213 Miles From Shea

The Mets and the Pirates play game 2 tonight, a game more people will probably watch since the game isn't being played at the same time as the Jets. Anyway, in cased you missed it, and you very may well have, the Mets won a 1-0 in the tenth inning. The Mets hope to continue the fireworks tonight against Duke as Dickey goes for the Amazins.

Dickey picked up his 10th win of the season in his last start as he got back on the right track with a 6 inning outing where he allowed 2 ER runs. The last time that he played the Pirates was in 2009 where he pitched two scoreless innings. The Pirates have the following numbers against Robert Allen:

The Mets will get a crack at Zach Duke who is 7-13 this season with a 5.47 ERA. In his last three games he has pitched 11.1 innings with 12 ER (he allowed exactly 4 ER in each game). His last good start was against the Mets (of course). In that outing he allowed one earned run over 7 innings of work. The Mets have these numbers against Duke:

Lets Go Mets!

By now you have probably realized that most of these videos are from the 80's and that is true. This video, the third in a row from 1986, is a video tribute and song to Rusty Staub. It's a nice touch:

Krod went to court today. Just as a refresher, since we have had a what seems like a half dozen other off the field issues between Krod's initial problems and today, Krod got into a scuffle with his Girlfriend's (and also Mother of two children) Father in the family locker room at Citi Field. It ended with Krod beating this individual, then Krod being held overnight in the jail in Citi-Field before going to Court the next day. After a two days suspension he went out to pitch an inning, did great, then realized that he actually tore a ligament in his thumb from his fight and his season was over and now the Mets may or may not being trying non-gurarantee his contract.

Phew.

Anyway things got more complicated today, as the AP reports, that Krod has been charged with Criminal Contempt. He was ordered in his first hearing to not contact his girl friend. He has sent her 56 text messages ranging from the I Love You Let's work this out to your parents are confusing and of course to the everything your parents have is because of me.

Well, the only upside is I get to use that logo again.

Oregon has been the long time source for really odd football uniforms that not only tend to change every season, but tend to have like 6 different uniforms per season. Well, fun fact, its not just their football team that has all the fun, as in 2008 the University of Oregon baseball team had 6 uniforms to choose from:

(Oregon Live . com)

Ok, so its more like 4 uniforms that become 6 based upon what shirt they where under the vests. From a quick glance, there is one thing that really strikes me about these unforms. Each of the four jersey tops are very different (with the exception of the green Ducks one) however the hat is the same for all of them. You would think with so many different other pieces, there would be more than one hat, but thats not true.

Alluded to before, what is striking about the jerseys is how different they all are. The only ones that make “sense” are the white “Ducks” and the dark green “Ducks” because normall thats how alternate jerseys should look. These two also stand out for another reason though. The font on the front doesn't match the font on the hat and the color of the font is not really Oregon Green, there is a lot of blue in there.

The road jersey is the one that looks most like “Oregon” in the sense that the font matches the hat. It is probably the nicest of them all.

However, the jersey the really shows the uniform oddity that is the University of Oregon would be the giant O shirt. That can only be done at that University, where odd is normal.

The Mets Played A Great Game Last Night.

No one saw it.

Now this isn't some “I'm a better Mets fan then you are because I watched it” because first off all, that doesn't necessarily make someone a better Mets fan and second of all, I also did not watch the game. I was watching my Baltimore Ravens* start the season with a 1-0 record.

It was however a great game and it was very reasonable not to watch. 1) The Mets are out of it. 2) The Pirates have been out of it for a while. 3) The amount of off the field issues with this team makes them hard to watch at times.

The story of the game was Dillon Gee who continues to pitch well. He put up a 6 inning shut out performance last night for his second major league start, with one ER in his 13 big league innings now. If there is a reason to watch this team for the rest of the season, Gee is a reason. His development has been interesting, and his success slightly unexpected. I am really curious to see how he ends the season. (Other reasons to watch of course are to watch Thole, or see if Duda gets another hit).

The game ended thanks to an RBI walk off single by Nick Evans. The player we all want to see. All the time. Yet he never gets to play. (the situation reminds me slightly of Jeff Kepinger, maybe I'll compare the two one day). Anyway it was a great game, or the recaps read like a great game, as the Mets had their 19th shutout win of the season. 

*What gives? You are a Mets fan, why do you like the Ravens?
The above is a question I get a lot. My entire family is from New York, and I was born in NJ, but at a very young age I moved down to Baltimore in the time of Cal Ripken and no Baltimore Football team. Due a vareity of family pressure I became a Mets fan, which is completley reasonable. There was no family consensus on a football team. My Dad was a Giants fan (I think he still has a soft spot for them), my cousin, one of the major Mets influences in my life, was actual a Pats fan (there's a long story there as well) and my Mom (my other main Mets influence in my life) was actually a member of the Baltimore Colts Marching Band at the time, although the team was no longer in Baltimore. So it was natural in 96 to pick up the Ravens, but it was never natural to root for anyone BUT the Mets. Long Story and confusing but it is how life works.

The Mets open up another home series tonight, this time against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Mets dropped the rubber game to the Phillies yesterday by the score of 3-0 and look to rebound with a strong series agaisnt the Bucs. The story for the Mets tonight will be Dillon Gee, who is looking to follow up his first big league start with another strong one. In his first start he got the win with 7 innings of two hit ball with only one earned run while striking out 4. In addition he also picked up his first RBI.

The Mets bats will look to fight against James McDonald who is 3-4 with a 4.17 ERA since joining the Pirates this season. He had a stretch of three really bad games recently where he pitched 16.1 innings and allowed 14 ER. James rebounded from that in his last start though as he pitched 7 scoreless innings. The first of those three games was against the Mets as he allowed 5 ER over 5 innings pitched. The Mets have these numbers against him.

Wright 1-3, HR
Davis 2-3, 2 2B
Pagan 2-3, 2B
Reyes 1-3, 2B
Thole 1-3

Lets Go Mets!

This is probably my favorite song of the week. I first heard of the Get Metsmerized rap while reading The Bad Guys Won, a fantastic book about the 1986 season. The lyrics are so bad that I couldn't believe it was an actual song. Earlier this year, someone posted the audio online and as bad as the lyrics are, the rapping talents of the 86 squad are even worse. It is so bad though, it is clearly a classic so enjoy, I guess:

One of my favorite cards of all time would be the 2007 Topps Derek Jeter card. A limited number (the first ones that were printed) of these cards had Jeter batting, with a few extra people in the backgrounds. A jokester at Topps photoshopped President Bush into the stands and Mantle into the dugout. The story goes that Topps did see this in the final proof of the set, but decided to let it run because it was hiliarous.

That was a smart move for Topps. Back in 2007 I still cared about Baseball cards enough to be involved with the news in the industry and there was a lot of buzz around this card. People were buying the basic set packs like crazy to try to find one of these cards, that were selling for hundreds on Ebay. Generally when it comes to sets, the big buyers are the upper echelon, the ones that gurantee rare autos and things like that, something the basic set generally doesn't cover. Anyway, here is the card that inspired a lot:

(via This Looks Shopped)

Hope you all enjoyed last week's tour around Buffalo with a week of minor league highlights (and we will probably do that again sometime in the winter). It has been a pretty depressing week in Mets world with just another slew of off the field issues ranging from players not visiting Veterans all the way to losing our ace due to surgery…again. Music makes people happy right? So this week we will be featuring Mets Musical numbers from the last few decades.

Today's video is a famous one as it was the video to go along with the “Lets Go Mets” song from 1986. Its a jovial video, one that I believe I have written about before, but whatever, and really just screams the time period:

The Mets and Phillies play the rubber game of the series this afternoon. The Mets dropped the first game of the series but were able to come back yesterday behind Ike's big 4-4 day at the plate. This afternoon, the current active team leader in strikeouts (now that Santana is done) will duel against Roy Oswalt.

Niese has had a great season so far and he looks to continue it this afternoon. As good as he has been though, the last three starts for him have been pretty rough, so the Mets are looking to get Jon, who has thrown more than 154 innings so far this season, back on the right track. The Phillies are a team that Jon has had success against this season as in two games against them he has pitched 14 innings and only allowed 2 ER. The Phillies have these numbers on Niese:

The Mets will get their first look at Roy Oswalt this season as we missed him when he was an Astro and haven't seen him yet as a Philly. Since joing the Phillies he has had 2.30 ERA over 54 innings of work. His last start was probably his worst since the move as he allowed 4 ER over 7 innings (except for his first start as a Phillie). The last time he faced the Mets was in 2008 where he faced the Mets twice with an 0-2 record allowing 7 ER over 14 innings. The Mets have these numbers on Roy:

Lets Go Mets!