New York Met Disaster Tuesday Night
As you might expect, the Cards’ dramatic victory in Queens wasn’t well-received by the Big Apple media:
Wallace Matthews, Newsday: “So far, the only benefit Johan Santana has derived out of being a Met is getting to co-star in a sandwich commercial with CC Sabathia. In every other respect, he is getting eaten alive. His team is hopelessly out of the division race, and close to DOA in the wild card. Time and again, he has been let down, by the bats, by the gloves, and last night, by the closer who was supposed to be the cure for what ailed last year’s Mets.”
Mike Vaccaro, New York Post: “This wasn’t the replacements getting overmatched. This was the ace starter and the big-ticket closer. The players who weren’t here weren’t responsible for this one. This one’s on the ones who are here. That’s the problem with assuming you’ve already seen rock bottom: You never quite know how many hidden floors there really are. And how many you still have to explore.”
Tim Smith, New York Daily News: “If the summer at Citi Field wasn’t long already, prepare for it to get longer. Relegated to fourth place in the NL East and with a logjam of teams ahead of them in the wild-card race, the Mets were already in an uphill battle to make the playoffs. Now their fight will be to remain relevant through August. Tuesday night against the Cards was a glimpse of the rest of the Mets’ season - a scrappy performance against a more talented team that ends in heartache.”
DON’T MAKE THIS PRINCE ANGRY
Brewers slugger Prince Fielder is a big man, even on a vegetarian diet. We saw his power first hand at the Home Run Derby at Busch Stadium last month.
So it’s for the best that Dodger Stadium security didn’t allow him to visit Dodgers reliever Guillermo Mota after Tuesday night’s 17-4 LA victory.
It seems Mota deliberately hit Fielder with a pitch in the ninth inning, retaliating for Manny Ramirez getting plunked earlier in the game. Fielder railed at Mota on the field, then continued his rage afterward.
Several teammates followed Fielder and helped restrain him.
“He ran over there, and they weren’t going to let him in, and everybody came back,” Brewers manager Ken Macha said afterward. “I don’t know if you can restrain Prince. I don’t think I can. I don’t think there’s anybody else out there who can.”
Once Fielder calmed down, he downplayed the episode.
“He came inside. It just got away from him,” Fielder said, according to The Associated Press. “It happens. That’s baseball. He tried to come inside.”
What about his charge toward the Dodgers clubhouse?
“I don’t remember that,” Fielder said.
THE END OF MARK PRIOR
Tipsheet forgot that former Cubs ace Mark Prior belonged to the Padres. He did. But now the team has let him go — likely ending his weird career.
MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE
Questions to ponder while everybody quits worrying about Albert Pujols and moves onto something else:
- Isn’t it amazing what a day away from the ballpark will do to a guy?
- Have we officially ended the second-guessing about Albert’s participation in the Home Run Derby?
- What’s more entertaining than a good, old-fashioned Twitter fight?
- Will Cubs fans ever forgive Steve Bartman? Isn’t it time to turn the page?
- Would NBA fans really enjoy watching older women dance at the games?
- Now that Tiger Woods has been exonerated for that gas passing incident, can Internet wags move onto something more important?
QUIPS ‘R US
Here is what some America’s leading sports pundits have been writing:
Steve Rosenbloom, ChicagoTribune.com, on the Cubs: “Kevin Gregg didn’t lead the league in blown saves last year on a fluke. It’s just a shame he ’s intent on defending his title. Gregg’s earned-run average in the series in Florida was 33-point-something-something. Fun guy. On Sunday, he threw two pitches for two home runs. On Saturday night, he was even more pathetic in blowing a three-run lead. Come by again when you can’t stay as long, OK, fella?”
Jay Mariotti, FanHouse: “The problem with Twitter? Aside from allowing only 140 characters of data per tweet, leaving us barely enough room to burp and fart, it provides the immediate and unfiltered dissemination of thought by people with no brains. Some of these people happen to be athletes, creating yet another distraction in a sports world with enough alcohol, weed, steroids, groupies and strip joints to go around. Now we have to deal with a daily assault of social-media madness?”
Greg Cote, Miami Herald: “At the world swimming championships in Rome, Michael Phelps lost his first major individual race in four years, along with his 200-meter freestyle record, to a little-known German wearing a racing suit that will be banned starting in 2010. I don’t wanna say the Arena X-Glide suit offers an unfair advantage, but I tried one on and set two world records just standing in front of the mirror.”
Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle: “They held a big international swim meet in Rome, and the swimmers were corked.”
Dan Daly, Washington Times: “With his trade to Minnesota, Orlando Cabrera has pulled ahead of Edgar Renteria in the all-important Most Teams Played for in the Last Six Seasons category. Cabrera has toiled for six clubs - the Expos, Red Sox, Angels, White Sox, A’s and now the Twins. Renteria, meanwhile, has drawn a paycheck from ‘only’ five (Cardinals, Red Sox, Braves, Tigers, Giants). If you ask me, they’re taking this “shortstop” business a little too literally.”
MEGAPHONE
“I wish for once and forever that we could come out and say we have 100 and some names, name them all and get it over and let baseball go on. I don’t know how they keep leaking out. I just wish that they would name them all and get it over with.”
Baseball great Hank Aaron, on baseball’s “secret” 2003 positive drug test list.
Name them all??? It’s a crime that anybody was named in the first place. Those players submitted themselves to anonymous and CONFIDENTIAL testing. The players union should be filing lawsuits against MLB for not destroyng the test results when they were supposed to.
cb, I believe it is the players union that failed to destroy the records. I am not completely sure about all the facts, but that is my understanding. Regardless, I agree that it is unfortunate the guaranteed confidentiality was not honored; however, it seems equally unfair to the ones that have been “outed” that others remain protected. All names should now be revealed.
yes we can officially end the second guessing about participating in the home run derby. Albert just ended a 12 for 58, .200 period. Wether the home run derby was the straw that broke the camel’s back from a busy all star week or the main reason, there is no second guessing that it was a bad idea. Remember the high leg kicks in the second round? Out of sinc started there.
The players union wants to make sure the public never gets the information on what is against the law and against the rules of the game? What a joke.
If it’s against the rules and you don’t enforce it, why test at all..what a joke. Please submit your confidential urine test, no one will now if your guilty..oh and by the way if you test positive don’t worry the players union will not let the info get out? The players union will protect you from what is against the rules of the game.
cb, you were wrong about this the other day too. The almighty players union is the one that kept the records which the government obtained through subpoena. And the government wasn’t part of the confidentiality agreement between MLB and the players…
Hank Aaron may be right. Name them and get it over with. You know the leak is going to continue. Canseco made mention of a drug cheat already in the hall (my money is on Dave Stewart or Ricky Henderson by the way). Canseco is a whack job, but lets face it, he did pretty much blow this out into the open. I never thought I’d have to give him credit, but so far he’s been pretty much right on with what he has said…
Jay Mariotti complaining how any old no-brains idiot can write something…now that is funny!
One game does not a slump break…but nice job by AP and the Cards last night.
I’m with Hank Aaron on the release of the names. I understand that the agreement was that they wouldn’t be released, but it isn’t fair to those whose names have been released. And, rather than having them dribble out one by one or two by two, put them all out there and, as Hank said, “let’s move on.” I am sick, sick, sick of this topic in terms of baseball. Put more attention on some of the other sports. You can’t tell me that all of those behemoths who play football got that way naturally.
I’m with Hank, but lets also have a list of players that did uppers in the 70s and 80s, and players that only played against whites.
cb, you are making the cheating players out to be the victims. Get real. They CHEATED and you are crying for them. I hope they are all named and we can move on. Besides, what is going to happen to them? Nothing. They have made their millions of dollars. I don’t feel sorry for these morons at all.