<>
Hat tip to Jeff Pearlman for this link
You would think the owner of a team that hasn’t won anything in ages and knows that he presides over a hostile fans base would think twice about taking to the microphone to address a sold out crowd on what was supposed be a night of celebration and have it turn into a fiasco. No this is not about Freddy or Jeffy Skill Sets as even as clueless as they both are they know and the Mets P.R. staff is savvy enough to know that the club owners are not very popular with the fan base, so you wonder what was the P.R. staff of the Golden State Warriors thinking by letting team owner Joe Lacob speak during Chris Mullin Night in Oakland.
The Warriors fans it seems hates ownership and it may be unfair to Lacob who is the new owner and is trying to fix what previous owner Chris Cohan broke, like firing the iconic Mullin as the teams GM but Lacob, as the video shows, looks totally shocked at the response he received from the fans and was totally unprepared on how to deal with the hostile crowd. Instead of just sticking to the script and getting on with the unveiling of Mullin’s retired jersey in the rafters, Lacob looks like he’s ready to piss his pants, if it weren’t for the great job that Mullin and Rick Barry do in supporting Lacob, I’m sure there would have been a puddle at center court.
After watching that video I wondered if Mets fans would do the same to the Skill Sets. They wouldn’t because I doubt we would get the chance. The Skill Sets know they are personas non grata with the Mets fans and as inept as we all think they are they’re not that out of touch that they don’t understand the shit storm of a reaction they would get if they tried to make a speech at Citi Field.
It’s a shame that Mullin’s night was marred by this display of fan revolt but there is also something refreshing about a fan base that sells out an arena game after game letting an owner have it for not putting a winning team on the court.
TRACKING DOWN HATERS AND THE JOHN T. BRUSH STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
There has been a lot of chatter over a piece that Jeff Pearlman wrote for CNN about tracking down a couple of guys who sent him some hate e-mail over a blog post he made about Jeff Bagwell not being Hall of Fame worthy. One of the e-mails was cloaked in deception as a civil response to Pealrman’s anti- Bagwell post but when Peralman opened the link he was struck with a pornographic image instead. What made it worse was he was sitting with his 7 year old daughter when he opened it.
Pearlman’ naiveté of opening a link sent by a stranger can be debated but what can’t be denied is that Pearlman went all George Costanza on his ass. Remember when George was driving Danny Tartabull to a PBS fund raiser when he thought another driver had given him and Tartabull the finger and chased the guy all the way upstate NY only to find the guys’ finger was in a cast? Well, that sort of what Pearlman did.
Pearlman doesn’t reveal how he tracked these vile critics down but he did and when he confronted them on the phone, they were shocked and I guess a bit scared that their cloak of anonymity was lifted.
When you write a blog you have to expect nasty and vile comments. On this site, I’ve had commentators who have left some awful comments about me personally and some of my posts. If they are funny or creative I let them stand, but if they are about someone else either a subject I’ve written about or another commentator I delete them. I can’t tell you how many racists and homophobic comments I’ve had to delete over the last few years. I won’t ever allow that here.
Now I wouldn’t go to the extreme that Pearlman did unless someone made a personal threat against me, if that happened I’d probably got to the police with it as my ass kicking days are over. By the way Pearlman is all wrong about Bagwell, the guys belongs in the Hall of Fame. If Jeff or anyone else thinks I’m wrong you know where to find me. I ain’t hiding.
The San Francisco Giants brought the 2010 World Series trophy to NYC this weekend. Greg Prince and Caryn Rose both got to lay eyes on the great baseball prize. As many long time readers here know, my dad was a huge NY Giants fan and even when they left town he still rooted for them until 1962 when the Mets were born. Not only because it was a new NL team (There was never ever a thought of my dad becoming a Highlanders fan. You had a better chance of him saying the Queen of England was a pretty good gal than have him say anything nice about the Bronx Bastards)but by playing in the Polo Grounds, he could now get back to his old stomping grounds. So for all sons and daughters of old NY Giants fans I’d like to tip my Mets cap to Bill Neukom for not forgetting the franchises roots.