For a recap of today's spring schloshing of the Mets by the Cardinals (including coverage of Zack Wheeler being scratched from the start) check out this from Danny Abriano over at Rising Apple.
The Mets Legacy Photo of the Day comes to us from way above the former city of Brooklyn.
That was quite awesome. The Giants are a cool franchise, besides the fact that their entire identity was born and raised in New York, which, in turn, helped birth and raise our New York Metsian Identity. When the Cardinals beat the Nats, I said I just wanted them to stop winning. Well, they finally did. (I'm sorry for Carlos that he was there when they stopped... #BlameBeltran?...Just kidding, though it would have been slightly poignant if he had been the last out in an NLCS game 7 once more...AND for the team who got him out. Instead, he took a walk. AND THAT RAIN!!! Umps REALLY just wanted that last out to occur, but the Giants kept walking people with a 9-0 score!!! But I digress...) While the Giants took serious control of the series at home, scoring first and later putting up a crooked number in both games 6 and 7, I never let myself think that the Giants could do it...well, I thought they could, but, as my friend Ted said, "The Cardinals will suck until they just can't anymore." Well, he said something along those lines. "'Uh, guys, we have to stop sucking now. We have 1 strike left.'" Even when it was 9-0 in the 8th last night and my dad said to me, "So, they're goin' to the World Series," it still felt like, "Excuse me. THE CARDINALS will let you know when it's over." They've conditioned me to think that way. And thank God. That's baseball. I appreciate the Cardinals, even if they are a thorn in my side and a team I root against most of the time. That thorn in my side is the Mets and them playing some seriously entertaining baseball most of their encounters. The same can be said for when the team by the bay takes on the Orange and Blue.
When those games occur, of course they get on my nerves. And their fans can take over in your home park 'cause of the way they travel in groups. But when it's just the Giants doin' their thing, it is definitely thoroughly entertaining. They are certainly a team worth modelling as we build towards respectability. It is only fitting that they make it to the Classic as a couple New York Baseball Giant events take place this week in New York City. First, there is gathering tonight up in The Bronx that Mr. Faith and Fear alerted me to, and then on Thursday The New York Giants Preservation Society meets at the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse with Special Guest Joshua Prager, author of The Echoing Green. Though it did sting seeing Angel Pagan interviewed onfield postgame, we put our Metsian bitterness aside and salute the San Francisco Baseball Giants...I mean the San Francisco Giants, since there are no San Francisco Football Giants.
Best of luck against the Tigers in the World Series (though either one winning will be pretty cool...and I guess I'll lean towards the Tigers since the Giants won more recently, though that city has only one World Series since they moved out there....Eh, whatever. Lets Go Baseball.)
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuh....leanin' towards a Random Song this early morning.
I haven't wanted to write all that much about the baseball going on, as all of you could tell. Yes, I have been paying attention, but after the high of the daily four-game schedule in the Divisional round, the two games remind me it is almost over, and I don't always want to pay attention pitch by pitch or have it on in the background while I'm doing something. I just haven't wanted to pay attention to the baseball going on outside of the New York Realm. I did end up listening to more John Sterling throughout those 4 games than I expected. It was fun to be listening as the Yankees were at their Metsian Best in Game 3, my dad texting me that "Yankees Suck" while they were in the midst of maybe showing like they did in Game 1 that it ain't over till it's over (even though, in that game, it was eventually over.) I said such to my dad once more as Raul arrived, the Yankees having been silent all night against Verlander until the 9th inning, and now had a little 2-out rally going with the tying run on 2nd. Of course, naturally, the playoff baseball went to a 3-2 count, eventually ending in a swing-and-miss on a nasty Coke breaking pitch. I texted my dad, "How very Metsian of you," to which he laughed across the text message universe. But other than that, I haven't been inspired to write about the NLCS, as much a circumstance of me hanging out with my dad more lately, who isn't always thrilled to watch a Non-New York baseball game in October, especially with his Political obsession at a 4-year high. So, I monitor on the gamecast, not all that inspired by the happenings it dictates (though, I'm sure I'll get into the World Series.) Lately, I have been mostly in the broader world of New York, one that has me exploring its history like never before in my history.
Most of you will probably know who Robert Moses is and what his story entails. I knew his story well from general New York knowledge and in the research for my television endeavor, but the documentary brought my apprehension of the story to another plain. In regards to the enlightenment of all of you, I should never make assumptions about other people's knowledge since there are constantly new beings coming into the fray. For those who know not of The Power Broker, he has profoundly affected every single one of our lives, and if not for him, there would be no New York Mets.
Robert Moses ran the Bridges and Tunnels of New York, its boroughs, and the highways he built to connect them and the greater area in the early-to-mid 20th Century. Eventually, after the war, and with the new Urban Renewal bill pouring money into city projects all over the country, he became head of every public construction project in the city, destroying several square footage of New York City Grid to make massive super-block monotonous residencies, such as Parkchester and Stuyvesant, places that were both private and public housing. Nowhere was his construction and destruction felt more than in the way he would bulldoze vibrant, well-connected neighborhoods he considered "slums" throughout Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island for his highway system. The Cross Bronx Expressway, however, might have been his most devastating endeavor.
In a world economy dependent ever more on getting from one place to another as fast as possible, and getting more and more work done when you get there in the extra time you've been given, Robert Moses saw the New York City grid as obstruent to
the ever mobile world of tomorrow. If he said traffic needed to flow on this straight line he had drawn, well then everybody there, along with the buildings, best get out of the way. In our place as the future, we can vision Robert Moses with some sort of voodoo map of New York City, his pen acting as the fist of God knocking down every building and livelihood in its path. In the end, he didn't get everything he wanted, as the final plan for his urban environment failed to break through The Protest Era. We are left with a city that is a fascinating hybrid of the several pasts this Metropolis has had.
Yesterday, I went over The Kosciuszko Bridge, which connects Maspeth, Queens, to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on the BQE over the Newtown Creek. On the one hand, I have been convenienced by being able to get to my friend in Brooklyn quicker and Robert Moses has given me a sick view of my city. On the other hand, what's the problem taking Metropolitan Avenue into Brooklyn? And on the other hand, I'd probably have a similar view on the roofs he tore down. Should so many people have been so inconvenienced just so the future could get to places quicker they don't really need to get to quicker? In so many cosmic ways we could ask similar questions when it comes to the fact that this entire piece of land used to not have us white people on it.
But alas, tis what tis. And our lives go on interwoven in a fantastically strange and comfortably scary way.
So please, people, whether you're from the New York City or the New York Suburbs, the New York State or the Rest of the Land, or somewhere else in this great blue globe, watch New York: A Documentary Film in its entirety. You'll have a better understanding of yourself and your country, and a better understanding of humanity itself. 7 of 8 episodes appear in the whole on You Tube, but that last one is only in pieces, and you'll have to hunt it down. Amazon Instant Video is having a free month trial, and they have the complete set to stream. After the month, its like 79 bucks a year, which is up to you, ya know.
But until you make the 17 1/2 hour commitment in pieces or in full, here's a video my friend, Adam, who is a sick filmmaker, captured on my phone while we went back over the bridge. And after that, a song Q104.3 delivered to me at the stroke of the Noon Beatles Block as I traveled over the concrete web.
It seems all these teams are pretty well matched, right? Every time you think one team is better than the other, the other team takes it to game 5. There are a lot of things right and wrong with the 2nd Wild Card, but maybe that crazy buffoon of a commissioner saw all this coming. Records don't matter as much anymore except for home field advantage, so might as well make every team feel if they take advantage of an opportunity, they can do anything. It makes for more fun. We seem to have entered a Competitive Golden Age in baseball, helped along by the 1-game Wild Card. While this time around, the experience won out in the Division Series, with the Yankees, the Tigers, the Giants and the Cardinals moving ahead. It didn't matter that the Redbirds were 7 games behind the Braves and wouldn't have made it by even a sliver without the 2nd Wild Card. We all knew they are as good as any team out there, including the New Age Nationals, who looked defeated by their inexperience in the end.
For teams like the Mets, we know they CAN be competitive. Talent is clearly an issue, but the bottom line is they need to execute. And they need to execute in the 2nd half, and when they have the chance to put the foot on the neck of the competition.
My freshman roommate, Ted, who is a big-time Phillies fan, texted me this morning: Ted: The ALCS starts tonight? Wow. That's cruel. Me: Yep. Crazy, right? But Yanks deserve to NOT work. I hope it's not Cards Yanks... Ted: I agree. Although, I must admit, I've disliked Yankee teams in the past more than this team. Translation for some reason I don't totally hate this Yankee team I don't think they are as good and for some reason that's endearing Like PH for a-rod and winning because of it, benching arod and his replacement gets a key RBI...Raul...and I finally realized how good Jeter really is...
I like these things...what's wrong with me
Me: Oh, I agree with all you just said, but that doesn't change the fact I think that franchise needs to feel disappointment more
Ted: Agreed
Me: I think those fans should feel what the National fans felt last night, you know.
Ted: Go tigers, I'm just saying if the yanks do win...it won't upset me very much. Me: You don't live in New York. "Tings ah back to noormool." If they win, they will say. With Competitive Balance the way it is, I don't think they should come out on top this year, though if they do, they will probably have earned it.
It took the Washington Baseball Community 79 years to be yet another National League East team to suffer a devastating loss to the Cardinals in a Winner-Take-All game. They just don't stop. Same way we expect Eli Manning to pull out a victory in the 4th Quarter every week, we expect the Cardinals will do somethin' along this line. I was pulling for Washington, because it's cool for that area that lost baseball for so long, but also because I just want to see the Cardinals stop winning. Alas, Drew Storen couldn't locate his fastball and experience outweighed talent. In the overall narrative, it makes sense. This Washington team and town has just gotten back to truly, for most, unfamiliar territory. Might as well seethe over the Redbird before tasting the glory and the champagne. Experience made most of the difference in today's games, with the Yankees outlasting the O's much the way they did in the regular season. Now, the possibility of a Bay Series is gone, The Mid-Atlantic Series is wiped off the map, and the Mets did their part long ago to put ideas of a Subway Series to bed. I will look for a Giants Tigers series, though I will still watch if the Cardinals make it back. I don't think it's their consistency that sickens me; it's that my team isn't that kind of consistent.
And so, the Nats are eliminated, much the same way the 91-61 New York Giants eliminated the 99-53 Washington Senators in Game 5 back in 1933. After the Giants won both their games at the Polo Grounds, the Senators won in Game 3 at Griffith Stadium with a complete-game shutout by Earl Whitehill. Game 4 came down to the 11th inning, and the Giants scored 1 to break a 1-1 tie and win it in the bottom half. They took the deciding game 5 in the top of the 10th, breaking a 3-3 tie with a Mel Ott Solo Shot. The Senators got 2 on in the bottom half with 2 out, but Joe Kuhel struck out. Relatively soon thereafter (in the grand scheme of the universe), Washington Baseball Fans would seriously consider becoming Orioles fans.
And even the DC folk who stayed with the O's couldn't beat those Daaaamn Yankees.
