5/21/12

Mets 2012 Stars & Stripes hat is camouflage

Gone are the red, white and blues of the past. This year, it's camouflage.

Looks like these hats are going from bad to worse.

5/17/12

I was on TV last night!

My girlfriend and I went to last night's Mets/Reds game, and ended up on TV a few times. I also caught a T-shirt. It was a banner day for me.

(I'm in the white button down with the blue hat. The girlfriend is next to me in the grey Mets shirt.)
Hat tip to @MetsKevin11 for the screencaps!


And here's some video:

5/9/12

8,000

Eight thousand games. 8K games. 100 + 900 x 8 = 8,000 games.

And still, no no-hitters.

Well, still 7,999. Johan Santana takes the mound on Friday for the Mets 8,000th ever game and their 8,000th attempt at pitching a no-no.

Just the Mets and the San Diego Padres have never pitched a no-hitter (and the Washington Nationals, but everyone but the Nationals knows they used to be the Montreal Expos). The Pads, though, have only played about 6,900 games in their lifetime.

Look, in the end, no-hitters don't really matter. They're not worth more wins, or runs, or games in the standings. But they're cool. And the Mets, at nearly 8,000 games don't have one. Roughly two no-nos are tossed a year, with 274 thrown since 1875.

And yet, the Mets don't have one.

Of course, pitchers who pitched for the Mets went on to throw no-hitters (and a perfect game) and pitchers that had completed the feat eventually came to the Mets, but couldn't spin the same yarn while in orange and blue.

So, on Friday when (not if) Santana gives up a hit to a member of the Miami Marlins, all the numbers on the odometer will turn, and the Mets will hit the dubious mark of 8K games without a no-hitter. Nothing will change and the Mets will go for it again in game eight thousand and one.

5/1/12

SOMEBODY LEFT THE GATE OPEN

The song that has been burned into Mets fans brains since the beginning of the season has been found, in its entirety. Amazingly, it gets worse than what we've heard.

Enjoy it, if you can...

4/16/12

Deadspin: Will You Start Loving Citi Field If It Gets Uglier? - A Mets fan responds

Deadspin writer John Koblin this teardown of Citi Field minutes ago. I tweeted out a link, and Mets fans are pissed.

I feel the need to respond to a few salient points that Koblin makes.

First, some factual errors...

1. Citi Field never had "forest green" walls. They were a black / dark grey. See here in this photo I took when the stadium first opened. (More photos here, here,  here and here.)

Koblin misquoted Dave Howard from this piece. Howard is referring to the seat, not the walls. Except below.
Citi Field’s exterior is a splendid architectural response to the dullness of Shea, while the inner bowl is muted. Shea’s candy-colored plastic seats are gone (along with generations of chipped paint on the handrails) in favor of dark green seats everywhere. 
“Dark green is the color of a classic ballpark,” said Dave Howard, the team’s executive vice president for business operations, as he stood ankle deep in snow. “And we thought the other team in town would use blue.”
2. Only the Yankees can have 408 walls? Come on. Please note all the other stadiums that are 408 to CF.

3. Only the Mets put retired numbers on their outfield walls? It's not like they're growing ivy out there. See U.S. Cellular Field, Busch Stadium and :gasp: Shea Stadium!

And now for some more personal viewpoints...

4. Mets fans haven't been showing up to Citi Field the last few years has absolutely nothing to do with the stadium. I love the stadium. It's beautiful and a huge upgrade over Shea Stadium. (At least to some of us.) I haven't been going to many games because the team stinks. It's not the stadium that makes me not go, it's the team on the field.

5. The whole point of the article is that the Mets seem to be listening to their fans, making the stadium more Mets-ian. Why is that a bad thing? How could that ever be a bad thing?

6. The uniforms. Everyone loves them. If you yearn for the days of black uniforms, you should be buried in the parking lot where Shea Stadium used to stand.

7. This doesn't even address the most obvious point of fan contention with the stadium: The Jackie Robinson Rotunda. He never was a Met!

This article does not reflect any of the thoughts of any Mets fans I've talked to over the years. We all seem absolutely thrilled with all the changes the team has made with the stadium since it opened. How, Mr. Koblin, is that a negative thing?

I don't get what this article was trying to accomplish. I'd love to find out, though.

Want to attend a game? Check out the Mets Citi Field Schedule and judge for yourself.

What number should the Mets retire?