Okay, not really... but this is pretty damn close...

I've had serious writer's block the last couple of months. Not really writer's block per se, but one thing I planned to write about next and just could not pull it out. That and being super busy with life in general. I kept wanting to write about the Mets game seven loss, but I didn't quite know what to say about it.

In one sense it was a great season. Game seven was a great game, as good as could possibly be hoped for in terms of the excitement level. But then it ended so flat. I didn't feel nearly the disappointment for this loss as I did in 1988 when the Mets dropped game seven of the NLCS to the Dodgers. But I can't help but feel that this season was a golden opportunity that passed by. Not to take anything away from St Loius, because they got the job done and won when they needed to win. Their pitching came up huge. But I just didn't get the feeling that this team was as good as the one that was swept by Boston two years ago, or the one that the Mets defeated in the LCS in 2000.

 

No, I'm not talking about leaf peepin'! I'm talking about John Maine pitching the biggest game of his life in Game 6 last night. Giving the Mets another day and setting up 'Game 7' tonight. I love Game 7's. Both teams are gonna throw everything they got. There is no tomorrow for someone. Bring it on!!!

Lets Go METS!!!

Hope the change in color scheme doesn't offend anyone, but I felt I need to let the blue and orange flag fly today. The pitching situation just goes from bad to worse with Pedro and El Duque. But, what the heck, anything can happen, and this is much better than the last five postseasons on the sidelines... Too bad I won't be watching the game... boo MLB... more playoff games on free tv!!!

It's hard to believe when I think back on the 1988 season that I would have to wait 18 years to see the New York Mets win another division title. The wildcard appearances were nice, but having grown up w/o a wildcard, it always seems a little less special. So hopefully the pitching can step it up for the playoffs and the Mets can advance in the playoffs.

FWIW, I still think that the divisional series should be expanded to seven games (the Mets have won both of the divisional series in which they appeared, so this isn't sour grapes). I just don't think five games is a fair indicator of an entire season. How about making teams play a couple of doubleheaders over the summer, and keep some shred of integrity in the divisional playoffs.

 

Quan and I at the Brockton Rox Can-Am League Championship series versus Quebec City. Brockton had trailed the best of five series 0-2, but held on tonight for a 4-3 victory to tie the series at 2-2 and force a deciding game five tomorrow. Quan gave her fluffy buddy a big hug!!!

We were optomistic as we crossed the Whitestone Bridge on Saturday morning, unable to see the water below us or the top of the bridge above. But as we arrived at Shea Stadium, the rain seemed to be easing up and the sky getting brighter. We headed in early so we could be sure to get our free caps on Cap Day. We browsed through the overpriced merchendise at a couple of the shops inside the stadium before making our way to our seats. We had great seats in a field level box about 25 rows up from first base. Then sometime just before gametime, the rains came. The tarp went back on the infield and we took cover for the next three hours. Finally around four, the first game of the doubleheader started. It was nice for most of the game, but the rain returned in the late innings, now accomponied by a sharp drop in temperature and a gusty wind. I would guess about 75% of the people who stayed for the first game left before the start of the second game. The second game started well enough, but by the fourth inning the rain was really picking up and we finally bailed in the sixth. The Mets lost the opener but won the nitecap in 11 innings. Quan had a pretty good time at the game, in spite of the long wait and tough conditions. Hopefully, we will make another trek down later this season on a nicer day!

Caught a great game last night. Mets finally coming out on top in the 13th with a 1-0 win after spectacular pitching from both sides. Seems like extra inning 0-0 games are rarer than ever these days. We are heading to Shea this weekend. Lets go Mets!

Quan and I are planning to attend a game at Shea this June, which will be her first major league game. We also have tickets for a minor league game later this month.

Bean's comments in the mlb.tv post got me thinking about the first game I ever attended. My Dad took the afternoon off to take me and my brother to a day game at the old Yankee Stadium, just before they started renovations. It was an afternoon game and we had great field level seats on the third base side. Dad took us to the Diamond Club first for lunch, and then bought us all kinds of snacks once the game started. He also got us scorecards (though I didn't know how to score), yearbooks and pennents.

I never saved any thing from that game, so for years I never really knew exactly what game I saw, I only remembered that it was a day game against the Minnesota Twins. Recently, I came across a cool website, retrosheet.org, that archives old boxscores. Using this site I was able to find locate the date of the game and find the boxscore. The game took place on July 18th 1973.

Of course I wasn't old enough at the time to appriciate the players I saw on the field that day, but looking back now it was quite a line-up. The starting pitchers were Jim Katt and Mel Stottlemyre. The hitters included Rod Carew, Tony Olivia, Roy White, Bobby Mercer, Thurman Munson, Graig Nettles, Gene Michael, and two of the Alou brothers, Matty and Felipe.

Thanks Dad!!! I know you probably won't read this, but it was a great day and a fond memory...

Continued weird behavior. Tues nights (5/2) Mets game was from the NYC feed and had no graphic overlays. Weds nights (5/3) Mets game was from the Pittsburgh feed and had graphics and local commercials (some of which were as entertaining as the game itself).

Good game to watch last night, although Wagner was painful to watch in the 9th.

FWIW, The only games We've been blacked out on so far are the Sunday night ESPN games. Since we don't have cable/sat we'll never see those.

We subscribed to Major League Baseball's mlb.tv live video service this season. Quan has taken an interest in the game since we watched the World Series last year, and is learning the game quite fast now.

The service itself is a bit quirky. I can only get it to work using IE. I've twiddled with my Firefox settings, allowing all kinds of third party sites the ability to run scripts, but to no avail. I don't know why they can't load the service using a single URL.

There is no choice of feeds for each game. For instance, as a Mets fan, I would prefer to watch the feed from New York, but it seems to be a coin flip which team's feed is used and I can't find any place on the web site that says which feed is being provided on a given night.

At the start of the season, we got the full feed from the channel showing the game, including the commercials. It might sound silly, but there was a certain charm in seeing local adverts being shown in another part of the country. Within the first two weeks, they switched this to mute the sound and show a static graphic advertising other feautures on mlb.com.

Saturday we watched the Baltimore/Seattle game (so Quan could see Ichiro) and we got the feed from Baltimore. The video never had any graphic overlays on it and we never saw any replays. It was bizzare hearing the anouncers describe replays that we were not being shown.

After this we switched to the Mets/Atlanta game. This was the New York feed and included between inning production footage. After the game they didn't cut out and we got to watch Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez check their hair and makeup and hear their conversation (which I'm sure they had no idea was public) as they prepared to do a highlight segment for tape.

Last night the Mets won the game on an error in the bottom of the ninth and the feed cut to the commercial graphics abruptly after the last out, not letting us see the replay. It did eventually come back for the post game wrap.

Overall, its still a pretty good service, and much cheaper than the alternatives.

We are a week into yet another season of fantasy baseball. You gotta love the first week of the season. A team either totally over achieves, giving one this very temporary feeling of genius, or (like my teams this season) you sink like a stone to the bottom.

Actually, I'm not all that bad. I have three leagues, all on Yahoo, this season and I'm currently 5/8, 7/12 and 12/12. The first league is my first attempt at a H2H league. It's Bean's league and uses a lot of stats. I have to admit, I didn't realize until yesterday morning, exactly how the scoring worked in a Yahoo H2H league. I thought it was all or nothing each week. But actually each catagory counts as a point, so winning or lossing in a particular week makes little difference to the overall score.

My other two leagues are roto. One is a league of co-workers, but it kinda sucks because the lineups are fixed for a week. Not much to do their but sit back and watch. The other is a public league where I did a Live draft. Of course that is the one I'm doing worst in so far. I still look at my team and feel pretty good about it, so I think I'll bounce back as the season progresses.

I guess there wasn't any wild celebration party in the Sullivan Quad on the Nova campus last night. I didn't have the warm and fuzzies after watching the BC game on Fri night. It just didn't seem like Villanova was playing their best ball of the season in the tourney. I didn't get to watch either of the games yesterday because we were in the car, but I did get to listen to quite a lot of both games on the radio.

The Connecticut/George Mason game was awesome to listen to. Had us on the edge of our seat as we cruised along the MA Pike and finally pulled into a parking lot at Shoppers World to listen to the OT.

It's kinda funny now, because last week, there was a lot of talk about how all of the one seeds advanced to the Sweet 16 and that this could be the first year that all of the one seeds advanced to the Final Four. So what happens, none of them advance.

UCLA might have played two of the worst performances ever for a Final Four team. Those games were horrible. Personally, I think LSU may be the team to beat in the Final Four. Florida looks tough also. And who can doubt now that George Mason is not legit.

It's that time of the year again. Not having cable, I didn't get to watch too much NCAA hoops this year, but I did follow closely on the net and did catch a few games on free TV in addition to the selection show. Congrats to the Villanova Wildcats (my alma mater) for their great season and #1 seed in the tourney.

I'm very excited that ALL of the early round games will be shown on the internet for free. It will bring back the days when ESPN showed 48 hours straight of first round games. It at least gave a person to option to see the games that were most interesting to them. Something that has been sorely lacking in CBS's coverage.

Speaking of lacking, is it just me that is sick and tired of listening to Jim Nantz and Billy Fudge Packer year in and year out? Do people really like these guys? Please tell me why. They are the most pompous and biased announcers that CBS uses. Their comments on last night's selection show were embarrassing. They slammed the committee for taking four MVC teams, when CBS's own studio analysts (Kellog and Gumbel, I think) had just made a case for the MVC getting six teams in based on their RPI. Nantz ripped the computers and the RPI, saying that the system was broken. In truth, power conferences build up their overall RPI by performing well in non-conference play, and then playing each other to boost their strength of schedule. Check out an early season RPI sometime, and you'll see that every team starts with a clean slate. It's ridiculous to think that the committee should have taken Maryland on the basis of the ACC's past tourney performance as Fudge argued.

At least in the opening rounds, their are eight sites and eight different announcing crews. Besides Nantz and Fudge in Philly, this year's tourney will feature;

Kevin Harlan and Dan Bonner in Greensboro
Tim Brando, Mike Gminski and Stephen Bardo in Jacksonville
Ian Eagle and Jim Spanarkel in Salt Lake City
Dick Enberg and Jay Bilas in San Diego
Gus Johnson and Len Elmore in Dayton
Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery in Auburn Hills
Craig Bolerjack and Bob Wenzel in Dallas

Honestly, I'd take any one of those crews to advance to the next round over Nantz and Fudge. Lundquist and Raftery would easily be my top pick. They are both informative and entertaining. Perhaps, CBS should have brackets of announcing teams, and let the fans vote for who should advance to each round.

Welcome to the website of Quan, Tony and Kristianna!