Hello Friends:
I hope everybody had a wonderful and relaxing summer. Also I hope anyone who suffers from the September blues like I do are starting to come out of it a bit. A couple of weeks ago, Timmy started 6th grade, two of my nieces started kindergarten and my nephew started in a new school. They rolled with it like it was no big deal, meanwhile I was the one up half the night worrying.
Such is life.
This is actually starting the 5th year since I brought Weekly Mail back. Can you believe it? Sometime in November, we will have a special to commemorate our 200th post. At least that's the plan.
BASEBALL: Stayin Alive...
When last we spoke on August 11, the Mets were 61-57 and had just taken 2 out of 3 from the Nationals. They have since gone 15-14, the textbook definition of mediocre. The highlight for me was August 21, a walk off win against the Indians that I got to see live with my dad, sister, brother in law and goddaughter.
The lowlight (and to be honest, when I officially threw in the proverbial towel) was when they blew that 10-4 lead against the Nationals and lost 11-10 on September 3. I figured at that point hoping to make the wild card was a fool's errand. With a bullpen like that?
Still, they fight on. They are still mathematically alive, they even closed the gap back to 2 games out after a sweep of the D'Backs. But again, I can't see it.
I'm still watching because I want them to finish strong, and because I want to see Pete Alonso get to 50 homers (if he doesn't catch Aaron Judge) I'd like to see Jeff McNeil get his Average back into batting crown contention, and I want to see the deGrominator's ERA continue to shrink as his strikeouts go up. Going into this weekend's series with the Dodgers, the Mets had a football season's worth of games left. A 10-6 finish, would get them to 86 wins. Playoffs or not, I can live with that. I'll lay the blame on poor managing and a lousy bullpen.
The other interesting factor involving the Mets is this issue with Noah Syndergaard and his request for a personal catcher. To review, according to my friends at the NY Post, Thor went to management and requested that he pitch to either Tomas (positively) Nido, or Renee Rivera as opposed to Wilson Ramos, who only had a 26 game hitting streak for himself.
I'm not a big fan of pitchers having personal catchers, but in some cases I can go along with it. Steve Carlton back in the 70's had Tim McCarver as his guy, and when I was a kid, Doc Gooden would pitch exclusively to Charlie O'Brien.
I thought it was bush league BS when Greg Maddox would pitch to any catcher besides Javy Lopez,back in the 90's and 2000's, so I'd be a hypocrite if I let Thor slide on this. The situations are eerily similar. Like Ramos, Lopez was a good hit/lousy defender. Unlike the situation with Carlton, both Maddox and Thor are singling one catcher out that they don't want. I'd rather Thor say, "Let me have Nido rather than him saying anybody but Ramos. I just think that's a sure fire way to hurt team morale.
And yet...
The numbers that Thor has put up while throwing to Nido or Rivera have been vastly better than when he throws to Ramos. Part of the issue is that Thor can't hold any runners on, and Ramos reminds me of a line Imus had about Gary Carter many years ago, about how Gary Carter couldn't throw out Nell Carter trying to steal second. It might just be to the team benefit if Syndergaard gets his wish.
I'm really torn on it. On principle I say tell Thor to suck it up (it appears the Mets are taking this approach) But I have to admit, part of me thinks the Mets should have him pitch to Nido. If it makes that much of a difference, and keeps the likes of Edwin Diaz and Jeruys Familia on the bench where they belong.
WEEKLY MAIL AT YANKEE STADIUM
WHEN: August 30
WHAT: Yankees vs. A's
with WHO:Tara and Timmy (for Timmy's 11th birthday)
This was Tara's idea. It was also Tara's idea to suit me up in a Yankee t-shirt. So to keep the peace, I went along with the program.
Of course, once we got off the LIRR and onto the D Train, I came to regret that decision. Three or four people came up to me and asked me for directions (are we on the right train? How many stops? Can we transfer to an express?) When I told one guy I wasn't sure when he asked me one of those questions, he said "I'm from Florida, where are you from? I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs FLUSHING!, but I said Long Island. How embarrassing.
Another woman came up to me and asked "What's our record?" I said "First place." I should have said "Beatles White Album" I had no clue what the Yankees' record was, I barely knew what the Mets record was that night.
I've taken the train to Yankee Stadium before, but not since I moved to the burbs. From Woodside it was simple, 7 to Grand Central, 4 to 161 Street. What a pain in the ass to get there from Nassau County.
And when we got there it was chaos. There was no set line anywhere. I chalked it up to not being used to going there, but figuring out what gate and more importantly where the back of the line was just made this very frustrating.
The Stadium itself of course is beautiful and it was a beautiful night too. There was a nice breeze coming in. We were way up in no man's land, but for baseball, that's great because you can see just about everything. The seats were comfortable and had fairly good leg room.
We got hot dogs and drinks in the first inning, which was relatively incident free. It was around the 5th inning when we went for secondary snacks (pretzels, ice cream etc) Timmy and I got on a line that didn't seem to move. There was two people ahead of us, and the guy getting served was up at the counter for what seemed like forever. (It took up most of the 5 inning.) I don't like to get on people who are serving the public because I know what that's like, but I felt myself doing a slow burn. Either the customer was ordering a million things, or the girl behind the counter was a moron. In either case by the time it was our turn, I was fuming, but like I said, I turned it down a notch.
I ordered ice cream for Timmy and was told that was a different line. But the different line was for Ben and Jerry's which was another long line. Timmy said no, he just wanted an Ice cream bar,. She went to her manager and came back and said there were no more bars. I said OK, how about a pretzel, no more pretzels. I said how about a hot dog, she said only footlongs. We asked for popcorn and she said they didn't sell that there. Finally Timmy looked at the menu and asked for Mike and Ike candy and she said We don't have those..
At that point I lost it.
"Why the f-ck are you still open then? If you are all sold out, why don't you close? You think you are going to sell foot long hot dogs all night?" The girl walked away probably to get a manager of even security. I just stormed off.
I guess the figuring goes, if the team on the field is winning, you don't need good customer service. The play on the field is in direct opposition to the service in the stands. The Mets are usually mediocre to bad, but you can always get something good to eat there. The Yankees have their 27 rings, but you better eat before the game.
I felt bad because I know how badly Tara wanted to take Timmy to Yankee Stadium, and I was glad we did it. Even though the Stadium is new (10 years old) you can see the old buildings that dot the Bronx skyline, the same ones that were there when Reggie hit his three home runs in Game Six, or when Don Larsen tossed his perfect game, or Roger Maris hitting his 61st home run. I'm a baseball history buff, for that alone I'd respect Yankee Stadium.
Which is why the highlight of the night was when we went to the Yankee museum.
That's where Thurman Munson's locker was moved to, that's where they have baseballs signed by hundreds of former Yankees, where they had all of their rings and many of their World Series trophies. The people working in there were super friendly and they all knew their stuff. My late cousin Tom Finn would have been perfect working there. Nobody knew more about the Yankees than he did.
That we ended our night in the Bronx at the museum made it a memorable night. That and the quality time with the family. Otherwise, their fan relations need a lot of work. IMHO.
WEATHER: The 19th annual storm of the century
Another summer, another Storm of the Century. This time it was Hurricane Dorian, which did most of it's damage in the Bahamas.
While I didn't hear anyone call it The Storm of the Century, I did hear many meteorologists say it was the strongest storm ever formed in the Atlantic. I have a strange feeling that record is not going to last very long. Like I say every year, it's getting much harder to deny climate change. Much harder.
And for the first time in my 46 years on earth, I've seen a President get into a tussle with the National Weather Service.
As I've said before when it comes to our 45th President, the truth is much stranger than fiction.
Look, anyone who reads this blog faithfully knows how much I like to break the chops of meteorologists. Those winter days where they say it's going to snow 3 feet and we don't even get 3 inches? How many of those have we have lately?
Trump may or may not have seen a weather model that said Hurricane Dorian was going to hit Alabama. Most models had the storm hitting Florida and the Carolinas while missing Alabama. But because he doesn't like to admit he was wrong and 2) likes to beat up on he media, he took a sharpie and extended a storm track on a map so that it looked like the storm would touch parts of Alabama.
“The President of the United States altered a National Hurricane Center map with a sharpie to falsely extend the official forecast toward Alabama so he didn’t have to admit he was wrong in a tweet.”Dennis Merserau- North Carolina Weather Reporter-via Twitter.
I probably shouldn't have wasted ink on this story, but someday someone might read this and think I was making this $h-t up. You are all my witnesses.
CRIME: Up the Creek for two Weeks
Actress Felicity Huffman was sentenced to two weeks in the slammer for her involvement in the college entrance fixing scandal. Most of the reaction that I saw suggests that Huffman got off easy, the Daily Snooze headline read Two Weak Vacation.
Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age, but I still think she should have been spared the clink. Fine the $h-t out of her, make her pay restitution through the nose, give her house arrest. But no jail time.
I'm not condoning what she did, not at all. In fact, if Lori Loughlin is found guilty of the same crime, I have no problem with her being sent away for a while.
Huffman took a plea, saved all of us a sensational trial. Admitted what she did. Yeah, I'm sure it was a carefully written attorney statement, but still. To me, the fact that Huffman plead should have meant more. I know I'm probably in the minority on this, and I know two weeks doesn't sound like a lot. There are people who have done far worse who got far less.
Couple of random thoughts...
I don't like the new Jets uniforms, I like the vintage 1968 Super Bowl helmets and jerseys better. These uniforms bring back bad memories of the late 70's and early 90's. But they also played plenty of crappy football in the uniforms I liked so I guess you can't go by me.
Last week, WFAN let go of Chris Carlin, thus ending one of the biggest screw jobs in the history of radio. They brought Carlin in along with Maggie Gray and Bart Scott to replace the "retiring" Mike Francesa, only to have the lying scumbag come back 4 months later.
Through it all, Carlin was a pro, handling what amounted to a demotion with as much class as one could expect, given the circumstances. Carlin gets canned even though his ratings are solid, meanwhile Francesa is barely holding off fellow blowhard Michael Kay. How is that right?
Gray and Scott will stay on for now, but how soon till they are sent packing? It seems inevitable now that Francesa is going to come all the way back and reclaim the 1-6 spot. He and the FAN deserve each other. What a disgrace.
Other than that, everything else is all right.
Thank you for reading, it's good to be back
and Have a Great Week
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