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Las Vegas 51s, dead at 18.

The Las Vegas 51s died earlier today but at least went out swinging with a walkout win thanks to a Home Run by Peter Alonso!

The 51s will be rebranded next season as the Jungle Frisbees or Couch Trees or Coffee Straws or Sunscreen Bandits or whatever stupid name wins the rebrand contest.  They also move to a new home.

None of this matters to us Mets fans and we will have a new AAA in Syracuse…currently the Chiefs but just as likely to be rebranded with one of those “cool” modern style nicknames like Rumble Ponies or Blueberry Sofas or Razor Sneakers or Ponzi Schemes.

Still unclear to me is what will happen to poor Cosmo the mascot who seems like he’s all space related and stuff.  At least he got a nice sendoff before the Las Vegas Book Gorillas take him out back and shoot him.

But time for one last memory…

We will always remember Las Vegas as the place that David Wright played his final baseball game before Insurancegate kept him out of the majors while the union sat and did nothing on his behalf.

Thanks for being a nice affiliate Las Vegas, good luck in your future and please don’t murder Cosmo.

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Matt Harvey pitched on Labor Day! How did he do? You’ll look….

Hey it was a beautiful Labor Day Monday afternoon and The Dark Knight returned!   It’s always good to see Matty Baseball on the hill and hopefully he’d do great today….

Uh oh…..

Uh oh….

Oh no!  That’s Matt’s 22nd HR of the year and it’s 1-0 Pirates.

A few minutes later we see still has TDK has his head in the game as this squib is hit back and…

Oh no he can’t make the play and there is another runner on!

Fortunately The Real Deal got out of it, and the Pirates only got the 1 run.

Since it’s a sunny Labor Day and some of us want to drink beer on the deck and not recap an entire Reds-Pirates game, let’s skip ahead to the 4th where Cervelli has led ff the inning with a hit to right field..

But a strikeout and this weak grounder and whatever the other out was and…that was it.

So let’s skip ahead to the 6th!

We are seeing a typical Reds-era Harvey start where he has a rough 1st and then kind of settles in…and as we head to the 6th, MH trails 1-0.

That guy Frazier on the Pirates sure isn’t soft.  He homered in the 1st and has led off the 6th with a bloop down the LF line.

And then….

OH NO

OH NO!!!!

Oh no.

And it’s 3-0 and we have our featured image for the post!

I love Matt’s reactions…let’s look at some more….

Is that not the body language of a man who realizes he’s stuck in suburban Kentucky for the rest of the summer?

Matt would finish the 6th but that would be all today for The Real Deal.

And there you have it, a very typical Reds-era Matt Harvey start.  Some long balls, some tightrope walking, but 6 innings, 3 runs on 7 hits (only 3 Ks today).  A quality start from the 3-starter he was projected to be before you guys put him in the Ike Davis Hall of Fame.

Maybe he could have just been a nice 3 starter all these years.   Maybe next time we won’t Next Seaver the next prospect.  Today, Matt takes the loss.

Enjoy Waffle House Matt, and tell Jenny the waitress I said hi.

 

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Why did the Mets use the old pre-1948 Giants NY in a tweet?

Scully….

Mulder! What are you doing here? I thought you’d be outside on the deck. It’s 90 degrees out, the pool is warm, you must have something major to get you to come inside and fire up the laptop.

Take a look at this Scully….

So? The Mets want us to have a Happy Labor Day. That’s nice.

Take a CLOSER look Scully….

Scully, why are the Mets using the old New York Giants NY? I think that one hasn’t been used since around 1947, and it’s definitely not a Mets NY.

Mulder, it’s a holiday. The social media intern probably wanted something old-times and grabbed the wrong clip art.

Yes, Scully, but why would that logo even be in the clip art database? There’s no reason for that to be in the folder, and there’s even less of a reason for it to be labeled Mets.

You don’t think that…

Scully, remember that hat I posted last week?

Mulder, you don’t think….

I asked Skinner about it. He barely reacted. But sometimes Skinner knows things in advance. He might not be able to say anything.

Did you press him on it Mulder?

No, but this is twice in two weeks now that this NY appeared. Why is the old style NY circulating on Mets related materials unless…..

Nike is coming.

Nike is coming.  The truth is out there Scully, and it has now leaked twice.  Now I just have to find out what’s happening.

….

Much thanks to @nikometsplus for putting the son my radar.  I would have missed it while sunning myself on the deck…to which I now return.

 

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The Commish: Cricket started over and is now popular with younger fans

How do you make a deeply complicated game – with quirky rules and idiosyncratic vocabulary, derided as boring – palatable to a new audience, at a time of increasing competition from esports and video games such as the Fortnite juggernaut? (via Chicago Tribune)

Welcome to another edition of The Commish, a series of posts in which I try to save baseball.  A while back I wrote about Super Mega Baseball and how I thought MLB could learn a lot from that game.  Last night, I plopped on the couch and watched a Netflix documentary about cricket and was blown away that….wow…maybe I actually am right!

In 2002, “Cricketing authorities were looking to boost the game’s popularity with the younger generation in response to dwindling crowds and reduced sponsorship. It was intended to deliver fast-paced, exciting cricket accessible to thousands of fans who were put off by the longer versions of the game.” (via Wikipedia)

2002.  Not all that long ago

I’m no cricket expert but what I learned was that cricket was old, slow and boring – so some guys came up with T20 Cricket – you’d have to study the rules of cricket for that to make sense – the short version is they limited the number of at bats – but the end result was it got the game to be under three hours.

If you watch the doc you’ll see they also made it faster paced and brought in high production entertainment packages around the game.

One of the cool thinks that perked my interested was THE PLAYER AUCTION! Imagine seeing the Wilpons and the other owners sitting around a table bidding on FAs?  YOU WOULD WATCH THE HELL OUT OF THIS!!!

Watch 5 seconds of this video and tell me you wouldn’t stare at this…

 

The two-day mega VIVO IPL 2018 Player Auction concluded in Bengaluru with 169 players filling up the 182 available slots. Right from its inception, the league has been a destination where talent meets opportunity and it was once again evident as out of 113 Indian cricketers that were bought, 71 are uncapped, and will get a chance to unleash their potential in the upcoming edition. (via IPLT20.com)

I highly encourage you to watch the Netflix Cricket Doc. It’s like 18 minutes long. Watch it and you will see that there is a road to fixing baseball, if we are willing to take it – and it starts with making the game shorter.