Mr Met goes rogue

 

Last week Mr Met, himself, lost his composure.  After a particularly tough Mets home loss, some of the fans began riding Mr Met as he was making his way to the mascot’s clubhouse.  Not only did the fans insult the bulbous-headed mascot, but his mother as well.  Let me tell you something, nobody insults Mr Met’s Mom and gets away with it.  I was impressed that even though Mr Met only has four fingers he still managed to shoot the hecklers a substantial bird.

My photoshopping buddy then combined my love of the Mets with the Stanley Kubrick classic, 2001 a Space Odyssey, to create a work of art.  Enjoy.  And let’s go Mets!

 

 

 

 

Durant to the Warriors

Maybe the Warriors can get LeBron too. Why stop at Kevin Durant? All the stars should congeal on one team which will save us the time of having to watch regular season games. We’ll tune in during June for the Dream Team exhibition Finals while the one per centers enjoy their corporate luxury suites.

I’m just about at the end of my rope with sports which has turned into a corporate, joyless cesspool full of overpriced arenas, arrogant, over-paid athletes, and tedious replay reviews. The only thing that keeps me going is inertia – I’ve been watching practically my entire life and old habits are difficult to break.  That, and I’d like to see the Mets win one more time.

The toughest thing will be what to talk about in social situations and on gigs.  I’m going to have to come up with an entire new set of topics.  Comic books anyone?  How about basket weaving instead of basketball.

The second guessers

I killed Matt Harvey back in September over the maxed-out innings controversy. I said he was gutless and that he was a pussy. Well I was wrong. He pitched his ass off in the post season leaving nothing on the table. Last night he was as dominating as a pitcher can be and showed no signs of weakening in the 8th inning.

Terry Collins showed guts in allowing Harvey to come out for the 9th. I don’t want to hear this BS about automatically going to the closer. Who are they going to? Mariano Rivera? Familia had a great season but by the time the Series came around he was used up meat and the Royals can hit him.

I can remember a delicate-genius manager, Tony La Russa, who went to his closer in the 9th inning.  This was a pitcher who would end his career with 390 saves and he probably would have had the most ever had he not been a starter the first 10 years. I bet Kirk Gibson remembers him.  If Dennis Eckersley can fail (and even the great Mariano couldn’t get it done in 2001) then it’s certainly not written in stone that Familia gets three easy 9th inning outs.

This is not a cookie cutter game.  Just because you have a closer doesn’t mean he will succeed every single time out, as evidenced by game one of this Series.  If you want to kill Collins how about this? He had two starters in his bullpen, both pitching effectively — Jon Niese & Bartolo Colon. How about sticking with them for more than an inning at a time?

Post mortum

The Mets lost the 2015 World Series and they did it in their inimitable style — in gut wrenching and embarrassing fashion.  After an improbable, some might say, miraculous season and playoffs, they came crashing back to earth in a World Series that saw them blow three late-inning leads,including two saves.

Their offense went awol, reverting back to pre-Cespedes quality, and their defense was putrid. I would go so far as to say that this was the worst World Series lineup I have ever seen.  The only one that comes close is the 1988 Dodgers, but that team won!

Yoenis Cespedes was playing hurt, his bat non-existent, but his defense was piss-poor and half the time it appeared as if his head was not in the game.  His bass-running gaffe which ended game 4 was inexcusable.  I was a huge Cespedes fan and it’s obvious that without him the Mets do not make the playoffs, but after watching his World Series error-riddled performance I question his baseball IQ.

It’s not only Cespedes.  Daniel Murphy, who carried the Mets through the NLDS and NLCS, reverted to being Daniel Murphy, slumping horribly and fielding like a little leaguer.  It will be interesting to see which team overpays for him during the offseason.

Nevertheless, I thought Terry Collins had a good Series.  I appreciate the fact that he sticks with his starters longer than most managers.  Matt Harvey, who I killed before the playoffs, pitched an absolute gem through 8 innings of game 5 and he (rightfully) lobbied to stay in the game for the 9th.  How could you take him out?  He was untouchable.  Jeurys Familia had been anything but lights out this past week and it was far from a given that he would have retired the side.  This idea that there has to be 7th, 8th, and 9th inning specialists is garbage.  GARBAGE.  I have no respect for anyone who would second guess Collins for having left Harvey in.  Zero.  If Lucas Duda makes a decent throw to the plate the Mets win the game.

And so it continues.  Even after a World Series appearance I cannot escape the embarrassment of rooting for this team. They couldn’t just lose normally — they had to do it in Keystone Cops fashion.  It’s as if they’re still paying off a deal with the devil they made in 1986. Written in small print in the contract:  Drink up, do as much coke as you want, stay out all night, get into brawls –  I’ll see that you win.  But be warned! Your team will be doomed to lose in embarrassing fashion for the next hundred years. 

A playoff upset to the 1988 Los Angeles Dodgers, the Vince Coleman, Bobby Bonilla era of the early 90s, the subway Series loss to the hated Yankees, Yadier Molina’s game 7 NLCS homerun, the epic division collapses of 2007 and 2008, and the garbage years of 2009-2014.

What to do?  I’ll sleep this one off, lose myself in some football, and by the time February rolls around hope will spring eternal.  Despite the doom and gloom of this post, the future does look bright for this team.  If only they can get out of their own way.

At the Movies: Whiplash

It’s time for At the Movies!  Now here’s your host, that connoisseur of the cinema, your favorite arbiter of taste…KEITHO.

5,6, ladies, I finally saw Whiplash and the verdict is in: It’s an instant classic. Let’s start with the countoff. When I’m sight-reading a complicated uptempo 7/4 chart there’s nothing that sets me more at ease than a random two beat countoff. Smooth.

The band director, Fletcher, must have an internal metronome akin to a Swiss watch as he is able to discern the slightest variation in tempo. Never mind that the tune is grooving like a Def Leopard concert the day after Mardi Gras. No, in the jazz world that Whiplash posits, tempo is the be all and end all. You speed up two ticks and there’s just the remedy – a chair hurled directly at your head will improve your focus.

Midway through the movie we get to see Fletcher at one of his own gigs. (he’s a pianist)  With all of his passion and Full Metal Jacket style fire and brimstone he must be playing something burning like a DOUBLE TIME SWING Giant Steps, or at least an 11/4 version of Stella by Starlight, right?  Nope. It’s a bossa nova!  A watered down one at that. It must be one of his originals.

I shouldn’t make fun. Watered-down bossa and all, Fletcher has snared himself a gig at Lincoln Center and he’s hired our protagonist hero, drummer Miles. But wait! He only hired him so to exact revenge and he has sent him onstage without a chart! The only thing is…it’s Fletcher’s gig. Who is he spiting?! FLETCHER IS THE LEADER, NOT DRUMMER MILES. Miles is going to get other gigs regardless of whether or not he makes the hits on some non-grooving poor man’s Buddy Rich chart. Hell, he’s playing at Fat Cat next week with better musicians.

Rating: 5 Stars

And that does it for At the Movies w Keitho. Remember to tip your waiter and go METS.

Shellshocked

OK so that happened. What have we learned in the past couple of days?

1. The Royals can hit fastballs
2. The Mets picked the worst possible week to go into a collective team batting slump
3. I can’t figure out how to tell wordpress I’m done with this list
4. We should remember 1986 in which the Mets lost the first two games to the Redsox – AT HOME – only to take the Series in seven.  True they were aided by questionable managing by John McNamara, who eschewed taking gimpy Bill Buckner out of the game for defense in game six, but who’s to say that Ned Yost isn’t capable of a managerial boner or two?  What remains to be seen is whether this current Mets squad has the grittiness to overcome a legitimately good, young Royals team.
5. I saw this stat today: Jacob deGrom threw 94 pitches last night, only three of which went for a swing and a miss.
6. I believe Cueto’s start was an aberration and that the rest of the Royals rotation simply isn’t that good.
7. The Mets are a Familia cantaloupe away from being tied in the Series.
8. Sorry for the listacle

NLCS GO TIME

Somewhere on a lonely, deserted, slab of rock in the desolate radiation-infused paradise in the middle of the San Francisco Bay that is Treasure Island there exists a lone, abandoned Mets cap. But this is no ordinary bit of refuse. This is a cap with the power to see a little team from Flushing known as THE METS on a journey through the baseball post season. It is a journey that has only one possible ending; a trip down the canyon of heroes on a different island. The island in which my brain has been spattered. All over. Manhattan.

So to all you Cubbies fans who have waited 107 years for a title. I say to you, what’s one more year? For it is the pride, the power, the Treasure Island radiation, that is going to insure the inevitable. Oh yeah, folks.

It…is…GO TIME!!!!!

Match point

This is the 3rd playoff series between the Mets and the Dodgers.  The first, in 1988, featured Orel Hershiser pitching a complete game gem in the 7th and deciding game.  Who can forget Mike Scioscia’s shocking, game-tying home run off of Dwight Gooden in game 4; a game the Mets lost in 12 innings. (Kirk Gibson’s 12th inning home run was the difference)

In 2006, which was the last time the Mets were in the post season, they swept the Dodgers in the NLDS.  There are two players, one from each roster, that are playing in this current series.  They are Andre Ethier and David Wright.  That 2006 Dodger squad included veterans Kenny Lofton, Greg Maddux, Jeff Kent, and Nomar Garciaparra.  The Mets had a more youthful lineup, featuring Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, and the aforementioned Wright.  Their roster also included veterans Carlos Delgado and Cliff Floyd. That Mets team would go on to lose a heartbreaking NLCS to the St Louis Cardinals and the next two years they would suffer gut wrenching late-season collapses.

This brings us to tonight’s series-deciding epic matchup between another veteran Dodgers team and an upstart young Mets club. Jacob deGrom versus Zack Greinke.  If deGrom falters manager Terry Collins will use Noah Syndergaard and even Matt Harvey. (Scott Boras be damned)  I imagine big Bartolo will be on hand as well –  anything it takes to get to the one pitcher that matters the most: Jeurys Familia. For if he is in the game that’s a good sign that the Mets have a lead and what was once unthinkable — a trip to the NLCS — may yet come to pass.

Let’s go METS!!!

It’s go time

If you had told me on April 6th when the Mets opened In Washington against the Nationals, that on October 13th they would be playing a playoff game against the Dodgers that could propel them to the NLCS, I would have laughed in your face. But here they are, poised for success in this most improbable season that turned on a dime with the July 31st acquisition of Yoenis Cespedes.

Matt Harvey was mediocre last night versus the feckless Dodgers, but when you’re facing third-rate starters such as Brett Anderson and your lineup possesses gamers like Curtis Granderson and the aforementioned Cespedes, it doesn’t much matter. The Dodgers [probably wisely] sat Chase Utley, but at this stage of his career he is not an impact player unless you count chippy slides.

As for Harvey, I don’t blame him for not being sharp, what with nearly a two week layoff.  In this era of pitch counts and coddling it is unrealistic to expect your ‘ace’ starter to have any kind of rhythm in his biggest start of the year. I wonder what Juan Marichal and Bob Gibson think of today’s crop of tin-men. Hopefully, if the Mets move on, Harvey will be stronger in the NLCS.  They will need him against a frothing-at-the-mouth, too young to be scared Cubs lineup. (yes I have written the Cardinals off)

In the meantime the Mets have a game to win.  Rookie Steven Matz and his sore back will face Clayton Kershaw, who will be starting on three days of rest. The realist in me wants to believe that the pressure of pitching in a closeout game in hostile Citi Field will be too much for Kershaw, who thus far in his storied career has been a playoff washout.  The fatalist in me, however, hears a voice buried deep inside of my head saying, ‘He’s due.  He’s due.’

This is it, Mets.  FINISH THEM.

The slide

LIsten, the Mets did not lose Saturday night’s NLDS game against the Dodgers because of Chase Utley’s chippy slide. They lost it because they couldn’t score more than two runs against Zack Greinke.  As much as I hate to admit it Utley did nothing wrong.  He went into second base hard, as he was trained to do; as ballplayers have doing for over a century.  I’m more upset that the umps did not rule him out since he came nowhere near to touching second base.  Once again replay fails us. What’s the point of having it if not to decide plays like these?

And memo to Terry Collins:  Throw the sabermetrics away.  You had no business taking Bartolo Colon out of the game after a botched double play.  This may be a stretch, but big Bartolo has pitched a few years — I think he can get a lefty out. Leave your broken down chess pieces in the bullpen until you get into real trouble.

That being said, this series is the Mets to lose.  They got what they wanted out of their trip to Los Angeles — they stole a game from Clayton Kershaw.  Now it’s time for Matt Harvey to back up his cocky demeanor.  Harvey against Brett Anderson is a mismatch.  If the Mets bats are quiet we need to see Harvey go deep into this game and silence an anemic, underachieving Dodgers lineup. That means pitch count be damned. Is Harvey a ballplayer or a corporate interest?  A gamer or a faceless drone? A hero or a bum?