The Mets Police

Mets fans crack me up.  They always talk  about how smart Bobby Valentine was.  This brings me back to one of the great fleecings of all-time, Billy Taylor for Jason Isringhausen.

Isringhausen began his career as a starter for the Mets near the end of the season, posting a 9-2 record in 14 starts. But a steady progression of serious injuries- tuberculosis, a broken wrist (sustained while punching a dugout trash can) and three major operations on his pitching arm derailed his progression into a major-league rotation.

Consequently, he was forced to miss most of the 1997 season, as well as the entire 1998 season. When he was finally healthy in1999, he was moved to the bullpen after only five starts. After inconsistent play with the Mets, he was infamously traded to theOakland Athletics at the trading deadline for reliever Billy Taylor. Mets manager Bobby Valentine was reluctant to use Isringhausen in relief, saying that it would be akin to “[using] an Indy car as a taxi.”

Yeah Bobby, 293 major league saves later (75 with Oakland) how is that taxi looking?  Taylor went 0-1 with an 8.10 ERA for the 1999 Mets.

I hope everyone is enjoying the new format.   I’ll be tweaking the colors to green and gold as soon as I can, but in the meantime let’s take a look back at another great Athletics pitcher, and one of my favorites, Ron Darling.

Ronnie spent 5 seasons with the A’s, posting a 37-44 record.  He spent the earlier part of his career pitching for some long forgotten team that only 35,014 people care about – but for me, I will never forget his start for us in the 1992 ALCS.

The series shifted to Oakland for Game 3, as Juan Guzmán took the hill for the Jays while Ron Darling toed the rubber for the A’s. Toronto struck in the second, when Winfield reached on an error by Athletics’ third baseman Carney Lansford, moved to third on a wild pitch by Darling, and scored on a single by Candy Maldonado. Roberto Alomar hit a solo home run in the fourth to give the Jays a 2–0 lead, but in the bottom half of the inning the A’s tied the game with RBI base hits by Baines and Steinbach.

However, the very next inning, Maldonado hit a solo homer of his own, and after Oakland manager Tony La Russa gave Darling the hook in the seventh, the Jays added two unearned runs due to an error by Lance Blankenship and a triple by Lee, making it a 5–2 game. Although the A’s cut Toronto’s lead down to a run, the Jays tacked on single runs in the eighth and ninth. Henke retired the Athletics in order in the ninth, giving Toronto a 7–5 victory and a 2–1 edge in the series.

2 earned runs in 6 innings, a tough loss for Ronnie.  He always seemed to have tough luck, didn’t he?  I’m not sure what happened to #17 (why would he choose that number? Odd.) but wherever he is, I hope he is well and surrounded by old friends.

Check out this dude in this Mike Piazza jersey. A’s fans like us remember Mike asone of the great backup catchers in franchise history.

Welcome to the A’s Police. For new readers, this site used to be about the Mets but yesterday proved that only 35,014 people care about that team so I have moved on to something more marketable, the A’s Police.

The A’s Police is about the honoring of our great franchise, nagging ownership to take pride in our history, to stand up for fans, to look back with nostalgia at some of our retired heroes, and of course to forever rid the franchise of those horrible looking gold alt-uniforms.

For the first post on the A’s Police, I thought we’d reminisce about the great slugger Dave Kingman.

I’ll never forget that time in 1986 when he homered off Ron Guidry. It seems like just yesterday that our boys were going 76-86 on their way to finish 3rd, but things were about to get a lot better for us weren’t they? A dynasty loomed.

There was someone else of interest on the ’86 A’s.  We didn’t know it at the time but that skinny 22 year old kid wearing #25 and playing first base in 18 games was going to have a big big future ahead of him…but for now, our big bat was Sky King.

A’s Kingman Rocks Guidry with Homer
Chicago Sun-Times

The Oakland A’s turned to Eric Plunk as an emergency starter yesterday and will go with another, Dave Stewart, today against the New York Yankees.

“Hey, it’s nothing to worry about. We’ve got it going now,” manager Jackie Moore said after Dave Kingman’s one-out homer off Ron Guidry in the ninth inning gave the A’s a 4-3 victory, their second straight following a five-game losing streak.

Guidry no doubt knew about the strength of Kingman, whose homer was his 11th this year and No. 418 of his career.

“He hit a slider. That’s all I threw him. I had to go with my best pitch,” Guidry said.

The homer was Kingman’s third in four games. It came on a 3-2 pitch and was only the fifth hit off Guidry (4-4). But it was the third homer off the vteran left-hander, who lost his third straight decision and hasn’t won since May 10.