First let me say Shana Tova to all of you celebrating Rosh Hashanah at sundown this evening.

Well just when I want to abandon this Mets season along comes Dillon Gee to shed a bit of light on the darkness of another post season-less season in Flushing.

Gee’ start even energized the broadcast booth last night as Ron Darling was as excited as we seen him in a long time as he watched Gee show a nice grasp of the art of pitching. Gee was quite effective using a sharp breaking ball that the TV crew said was a curve but Gee himself told Kevin Burkhardt that it was a slider that he relied on most of the evening as he could not get good command of his curve and that helped him set up his low 90’s fastball to keep the Nationals hitters off balance. That is the definition of pitching ,staying  ahead of batters and keeping them off balance and for one night at least, Gee showed a ton of promise as an arm to look at for 2011.

For all the grief I give the Skill Sets, the one thing I’ve always admired about them was their commitment to our armed forces. If you go to games at Citi Field you know that the club acknowledges wounded vets by giving them much deserved VIP treatment at Mets games. They were the driving force in the caps worn and sold during Memorial Day and 4^th of July by players and fans with proceeds going to the Wounded Warrior program and they make sure that the players make a trip to Walter Reed Hospital when the club plays the Nats in D.C., which has a profound effect not only on the heroes who were injured in battle but on the Mets players as well. Guys like David Wright, R.A. Dickey and Angel Pagan are up front about their feeling toward the trip in fact the whole Mets organization steps up big time by going to Walter Reed to lift the solders morale.  Well, almost everyone.

It seems Oliver Perez, Luis Castillo and Carlos Beltran were the only member of the team to not make the trip to Walter Reed.  Why these three decided not to go has not been explained. Hopefully those with access to the players will ask them why they blew off this very important trip.  The fact that it was these three who were absent proves out why the vast majority of Mets fans can’t stand the trio.

Perez and Castillo should have been dumped a longggggggggggggggggg time ago but it should not be a shock that these two selfish shitheads would not go to a hospital to visit injured soldiers. Maybe they were embarrassed that as much as they suck at what they do and lack any balls to step up and make a positive contribution to the team ,shamed them from showing up. As for Beltran, he did himself no favor in the eyes of Mets  fansfor not showing up.

As far as I’m concerned Perez, Castillo and Beltran are three no good scumbags for not appearing.  I defended Beltran when he came back from injury and a lot of folks blamed him for the second half demise of the club. I have never been a fan of Beltran even though he is a great player (most long time readers know I was no fan of Mike Piazza’ either as Piazza and Beltran have the same “me” attitude just my opinion) and I think he is sometimes attacked unfairly but after being a no show yesterday, my Beltran defense rests.

If there is a silver lining to this embarrassment, it’s that maybe NOW Jeffy Skill Sets, getting embarrassed by these three, will finally realize that they all need to go no matter what the monetary cost.  I would have a ton more respect for the Skill Sets if they sent both Perez and Castillo home right now and informed Beltran that the club will do all they can to move him to a new team. I just hope that Beltran didn’t blow off this hospital visit because of his discontent with Mets management because if he did then he’s a gutless coward.

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No THIS CALL TO THE BULPEN tonight as my self and Evan Riney of Rhino Rants will be host the weekly Baseball Bloggers Alliance BBA Talk podcast tonight at 11pm ET. The show is always available on the BBA Talk page on Blog Talk Radio and as a download in iTunes.

I think Keith Hernandez speaks for all Mets fans when he vents his frustration about Big Pelf. You have to wonder if Pelfrey will ever cross that bridge from potentially a front line pitcher to a real Ace of the staff. 

Is there any reason why Jose Reyes needs to comeback this season? What’s the point?

So now I see where the Mets made a mistake with Oliver Perez. Instead of insisting that OP go to Buffalo or St. Lonesome, they should have just loaned him out the Mexican League. He’d of left in a heartbeat.

I’ll be shocked, SHOCKED!!!!! If Wally Backman is not the next manager of the NY Mets

Another former Brooklyn Cyclone makes his debut tonight as Dillion Gee makes his Major League debut tonight in DC

FREE JUSTIN TURNER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All is well in NYC, there was life found on Revis Island.

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I feel bad for Texas Rangers 3^rd Base coach Dave Anderson who was called for touching a runner at third base to end yesterday’s Twins 6-5 win over the Rangers.

I had the same exact call called out on me this season while managing my 14-15 year old team. I had a runner at 2^nd 2 outs down 1 run as well but this was in the 4^th inning. The runner was my first baseman who at 14yrs old is about 2 inches taller than my 6 ft frame. The area around the third base coaches box (this is like the minors where the manager also coaches 3^rd base) does not have a lot of ground as you are up against a chain link fence in very tight foul territory.

We get a solid base hit to RF and I know my runner has very good speed and is tall so he has long strides so as soon as the ball goes over first base, my arm is moving like one of those wind turbines as I want the runner from 2^nd to score but I also keep an eye on my batter/runner to see if can get from 2^nd to 3^rd. My runner on 2^nd gets a great secondary lead and his charging like a linebacker to 3^rd. He then make an extreme wide turn where I have to make like the old linesman in the NHL before plexy glass was installed on the boards and I try to leap up on the fence but I wasn’t fast enough and we clip each other. Right away the field umpire calls out.

And of course I go ape shit. Now the two umpires know me and do a lot of my games so they know I don’t usually go all Billy Martin over calls but this one had me in a rage. The home plate ump grabs me and says “ Steve, calm down, calm down you know better than any one what the rule is” I sure do. Rule 7.09 (h) of the MLB rule book states:

It is interference by the runner when:

In the judgment of the umpire, the base coach at third base or first base, by touching or holding the runner physically assists him in returning to or leaving third base or first base

The key here is the judgment of the umpire and in my case and Rangers 3^rd base Coach Dave Anderson’ case we both got screwed by the umpire. In my case I was trying not to get run over by my runner and I made every attempt to get out his way. In Anderson’s case from the video it looked like he had his arms out to get out of the way of the runner, Michael Young but Angle Marquez in his (bad) judgment call Young out.

Twins TV voice John Gordon keeps saying over and over that “the rule is the rule” the rule is not set in stone it’s the umpires judgment and in my case and Dave Anderson case the umpires used bad judgment

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I have spent more time at MCU Park this summer than I have at Citi Field. For one thing the baseball team in Coney Island is a lot more fun to watch than in Flushing and the fact that I can get from my driveway to the parking lot at Abe Stark Rink in about a half hour helps as well.

The first thing you notice about the crowd at MCU Park is the diversity. I know the bashing of Citi Field for its Ebbets Field look and Brooklyn Dodger influence is en vogue amongst Mets fans and I feel sorry for those of you that hate the Brooklyn feel of the ballpark because it’s obvious you didn’t grow up or ever live in Brooklyn. On any given night at a Cyclones game there are more different races and ethnic groups represented than the ” It’s A Small World “ride at Disney World.  Where else but Brooklyn can you sit in a row with a couple of families from Crown Heights, one Orthodox Jewish, the other African-American and next to them a family with the women wearing the traditional Muslim Hijab ? You see Asian’s, Irish, Italians, Latinos , Poles you name the ethnic group and I guarantee they have been in attendance at a Cyclones game.   I’ve been going to Cyclones games from the very first year they were in business in 2001 so in ten years I’ve gone to well over 100 games, I have never seen any kind of fighting, physical or verbal anytime . Just a bunch of fans rooting for Brooklyn to win.  See, we all can get along as long as a baseball game is involved.

What I do get a kick out of is the yuppies and hipsters who have just discovered Brooklyn and act like they made some rare discovery that no one ever knew about.  Brooklyn has been like that forever.

As for the team, this may have been the best Cyclones team ever. I’ve been critical of the Skill Sets for stacking the deck at Coney Island to make sure they have a winning record but this year maybe you could make the case that Corey Vaughn or Darrel Cecilliani should have been bumped  up but I think a full season of success, especially for Vaughn who was drafted this past June, was better call on their development and besides a championship flag flying over the Parachute Jump out in right field would look  very nice.

The Cyclones lost last night and have one more regular season game to play today on Coney Island before the playoff start on Tuesday. They play one road game in either Williamsport or Jamestown whichever one takes the wild card and then back to Brooklyn on Wednesday. I hope to get out there on Wednesday for that game because not only as a born and raised Brooklynite do I have a rooting interest here but as a Mets fan we can only hope that players like Vaughn, Celliani and Jeff Flag keep getting better and make it to Flushing along with their manager to bring the same positive esprit de corp of Brooklyn to Queens.

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Happy Labor Day weekend boys and girls and what a weekend it is, Hurricane Earl flamed out like Mets free agent signing, College Football goes full bore today (the DVR is ready to record the beginning of the Brian Kelly era in South Bend ) and I watched thee Brooklyn Cyclones record their 50^th WIN last night and are ready to start the NY-PENN League playoffs Tuesday against either Jamestown or Williamsport,  and how nice would a NY-PENN Championship top off Wally Backman’ return to managing?

Allow me to too my own horn here for a moment as I am honored to have been named the President of the NY NL Chapter of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance.

So you don’t think Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel are dead men walking? First Jeffey Skill Sets goes to Brooklyn, I doubt there are any Skill Sets family members living in Bensonhurst or Gravesend anymore, to see about <wink!> “some structural plans”<wink!> at MCU Park and it just so happens that Cyclones manager, Wally Backman was walking by and had a chat with the Boy Blunder. I guess Backman not only is a very good field general but also has expertise in sheetrock and brick laying as well. Then Deadspin post a story about a group of Mets fans on a JetBlue flight notice a flight attendant having to help some asshole, the kind of asshole we all hate, try to push his big ass luggage into the tiniest space in the overhead, when the idiot got up to push the luggage in the Mets fans all gasped when they saw the culprit was OMAR MINAYA!!! Oh the humiliation not that he was a inconsiderate boob stuffing his luggage in a compartment but he was flying JetBlue which has no first or business class, just great unwashed class. Of course Omar was heckled by a few passenger/Mets fans but he never heard them as he donned his headphones and watched Cartoon Network all the way to Chicago. Oh and where was Asst’ GM John Ricco? Eh, eh, eh, Mr. Ricco was enjoying flying on Air Skill Sets with Jeff-er-oo while sipping drinks with paper parasols in them entertaining him with his plan to rid the Mets of excess baggage like Omar and Jerry.

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I was going to take a break from blogging today but a few items of interest have given me the urge to vent, so a venting we will go:

Johan Santana either hurt his right pectoral muscle or his shoulder or he broke a finger nail or his left arm was amputated from just above his elbow. Take your pick because no one knows for sure especially the manager who has trouble decipher the difference between a pec muscle and a shoulder.

So let me see if I have this right, you can criticize the President of the U.S., the Pope, Muslims building a community center in Manhattan, the NYC Transit System and your In-Laws but you can’t criticize Jeff Francoeur and his inability to hit a baseball with any authority or the fact that his nice smile and balls to the wall hustle might be a façade as when his playing time was cut due to lack of production he had his agent go crying to management that he wanted out. You know what, sometimes you Mets fan get want you deserve, a losing team and incompetent management.

Yesterday Wally Backman met with Jeffey Skill Sets on Coney Island. Today and tomorrow Wally gets to see me at MCU Park ( I’d love to meet with him in fact I’d take him over to Gargulio’s for a little escarole and beans and scungilli my treat) It seems Wally was a little taken aback when asked if Jeffey offered him the Mets managers job while visiting the Cyclones chief. Yeah I’m sure you two talked about the carpets and drapes.

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As stated here and on other sites, the repartee of Gary Cohen, Ron Darling, Keith Hernandez and Kevin Burkhardt have helped take the edge off another unfulfilling season by the NY Mets. Last night was no exception.

Just as I was ready to switch over to the Rays-Jays game, Gary Cohen brought up the comments by Wally Backman about the Mets managerial job. Wally kind of hinted that some of the moves that Jerry Manuel has made this season are not particularly the same ones he would have made as Mets manager. No one is better than setting up his partners like Cohen and this subject got Hernandez and Darling going and we were off to the drag races.

Darling seemed offended by Wally’ statement saying there should be some sort of code of conduct between mangers. Hernandez then added it wasn’t such a bad thing like when Gary Carter practically put his thump and pinky to his ear during an interview and mouthed ‘Call me Jeff” into the camera. Darling agreed and you can just tell that back in the day, Kid Carter was a handful in the clubhouse. Hernandez then went on to let us know that Wally likes to talk. He mentioned that when the Mets were to play the Astros in Game 5 of the 1986 NLCS Backman was crowing in the clubhouse how the Mets were going to win that game. Hernandez said he went over to Backman and told him to keep quiet, and reminded him that Nolan Ryan was pitching (against Dwight Gooden in one of the great post season match ups as Ryan K’d 12 and walked just 1 in 9 inns while Doc pitched 10 innings and got a ton of ground ball outs as the Mets won the game in 12 innings on a Gary Carter single scoring guess who? Wally Backman) to which Backman replied in his Wally Way “Who gives a fuck”!

From there the SNY camera got a glimpse of Roger McDowell on the Braves bench and Hernandez had us all gather around the 50’’ Sony HD TV to hear the how Roger McDowell hated Gregg Jefferies guts. Keith brought up, as he has a many occasion (you get the feeling that Richie Hebner would be given a warmer welcome into the Mets Alumni than Gregg Jefferies ) how Jefferies was the only player on the team to have his own private bag for his bats, and Keith blamed Charlie Samuels for that as Darling added “you blame Charlie for everything” and the trio of announcers had a good laugh. Hernandez continued on how this burned the other players ass’s and McDowell had had enough of this little prima donna getting preferential treatment and proceeded to take  Jeffries bats and tossed them from the bag out into the parking lot at Shea. That yarn brought back memories of when Soldier of Fortune aficionado Randy Myers and McDowell took Jefferies bats and sawed them in half. I have mentioned here a few times  when John Franco joined the Mets in 1990 he tried very hard to get Jefferies to understand he needs to be more of a “we” guy than the me guy he was and to that end Franco invited Jeffieries for a night on the town in Bay Ridge Brooklyn. Franco was an acquaintance of a few of my friends so I’ve gotten to meet him on a few occasion so when he walked into the club where my buddies and I were hanging out, with Jefferies, we thought we were set for a pretty good night of partying. Well, after just about an hour at the club (The Penthouse for all you old disco types from Brooklyn out there) Jefferies was hitting on every woman in the place and nearly got the living shit kick out of him for it. Lucky for him the bouncers at the club were teammates of ours from our Staten Island Touch Tackle League team (Someday I’ll tell the story of when I ran down former Notre Dame and Pittsburgh Steelers QB Terry Hannraty  for a sack, the highlight of my journeyman athletic career) so Jefferies was spared a Bay Ridge beat down. Also that was the last time Franco ever invited Jefferies out for even a cup of coffee. When I was managing teams in Staten Island Little League, Franco’ son JJ was in the league and John would come watch him play when he could, When I saw him one evening at the complex I went to say hi and he said “Geez I see you everywhere around the Island (Franco lived just a few block from me on Staten Island) I laughed and then I asked him if he still kept in touch with Jefferies, Franco looked at me and said “Holy shit your were there too”?

Wow talk about making a short story long, anyway, Hernandez went on about the last game of the 1989 season when McDowell then a Phillie, and Jefferies fought as the last out of the game and season was recorded. The story in the NY Times paints a very ugly picture of that season and gives us a glimpse of the turmoil that the 90’s would bring. This quote from Phillies manager Nick Leyva sums up the feeling for Gregg Jeffries around baseball:

Nick Leyva, Philadelphia’s manager, defended McDowell by saying that Jefferies is not popular among his own teammates, then Leyva said, ”There were 30 guys on our side rooting for Roger and 20 guys on their side rooting for Roger.”

As a Mets fan, the one thing you should be rooting for right now is tonight’s game is a blow out early, maybe story time with Keith and Ron will talk about the nights at Rusty Staub’ restaurant on the East Side, that will be better than Taxi Cab Confessions.

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It was a move long overdue. In fact give John Ricco credit for getting a live body for Jeff Francoeur  but the organization shouldn’t have stopped there. It’s quite clear that again for the third season in a row the Mets have rolled over and died. How Jerry Manuel gets to fill out a lineup card today for the Mets is a smack in our Mets fan faces. Sure it doesn’t matter anymore this season but by firing Manuel and Omar Minaya today would send a message that a tidal wave of changes are coming. But I have absolutely no confidence that inept bullshit ownership has the balls to do this.

A real owner who owned this close to one BILLION dollar company would go into that clubhouse and rip the living shit out of this team. But that won’t happen.  The only passion comes from the fan base. It’s not just a matter of screaming and yelling in fact screaming and yelling wouldn’t have any effect on this team anyway. If the owner would just go into that clubhouse and tell this team the truth that they are an embarrassment and what has him baffled is they don’t seem to mind that they are saddled with this label. The owner would also be of the right to let them know that this little Country Club mentality that has infected the clubhouse will be dismantled. The owner should then go on about how there will be a new GM and manager next year and if this new management team says to me that (pointing at players) you, you or you need to go, then you got to go. The owner should also stress that his office is closed to any player who has a baseball related issue, all of those inquires must go through chain of command from manager to general manager. If you have a personal or family issue as the owner, he should let them know he will help him as best he can.

As fans we can talk about who to cut, who to trade for, who to sign as a free agent but all that talk is a waste of words and oxygen unless ownership either cleans out the front office and makes a concerted effort to change the perception that the organization is clueless, leaderless and headed on the fast track to nowhere.

By a show of hands, how many of you Mets fans out there are still wearing your Mets gear in public?  Not many I see. I can’t blame you as it wears you down to wear your WRIGHT 5 or REYES 7 and have to answer inane question after inane question about the team. I don’t know about you but I’m worn out from answering question after question about why this organization is so bad and can’t get out of its own way.  All I can tell them is “Blogging about the Mets ain’t easy “

All you need to know about the player’s view of the team is in this Tweet from Steve Popper. First Rod Barajas now Francoeur, if the players don’t want to be here then why should I buy a ticket or watch SNY or wear drape myself in Mets regalia? Why do I feel the chasm between the team and fan base exists because the Mets fans take this much more personally than the players do? Did you see the smile on Francoeur’ face last night when he spoke to the media about being sent to Arlington? When was the last you smiled as a Mets fan?

I’ve seen some of the Tweets of Mets fan who are actually upset that Jeff Francoeur was dealt to the Texas, are you fucking kidding me?

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