I hate the free morning papers they hand out at the subway entrances (because I feel they are responsible for bringing down our national literacy rate even further), but couldn’t resist picking up copies this morning once I saw the SNY promotional cover (front and back above).
I realize that I’ve taken a few photos of the SNY creative but haven’t posted it or talked about it. I have to take this opportunity to say, hats off to SNY for this beautiful, elegant, inspiring creative. There’s nothing fancy or elaborate about it, but the entire campaign (which you see in subways, phone booths, and on buses all over NYC) makes the channel look like a class act. I’m definitely going to go hunt for some frameable images in the collector’s market.
If you go to the AMNY website, you can download today’s issue, including the cover, as a full-color PDF.
Someone at TBF’s office just gave him two free tickets to tonight’s game. Provided we don’t get rained out, I’m going to head up there - late, but I’ll get there. I will be That Annoying Person showing up at the third inning. At least it’s only 15 minutes from Grand Central to 161st St. on the express.
I thought today’s Gary-Keith-Ron and sometimes Howie in the Upper Deck was a great idea.
I just wish it had been a more enjoyable game to have done that for.
I suppose i could manage to add something to the pile of grumbling, to the disgruntled hordes phoning WFAN, to cranky co-workers sending me instant messages throughout the afternoon demanding FIRE WILLIE!!!!!!!!!!
But what, I ask, what?
I am nervous about the weekend, glad we are going to see Mr. J. Maine, anxious about Mr. O. Perez, and hoping that Mr. J. Santana shows all those ‘We already KNOW Santana’ Yankees fans that they, um, well, don’t. And then I look at a lacklusterstruggling ambivalentinconsistent undiscernable, unfathomable Mets and realize that I just don’t know.
But no one does. I just don’t have to figure out how to file a thousand words of copy a day about it.
We are going to the House of Evil on Sunday night, section 601. Right behind home plate, carefully chosen by TBF and purchased from a Yankees season ticket holder living in Florida, as having excellent photo potential for yours truly. I like the idea of the Subway Series, I like the potential of the crosstown rivalry, but I don’t like Yankee Stadium, think it is overrated, and going into enemy territory is more unpleasant than it should be. I know, gone are the days of dueling, and women once had to wear crinolines and stockings to the ballpark. I’d just like to think that it was once more civilized. I realize the rivalry was probably stronger once upon a time, but I’d just want to know it was done with more style.
I just don’t want to walk out of there embarrassed at the way they played. Which seems to be a 50-50 shot these days.
I will miss some of Saturday and hope to catch as much of tomorrow as I can, but I have huge enormous plans with a friend having once-in-a-lifetime events and those take precedence. I am okay with this but I imagine TBF is planning how he can sneak a radio into Maxwell’s without being completely rude. (Yes, I know you are, and I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.)
DISCUSSING THE SUBWAY SERIES TONIGHT ON BLOGTALKRADIO.
Tonight around 9:30pm I’ll be discussing the Subway Series on A Show Of Their Own. This is a talk show hosted by two Yankees fans, Brittany and Bernadette, the latter behind the web site Lady At The Bat.
As most of you know, while networking with other women baseball bloggers is something that’s incredibly important to me, I generally don’t associate with fans of That Team In The Bronx and I won’t even put them in the blogroll. This may be immature but it works for me. However, Bernadette recruited me to , a community for baseball bloggers, and seems like a reasonable, intelligent human being. So I’m going to give this a try. I would be wrong if I didn’t mention that I have a great deal of trepidation about the whole thing, as my experience with Yankees fans has been at least 90% negative in the past.
So, please do not leave me there all by myself. The game’s going to get rained out. Come and listen. You can call in at (347) 945-7751. C’mon, represent.
One of my must-read blogs is The Church of Baseball. Last season Sister Daedalus blogged about the Nats and the Reds (since she was living in DC at the time, although her Reds loyalty is from birth). This season she’s closer to home.
I do not wish to rub salt in wounds. However:
Dear Mets, let us introduce you to Senor Johnny Cuest. Sorry you have to meet him in this way, as we are going to take the series from you. No hard feelings about those 96 mph heaters blowing by you, ok? But hey, we left you with a gift this weekend - your guys started hitting a bit, too. Don’t give up, and stop booing your players. It’s early in the season, and you guys have some good ones.
HAHAHAHAHAHA.
Let’s remember that this was a game in which the opposing pitcher STOLE SECOND.
It was lovely to see The Good Oliver again, and if this is how he performs because his mother’s coming to town tomorrow - well, I would say we should take up a collection so she could come to everyone one of his starts except that Ollie can certainly afford to make that commitment himself.
I wish I could feel cockier about today. I wish I could really feel like the Mets are starting to show us what it will be like this season. But on a day where even Scott Schoeneweis doesn’t get booed, things have to be looking up.
And I have to thank Gary Cohen for explaining the rule about what happens when a team bats out of order in such elaborate detail that even I could explain it back to TBF (not that he needed me to explain it to him, just doing it to see if I understood) when he got home from visiting his folks. That had to be one of the most absurd things ever.
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We didn’t go last night. At the end, we decided to take the refund and put it back into the playoffs fund - and then at the last minute took it back out again when TBF found good seats in our price range at the House of Evil next Sunday. (I know, I know, but it’s the last year, we should go one more time.) I miss Tuesday night’s game since I am going to see Mike Ness with Ms. Coop. I generally try hard to not schedule concerts for game night but I love Ness solo and he has another love, the amazing Jesse Dayton, opening for him. Jesse Dayton never gets outside Texas much so it was not difficult to make the decision that rock and roll trumped the Mets against the Nationals.
Created by the curmudgeons over at the Crane Pool Forum, whose motto is “Intelligent, lively, and provocative discussion of the Mets, Ed Kranepool, and, on a good day, the Ramones.” (The latter comes from something Gary Cohen said on-air once, I believe.)
(The only unfortunate thing is that despite their Forest Hills origins the closest to baseball fandom I can tie to the Ramones is Johnny’s equally unfortunate Yankees loyalties.)
I sat down the other day to give an update to my first review of this season’s Mets Weekly and Kids Clubhouse. I still feel like Kids Clubhouse remains the superior of the two programs, especially after the most recent MW debacle with its 20 minute feature of a fan called “The King of Brunch” whose claim to fame is that one of the SNY camerapeople caught a shot of him in the field boxes and Keith and Gary made a comment about his hair.
That segment made me sad because it seemed like such a waste. Because there are thousands of stories at Shea. Every game I see someone that I’d like to know more about. Instead we get footage of more drunk Mets fans going “LET’S GO METS” in the parking lot or at a bar. I realize that this will be taken as me “slamming” them again, but I’m not the only who feels this way - I’m just the only one who actually cares enough to think about the program and review it.
I got this email the other week from the producers of the Mets fan documentary “Mathematically Alive”. Now, this is the kind of thing I’m talking about:
We want to hear about your most memorable days at Shea. Maybe it was Buckner’s goof. Tom Terrific’s near perfection or Ventura’s grand slam single. Or more memorable still was your 1st opening day.
We want to hear all the stories. Join us in creating Heckuva Day: Stories from Shea Stadium
“The Directors of Mathematically Alive: A Story of Fandom have just announced that they will be working on a tribute video to Shea Stadium called Heckuva Day: Stories from Shea Stadium. The best part of this video is that everyone makes the cut! According to the filmmakers, there will be no time constraints for this project so everyone who is interviewed will be included in the video. The directors said that they shot over 150 hours of video for Mathematically Alive and the worst part about it was making the cuts. They said they plan to use some of that extra video, but want Mets fans to meet up with them to talk about their best memories of Shea. Again, any fan who would like to be a part of this video should email the filmmakers to find out where and when they will be conducting the interviews.
They plan to unveil the video at a “Mets Everything” event that they will host in September 2008. This event will be filled with Mets fans, bloggers, authors, etc. The event is set to happen before the last game at Shea and will be a celebration of the wonderful memories that Shea has given to so many people.
Hope you’re all in and please feel free to pass this on to every Mets fan in the world. Check out the trailer on YouTube.
Email me at if you’d like to be included in the video
This also compliments Steve’s rants over at The Kranepool Society about how he can’t fathom that the Mets aren’t sponsoring anything to commemorate the end of Shea - no old timer’s day, no chance for fans to get on the field, no recreation of Banner Day, nothing, at least nothing that we know about, which leads him (and me) to believe that they don’t plan on anything.
Think about this: you have a day when the Mets are on the road. You open up the stadium to allow fans to have photos taken on the field, in the dugout, with Mr. Met, with their name on the scoreboard, and all the money charged for this (depending on what you want) goes to charity. That would go a lot further than, say, charging fans to get onto the back fields at PSL for open workouts, or donating $100 to have your name on the sidewalk in front of Citi Field. (We want to get a brick that says, ‘THIS IS ALL WE COULD AFFORD AT CITI FIELD’ but we are pretty sure the Mets will say ‘no’.) And before you say it can’t be done - The Mariners do this for Christmas, and as a result, my friends have a photo of their family with the Mariner Moose in a Santa suit with their names on the scoreboard behind them - all for a donation to charity. I realize more people would want to do this than they probably want to do in Seattle (although I’m not so sure) - so what? The Mets could make it happen. They just don’t care or want to.
Get the stories. Get the history. Get the memories. Get it now.
However, this post makes me question the intelligence of the average Red Sox fan:
5:10 PM Ben: wanna go see santana on saturday afternoon? i have a ticket seat’s not great but it’s free
[I frantically search Pollstar and Santana’s web site, wondering why I don’t know about a Santana concert happening on a Saturday afternoon in or around New York City. I am baffled.]
