213 Miles From Shea

Continuing our week long journey into the fun of Mr. Met, today's commercial has two variants (with the other variant being posted on Thursday). In this advertisement we see Mr. Met utilizing all of Shea Stadium as his personal driving range:

Classic Rock and Baseball seemed to be blended often and generally in the form of Minor League Baseball jerseys. We already saw an example earlier this year of the Blue Claws becoming the BruceClaws (Bruce Springsteen). This time around, the West Michigan Whitecaps send a tip of their hats to Led Zeppelin with this awesome jersey depicting an iconic Led Zeppelin pop culture image:

(Whitecaps Website)

You can also check this site which has an example of the uni's in action!.

Just like the American League yesterday, today we take a look at the National League promotions for the month of September. The American League had some good promotions, but it wasn't the best month ever. Can the National League make up for the American League this month? Let's find out: (All images from their respective mlb.com websites)

Chicago Cubs: This is a great one, obviously planned before the season started. They are having an education day featuring an Soccer Playing Carlos Zambrano Bobblehead.

Florida Marlins: This is a new one for me. I have never seen a player Poncho.

Atlanta Braves: Well I'll be. They are doing the silly bandz thing too:

Pittsburgh Pirates: Roberto Clemente Bust? It's unusual and nice:

Arizona Diamondbacks: I haven't seen too many catcher bobbleheads that actually have the catcher in a catching position:

The Mets, fresh off of a series win against the Astros, head back on the road, this time to Atlanta. On their last road trip, the Mets finally won their first National League Road Series of 2010 (although it was against the Pirates) and now they try to make sure they win one against a team in their own division. The Mets look to get behind Misch who will battle with Jair.

Pat Misch has an 0-3 record this year over 4 starts, and he has pitched a lot better than that. He has an ERA of 3.50 over that time period, and although he deserves at least one of those losses, there are some (like his 6 inning, one run ball against the Phillies) that he doesn't deserve, but that has been the life of Mets starters in the month of August. The Braves were a team that Misch really struggled against last season as he allowed 14 ER over 9.1 innings of work. The Braves have these numbers on Misch:

The Mets will get to tak on Jair Jurrjens again and his 5-4 record with a 4.36 ERA. He was really doing well in every start in August until his last outing where he allowed 7 ER in 5.1 innings of work. He faced the Mets once this season as he picked up the loss in a 6.2 inning outing where he allowed 3 ER. The Mets have these numbers on Jair over his career:

Lets Go Mets!

This week we will be looking at a 6 part commercial series from 2005 (or as far as I can tell from 2005 or directly around that) where the Mets made a series of short commercials about what Mr. Met does at Shea Stadium when the team isn't there, how bored Mr. Met is and how he gets into trouble.

The result? Easily one of the best series of baseball commercials produced featuring a Team Mascot. The commercials didn't throw the fact that you needed to buy tickets and just let the persona of Mr. Met carry on the advertisement.

There is a lot risk in buying a player's T-shirt or Jersey and I should because I have made a lot of these purchases over the years. Now when I say there is a lot of risk, I mean as much risk as can go in to buying some fabric for $15 to $25. The risk is generally summed up in “how long can I wear this shirt?”. Is this player going to be a star? Am I going to like this player enough to represent the name on the back with the name on the front? Will this player get in a conflict with the team that will be overall negative? Will this player suck? Will this shirt be wearable after the player retires?

I've had shirts that have fallen all over the place. I still like to wear my Leiter and Floyd shirts. Wright and Reyes never go out of style. For some reason I am perfectly alright with wearing my Murphy shirt from time to time. There is one shirt that stays locked in my closet under bad purchases while I was young and stupid:

And remember kids, always think before you purchase.

All throughout the season, I have started this monthly series of posts with Mets promotions first. Well, the four Mets promo's do not have photos yet, so I'm gonna hold up writing that article to see if I can wait out for some photos. Anyway here are the American League Promotions for the month of September that caught my eye. All photos are from their respective mlb.com websites:

Baltimore: The Orioles are so excited right now about their new manager, that they will be giving out Name and Number shirts for Buck Showalter. This isn't the first time that the Orioles have done this for a non-player, and since they do so many of these Name and Number shirts every year, it will not be the last non-player they give out.

Tampa Bay: The Rays always push the envelope with the unusual, and this time around its for the kids. Check out the Super Hero cape for the Tampa Bay Ray:

Cleveland Indians: Someone else had to join in on the Snuggie Party:

Kansas City Royals: One way to measure one's age is the inability to understand fads for kids. I work with children and there is one fad that I do not understand at all, and that is Silly Bandz. Well we've already seen it invade minor league baseball (via Brooklyn Cyclones) and now it takes aim at the majors:

Minnesota Twins: Lotsa good stuff going on with the Twins this month. They are giving out a pin for their Hall of Fame ceremony (classy), a wind-up Span toy (interesting) and a Twins themed Fedora (also classy)

Oakland Athletics: Normally I don't include normal baseball hat giveaways, unless they are Special. I think there is something nice, simple, yet unusual about this giveaway:

The Orioles did the best they could this weekend by sweeping the Angels, but it wasn't enough as thanks to the big two on top of the division, the Orioles were eliminated from both the Division and the Wild Card yesterday. While this wasn't a surprise, it does mark the winding down of the baseball season as the Orioles become the first team to mathematically lose all hope. They should be joined in this category very soon courtesy of the Pirates:

The most accurate assessment of the Mets right now might just be a 500 team. They started the season going on huge streaks in both losing and winning directions and since the last losing streak, the Mets have steadied at 500. Some days they look so good that they are going to go on to win 30 of the last 35+ games and then other days, like last night, they look like they might not ever win again. The Mets were back to looking like a winning team today as they got good starting pitching, good timely hitting (the timely part being the key and the difference from last night) and they got some good bullpen help to close the door on the Astros and take the home series.

The second inning brought great returns for the Amazin's as they finally capitalized on walks. David Wright started the inning off with a walk and was moved to third by Ike's 24th double of the year. Thole then followed that up with a walk and Hernandez struck out. So the stage was set for Dickey to come up with the bases loaded and one out. He became the first in what feels like forever to take advantage of the situation and stroke a ball up the middle (which to be fair, should have been at least one out) as two Mets scored. A Pagan groundout would then score Thole.  Luis Castillo later singled Dickey home, only to caught stealing for the third out.

From that moment on the game was all Mets. The Astros scored one run back in the next inning and later in the game Thole smacked his second homer of the year out of the park, and that would be the end score of 5-1.

Pitching was the story for the Mets again today as Dickey through a great 7+ innings of work allowing only one run and he was relieved by Parnell (who for some reason is still the 8th inning pitcher) who got a double play, put himself in trouble and then got out of it and then the game was finished by Takahashi.

Next up for the Amazins will be the Braves as the Mets leave Queens in hope to find some luck on the road.

This is an old clip. Old Old Old clip all the way back from 2006. It is from a fairly terrible TV show (Jim Rome) however the clip is fantastic:

So a few things come to mind when watching that video. First is that Batting Practice Uniforms have changed a lot in the last 6 years or so. The season before that video, the Mets wore Orange BP jerseys, then those blue ones with the black tops came out. They were later replaced with what the Mets wear now (blue with orange black underarms). Also this video seems to take place before BP hats, which are already in their second generation on the field. The next thought is look how young Reyes and Wright are. Wow. Good Clip.