Cell phone hell

Originally posted on July 8, 2013

The great thing about Twitter, besides the fact that certain female celebrities love posting half-naked pictures of themselves (yes Rhianna, I’m talking about you), is that it allows me to semi-follow Mets games without having to constantly open up Mets.com or the Sportscenter app on my phone.  I say semi-follow because @Mets only sends out tweets when the Mets have done something good, so a long break between @Mets tweets during a game is never a good sign.  As they are the only team I follow on Twitter, I have no way of knowing if this is standard practice for all the teams.  And though they made a game of it Saturday, including HRs by Buck and Byrd, not a single tweet was sent out during their 7-6 loss.  From what I understand, there are several people who control the @Mets account, and although I’ve tweeted them on several occasions saying, “Every score change deserves a tweet” I’ve yet to get any sort of reply.
The other problem to following games this way is when you enter a cell phone black hole as I did this weekend in southern Vermont.  The first tweet I got about the game was Kevin Burkhardt’s about Josh Satin being 3-3.  At that point, @Mets had sent out 3 tweets on the game but I’d yet to get them.  Nor could I pull up the SC app on my phone to check it out.  It amazes me that there are still gaps in cell coverage, especially up in the heavily populated Northeast.  Granted, I was in the mountains of VT, but even in places that had free wi-fi, I found the signal strength to be weak at best.  I guess all this just goes to show you how spoiled we’ve become and how reliant we are on technology that 10 years ago (that’s probably a bad guess as I don’t think smart phone apps and Twitter have even been around that long) didn’t exist.

Get the Buck out of here

Originally posted on July 2, 2013

Let me begin by saying the Mets have virtually no alternatives at catcher, so to a certain extent I understand why Terry Collins keeps putting John Buck behind the plate game after game after game.  Having said that, it is time that Buck be given an extended break and the Mets allow Anthony Recker to catch several games in a row.
This is not what the script read coming out of spring training.  By now, we all figured Travis d’Arnaud would be our everyday catcher.  When Buck got off to his hot start in April, my feeling was, “Well at least when d’Arnaud comes up, we will have a reliable backup and someone with pop on the bench.”  Given his career numbers, no one expected Buck to keep up his torrid pace, but at the same time I don’t think anyone expected the May and June to follow.  After a 9HR/25RBI start, Buck hit 2 homers in May with 10 RBI.  June was even worse.  He had 1 HR and 2 RBI until June 30th whe he hit a 2-run HR in the bottom of the 9th in a game the Mets were losing 13-0.  Counting tonight’s game, he is 3 for 37 in his last 10 games with 16 strikeouts.  That’s a .081 average.  And if you watched tonight’s game, he committed one of the biggest baserunning blunders you will ever see. After the Mets had tied it up in the 9th, they had 1st and 2nd with 2 outs.  Buck, the runner on 1st, meant nothing.  On a ball in the dirt that didn’t get far from the catcher, the runner from 2nd broke for 3rd, a heads up play.  After a moments hesitation, Buck broke for 2nd and was easily thrown out, ending the inning.  Someone who has played as long as Buck had to have known his run meant nothing.  There was absolutely no reason to take a chance there, and yet he did.  The man is both mentally and physically fatigued.
Consider this.  Last week, the Mets were off on Monday.  They then played 2 games in Chicago before moving on to play 1 game in Denver. Even though they had the Monday off day, Collins elected to give David Wright the day off in Colorado as well (Buck got that game off too).  Buck plays a far more demanding position than Wright and is older than him, and yet has only played 8 fewer games.  There’s this notion that he needs to catch our young pitchers, Matt Harvey and Zack Wheeler. If Buck were to be our catcher for years to come, I’d agree with this.  But since he’s just keeping the position warm until d’Arnaud arrives, there is no need for him to develop a rapport with those 2 guys.
Starting Recker multiple games in a row will not improve the Mets offensively.  He is hitting only .157.  But if a few days off will allow Buck to come back and be half of what he was in April, it will be time off well spent.

Hello world!

Originally posted on July 1, 2013

 

Okay…so I’ve started a blog.  Why? I’m really not sure.  Probably because my Facebook friends have no desire to read another rant by me about the deplorable state of the Mets.  Or a post about the weather, or any other topic that I frequently ramble on about.  So I’ll rant and ramble here, knowing full well that very people will ever read what I write.  Who cares.
Let me begin by explaining my blog’s title, half of which doesn’t appear to be visible (I’ll have to look into that).  Since 2000 I’ve been a Mets plan ticket holder.  That first year it was my dad (a Yankees fan) and I.  We had the Saturday pack.  All 13 Saturday home games.  I believe we were Mezzanine Section 8, though I can’t be sure of that.  It was a great first year.  Being a plan holder got me limited access to playoff tickets (games in each round, but not all the games).  In the NLDS, I was at the game vs. the Giants that the Mets won in extra innings on a Benny Agbayani walk-off HR.  In the NLCS I was at the game that clinched the pennant as the Mets beat the Cardinals to go to their first World Series since 1986.  Sadly, I only got tickets to one WS game that I will remember for 2 things: the Mets lost and there was a pre-game performance by Baha Men of “Who Let the Dogs Out”.  The following year my buddy Joe started doing the plan with me and we moved over to Section 6 (still in the Mezzanine), where we would remain until Shea got torn down after the 2008 season.  We once again had access to playoff tickets, which means we were witness to one of the most amazing postseason catches ever when Endy Chavez robbed Scott Rolen of a HR.  Unfortunately, that was Game 7 of the NLCS so we were also witness to one of the most heartbreaking moments in Mets history, when Carlos Beltran took a called 3rd strike (damn you Adam Wainwright) to end the game with the bases loaded.  It’s been all downhill for the Mets since then.
Anyway, getting back to why I titled my blog, “Just Happy to be in the Park…” In the last year of Shea, it was important that I be at Shea’s final Opening Day and final game ever.  After all, the place had become my second home.  When CitiField opened the following year, it was important I be at the first games and I managed to  hit all 3 “firsts”.  1st game St. John’s vs Georgetown, 1st Mets game (Mets vs Red Sox exhibition) and Opening Night, Mets vs Padres.  Since 2004, I’ve been to every Opening Day.  When the ticket rep asks me where I want to sit, I reply, “I don’t care, I’m just happy to be in the park.”  And since Opening Day has become something of a holiday for me and my family, that usually means sitting up in the cheap seats to save some money.  After all, it’s not about where you sit, it’s just about being in the park