Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Geekery: Baseball widgets for your desktop

For those of you (like MG) who are chained to a computer all day, this great article from Wired covers all the widgets, gadgets and other technological goodies that will keep you up to the minute on all the upcoming baseball goodness. Mac, PC *and* platform-agnostic.

If anyone knows where I can find a box score program for Palm, please drop me a line. We saw someone using one last year during the NLCS and TBF’s eyes lit up. As he described it recently, “On the one hand, it’s like the world’s most perfect gift; on the other hand, there’s no way I’d ever give up doing it on paper.” I, on the other hand, am not a luddite.

Opening Day Thoughts

Two years ago, TBF and I had just started dating, and I was stressing about an appropriate gift to buy him to commemorate Opening Day. I didn’t give a damn about baseball, but I knew he did. (I bought him a map of the US with all the baseball stadiums and the ideal routes for a stadium roadtrip marked out.)

Last year - wasn’t a great day for me and I remember coming home on the subway watching everyone heading out to Shea. TBF wasn’t here, and I was still trying to find my way through baseball by myself. I could have bought a ticket and gone, but I didn’t want to go alone. Instead, on one of the worst days of the year, I have to watch the blue-and-orange masses headed out to Shea as I head home.
So, this year was going to be different.

“What opening day traditions do you have?” I asked TBF with ebullience.
Blank look. And a recitation of Opening Days he has missed or the few times he got to attend. A note that he would be keeping score.
I am somewhat - make that very - disappointed, as I expected there to be a long list of arcane traditions that had to be followed, and was eager to do so. I don’t know what you do or you don’t do. I was hoping there was a script I could follow, a tradition I could borrow since I didn’t have one of my own and I felt kind of forlorn without one.

Click to continue reading Opening Day Thoughts

“Baseball Stud”

This is the title of an article in this weeks New York magazine featuring - no, not Julio Franco - yes, Mr. D. Wright. The article begins with him bowling in Port St. Lucie (not on the same evening that TBF and I debated the virtues of bowling vs. mini-golf, and instead had dinner and went to sleep early since we were so damn tired - but everyone else saw him at the bowling alley), and continues with some choice quotes from his teammates.

I like it because it isn’t fawning and it’s also not trying to knock him down either.

“Ohhhwaaa!” DeLuca shouted. “See that? Not the play. But see that smile? That’s what I’m talking about! That charisma! I’m telling you, man, he’s our Jeter.”
“Our wives love him,” added Gomez, for emphasis.
“Our wives want to marry him!”
“They really do!”
“Hell, I want to marry the kid,” said DeLuca, clinking bottles with Gomez. “I said to my wife—I said, ‘Honey, if I don’t come back, it means I ran away with David Wright.’ He’s helped bring the fun back to this team, okay? Which, believe you me, was missing for a long, long time.”

...which is probably what they’re taling about when they say “The women want to marry him - and the men want to marry him too.”

 

Sunday, April 01, 2007

MetsGrrl Mailbag: Mets beat reporter Narty Moble answers fans’ questions

In honor of Opening Day and the new look and location for MetsGrrl, we are thrilled to welcome MLB Mets beat reporter Narty Moble, making a special guest appearance with the Mailbag. Narty, over to you:
                 
Dear Narty: I was curious as to what you thought about why the Mets did not go after Johan Santana harder in the off-season.

Joe P., Carroll Gardens

I’m sorry to break it to you, but Johan Santana was not available. The Twins would be foolish in the extreme to trade Santana now.

 

Click to continue reading MetsGrrl Mailbag: Mets beat reporter Narty Moble answers fans’ questions

Friday, March 30, 2007

new creative, part 2

The other side of the G platform:

it’s just TERRIBLE. blech.

but it’s a nice counterbalance to seeing this multiple times during my commute:

[I don’t have a real problem with Mariano (neither does TBF, for the record), I just find the photo creepy. Not to mention not needing to be publicly exhorted to read the bible by anyone.]

——-

Thursday, March 29, 2007

opening day tickets!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I’m slogging through email at work, when an email lands in my inbox from one of the various “benefits” offered to us. I say “benefits” because up until now, I have found the application of that term to be dubious at best.

Until just now.

“Working Advantage has tickets for exciting Mets games this season, including Opening Day on April 9! Be there at Shea Stadium in Flushing, NY to cheer for the Mets as they battle for this year’s championship.”

OPENING DAY?!

So I click and dial TBF at the same moment.  I read him the email.
“‘Upper Level Seats, Sections 44 or 46 available for $29.00 per ticket.’”
TBF: “That’s WAY out there.”
“I know.”
“Forget about pictures.”
“I know.”
“Forget about seeing the Diamondvision.”
“I know.”
“Do we even know what row?”
”’ The general seating section listed above is guaranteed; however, specific rows and seats cannot be requested or guaranteed. You will be assigned the best available seats, within our reserved block, based on the date and time of your order.’”
“Arghhh.”
“I know. But it’s face value - okay a little more.”
I try mets.com in case they suddenly made seats available and didn’t tell anyone, and open up StubHub in another window. The StubHub ticket quantity has taken a nosedive from 1600 seats down to 900 seats. In the meantime, TBF is looking to see what’s available in Seven-packs - and that’s even worse seating locations than what we’re currently being offered.

I bought the tickets.

I am, however, pissed at the Mets that they didn’t make these seats available to the general public, or to account holders. And I should be principled enough to not buy these, given as much as I’ve bitched about things on here.

But I’m not that principled and I want to go to Opening Day. I suck.

YOUR TICKETS ARE HERE.

Coop was bitching earlier today about not having gotten her tickets, and then a few hours later, how they had arrived. That sent me to the phone, to the Mets Ticket Office, where an earnest young man proceeded to try to explain to me that, no, they couldn’t give me my tracking number because there were so many people getting tickets.
MG: “Right. You sent tickets to the same amount of people during the playoffs and you did this.”
MTO: “But they’re not coming from here—”
MG: “They’re coming from Arkansas. Again, so did the playoff tickets.”
MTO: *silence* “Let me transfer you to someone in customer service.”

This then involved TBF and I chasing DHL around somewhere off the Gowanus Expressway, in a part of town so deserted TBF refused to let me wait in the car. And then, a very annoyed DHL employee dealing with two highly excited customers happy to wait for them to find their box, no matter how long it took.

Click to continue reading YOUR TICKETS ARE HERE.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

the official metsgrrl spring training report

[Administrative note: I know this post is incredibly long. But this will likely be one of the last posts before the blog moves out of Blogger and onto a proper web site, one that will allow me to have excerpts on the front page and each post on its own page. So I beg your indulgence, but if I don’t post this now, once the season gets started it will never get posted.]

]

Spring training wasn’t about the tickets or the hotel or any of the other innumerable details it took to get TBF and I down to Florida last weekend. Spring training was about that first moment that the gates to the practice fields opened at 9:30am, and we walked down a dirt path in the morning sunshine. The grass was that impossible, improbable green, and instead of watching it from above you were surrounded by it. The sky was blue and gold and ringed with fluffy white clouds. The air was warm and soft and clean, the breeze that blew through the pine trees was calm and soothing. There were birds twittering in the background, and a layer of quiet underpinned it all.

Then the players walked onto the field, the royal blue uniforms the perfect contrast to the green and the sky. They are feet away, relaxed stance, smiling and laughing and decidedly normal. Your shoulders relax another few inches, climbing down from their mundane sentry posts up around your ears. The grass is still slightly wet and sparkling. You lean against a fence, breathe the air, and decide what to watch next. No pressure, though, you’ll be back again tomorrow. Sure, they may clear the spectators after 15 minutes, or after 30, but you’ll be get something you didn’t know you came here for, and you’ll be back the next day. Wait, there’s Carlos Delgado on a different field, practicing short hops with Sandy Alomar, over and over and over, and you can just stand there quietly and watch him. No one else is really paying attention, they’re all over at the other field, waiting with their Sharpies and their clean white baseballs.

Yeah, the hordes with no manners, clamoring for autographs in the middle of the workout, with their dozen balls in mesh sacks or their game-used base in a plastic grocery bag, toted by a child who is just barely bigger than said base, could piss you off and ruin the whole thing. The beauty of it is that they don’t have to.

Go stand somewhere else, and if you’re lucky, you’ll befriend one of the security guards who got married the year the Mets were born and he and his wife became Mets fans by default. He can tell you stories from 1966 or 1972 or a few weeks ago. Talk to the couple standing next to you with the disposable camera, and you’ll find out that they’re at workouts to get signatures for the wife’s father, who suffers from Lou Gehrig’s disease but loves Jose Reyes and David Wright.

Stroll over to the side field and watch the minor leaguers, who you may see on the adjoining field in a few years. Say good morning to Al Jackson as he strides by, heading for another field, where he’ll shortly be joined by the starting rotation. You can’t stand next to that fence but you can get close enough to watch them take a lesson in fielding.

Baseball happens so fast; Spring Training is where it all slows down. I can watch Aaron Heilman throw tosses or take a dozen photos of Mike Pelfrey pitching because it doesn’t count, because you’re so much closer, because you can be selective about your details. It’s zen meditation in the real world, watching the baseball arc in that familiar movement from home plate into the outfield, as you watch it trace an invisible line through the air and down into the waiting glove of the outfielder. *smack* You can hear the ball hit leather, because it is spring training and you are closer than you will ever be at Shea. You use binoculars to lip read or to see who is doing what in the bullpen or figure out what Lastings Milledge’s batting gloves look like.

That would be a good start to attempt to explain what the whole Spring Training trip was like.

Click to continue reading the official metsgrrl spring training report