213 Miles From Shea

I finally got my act together and uploaded about 49 pictures on the web in order to create a multi-part photo essay here to explain what it was like to be at the National Sports Collectors Convention. If you want to just see the pictures without all the commentary, click on the 213 Miles From Shea Facebook Fan page (right column of the web page) and look at the photo album with the Convention title (also while you are at it, become a fan!).

Anyway big barely begins to scratch the surface of the size of this convention. The reason that it is usually held in the midwest (and for a change in Baltimore) is that there are very few venues that can support the convention. Overall, there are over 22 aisles of stuff to look through and at some points it is even hard to find a table you want to revisit because you can get lost in the sheer magnitude of the convention floor.

Essentially what you see from the front gate. See that far wall, beyond the black curtain, towards the center of the image, a larger secondary room beyond that. On the left of the image, you see the beginning of another area that is not pictured. Below is my attempt of trying to picture about half of that back room:

The problem in the above image is the height of some of the booths actually block youfrom seeing how far back the covention goes. Also if you see that wall that looks like a bunch of circles just above the man in the orange shirt — thats not a wall. Its a bunch of baseballs. A very common site at this convention is just stacks and stacks of autographs.

People will probably tell you that the one day you would not want to attend this convention is on the last day and I would have to agree with those people because starting midway through the day you will start to see this:

The convention in terms of venders starts to clear early on the last day (luckily I went on the last day and another day as well in order to max the convention experience). Out of all the Photo-Essays this one will probably be the worst, since there are only three photos. However over the next few days there are going to be themed ones talking about baseball's, baseball cards, plaques and strange items to see at these conventions!

Some quick hits to go with your Wednesday morning Cinnabon Original Flavor Bar:

In a crucial outing for Pelfrey, our savior from the first half of the season returns as the Mets defeated the Rockies tonight by the score of 1-0. It was the second win in the last several days for the Mets by that score (as Santana did it last weekend). Anyway the Mets, who now have 16 shutout vicotires on the year, really have to thank Pelfrey, Takahashi and Krod for this win as the offense struggled again. Pelfrey was dominent the entire night as he allowed only 4 hits, allowed only one walk and struck out 4. He threw his sinker more effectively and kept the ball in the park which kept the Rockies off the board.

The Mets offense though was another story. Once again they really struggled to get anything going. Several times in the night they had runners in scoring position and the only time they were able to score was when Reyes got to the plate with the bases loaded and hit a sacrifice fly. Once again Wright and Davis went hitless as Pagan did as well. In fact the one of the best players at the plate tonight was Fmart as he went 1-2 with a walk although he had an out where it would have been nice to get some runs. But just like the last win when the Mets won 1-0, the offense woes are forgotten when the result is in the win column.

Lets Go Mets! We are back at .500!

The Mets come home to try to salvage their last chance of post season hopes tonight as they take on Jimenez and the Rockies at Citi Field. The Mets will be hoping tonight that Mike Pelfrey returns to his early 2010 form as he had another bad outing his last time out. On the season he is 10-6 with a 4.16 ERA. Pelfrey pitched a crucial game earlier this season as the Mets really needed him to beat the Rockies as the early part of the season was starting to spiral out of control. In that game Pelfrey pitched 7 shutout innings allowing only 5 hits and striking out 6. The Rockies have these numbers on Mike:

The Mets will have to face one of the most dangerous pitchers this year, Ulbado Jimenez who is starting to come back down to earth in terms of his ERA (now 2.61) but not in his record which is a staggering 17-2. After a very shaky majority of July, he has returned to his normal form in his last two starts allowing 1 ER over 7 innings in each start. He faced the Mets twice last year with a 1-0 record over 15.0 innings allowing 5 ER (3.00 ERA). The Mets have these numbers on Ulbado:

Lets Go Mets!

Over the last several days this site has practically became a site about the Sports Collectors Convention and the Mets, and while that will end soon (I promise, but material is material) I wanted to let you all know about an opportunity to be a part of what we were just greeted with in Baltimore. While the National Sports Collectors Convention is unlike any other convention, there is a big one that will be happening later this month in White Plains, New York: The East Coast National #6.

On August 19th – 22nd, the convention will take place at Westchester County Center. The Convention will be about half the size of the of National, being about 300 booths, but will pretty much be geared towards New York Sports, meaning although the quantitiy is less, the quality should be more up Mets fans direction (aka, I probably would have spent more money at this one coming up rather than the one that just passed). Several Mets will be there signing autographs including Gary Carter, Orosco, Sid Fernandez, Kiner and Dr. K.

Now I really know nothing about this convention other than what I've read at the site linked above, so if any one is going and wants to send me a review of it, or send photos of it (and get credit for it, of course) please shoot me an email at elliotteichman@gmail.com

Generally bizarre baseball uniforms have one key ingredient: Pop Culture.

Alas, nothing makes a baseball jersey pop like the marriage between the American Icon of Baseball and Iconic Pop Culture References. One of the most iconic game shows of all time, especially in the mid afternoon, is the Price is Right. Bob Parker would be proud of these jerseys which are very busy (in a good way) and contain a ton of detail pertaining to the show:

(via Fan IQ)

(via Today's ACC Headlines)

Just like the show, the players are wearing the basically famous yellow name tags on their fronts. They have prices around their sleeves, similar to spinning price wheel. The Name On Back, isn't really a name on back its a plea for Bob to pick them to come on down. Essentially what this jersey gets perfectly is the font of the TV show with that up beat feel of the TV show (which I think is really shown in the front script – The Fresno Grizzlies, instead of being just Fresno Grizzlies). 

Major League Baseball and Australia (via the Australian Baseball Federation) announced that there will be, starting in November 2010, the reinstatement of the ABL – Australian Baseball League. The original league ran between 1989 thru 1999 when the costs of running such a league took a toll, and the league had to be broken up. Part of it surived as the Internationa Baseball League of Austrailia, but that fell apart by 2002. Anyway this new league features six teams in six cities, as shown by the logo sheet below (via MLB.com):

Side Note: I feel like I have seen the Bandits logo before. I think its somewhat common for colleges/high schools or something. Anyway the league will run from November through January where the playoffs will start (top four teams moving on into the playoffs). In other words this is sort of a farm league for MLB to have some of their talent, especially minor leaguers, play there in the winter as opposed to the winter leagues. If you remember the Hawaii winter league was recently shut down, so this is a slight replacement, except unlike the Hawaii winter league, these teams (I believe) are not owned by the MLB in the way were the players need to be connected to a big league club.

I'm all for this. I love seeing the sport of baseball travels across the world and it is in a country that hais had baseball before, so hopefully making a fan base will not be too difficult.

If losing 4 of 6 to division rivals didn't get you.

If several key Mets slumping didn't get you.

If the season falling from reach didn't get you.

Well, Adam Rubin has you covered. Rubin isn't trying to depress us, but only warn us about getting our hopes up for the next offseason. It looks like the Mets will get the worst from both worlds. The problem with a team of homegrown talent is that it isn't the best talent, but comes at a fantastic price. The problem that comes along with a high talent team, is that it comes with a really big price. Next season the Mets are looking at a mostly homegrown team (which is exciting in its own right) but the bad investments over the last few years creep up and now the Mets are saddled witha huge payroll, so they can't improve that home grown team.

Essentially, Rubin finds that between Santana, Beltran, Bay, Wright, Perez, Krod, Reyes, Castillo and Iggy, the team is already committed to about 114 million. Then if the other 16 players were at the leag mininum, then that makes a total of 120 million. Then you have to figure we want to sign Reyes to an extension, and want to keep Feliciano and and the end of the day there is very little money to work with.

Trading Perez, Castillo and Beltran will probably not soften the financial crunch on the team, because to move them, the Mets will need to keep the money. In other words, the best way to improve this team will be to trade for prospects and players to make an impact, and in doing these trades, add a more managable amount to the payroll.

It is worth noting that things should get a little better after 2011 with a few players coming off the payroll…hopefully.

As stated about a thousand times last week, the last six games were of critical importance for the Mets to make a serious playoff run this year. Well the Mets were the 2010 Mets and they didn't take either of the National League Road Series and now the Amazin's find themselves in a very awkward position.

Going 2-4 on the road trip, basically left the Mets exactly where they were from the start of the trip. Yes they have a losing record now, but they still have a slight window for making the post season. The key is though, that window is just slightly open. In other words, let's compare to last season. At this point last season we weren't mathamatically eliminated yet, but we knew there was no chance of making the playoffs. That meant at this point, we really had the freedom to start explore options for 2010.

The Mets this year are just awkward. They really should now start trying things out for 2011 (ie Fmart playing all the time) but that means they also will be shutting the window for the post season. This is essentially the direction the Mets are heading in right now, and its probably the right decision, it is just hard to admit that because that means we have to admit defeat….

Or does it? The Mets played their best this year when they were using players like Tejada and were just trying to play .500 until we got Beltran back. Instead they ended up playing a fantastic June. Well since we have had Beltran back we have gone the opposite way.

This just all further complicates the feelings about the end of the 2010 season. It would have been really nice last week for the Mets to win, that would show that we really are in the pennant race.. It also would have been nice, in a strange way, for last week to kill the 2010 season, because that way we would really know what to concentrate on. Rather we got purgatory. We hurt our chances, but we haven't killed them.

So Lets Go Mets! Let's try to have our cake and eat it too while we prepare for 2011 and still try to make the playoffs in 2010.

You would think that even with going to the National Sports Collectors Convention, I would use one of those items for this weeks Memorabilia Monday, but I'm still working on that so check out this hat:

(Strictly Fitted)

Essentially this hat is the basic home hat, blue hat, blue bring with an orange insignia and orange button but with a twist. On side of the hat, there is a blue scale picture of Citi while on the other side their is a blue scale image of Shea. The hat can be found here. It's a really interesting idea for a hat.