unwatchable.

So as only a casual fan of the team and, hell, the entire professional game, maybe the allusions to Arrested Development and The Wire signify my hope that next year’s Knicks — with LeBron and Bosh or LeBron and whoever — could become the type of programming so transfixing, so transcendently awesome that I feel the need to watch and rewatch every moment, like I once did those shows.

And it could happen. If it all goes down according to Walsh’s plan, it’s entirely likely.

The fear, of course, is that it won’t. That King James will stay put in Cleveland and Walsh will be left with some lesser free-agent haul and egg all over his face.

The thing is, Walsh — with the way he’s gone about eradicating the detritus of Isiah’s amazing orgy of suckitude — should by now have earned enough faith from the Knicks’ fanbase for it to assume he’ll do well with the cap space he’s fought for since the day he took the reins.

So the Knicks’ deadline deals — to this partial but somewhat distanced observer, at least —  don’t say “LeBron or bust,” as much as they say “tabula rasa.” Walsh will enter the offseason with a clean slate and a ton of flexibility to mold the team in his and Mike D’Antoni’s image, and only Eddy Curry left to show for the Isiah Thomas Era.

Of course, building a good team is a lot different than dismantling a crappy one, and it remains to be seen if Walsh is nearly as good at the former as he is at the latter.

Put me down for bullish, though. At the very least, I’m guessing he’ll be better than Isiah.

Hilarious Triple-A lineup scenario

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Chris Wilcox Will Davidian did a nice job over at BlueAndOrange.net with something I’ve been meaning to do for a while: Aggregating all of the minor moves seemingly made to improve the Mets’ Triple-A farm club.

Buffalo, as I’ve mentioned before, has one of the most active and dedicated Minor League fanbases, and during last season the Mets promised to do better by the city.

This offseason, they’ve pretty clearly made an effort, as Chris Will details in the link above. But I’ll take it one step further and imagine a hilarious scenario.

All of the following men, in theory, could be on the Mets’ Triple-A club in 2010. This lineup doesn’t include Ike Davis, Ruben Tejada, Josh Thole, Fernando Martinez or Nick Evans and so it’s certainly not one I’m advocating, but the Bisons could have the opportunity to field an entire team of Ken Phelps All-Stars.

Check it out. Here they are, with their career Triple-A slash lines, their total number of Triple-A plate appearances, and their Opening Day ages:

C: Chris Coste: .282/.337/.414 — (Age: 36, AAA PAs: 2142)
1B: Val Pascucci: .278/.397/.509 — (31, 2673)
2B: Andy Green: .300/.381/.486 — (32, 1881)
3B: Mike Cervenak: .299/.337/.457 — (33, 2458)
SS: Russ Adams: .276/.345/.409 — (29, 1927)
LF: Chris Carter: .304/.373/.493 — (27, 2201)
CF: Jesus Feliciano: .310/.357/.391 — (30, 1465)
RF: Mike Hessman: .238/.327/.486 — (32, 3691)

That’s so many Triple-A plate appearances. That’s so much Triple-A mashing.

Mets’ Spring Training off to rollicking start

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According to Craig Calcaterra at Hardball Talk, citing a source, Kelvim Escobar may be seriously injured. I’m a little bit skeptical, as I normally am about stories coming from anonymous sources, but since Escobar’s spent the better part of the last two seasons seriously injured, it just would not be that surprising.

Awesome.

If Escobar’s as hurt as Calcaterra’s source suggests, people will look back and slam the Mets for signing him to the one-year, $1.5 million contract they gave him in December.

And then other people will slam those people, and say, “well how come you didn’t criticize them for it at the time?”

But those who did not criticize the Mets for the Escobar deal at the time — and count me among those — probably didn’t realize how limited the Mets’ offseason budget was. Nor would they have realized that the $1.25 million shelled out to a high-risk pickup in Escobar would have theoretically made the difference in acquiring Joel Pineiro, or probably been used to sign Felipe Lopez to play second base.

That’s not going to happen, of course, because the Mets have $8 million committed to that position in Luis Castillo and Alex Cora and appear to hate copping to sunk costs.

Whatever. If Kelvim Escobar’s really seriously hurt, it won’t sink the Mets in 2010. He was slated to be a setup man, a guy who wouldn’t throw more than 70 innings anyway.  I know we keep hearing “eighth inning, eighth inning, eighth inning,” like it’s some elusive and insurmountable hurdle, but A) there’s no rule that says a team should only have one eighth-inning guy and B) it shouldn’t be too hard to find that guy anyway.

It’s just bad news, is all, and a bad way to kick off what should be a beautiful, uplifting time: pitchers and catchers.

Items of note

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The Phillies should be the favorites to win the National League East, but I’m kind of surprised by how few people picked the Braves here. Even without Javier Vazquez, their rotation — with Jair Jurrjens, Tommy Hanson, Derek Lowe, Tim Hudson and Kenshin Kawakami — should be pretty awesome, mostly because I think Hanson’s going to be a stud. There’s a lot of uncertainty/badness on their defense, though.

All that was left in Nate Robinson’s locker last night was a can of Vaseline and some tube socks. No comment.

Speaking of the NBA trade deadline, I recommend sticking with my neighbor Tommy Dee at TheKnicksBlog.com today, and not just because I’m a shameless corporate shill. He holds it down.

I did double duty at the Perpetual Post last night, recapping — in a way — Tuesday’s episode of Lost with Zoe Rice and jamming on the life lessons learned from jazz training with Akie Bermiss.

The search for whoever this guy is

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OK, I posted this on Twitter and only Catsmeat was goodly enough to respond. I’m looking for an answer, and I’m not looking to accept something as simple as “oh, Internet ads something have random pictures attached to them.”

Who the hell is this guy?

This bearded, wild-haired fellow has been haunting sidebar ads all over the Internet for months, and I can’t find any reasonable explanation. Usually I’m pretty resourceful when it comes to finding out about weird stuff that’s on the Internet — I have access to Google, it turns out — but I can’t seem to find the right string of search terms.

I should note, though, that searching for “sidebar advertisement beard man” — not in quotes — did lead me to this article, so my efforts weren’t entirely in vain.

Anyway, I have so many questions: Why is this man the face of debt relief? Is this supposed to be the type of person these ads are targeting, or the type of person that will come get you if your debt spirals so far out of control that you end up living on the streets?

Even if you want to tell me that these photos are randomly attached to these ads, this guy comes up with enough frequency that there has to be a very limited numbers of photos that are ever attached to the ads. So then, why this guy and not a sunset, or, I don’t know, a parakeet or something? How did that happen? Could this possibly have been the product of someone’s conscious decision?

And where did the photo come from? Who is this bearded man?

Please, Internet, help me. If anyone has any answers, I welcome them.

Rod Barajas might be worse at this than the Mets are

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Dustin Parkes at Drunk Jays Fans details the continuing saga of Rod Barajas, once a Blue Jay, never a wizard of finance.

This was news to me, but apparently Barajas and his agents have cost the catcher millions over the years by consistently making questionable decisions while attempting to play the free-agent market.

Sound familiar?

So now rumors say Barajas could be heading to the Mets. Or not heading to the Mets.

Or maybe both parties are dancing around in a circle, pens drawn, trying to hammer out a free-agent contract that can somehow make them both come out the loser.

Oh c’mon

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Some mischievous editor slipped one past the goalie at MLB.com:

I know it’s not pronounced that way. But there are a lot of more tactful ways to word this headline. Kudos to whoever didn’t opt for any of them.