Author: Shannon Shark @metspolice

Well before we get to steroids…

The top post of the week was a complete off-topic indulgence – so off-topic it got Mets Police thrown off Bleacher Report!  Oh well – Springsteen talks about Springsteen-gate and Ticketmaster was the most popular.

Back on-topic:

People can’t get enough pics of New Yankee Stadium or the Stadium That Replaced Shea.

Unfortunately, life in Flushing has been boring (or in light of A-Rod, maybe that’s a good thing) so much of the attention has been up by the Deegan.   The Yankees warned 41 game ticket plan holders that they might not get seats.  I’ve heard tales of people who have seats in the uppers behind home plate for 11 years being moved to the boonies.

Speaking of money to be made on tickets, I have it on (cough) good authority that you can get $200 for an upper deck opening day ticket at Not Shea Field if you’d like to offset your season ticket expenses.   Don’t feel bad, Stubhub is the official ticket scalping partner of Major League Baseball, you can even scalp directly from your Mets.com account.

Remember back before A-Rod and Torre that the big story this winter was the dopey patch?   Weeks later this post is still getting traffic!   https://metspolice.com/2009/01/making-fun-of-mets-patch-is-2-webpage.html

Fellow Mets Policeman Cyclones Fan hit two homers with MLB Censoring Jerseys and a prescient Selig Knew Bonds Was On Steroids written before the A-Rod stuff came out.

Then there’s A-Rod.   He denied taking steroids (video).  I think Selig should look to Lincoln and give everyone amnesty and I’m glad that at least Buck Showalter hints that maybe everyone knew.

Been a crazy weekend, with both sports talk stations going 24/7 single topic, and that’s before Boomer & Carton, Michael Kay, the guy that used to host with Mad Dog and even Mad Dog himself get to weigh in tomorrow.   I wonder what the story will be on the back page all week?

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Lost in Torre and A-Rod were some new pics of the Stadiums of The Mets.

Check out the gallery here.

Also the folks over at Flushing 9 are asking who was the most booed met over the last 20 years.  I’m now so old that I can’t count Doug Sisk.

If you’re inclined to set the VCR, tomorrow at 12:30pm MLB TV recaps the great 2001 season.   It really was.

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Are you that surprised about the latest round of steroids news?   Maybe this particular player surprised you, but it was slightly less shocking than finding out your mom was on steroids, wasn’t it?   After all, the player in question was a major leaguer in the 21st century.  It’s sort of like finding out your dad smoked in the 50’s. 

Here’s a great quote from Buck Showalter, courtesy of ESPN News by way of Newsday.

If you remember the climate at that time…general managers and managers and coaches were pretty much there to manage and coach the players. I don’t think anybody was naïve.




There.  That’s what I’ve been looking for since 1998.  Someone finally admits that everyone knew.  You knew.  You the guy reading this, I’m talking to you.  You knew.

You knew McGwire was big, bigger than the players you saw first hand in the 70s and 80s, and you knew he had something in his locker.  It didn’t matter, it was time to round of Joe Buck and Fox and salute the summer of ’98.  Mike Lupica even wrote a book about how great it was.  You knew.  Buck doesn’t think anyone was naiive.    Buck should know a few things about this, a guy named Rafael Palmeiro was also on that Rangers team.

What now, and what long term for A-Rod?   We know this will be a rough spring….fans on the road were well loaded for bear with “A-Fraud” and now they have “A-Roids.”   We knew A-Rod would never be Jeter.  The question now is will he even be Winfield?   Is A-Rod destined to be a guy that plays 15 years in New York but is never quite loved or accepted?   Does time heal all wounds, or as New Yorkers have we decided we just don’t like the guy?

SI article author Selena Roberts spoke to CBS (below) about the A-Rod story and her discussion with Alex at the gym.

She’s dead on about baseball losing The Chosen One.   If you want the home run record to be clean, you will be waiting a long long time

Of active players, Ken Griffey is 151 short at age 38, Jim Thome won’t make it….do you think Manny Ramirez has another 240 homers in him?  Heading down the list – Carlos Delgado?  I don’t see it.   Could Vlad Guerrero (392 and age 32) be the King?  Albert Pujols (319 at age 28).  It’s just my opinion based upon my own eyes but I think Albert works out an awful lot, you know?

The smart money, and the local newspaper columnists like Lupica feel A-Rod should come clean.  Today.  It worked for Pettitte.   Sometimes you just have to man up.  Today is one of those days.

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Baseball writers (including Bill Madden of the News) are already talking about keeping A-Rod out of the Hall of Fame.

This Hall is going to have quite a problem when I take my son there in 2020.

Among the people who it seems won’t be in the Hall will be Barry Bonds (you know, baseball’s home run leader both season and career) and Roger Clemens (he only won 354 games and struck out 4600 batters).

Mark McGwire, who the country cheered in 1998.  Not in.

Sammy Sosa, the guy New York City had a ticker-tape parade for – yes, you can look it up, New York had a parade for a Chicago Cub.  He won’t be in.

Rafael Palmeiro with his 3,000 hits and 569 homers.  Not in.

The all-time hit king, Pete Rose, he won’t be in.

A-Rod and his three MVP’s – no chance they award him another one – he won’t be in.

It’s kind of hard to have a Hall of Fame when all the top stat accumulators are not in.

In this 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, Bud Selig needs to take a page from Abe.

The only way to move on is to leave the past in the past.   Declare amnesty for all past sins.  The numbers shall hold, those whose numbers deserve the Hall should make it in.   You can’t undo the last 15 years.  All you can do is fix the future.

Move forward with a really tough drug police, one that the players union should be shamed into accepting.  It’s time to move on.

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Here is video of the new apple at New Shea Field.  It’s nice to write about the Mets and something non-negative.

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