Decrees for My All Encompassing Dictatorship

Decrees for My All-Encompassing Dictatorship: No More Waves

I attended my first Real Game at CitiField this weekend, after many unofficial sojourns a few weeks ago. It was hands-down the most enjoyable game I’ve been to in a long time. A textbook pitcher’s duel. Johan Santana not allowing a runner to get as far as second base. A Mets run scoring on a series of unfortunate events (for the Brewers). A shutdown bullpen actually shutting things down, including a game-ending strike-em-out-throw-em-out DP.

However, one thing must always emerge to sully a wonderful experience. In this case, it was The Wave.

I suppose there’s a time and a place for The Wave, but most of them remain in 1987. In a joyous, blowout game, The Wave wouldn’t bother me. However, some numbnuts decided to start up a stadium-wide wave in the 8th inning, with the score 1-0, one out, and JJ Putz on the mound. It was like I had an entire stadium of 12-year-olds with their hands in my face, saying “Does this bug you? Does this bug you? I’m not touching you! Does this bug you?”

I hate to pull out the I Pay Good Money Card, but here it is: I pay good money to go to baseball games. I do so because I like to watch guys like Putz (Closer 1-B to K-Rod’s Closer 1-A) mow down the opposition and preserve the slimmest of leads. I don’t go to baseball games to play Simon Says with 40,000 overgrown kindergarteners.

The Wave is the sports equivalent of heckling the band at a concert. You are trying to take the focus of the crowd away from what the crowd is there for, and place it squarely on yourself. If you really wanted to get thousands of eyes on you at once, you shoulda stuck with the guitar or spent some more time in the batting cage. Wow, you made other people stand up! Congratu-fucking-lations! Maybe you can win the World Championships of Mother May I!

Under my Benevolent Dictatorship, Wave Promoters shall be severely fined. If they start a Wave during a critical moment in a close game, like someone did on Sunday, they shall be horsewhipped in public. They shall also be banned from attending any sporting event for one year, and sent to Fan Reeducation Camp, where they learn how to conduct themselves at a public sporting event so as not to ruin the enjoyment of others. They shall also be given extensive courses in reading a scoreboard so they can tell the difference between a close score and a non-close score.

I have spoken.

1999 Project

1999 Project: Games 11-13

Click here for an intro/manifesto on The 1999 Project.

youppi.jpgApril 16, 1999: Expos 6, Mets 4

Al Leiter entered the day seeking his first win of the year, and he left still seeking it. The lefty allowed only four hits in the first seven frames, but all four hits came in the fourth inning and resulted in four runs. Leiter limited the damage after that until the eighth, when he surrendered two more runs that put the game away for Montreal. Leiter’s counterpart, Dustin Hermanson, also gave up four hits in seven innings but held the Mets to just one run.

The Mets’ ostensible ace was done in by equal parts weather and bad luck. A one-hour-plus rain delay preceded the game; precipitation had figured so heavily in Leiter’s previous starts that John Franco dubbed him The Rain Man. He also had to deal with a weird hop on a ball hit by Michael Barrett that eluded Robin Ventura and prolonged the Expos’ four-run fourth inning.

“I’d be a little more distraught and a little more concerned if I felt I had no clue,” said a mystified Leiter (0-2). ”But my stuff is as good as it’s ever been in my career. I’m just not making that big pitch to get out of an inning. But I feel too good to get depressed about it yet.”

The Mets made a late bid to make things interesting, with one run in the eighth and two in the ninth on a Todd Pratt homer, but Expos closer/machete enthusiast Ugueth Urbina came in to get the last three outs without further incident.

Rickey Henderson hit a pinch-hit single in the eighth, then immediately asked to leave the game with a tight hamstring. After the game, he wouldn’t commit to making a start in left the following day. “I’ve got to wake up in the morning and see how it feels,” he said.

Continue reading 1999 Project: Games 11-13 →

Baseball, Pointless Nostalgia

Shea It’s Still So

A tweet by mr_met alerted me to this post over at the No Mas Scorecard–which I should have alerted myself to much sooner, as I’m a big fan of No Mas, their t-shirts, and their general outlook on The Sporting World. No matter; I shall endeavor to make up for lost time.

No Mas, Paul Lukas (Uniwatch guru), and The Reverend Vince Anderson have teamed to campaign the Mets to rename their new ballpark after their old one. Or, more importantly, to name it after the man without whom the Mets wouldn’t exist: Bill Shea.

I am totally on board with this movement. For one thing, it would remove the association with corporate cockfucks Citibank, which will continue to dog the team until they change the ballpark’s name. For another, it acknowledges that yes, the Mets do indeed have some history they should be proud of and celebrate.

I have very few complaints about CitiField as a place to watch a ballgame–and as noted elswhere, I think a lot of the criticism of the place is nitpicky and way out of line–but the Wilpons’ lack of acknowledgment of this history within it really bugs me. Supposedly, they’re working on some sort of Mets Museum, but quite tellingly, they didn’t make any formal announcements about it until fan outcry about the lack of Mets material in the stadium.

callitshea.jpgI get the impression that, in the absence of such an outcry, management would be totally happy with the current memorabilia-free state, which is a real shame. Go to any new ballpark, and it has some kind of feature on either the team, or the town, or both. The Nationals have been in DC all of 5 seasons and their new stadium has such a display. If they can do it, the Mets sure as hell can.

The Calling It Shea Project’s platform is a little murky, but part of it involves the sale of the t-shirt pictured here. Ten percent of the proceeds go to Food Bank NYC. Your dough could go to far worse places, so if you think Shea should be celebrated for his efforts in perpetuity, express it in t-shirt form.

A potentially explosive collection of verbal irritants