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Okay. We have at least a dozen Spanish-language channels on our cable service. Can we not get this stuff to watch in the off-season? It’s got to be on Time Warner SOMEWHERE, right? Right?!
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Anthony over at Hot Foot posted today that he was permanently sick of the Hot Stove and wanted to blow it up. I am sick of it myself, mostly because it is causing me to read and reread continual reports of nothingness.
[While we’re at it, can anyone explain to me the genesis of the term ‘hot stove’ and why it’s used in baseball?]
Last winter’s Hot Stove season was frantic but went completely over my head - not because I wasn’t interested, but because I had no context and zero way of evaluating whether or not things were good or bad. I didn’t know the players, I didn’t know history, I was utterly and completely lost. Contrast to this year, when I can have a conversation with my father, over holiday dinner, about Barry Zito and if he will go to the Mets… but it stops there.
It wasn’t just that there was no action, it was the fact that we heard every time Omar went to the hotel’s gift shop to buy a bottle of mineral water during the Winter Meetings. I am a big proponent of not posting something unless I have something worthwhile to talk about - other web sites don’t have that luxury and so minor happenings (or non-happenings) were blown completely and totally out of proportion.
Adam Rubin commented last month that the winter meetings have now become a media event when it wasn’t ever one before, that media outlets (such as morning shock jock radio) who had never covered the winter meeting were now doing so. And with the proliferation of baseball blogs, everyone felt the need to chime in and create non-stories out of stories. I would run through my RSS feed, and with some exceptions, the stories would either be pointless or a non-issue.
I am still a little dismayed that Barry Zito went to the Giants. I don’t pretend to know a lot, but on no level does this make sense to me - even with the understanding that (as Metstradamus refers to him) clients of the Prince of Darkness only care about cold hard cash. But it’s done, it’s over, and all we can do is sit and wait for pitchers and catchers to report. Nothing can possibly happen that will be that exciting until the season begins again and new trade possibilities present themselves.
“I’m starting to miss baseball,” TBF announced yesterday.
“I don’t think I ever stopped,” I said.
“I think that means I’m over it now,” he said.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be over it. I’m more in a state of permanent denial.”
All I am doing now is counting the days until we can buy tickets to the Spring Training games, and until we can get on the plane to Florida in March. Then it will really feel like the year has begun.
It seems like a very long time ago that I logged into Blogger to start what was essentially meant as an online diary where I could write about my first year as a baseball fan. When I set the blog up, I added links to my favorite Mets blogs in the sidebar for no other reason than to keep them out of my already-bursting RSS reader. Little did I know that clicking through them would bring my little corner of cyberspace to the attention of the blogosphere and beyond.
I particularly would like to say thanks to Mike of Mike’s Mets for being the first to write about my blog - and continuing to write about it as the season progressed. Via Mike, the blog came to the attention of many other distinguished bloggers, who seemed to like what I was doing and started paying attention, calling out noteworthy posts, and generally allowing this newcomer into their world. To all of you, I say “thanks”.
In a million years, never in my life would I have imagined this would have happened. I was doing this for fun and discipline and so I didn’t lose the memories. Little did I know, of course, when the year began, that I would be holding tickets for playoff games and experiencing the thrill of October baseball.
In 2007, I plan to continue the blog. I still have a lot to learn and do and see and look forward to taking you along with me. I also plan to take this off of Blogger (I registered metsgrrl.com, and that address will already bring you here) and redesign the site completely. I actually already own server space for my other writing projects - it never even occurred to me to set this blog up on that space, with proper design and layout, because I thought it would be a tiny little project and didn’t think it justified the work involved. The best laid plans, and all that.
And finally, to you, the people who come here and read this: more than my disbelief in the attention I got from the blogosphere was the fact that I have actual READERS! Repeat offenders! People who come here and spend time here and bother to read what I have to write. Thank you for your continued patronage, and I hope to keep you entertained and interested into 2007.
Let’s Go Mets!
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“I can’t believe we didn’t get Zito. He wanted to stay in San Francisco.”
“No, it’s about the most money.”
“And the surfing.”
“Nooo. The Boras clients are about money. That’s it.”
“But that sucks. I can’t believe he’ll be happy there.”
“You know what? Barry can f* off. And when the Mets go to town on his ass, I’m going to laugh.”
On a more positive note, we now have plane tickets and hotel reservations for Spring Training in March.
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MetsGrrl.com’s undercover reporting staff on the West Coast has supplied us with the following intel!
We can exclusively reveal The Contents of Barry Zito’s iPod:
The Waiting - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Lone Star State of Mind - Nanci Griffith
New York City Serenade - Bruce Springsteen
California Sun - The Ramones
City of Blinding Lights - U2
That’s Right (You’re not from Texas) - Lyle Lovett
New York City - They Might Be Giants
Should I Stay Or Should I Go - The Clash
Twist and Shout - The Who (Live At Shea Stadium)
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap - AC/DC
Give It Away - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Freedom of Choice - Devo
Livin’ On the Edge (of Houston) - Reverend Horton Heat
Given To Fly - Pearl Jam
Rockaway Beach - The Ramones
The Wait - The Pretenders
California Stars - Wilco
Within Your Reach - The Replacements
Money, Money, Money - ABBA
Rotten Apple - Alice In Chains
Check Your Head - Beastie Boys
No One Knows - Queens of the Stone Age
Decision or Collision - ZZ Top
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For - U2
Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want - The Smiths
Add your own suggestions in the comments!
MG used to call the Lower East Side home, and was perplexed for some time that article after article would insist that #05 lived down there, because there was no way that would happen without someone knowing about it, writing about it, or blogging about it. (Of course, we would later find out that it was the Upper East Side.)
However, today we’re greeted with the news that Mr. Wright is moving to to the Flatiron neighborhood, a hop skip and a jump from Live Bait and the Shake Shack.
“Another fun feature is a very large pantry area,” [listing broker] Ms. Fenn said. “It’s twice the size of some bedrooms in New York.”
Yep. I’m sure D. Wright saw that large pantry area and thought: the chicks will *so* dig this.
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Yet more gratuitous self-promotion, but this time they used a little bit more commentary from yours truly, talking about the 8/22/06 game against the Cardinals.
I think I did pretty good.
No, strike that - I *was* good. No “think”. There.
And now, stopping to consider the situation, I am completely and totally dumbfounded. In one year, I have gone from knowing virtually nothing about baseball and not having gone to more than maybe a dozen or two games in my entire life, to having an account with the Mets ticket office, going to over 30 games in one year, multiple roadtrips, attending every home playoff game…
and now, being on television, talking about baseball and the Mets.
It’s freaking SURREAL.
My literary agent read my blog a little while ago and thinks I should think about writing a book. She might not have the worst idea in the world. But, again, file under SURREAL.
[P.S. If anyone can run video off their DVR so I can get a VHS tape, or get a video file off their computer that I could burn to DVD, please drop a line. Some friends who do not live in the area would like to see this. Thank you.]
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It arrived.
I know it’s been online for a little while, but I was not looking. I wanted the letter or better, the phone call. A long time ago, TBF told me about how, every year, he waits to get that phone call from the Mets ticket office, trying to entice him to “increase his involvement with the club” and to try to get him to buy a ticket plan. He actively looked forward to this call each year, and back when I first heard the story, told me with great relish how he couldn’t wait for the day that he could answer, “Well, yes, actually, I would like to move up to the next level this year.”
I kinda ruined that, I think.
But the invoice is here, and we are back in the exact.same.seats. But, I love those seats. And unless we found some more money hidden under the sofa cushions, we are back on the mezzanine, section 12, Tuesdays and Fridays, just like last year. Which suits me just fine.
So we will be paying that invoice very soon.
It makes me a little nervous that we don’t have the scratch to come up with a full season, because I worry what happens to us when Citi Field opens in 2009 (when we probably will have the scratch). This is the type of moment where TBF stares at me, shakes his head, and mutters something about not thinking ahead that far.
In the meantime, I think I’ve picked out our weekend to go down to Port St. Lucie in March. TBF gives me that blank stare whenever I start trying to talk about it, and makes noises about “saving our money for games that really count”. Which I am entirely ignoring, because I know exactly what will happen: we will go to Spring Training and he will love every minute of it.
Have you been to Spring Training? Got any advice? Tips? Suggestions? Leave ‘em in the comments.
