On Wednesday December 14th the Mets and New York Cares will join forces for their 5th Annual Winter Coat drive. For donating one or more winter coats you get a voucher for  two tickets to a Mets game at Citi Field for select April games. Here are the full details of the coat drive:

The New York Mets, SNY and New York Cares are teaming up for the 5^thannual Mets “Warm Up” Holiday Coat Drive Wednesday, December 14 at Citi Field.

 Fans donating one or more coats will receive a voucher redeemable for a pair of tickets to a select Mets game in April 2012 and a coupon to receive 15% off regularly priced merchandise at the Mets Team Store on December 14 only.  Season Ticket Holders who donate coats will get 20% off regularly priced items upon showing their Season Ticket Holder ID card.

Coats will be collected at the Seaver VIP entrance of Citi Field between 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.  Fans may use parking Lot B (Entrance on the north side of the ballpark off Shea Road.

In addition, the New York Cares’ Youth Service Club team that collects the most coats through December 23 will be honored by the Mets during a special on-field, pre-game ceremony at Citi Field in 2012.  The Mets will also give the winning team tickets for students and a friend to attend the game at which they will be honored.  The New York Cares’ Youth Service Clubs provide community service opportunities at 48 New York City public schools.

The goal of the New York Cares Coat Drive is to collect 100,000 coats by December 31 for men, women and children in need in New York City.  There is a special need for children’s and large men’s coats this year. 

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As cold and nasty as it is outside today, what would give to be at Citi Field tonight for Game 6 of the World Series?

While watching this World Series and seeing the fans in St. Louis and Arlington, revved up and waving their rally towels (don’t laugh I still have my Mets K Hanky from 1988) and living and enjoying the moment instead of what we as Mets fans are doing now, reminiscing about the past and waiting to see what our future looks like.

I also wonder about what Citi Field will be like when we have our first great Mets moment there. So far my great Citi Field moment is attending the last game of this past season and not having a long line at the Shake Shack.  Will the atmosphere at Citi match that of Shea in the exhilarating days of yore?

I’ve been in Shea when the stands were physically shaking, as the field level was on rollers and you see and feel the whole lower moving up and down.  I’ve been in the Upper Deck where fans stood and cheered (how many times have you heard Mets fans clap with two strikes on a batter? Sad isn’t it) and the sound of 55,000 loyalists was overwhelming. There is no other fan mantra like “Let’s Go Mets” (Let’s Go Rang-ers at MSG comes close as does DEE-FENSE at a Knicks game but they are not Let’s Go Mets) and you get that kind of atmosphere when there are no clubs to hide in or team stores to shop in during a game or dunk tanks or hamburger stands to stand in line in. That was the beauty of Shea, it was baseball’s dive bar, it had beer and hot dogs and peanuts what else do you need at a ball game. Sure the bathrooms were a mess and the concourse ceilings leaked and yes I bitched and moaned about it but after a few years at the McMansion of baseball parks, maybe leaky roofs and sewer water wasn’t so bad.

I guess I shouldn’t knock Citi Field for not having a Mets Moment yet as it’s not up to the building to provide that for me, it’s up to the team and my fellow Mets fans to do that. I just hope that when this team does become a contender, that there will be fans in the stands to not just cheer the team on but intimidate the opponent.  I fear that Citi Field will never rock n roll like Shea not because I don’t think the team will ever contend for a World Series again but that the fans closest to the action will be inside nice and warm watching on a big screen TV.

With the cancelation of last night’s game 6 and the fact that this is the 25^th Anniversary of the last Mets World Series win, I’ve been watching the DVD of Game 6 and 7 and what stands out is the volume of noise coming from the stands. Just looking at Calvin Schiraldi’s face as the Mets began their 2 out rally in Game 6, tells you that the comeback and the crowd was becoming overwhelming for him. In fact, the atmosphere at Shea could be counted as a contributor to the victory as roar and foot stomping just kept building and got more intense with each base hit, reaching a crescendo on the wild pitch to tie the game and just exploding on the Buckner Bungle to win it.

Check out the fan shots from Game 6 or Game 7, how great is seeing Mets fans happy, loud and rowdy? I just hope Citi Field is not to prim and proper not to let its hair down when it’s needed.

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As most of you know, I have a strong dislike for the rent a cops at Citi Field ( and at MSG as well) as it seems in order to get a job as an usher, concessioner or security person you must have a lack of social skills and the inability to use common sense.   It seems last night at Citi Field, which could have been Tumble Weed Field as the crowd seemed to be “by invitation only” with all the empty seats that were shown coast to coast and to all the ships at sea, the powers that be, have had enough of the “Don’t Trade Reyes” crowd as we see here from this dispatch from Darren Meenan of The 7 Line who brought his “Don’t Trade Reyes sign with him on Sunday just as he did on Friday. On Friday the Mets were cool with the rally but it seems on Sunday night the retreated back to the same old management and Meenan and his sign were tossed from the ball park.

Think about that for a moment, the Mets are hemorrhaging in red ink, they are the laughing stock of baseball, and they are sitting on tens of thousands of unsold tickets, so you would think the last thing this organization needs is any more unwanted bad publicity but they are getting it now with the treatment of Meenan last night. 

Was I there when this incident occurred? No but I know from firsthand experience how the Green Jackets operate and quite frankly they haven’t changed since the days at Shea. They do have some fear in them though as I saw a fan try to slip a few bucks to one usher to get a seat in the Field Level and the usher nearly shit himself telling the fan ”no, no we can’t do that anymore, they’re watching us” Well, it’s about time.

I hope the Mets hear about what the staff did to Meenan last night and invite him back to Citi Field for free and with a limo ride door to door. The credibility that this team has with its fan base is at a low I haven’t seen since the mid to late 70’s. It’s time to retrain the staff at Citi Field in a crash course in customer relations or the only sign the Mets will have to worry about will be the For Sale sign outside the ballpark .

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Daniel Shoptaw is the President of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance and he is also a St. Louis Cardinals fan and runs a Cardinal site called C70 at the Bat. Daniel does a feature where he does a Q & A with bloggers of other team called Playing Pepper. His most recent PP is up at his site and it featured yours truly along with my fellow Mets bloggers Anthony of Long Live Shea, Paul of Paul’s Random Baseball Stuff , Kerel Cooper of On The Black, AC Wayne of Mets Public Record, M.W. Strout of Mets Fans For Life, Phil Hoops Jr. of Hoops Approved, and Dave Doyle of the Mets Report

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If my beloved New York Mets can’t win the World Series then I’m glad my dads beloved Giants won. My father came to America from Ireland in 1929 and landed with four of his brothers in Salem MA to live with their aunt. In 1930 my dad and one brother took off for NYC and never went back. He and my uncle wanted to see Babe Ruth play as they heard all these stories about the great baseball slugger. So off to Yankee Stadium they go but one problem, the Yankees were on the road. A cop walking the beat around the ball park told them if they wanted to see a baseball game today go over the bridge into Manhattan as the Giants were playing that day.

The legend as my father told me time and time again was ,when they got to the Polo Grounds, John McGraw was barking orders to his players. My dad asked who he was and a guy next to him said “That’s McGraw he runs this team”. With that my father looked at my uncle and said, “They let an Irishman run a baseball team”? They were both flabbergasted. Remember this was back in the day of businesses putting up signs “NO IRSH NEED APPLY and “ALL DOGS AND IRSH KEEP OFF THE GRASS” so to see a man who traced his ancestry back to the Motherland in a position of authority was extraordinary.

So from that day on, my father’ baseball devotion was to the NY Giants and to Little Napoleon. My dad would tell me it was heartbreaking when the Giants moved West (I’d tell him, you couldn’t have been that broken up since I was born in 1958 eighteen years after my sister) but then in 1962 the Mets were born and he had another team to root for.

But I always remember as a kid, when the Giants and Dodgers came to Shea, it seem like it was always a weekend series, and we always went to the games when the Giants came to town. Even though his new allegiance was to the Mets, my dad always remembered the Giants were his first baseball love. I’m sure he would have loved to see this years Giants celebrate wining the World Series, not as much as if it were the Mets but I know he would light up a cigar and say “At least it’s not those god damn Yankees”

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Join me tonight at 10PM ET for THIS CALL TO THE BULLPEN Radio Show on BLOG TALK RADIO. My guest will be Matt Pignataro of 7 Train To Shea. Matt and I will go over the fallout from the dissmissals of Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel and give our opinions on the course ownership needs to take to get the Mets back on the winning track.

If you can’t join us live, you can listen to the podcast here at Kranepool Society (lower left side bar)  or at the show page on BLOGTALK RADIO and as a downloaded podcast on iTunes

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So Jason Marquis signed with the Washington Nats for 2yrs/$15 mil. It seems the Mets were adamant about Marquis signing for minimum of 5 yrs/$40 mil.

Of course if the Mets signed Marquis for the same deal it would have been very nice but let’s not make him out to be Don Drysdale, okay, he’s a plow horse who takes the ball every 5^th day and most days keeps his team in games.

The big problem for the Mets if John Harpers’ info is correct, the team has placed a priority on adding offense first then seeing how much is left in the bank account to go for pitching. If that’s the case, this Mets team is destined for doom.

Does it really pay to get mad anymore? I have no idea what the Mets plan is this off-season and I’m at the point that I couldn’t give a shit if Jason Bay signs here or not. In fact, my mindset for this coming season is of a late 70’s type mode. I see myself going to as many games as I can at $iti Field because for all the screaming, cursing and acting like baby bullshit I do here, I’m still a die hard Mets fan. I’ll be there (hopefully) on Opening Day and for a lot of other days/nights at $iti Field. So the Mets don’t have to do anything to appease me because even if they were still playing in our beloved Shea with it’s leaky toilets and broken seats, I’d still be there bitching and moaning but with cash and credit card in hand, wearing a Mets jersey, Mets cap, Mets socks (yeah that’s right I have about 5 pair of Mets socks) and standing and applauding when Alex Anthony says “And here they are your 2010 New York Mets”.  You say I’m a jerk and ass whatever but the bottom line is I love the Mets it’s the owner whose guts I hate.  Even Jimmy (Welcome to my Garden Party) Dolan laughs at Jeffey Skill Sets.

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I don’t know about you but I’m getting a massive headache trying to decipher what the hell the Mets plan is for the off season.

Omar has gone on TV and print preaching pitching and defense and I scream at the TV YES OMAR YES! !!!  then I read the tons of minutia coming out of Indianapolis and everything about the Mets is contradictory.

The Mets are hot for Matt Holiday and John Lackey,

Then we hear, the Mets won’t be spending on big ticket free agents.

Luis Castillo has been offered to every team but Miguel’s Taqueria softball team. If you can’t move Castillo then you have to buy out his contract. I’m not a big Castillo fan and I would love to see him moved but you have to admit the way the Mets are treating him sucks. If my job treated me like this I’d at the union hall filing a fucking grievance. Either trade the man or grow a pair of balls Jeffey and buy him out you little shit.

Last night I watched Mets Hot Stove and the great Bobby Ojeda when asked by Kevin Burkhart what the Mets biggest need is this off season, Bobby O said “pitching, pitching and more pitching. Then when the cut to Indianapolis, and Chris Carlin interviewed Bobby Cox who was asked about his suplus of starting pitching. Cox said “you hate to move a starter because you never have enough pitching” Now they know that, I know that, you know that, all of baseball knows that. Do the Mets know that?

The last time I was this discouraged as a Mets fan, Lorinda de Roulet were trying to figure out how to clean baseballs and Bebe and Whitney de Roulet were strutting their debutant ass’s through out Shea trying out as ball washers.

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I must admit, I didn’t watch much of the Mets-Giants game last night and from the looks of things I didn’t miss much. One thing I did notice and I kind of noticed this on Saturday, $iti Field is not exactly packed and jammed.

 

Remember back when the plans for $iti came out and it was announced that the seating capacity would be about 15,000 less than Shea and the outcry that fans would be shut out of games? Now there are tickets a plenty even in the beginning of the season the secondary markets were awash in Mets tickets. I’ve been to 10 games so far this season and I plan on going to at least 5 more. Sure it bothers me that the team is awful but what bothers me even more is winter. As bad as the Mets are right now, just think what it’s like in the middle of January with the snow, wind and cold and you have to wear three layers of clothes and a coat, hat and gloves. I can’t get enough days at the ball park to suit me. Besides the way the team is constructed right now, it has a nostalgic feel to going to a Mets game, very 1975-ish.

 

Is there a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel? First, the team started to listen to the fan base and has made improvements to $iti Field. The video screen in the RF corner came in handy on Saturday and the montage of Gooden, Straw and Hernandez looked great along with the banners on the outfield wall and even the cow in the promenade was cute. The place had a Mets feel to it, finally.

 

Then there were the Throwback uni’s paying tribute to the our NL heritage that the Skill Sets are finally embracing and maybe, just maybe the organization is realizing that blue and orange are our colors and the uniform we all grew up with is what we want. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that after this season the dreaded black uniforms will be no more.

 

But last night was the topper in this starting to feel better about my team. The Skill Sets actually went over slot money to sign their top draft pick RHP Steven Matz, by close to 400K. Now we’re talking here, let me give Jeffey and Freddy an ‘Atta Boy for that. See it’s not hard fellas.

 

Let me send out my hopes for a speedy recovery to Alex Cora who is having both thumbs operated on and is down for the season. The Mets should have let Cora take one more at bat so the fans could give him the ovation he deserves. Cora should have had his thumb surgery back in June but put it off due to the dearth of infielders to step up and play. Alex Cora is a gamer.

 

To fill Cora’s spot on the roster the Mets have resigned Teddy Martinez

 

At this point in the season, it isn’t really worth getting worked up over, but enough of Livan Hernandez already.

 

The Mets fan version of the Weather Underground will meet again a week from tonight at Two Boots Tavern 384 Grand St on the glorious Lower East Side. Come one come all we all need the therapy.

 

Highlander fans are starting to bloom in all their glorious doucheness over their teams recent run of good fortune. As I stated to my colleague who sits next to me at work, you can break balls all you want right now Highlander fans, but keep this in the back of your small minds, if you want to belittle the Mets and Mets fans and stick out your chests and walk around like it’s a foregone conclusion that World Series title 27 will come this late October you better hope it does, because if your Bronx Bastards fall short this post season. I WILL MAKE YOUR LIVES A LIVING HELL!!!!! Believe me it is very tough for me to hold my tongue when I wear my Mets shirts, shorts, cap, watch, and sling bag and get a bunch of shit from Highlander fans so you know I’m just waiting to attack and when I do it won’t be pretty. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

 

Memo to Adam “The Bull”

 

You can kill the Mets all you want but remember your place at WFAN, you’re a benchwarmer . Come September you’ll be back in your proper place taking phone calls from Jerome in Manhattan at 2 AM.

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Just have a minutte here to say hi from Disney World. Saturday I listened to Angel Pagan hit that 8th inning granny that proved to be the game winner. I see last night Big Pelf was not on his game and tonight Nelly Figs is back and starting.

I see I struck a nerve with my Billy Joel comments but like I say his is not the kind of music I listen to and it’s pretty weak to plat th elast concert at Shea and be a New Yorker and give in to Phillyfans by wearing thier colors.

Speaking of Philly fans there were a lot of them in the Magic Kingdom all of them in thier new Phillies cap andnew shirts all bandwaggon jumpers.

Tons of Rays fans as you wouls suspect and many Cardinal fans but the biggest group here are the English soccer fans with Everton the team most fancy.

GTG later

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