Starting to feel like 2003...

...time to discover new Jae Seos and Jason Philips to emerge from the ashes of an injury riddled carcass. Daniel "I am unable to naturally pull a ball" Murphy has distinguished himself as a pinch hitter/defensive replacement at first -I can't believe it either- and Fernando Martinez will get plenty of at bats, while the bullpen will become a revolving door showcasing the mediocrity Omar Minaya has assembled the last five drafts.

TONIGHT'S TALE OF THE TAPE:
Albert Pujols: 26 HR
Alex Cora + Daniel Murphy + David Wright + Fernando Tatis + Ryan Church + Omir Santos + Jeremy Reed + Luis Castillo + Tim Redding = 16 HR

Dedicated to Al K, Mza

For the greatest walk-giver of them all, long may your balls soar heaven-ward only to tumble gently towards the earth.

L.A. Haters

This here is T.J. Simers, a sports columnist for the L.A. Times. Most sports coverage in brah-burg veers into lazy homerism. There's also the opposite, lazy hating. The day after the Lakers deservedly copped the championship, T.J. Simers spat out a caustic holier-than-thou column titled "Idolatry of Lakers is Ludicrous."

Our wanna-be Fonzie begins with:

"The Lakers won. Yippee, hooray for them and all that stuff."

Yeah, like whatevs, daddy-o, who cares about anything right?

"As civic pride dictates in these things, of course, everyone is supposed to be a Lakers lover now, giddy and overcome with affection for their heroes, but excuse me if I sit this one out."

Why, oh why do you yawn Simers? Let's see:

"The Lakers were good, all right, and gritty when they had to be, Kobe brilliant as almost always, while Trevor and Lamar added spice to the championship mix."

Hmmm, where's the beef?

"But winning it all makes them no more appealing, Kobe still over the top absurd in his mood swings, Pau still carrying on like someone swiped his rattle, Phil so above it all it's surprising he doesn't demand to be carried off the court like Cleopatra.

The Lakers are champions, but they did little to cozy up to the folks of L.A. beyond being good -- Kobe and Phil, the two leaders of this outfit, just as removed as always."

C'mon Kobe, can't you do a lil soft-shoe for our man Simers? Can't you guys do more than just be good and win ballgames for the ol' man? Can't you let those pearly whites gleam? Can't you preen?

But that can't be it. No, can't just be the lack of 'pizazz' that has ol' Iceberg Simers' panties in a bunch. Give it to us str8, no chaser, Teej:

"But now there will be a parade here, so everyone can pay homage to a bunch of people blessed by God with extraordinary athletic ability, but in some cases, the social skills that would make them outcasts in many workplaces.

Wouldn't you like to see the look on Gasol's face if your boss yelled at him?

You want to have a parade and scream your lungs out for a job well done, then invite the young men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to walk down Figueroa Street and be feted like heroes in the Coliseum.

How many people give it their all every day in their jobs, every year until retirement, 30, 40 and 50 years, with no chance of a parade -- as determined as Kobe, as focused as Kobe, as accomplished as Phil?"

Laziest sports journalism of the highest order. Most of us sports fans have bought the ticket, taken the ride, we consciously divide the back pages of the paper from the front. Without doing that, following sports would be impossible. In the context of all the crazy shiznit that goes in the world, investing our emotions in the athletic accomplishments of strangers is foolishness bordering on mental illness. But again, what makes it not insanity is our conscious division of real shiznit into column A and our entertainment, whether it be sports, movies, robots that transform into cars, videos of people getting hit in the groin with footballs, whatever, into Column B.

We don't need need holier-than-thou hacks like Simers to pull the "fuck these guys, they're not the real heroes" card on us. Go embed yourself in the frontlines in Fallujah if you're gonna pull this kind of armchair harrumphing. Otherwise, if you're gonna stick to the sports pages, stick to the ballgames. Same reason I don't follow Heathcliff's madcap adventures in the funny pages for insight into our crumbling economy.

Reminds me of Rick Reilly, who's so fond of churning out compare/contrast pieces between some supposedly spoiled athlete and some salt-of-the-earth coal miner. There was the time he said QB Kerry Collins had "the 'nads of a danish," and, wow, aint this a knee-slapper, saying if World War II had been up to pastry-pubes Kerry, "we would all be using umlauts now and taking Monday off for Goebbels Day."

Oddly, eight years later, Reilly dropped a Collins love letter, ending a column about him from this past season with this killer coda:

"If you look at Collins' face this week, you'll see a big cut on his nose. He was deer hunting, saw a six-pointer loping by, didn't have time to get a good rifle rest on his shoulder, fired anyway and the recoil nailed him. But he got the deer.

Figures. He never did like to pass the buck."

That's another calling-card of the sports-hack, ending their hard-hitting columns with lame faux-Hemingway-tough guy sparse prose. Let's see how cold-blooded Teej can be with his ending:

"[W]hat's the difference between a Lakers championship and one won by the Sparks?

As far as I'm concerned -- with no rooting interest in either -- nothing."

Would you believe he rolls ciggies into his white-shirt sleeve and can make a jukebox hum just by elbowing it?

Now, I love newspapers more than anybody, but why shouldn't fans today read anything but newspaper sports sections if their prime column space is wasted on the ham-fisted humbug histrionics of grumpy geezers?

Aww Baby, It's Jus' Wrasslin'

Working on a wrasslin' project. Two samples.

A Tale of Two Cities

Los Angeles Baskets. The Lakers. The Clippers. The Lakers are gunning for their 15th N.B.A. title. And the Greatest Rapper Alive just dropped a banger big-upping Kobe:




The Clippers? Running embarrassing ads in the L.A. Times encouraging us to buy ticks based on their upcoming #1 pick in the draft. OOOO Yao? LeBron? Supes? How convenient that the Clips ignore their own history with #1 picks? 1998=The Candy Man, no not creepy Tony Todd, but Michael Olowokandi. Also overlooking the fact that they've chosen in the lottery every year save 4 since the lottery system started 25 years ago! "Chris" Benoit Benjamin. Hersey "Highway" Hawkins. Danny "Knees" Manning. Loy "Twas all for" Vaught. Terry "KoKo" Dehere. Antonio "Frownie Wuz Right" McDyess. Lorenzen "If Picking You Is Wrong I Don't Wanna Be" Wright.



The Clippers actually haven't done a bad job picking within the past 10 years. Lamar Odom. Q-Rich. Tyson Chandler. Of course, those three shone the brightest after leaving the Clipper Coupon Kingdom.

The Clippers are no strangers to running embarrassing ads in the Times, however. Their owner Donald Sterling, is quite fond of running multiple ads a day for his various housing developments and fake self-awards all featuring this hunky headshot:

Krunk

There have been some memorable championship celebrations. Chase Utley yelling "World Fucking Champions." Strahan stomping the ground at City Hall. Shaq-Fu's raps during the Laker celebrations in the early '00s. Neon Deion Sanders dumping ice water on Tim McCarver's head, prompting sensitive Tim's immortal reply, "You're a real man, Deion."
But I don't think I've seen another world-class athlete look as vulnerably drunk as Lionel Messi here. Enjoy.

Props et Poundz

Rock Steady Rog knows what time it is.

It's all iiite in white, unning for #15 on the grass.

Pics courtesy of The Guardian.

Shifting Sands of Clay/Thundering Thuds of Hooves

Shittin' on 'em. The Competition

"Je veux que vous gagniez...et vous goût aimez juste le miel."
"....merci beaucoup...mon boo."

Why should we care?

Derby winner Mine That Bird and 9 other horsies will run in this afternoon's Belmont Stakes out in the nether-world Queens/Nassau border town of Elmont without Freakness winner Rachel Alexandra.

No rematch between the he/she Mine That Bird, shorn of his bawlz after all, and fab filly Rachel Alexandra?

Every year, the promise of an exciting Triple Crown season returns, struggling a little less each year to avoid becoming part of the vestigal Americana of egg creams, soda jerks, adults playing baseball, automats, newspapers, chomping cockily on cigars, heavyweight champions, suits worn with hats and a strong domestic industry. We are told tales of when horse racing was right there with baseball as our most popular sport, that past champions such as War Admiral, Secretariat and Seattle Slew mattered as much as any star slugger or singer. I suspect the sport would be long dead were it not the only sport on which gambling is allowed. A $5 million bounty still stands for owner of the next Triple Crown champion.

This year, in yet another Triple Crown-less season, horse racing still had a chance to maintain the sporting public's interest with a Freakness-rematch in the Belmont. Instead, Rachel Alexandra's owners have pulled her out of the race, citing "tiredness." If the powers-that-be in the sport don't care about the Belmont, then why should we?

We'll take Frownie's old fav, Luv Guv, at 20-1 in the state that luvs its guv the least, followed by Mine That Bird (2-1), and Dunkirk (4-1).
- - -
Speaking of unconsummated rivalries, Roger Federer will take the court in Paris tomorrow for the French Open title. Winning would not only give him a tie with Pete Sampras for the most Slam titles, it would place him amongst the rare handful of eternals to win on grass, clay and hardcourt. Unfortunately, Nadal, whom Federer has faced in a record 7 times in Slam finals, beat him to that later feat when he won the Aussie Open back in January. Nadal will not be facing Federer, which is a damn shame as their rivalry reached a new plateau as each has adapted to win on the other's dominant surface.

I suspect that Federer will not find it to be a hollow victory if he wins tomorrow, much like how the Celts must have felt in winning the title in '86 over the Rockets instead of the expected Lakers.

The bigger question is where Federer ranks amongs the all-time greats. There is no more difficult sport in which to compare eras than in tennis. None. First there is the fact that the Open Era inaugerated 1968 made comparing tournament track records impossible, much like expanded postseason play in baseball has made a mockery of all-time postseason records.

More important is the change in equipment.I grew up playing with a metal racket that has about half-the-surface area of a modern racket. To play with a wooden racket is simply inconceivable. The rackets held by Big Bill Tilden all the way through McEnroe look like ping-pong paddles compared to today's equipment. They may as well have been playing with their hands. It is nothing like, say, the shift from wooden baseball bats to aluminum ones. It would be more like replacing a baseball bat with a adamantium cricket bat. It is replacing a feather with a bazooka.

Still, judging by Federer's unique-for-the modern-game all-around skill set, he would have likely thrived in past eras. Not everyone agrees on the importance of winning on all three surfaces, but I rank the feat as the most important factor in judging champions. Only Rod Laver and Andre Agassi have won all four titles, which is a major reason why I admire Agassi's career more than Sampras'. And why I think Federer is the superior player to Sampras, regardless of career titles.

Which is good, because I don't think he will win tomorrow. Fatigue has been a major issue for Federer of late. The man had mono after all. His semifinal lasted five sets, and the expectations of the entire tennis world will weigh heavily upon his floppy-haired dome tomorrow. Unless, of course, the fix is in, as hinted by the overly-supportive quotes given by the men's field in Paris. An example, as reported by the L.A. Times, "Everybody wants Roger Federer to win, even his quarterfinal opponent Gael Monfils, who said so in their post-match handshake." We'll be there, bright and early hoping.

How about y'all out there? Share your opinion on who is the greatest player in your lifetime and in history.

Circle the Date, Part II

After gutting out an impressive 19-9 May, the Mets turned back to pumpkins in June, getting swept by the hapless Pirates -forget Turner Field, PNC Park is the real house of horrors for the Mets- with very little resistance. Omar Minaya rolled the dice assuming his AAA team sprinkled with some major leaguers could pad some wins against patsies like the Pirates and Nationals, but he didn't count on hiccups from Johan Santana -a correction period, he isn't going to pitch to a 1 ERA- and an outright disaster from Mike Pelfrey -whose AWFUL peripherals are becoming a warning sign, you can't miss this few bats and survive- culminated in a very damaging sweep that underscores how inconsistent the team is: they'll keep exchanging good and bad months until they're home again in October. Minaya could peddle some of his mediocre prospects for a first baseman -Daniel Murphy should be playing everyday in Buffalo- or corner outfielder -Fernando Martinez does not appear overwhelmed at the plate at least-, but the team also needs another starter -in the short term Nelson Figueroa is a capable replacement for Tim Redding- and reliever to replace J.J. Putz.

A word about Putz: very few questioned Minaya's 'two closer' strategy last winter, but considering how badly the Mets were burned by the damaged goods they got in the Scott Kazmir-Victor Zambrano debacle, shouldn't they have had some concerns about Putz' health in 2008? The team's mishandling of Ryan Church, Carlos Delgado and Jose Reyes and their maladies implies total incompetence from the team's medical staff.

Godspeed to Minaya, because he is well aware his job is on the line.

If Schtee Falls In The Forest........

Terry celebrates with man-love.

Dider gets down.

An incredibly blurry shot of Malouda's audacious shot.

A blurry but convincing pic of the ball crossing the goal line.

Saturday saw Chelsea lift the FA Cup at Wembley following a well-deserved 2-1 victory over Everton. Under interim coach Guus Hiddink Chelsea have performed splendidly. In particular his coaching seems to have rejuvenated the mercurial Didier Drogba. The Ivorian, whose name is quite fun to say aloud, now penetrates with flair and finishes with imperiousness.

Mercurial, an adjective rarely used outside sport, could also describe Drogba's team-mate Flourent Malouda. The flashy Frenchman was pried from Lyon amidst much hullabaloo in the summer of 2007, but has henceforth proved to be mostly invisible.

Not so Saturday. With 10 minutes remaining he took a Lampard pass and unleashed an absolute howler from 35 yards out that shuddered off the crossbar, thudded just inside the goal line and then out into the arms of embarrassed Everton keeper Tim Howard. What should have been a goal for the ages was erroneously ruled to not have crossed the line.

As I, and many others, have argued, it is inexcusable for the world's second-fastest team sport to not take advantage of video replay. Particularly so in a sport where goals are rarer than Michael Keaton sightings. The ref's ass was saved by virtue of Everton's inability to overcome their one-goal deficit. This time. The next time?

It's (still) a F'ng Disgrace

The European club championship is this afternoon, live from Rome on Espn 2, betwixt Manchester United and Barcelona. How Barcelona got here is a bit of a joke. In the first leg of the Camp Nou, Barca could not penetrate Chelsea's stout defence consisting of 10 Blues in the box. Afterwards, Barca showed that burgundy is truly their team color as they whined incessantly about Chelsea's "negative football."
In the second leg, at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea far outplayed Barca, leading 1-0 through the 91st minute thanks to a wonder-volley from their best all-around player, Michael Essien. They should have had several more goals through penalties, as these pictures imply.


After a non-handball-call in the 94 minute, the proceedings devolved into chaos ending with Didier Dogba, the recipient of two non-calls, blocking the ref's passage and yelling "It's a fucking disgrace" into the camera. (peep the excellent remix).
How can the world's second-fastest team sport continue to be refereed by only one man and a handful of final-word-less assistants? Would a better system be one where the game is controlled by a referee sitting in a luxury box above the field of play monitoring the flow via tv monitors? In this scenario the referee on the pitch would have no authority, receiving instructions from above via radio. This would drastically cut down on the sad sight of grown men grovelling with the referee. Like a red-light camera, the ominous eye-in-the-sky could prove to be more effective.

The game also exposed the pointlessness of the "away goal" rule, whereby a goal scored by the tourists counts double if the score is level after two games. Over the last 10 years there have been 56 home goals and 36 away goals scored in the semi-finals. Anyone who watches these games sees away teams usually playing most timidly, happy to get one away goal at most. Goals, especially in major tournaments, are fluky and hard-to-come-by; it seems arbitrary to make some goals worth more. Almost like counting goals from more than 30-yards away as three.
Ideally these games would be played single-elimination-style, as the final is, but then again we would just see more nil-nil draws ending in penalties.

Which brings us back to today's between the best of England and the best of Spain. As with our pal Frownie, we will continue to pick these games according to our philosophy that the game needs fixing, and until necessary changes are made we will continue to get the same undesirable results.

So, 0-0 and on to the penalty lottery from the Eternal City it shall be.

Soak It In

Oh, hello there. Sit down, won't you? Come now, how can you resist? The pursed lips, the bushy 'stache, the well-groomed hair with just a touch of devil-may-care wayward curls, the comfortable camel blazer, the enormous dog-food-bowl-sized ashtray, empty for now, but ready to be filled during a long evening in this dark corner of the bar.

Dedicated Followers of Fashion

The Mets recently sent out a fan survey looking for feedback on the team's various uniforms. For much of their history, with slight variations, they have worn home pinstripes and road grays with the blue hat. That all changed a little over 10 years ago with the introduction of black. While Mets fans remain divided between those loyal to the simple orange-and-blue and those rocking the all-black, no one can argue that the current state of five different uniforms and three different hats is overblown.

Intriguingly the survey also solicited thoughts on potential new looks for the team. Here they are.

Hmmmm. Option B creates the same sherbet effect as the Phillies' home uni. Sherbet is to sorbet like grilled cheese is to panini.
Maybe if Patrick Ewing swung bats instead of awkwardly hoisting up 12-footers these sweat-guard jerseys would be necessary. Then again, these kind of unis are common in Japan and we all know Japan exists 12 years in the future so maybe this look is as inevitable as another east village ramen noodle bar. Or is it all about katsu now? Mochi-Mochi, foodie snobs!
Even dreamy David Wright would look ugly in these. Why, even macho Mark Sanchez would look ugly in these. Well, probably not, but still, these look like the cheap knockoffs available for purchase at the Moshell's on Fulton Street. Even Modell's wouldn't stoop this low.
Option B shows the Mets' current black jersey, while Option A offers a cleaner look sans piping.
Pumped! Either option is perfect for a road jersey. These bright blue babies would make our bumbling Mets stand out and look sharp even when they miss touching thoid base. Doesn't hoit that the look hearkens back to the golden days of Doc and Daryl. Hey, remember 1986? No? Fine then, carry on sexting, playing lacrosse, rocking skinny jeans and spreading the swine flu post-spring break you emo little rascals.

And props to Wally1912 over at the sportslogos forums for the above images.

Sound Advice

Back to the Basics

Hidden in the Mets' seven game winning streak were fielding gaffes and baserunning lapses, and they finally reared their ugly heads in their series against the Braves. Between David Wright's poor throwing arm and refusal to charge balls and get played by bad hops and Jose Reyes' curious baserunning decisions -taking a massive risk going for a triple in the eighth inning of the second game, running on a ground ball to short and walking into a Larry Jones tag and the icing on the cake, cadillac-ing around the bases on a deep fly ball to left center that bounced off the top of the fence- there is a general sloppiness to the team that wasn't nearly as damaging when they could outslug opponents with Carlos Delgado in the lineup. Wright and Reyes are not the only culprits, but the highest profile ones: Luis Castillo also refuses to play ground balls and waits for them, and Daniel Murphy still plays left field on rollerskates. Manager Jerry Manuel and bench coach/infield instructor Sandy Alomar Sr. can run as many drills as they want, but perhaps new voices are needed to reach to the players, voices like Tom Emanski -winner of back-to-back-to-back AAU national championships- and Fred McGriff -"these are the instructional videos that GET RESULTS!"

More Fallen G's

Thought I'd stay with the fallen G theme this week. This here is Ralph Beard, a star 1940's hoopster for Kentucky who passed in November of 2007.

By all accounts Beard was a baller who should be remembered amongst the pioneer greats from the post-war hoops era. Unfortunately Beard was a grizzly bear who stayed on his hustle, getting caught up in the City College of New York point-shaving scandal that engulfed college hoops in the early 1950's. The Repercussions were extreme, to put it milder than Hunt's Ketchup.

Besides the many ballers like Beard who were blacklisted, powerhouse teams such as C.C.N.Y., N.Y.U. and L.I.U. gave up D-I hoops. The N.I.T. began to wane in dominance, and New York City in general lost its central status in college ball.

Beard obviously wasn't too happy with the outcome, giving this powerfully poetic quote to the Tampa Tribune in 1999, "“I loved this game. It isn’t like losing one of my kids. It isn’t like losing my wife, Bettye. It isn’t like going blind. But I’m telling you what — it will be with me until they hit me in the face with that first spade full of dirt — because basketball was my life.”

Remembering Two Fallen G's.

Two baseball G's passed recently. Dom "The Little Professor" DiMaggio and Jack "Lucky" Lohrke.

DiMaggio, besides strongly resembling "Steve" from Sex and the City, is a genuine Bosawk legend who suffered from playing in the shadow of his Yankee brother. Matter of fact, one of the records he still holds-longest hitting streak on the Red Sox-came to an end at the hands of Mr. Coffee.

He didn't sound too bitter about it tho, here's the Little Pro telling it to the NY Times:

First of all, when I hit in 34 games in a row, I was only doing my job. I played every game pretty much as I played any other game. I got my fair share of walks during the streak — I don’t think I chased bad pitches. I was a line-drive hitter. My job was to get on base and let the sluggers like Ted Williams drive me home. I wasn’t even aware of my streak until it was at 22 or 23 games, and I didn’t make a big deal of it.

On the day it ended, Aug. 9, we were playing the Yankees at Fenway Park. Our rivalry with the Yankees was great — every bit as emotional as it is now. The atmosphere was very thick whether we played at Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium. That afternoon we were in third place, six games behind the first-place Yankees, but playing great. We were just entering the pennant race. These were big games.

But when you feel pressure, you do not perform. The first thing you’ve got to do is be completely relaxed. And that’s the way I was. On that day against the Yankees, I felt good. I hit one solid shot to the third baseman that was turned into an out. I got out another couple of times. I was 0 for 4 when I got to the plate in the eighth inning against Vic Raschi, who was a darn good pitcher.

I smacked a line drive right up the middle so hard that it passed Raschi’s ear! He ducked to get out of the way of it! As soon as I hit it, I said, “O.K., that’s 35.” But that ball wouldn’t drop. The ball refused to drop. Joe is standing out there in center field, and he didn’t have to move. He said it himself later — if he hadn’t caught the ball, it would have hit him right between the eyes. So there was no effort on his part. It wasn’t a great play by him, like they’re still saying today. I just hit the ball too damn hard!

But the streak was over, and I didn’t mind that much. (After all, we’d won the game, 6-3.) And hitting streaks didn’t matter to me, even when I hit in another 27 straight in 1951. It’s just a statistic. And the only statistic that really matters to me is hitting .300. I did it four times in my 10 full seasons in the major leagues, and finished with a .298 average lifetime. My only regret is not hitting .300.

It would have meant so much. Enos Slaughter hit exactly .300 in his career — and he’s in the Hall of Fame. Why? Did he hustle any more than I did? Did he have a better arm than I did? Did he run the bases any better than I did? Did he play defense as well as I did? Who knows? All I needed was 12 more hits — only about one per season — and I would have had a .300 average.

But that’s O.K. As I said, I was a leadoff man. I think one of the finest compliments paid to me was from my own teammate, Bobby Doerr. He said to me on more than one occasion, “Dommy, if you had been batting fifth or sixth in the lineup, I am positive you would drive in 100 runs a year.” That to me was the ultimate compliment. Just like the streak, I did what my job called for.
-----

Jack "Lucky" Lohrke had a short career, mostly with the New York Giants. As for that nickname? "He didn't really like that nickname," his son said. "It reminded him of too many things."

What things? From his AP obit:

Mr. Lohrke served in the Army during World War II and fought in the D-day invasion at Normandy and later in the Battle of the Bulge. He recounted how four soldiers, two on each side of him, were killed in combat.

In 1945, Mr. Lohrke was leaving the service when he prepared to board a military transport for the trip home to California. Shortly before takeoff, he was bumped from the flight by a higher-ranking officer. The plane crashed, and all passengers were killed.

In 1946, Mr. Lohrke and his minor league teammates on the Spokane Indians boarded a bus for a ride across the state of Washington. During a lunch stop, Mr. Lohrke got word that he'd been promoted to Triple-A San Diego, took his gear, and hitchhiked home.

That night, the bus careened off a rain-slicked pass through the Cascades mountain range and plummeted into a valley, killing nine players. It remains the most deadly crash involving an American professional baseball team.

By the time he reached the majors, Mr. Lohrke was "Lucky."

The Amazin Mess Casting Call II

Via the Almighty Bizman, here are former KC Chiefs' WR Johnnie Morton as Johan Santana and late 1980's funnyman Mario Joyner as Carlos Delgado.

Casting Call

What if Hollywood, already inspired by the upcoming Moneyball adaptation to film, gets an itch for another baseball drama? What was more tumultuous than the 2008 Mets season that featured backstabbings, power struggles, midnight firings and a second straight choke job? Casting from the top:

Gregory Itzin as Fred Wilpon

Out-of-touch patriarch of the franchise already handing the reins to his son...

Steve Carell as Jeff Wilpon

and always behind Jeff's back, whispering into his ear...

Carlos Gomez (the actor) as Tony Bernazard

Robert Townsend as Willie Randolph

Billy Dee Williams as Jerry Manuel

Temuera Morrison as Carlos Beltran

Chris Pine (r) as David Wright

and on the other line with Joe Benigno and Evan Roberts on WFAN...

Zac Efron as Cole Hamels

Obviously, Omar Minaya is a glaring hole, as are the roles of Johan Santana, Carlos Delgado, Jose Reyes, but that's what the experts are for, right? Get cracking on that screenplay!

Don't have the time or money to attend a Mets game?

Get pumped up by the techno beat of 'Sandstorm' before a Met hits into a double play.



Simulate the slow walk out of the ballpark after another excruciating loss with the End Credits to Jurassic Park playing in the background.