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I found the site that would generate the flash, but TBF provided the humor. A day late, but still hysterical.
(Click the image to go to the site for the movie. It won’t play if I embed it here for some reason)
A while ago, I toyed with the idea of writing up something about Ryan Church. I thought I owed it to him for continually referring to him before he arrived as “that anti-semitic scrub outfielder”. That was wrong, and massively unfair. Now, I realize that Ryan Church is not exactly sitting here reading my blog, but I think it’s time for the public apology anyway.
Last Sunday at Shea, while I’m always happy to see Ryan Church out in right field, I wasn’t happy to see him that day. I still felt it was too soon, felt the whole Mets treatment of the situation was unforgivable. He seemed to be fine but I hoped he wasn’t rushing it because he knew that the team desperately needed him.
That alone is enough of a reason to like Ryan Church, but he has given us countless other on-field and at-bat reasons to be glad he was here.
I asked my buddy Kristen, over at great Nationals blog We’ve Got Heart, what she thought:
I really miss Ryan Church. I’ll say this - He was treated unfairly here. The Front Office had some kind of personal distaste for Ryan and it carried over into everything. He was yanked around the minors and even when he was a starter, he’d be the first to sit for some new outfielder experiment. I believe that he was actually a fan favorite. So many bloggers and fans I’d talk to wore Church jerseys and Church t-shirts. He was a lot of people’s favorite.
I’m not surprised by his performance. I knew he had that in him but this just wasn’t the right atmosphere for him to build success. From up high, there was no confidence in his abilities or desire to let him be an everyday outfielder. That’s a sad reality when you are the worst team in baseball—to pass up on a guy like that for experiments (like Wily Mo, Nook Logan, Ryan Langerhans...ugh!)
He started hot last season and cooled off a little, but he did manage to rack up a ton of doubles.
Personally, I wasn’t following the team with the Jewish controversy came about. From my understanding, he was asking his pastor about his girlfriend that was Jewish. I never took it to me that he was being critical of the Jewish faith, but trying to explore conflicting beliefs. I don’t know enough to say more - except that I took his explanation to be sincere.
He comes from a military family and I’m almost certain his brother has spent a significant amount of time in Iraq. His other brother, I believe, is a security guard at a prison. I think his mom has joked that Ryan has it the easiest.
As far as I know, he was a good guy on the team. First to come out to get the game started. He’d always sit on the bench for a few minutes before running out to stretch - but he was - almost always, the first person out. He rarely signed autographs before games. He was serious and focused it seemed.
I really do wish him the best. Here’s a great blog about it.
Finally, for those of you who don’t live in the area (which seems to be an awful lot of you, which I continually find cool as heck), there is this story, which, while continuing to prove the unspoken point about Yankees fans, shows you a ton about Ryan Church. He just got here; he doesn’t know people; but yet he was touched by this woman’s story and wanted to help.
[For the record, TBF noted that if heaven forbid something happened to him and Joba Chamberlain wanted to give me some money, he wanted to make sure that I knew that he would want me to take it.]
Which team are these quotes below referring to?
“They’re not happy, and they shouldn’t be,” [team manager] said. “I’m sure our ownership and our fans, they’re not happy. Anybody that’s happy in this clubhouse, there’s something wrong.”
“This is not a field managerial issue,” [GM] said. “He’s not at the plate with men on first and second and leaving them there three times. Those things have to happen. His focus, and the staff’s focus, is to try to get them to do those things and to be a prepared club.”
[Only Yankees fans wimps will use Google to answer this.]
I don’t know why another team’s misery is something I am looking to, but I found the second quote to be telling because I don’t remember anyone in the Mets organization actually saying that.
I am not yet ready to say that Our 2008 Mets have turned a corner. Not just because of Oliver the Bad on Monday, but that is part of it. (And that whole thing makes me so angry I could scream, but that is for another time and another post.)
I missed the Pedro start (aside from a few key plays) because of an emergency at work. I missed yesterday’s game because I have friends in town playing shows. I also think that a tiny break right now might not be the worst thing in the world. Last week was tough. The emotional rollercoaster is hard.
What happens to the name of the subway station?
Does it change? Will the MTA allow it? I doubt it, but the almighty dollar speaks volumes.
This will bother me. A lot.
I was originally supposed to attend this game with Coop - who decided earlier in the week that schlepping back to Jersey after an 8pm ESPN Sunday night game was a little more than she could deal with. TBF, however, announced that we were going - later of course amending that to, “Well, if the Mets are going for a sweep *I* am going to go, and would very much like it if you would join me.”
“Upper Box 22, row 1. $8” he yelled at me Saturday night.
“The upper boxes have no legroom in the front row and that’s too far out.”
“Mezzanine Section 2 Row B, $15.”
“Possibly.”
“There are these field boxes on eBay that have no bids.”
“Fine, let’s wait them out.”
Of course, now that the Mets were actually winning games, nothing on the secondary market was staying not-bid-on for very long, and by 10pm TBF was scowling because Buy It Nows were no longer valid and ignored pairs of tickets were now up to $58. It was late, and I was tired, and had had a lot of baseball, and wasn’t that sure I wanted to drag myself back out to Shea to sit in crappy seats.
So I started poking around, and found two seats behind home plate for $136 each. I wasn’t really going to buy them, but Miriam from Section 12 had sat on the field level Thursday night - something she wanted to do once before Shea was no longer - and that had planted a seed. I have sat on the loge and in the loge boxes and TBF had been on the field level, but not in front of the main aisle - but we had never gotten anything really, really good at Shea. But there was nothing out there, so I was willing to leave it as: We tried to play the system and we didn’t win. I can live with this, was my attitude.
However, I forgot that I was dealing with TBF. When I woke up the next morning, he had been up for several hours already, and before I had even gotten coffee into my system, presented me with several options, both of which had the same result: field box seats behind the dugout for half price. I know this doesn’t seem reasonable, or logical, but keep in mind that this was an afternoon game that got moved to 8pm and frankly, it sucks getting home from Shea late on a Sunday night.
So of course, we had to buy them.
513 photos, only two edits (on the train and just now) and I gotta sleep. Here’s a selection below, the write up and the rest tomorrow evening.
Uh, so we found Field Boxes for sale for, like, half price, so we’re off to Shea tonight. I will post my wrap-up of the weekend later or tomorrow.
Bloomberg offers summer reading suggestions for Your 2008 Mets:
Carlos Delgado—``The Odyssey’’: The 35-year-old could use a reminder that with age come wisdom and cunning. And when he’s done, perhaps Hemingway’s ``The Old Man and the Sea.’’ The central character, an octogenarian named Santiago, is inspired by his baseball hero, Joe DiMaggio, who did great things in spite of obstacles, including injury.
[via]
