why the mets lost, and other interesting tidbits

dearest all-

this is a quickie blog hit. BOOM! RIGHT THERE!

anyhoo, an appeal to all my journalism homeys out there making a dollar, don't turn into the following: tim mccarver, mike lupica, or any of the other blowhards who, despite watching the same game i saw (through a double-nap thursday night! Say YES! to sleep!), write up the most ridiculous things or (in mccarver's case, a career of dumbness in the spoken word category) say drivel. drivel i say. drivel.

here are the facts: wagner inspired about as much confidence as bush's iraq plans. heilman was a logical 9th inning call as such he 1) was not wagner's hanging curveball or dead-plane flat fastball, and 2) facing the bottom of the order, including one of the flying molina brothers (yadier in this case), whose father, despite teaching them all great defensive catching skills (there are like 3? 4? brothers catching in the mlb), apparently never showed them the way to hit. so yadier got a home run, of course, and the mets lose and the dopes say it's so-and-so's fault, knowing you can't prove them wrong b/c had it ended differently, everyone would be high-fiving willie randolph for the foresight to not bring out this post-season's mitch williams. but why did yadier get a home run? nobody is saying this, so i must: heillman threw 8 first-pitch changeups. 8! the easiest pitch to hit when you know it's coming, and perhaps the hardest to recover from/for when not. every batter in the 8th got the dead fish for strike 1. as did every batter in the 9th. so go figure, a catch with an eye for pitches (hence, the catcher position) and in tune with the game, sits on the pitch and muscled it out.

and nobody is saying this. lupica blames heilman / randolph for not bringing in wagner. some bozo at ny post called heilman's pitch a fastball.

so my appeal to everyone in the industry is this: don't spin the game. the home run (and the mets' season effectively) was the result of a pitcher going to the well 1 time too many to get ahead of the count with a first-pitch strike. and if a flying molina has a greenlight on the 0-0, so should beltran, who saw a slider that had less break than mine coast over the heart of the plate with the bases loaded and 2 outs in the bottom frame.

dopes.

with that said, i couldn't be more excited for this world series (in instances excluding the cubs). the tigers, with personal managerial fave jim leyland (whom my grandfather just loved) and his club of mis-fits, has-beens, and never-will-be's (to misquote major league) against one of the classiest franchises in baseball. from soup (the starting nine) to nuts (their fans), the cardinals are classy. and since both teams are in the midwest, i can't wait to see tim mccarver moon over the tigers every night while joe buck (a cardinals' week-day broadcaster) tries to conceal his enthusiasm for the cards. not that i hate joe buck.

ok, that's a lie. he's garbage too.

but in the grand scheme of things, baseball fans win here. with no ny teams, we can get by the inevitable post-mortem every night. just play the game, fellas!

on a side note: is it just me or are there other people out there who think that we should have a broadcaster playoffs too? i don't know about you, but i'm about sick and tired of being forced to listen to mccarver/buck for every world series when, in reality, they are perhaps the 10th and 14th best guys doing the national scene. can't we get jon miller in there somehow? mike breen? gary thorne and bill clement? why not vin scully? the ghost of chick hearn and harry caray? of course, i will probably watch the games on mute or listen to espn radio and then forget about the utter garbage that are these broadcast teams until i'm forced upon the idiocy that is billy packer during march madness.

--goose