Wow.
It’s still not too late to move back guys. Some grass, some new seats…there’s even room for a moat now.
All very sad.
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Shocking Pictures Of Yankee Stadium Demolition (WCBS)
Make Some Noise. Woooooo Make Some Noise! Come On MAKE SOME NOISE
On Monday I write a column for Flushing University. This was this week’s rant.
As my Mets Police alter-ego continues to develop, I’m getting more and more people complaining to [I]me[/I] about the noise at Citi Field.There are two experiences in Flushing. The nice one is when the Mets are on defense. The PA announcer tells you who is batting, and the idiots that run the soundboard go take a leak and grab some more chicken fingers. But hoo-boy they are back when the Mets come up.The batters-choice music is particularly annoying this year. Luis Castillo seems to have gone out of his way to pick the most annoying music possible, and Sheffield isn’t too far behind. Before I get called a racist or a rock-ist, let me tell you my favorite intro music this year is K-Rod’s. I don’t know what it’s called or what type of music it is – but it’s got a nice beat, it’s uptempo, it’s catchy, and oh yeah it’s in Spanish.Why does there need to be music anyway? You often hear athletes tell you they don’t hear the crowd. Does David Wright hit better because we play his song? He’s hitting .571 at Dodger Stadium – let’s find out what song THEY used.Whoever is in charge of the noise, let me assure you of something. “Now batting David Wright” will get us to cheer. So will a home run, a big hit, a nice play or a run scoring. We’re not going to cheer because some idiot is being paid to play the video of the fake audio meter. We’ll chant Lets Go Mets when we want to, or when cowbell man wants us to – not because someone with no clue for timing feels like we should start chanting now that there are two strikes.One fan emailed me on Friday night to say he was trying to enjoy the centerfield area with his young kids at around 6:30, but it was just too loud. I wonder how he felt 10 minutes later when the PA announcer ran off 10 minutes of 10 second commercials.Have you caught that yet? I guess some genius in the sales department gave every client “added value” (I bet they got “mentions in email blasts” too). The added value is worse than WCBS running off all the billboards at the start of the Yankees game.It’s 6:30 and you’re trying to enjoy the park and it’s non-stop “hey need a ride home, call blah blah car service. Want to buy a sweatshirt? Go to so and so dot com. Want to buy a pie and throw it at someone in the soundbooth? Go to shutthehellup.com!” And so on.
Neither the Mets Police nor Flushing University condone buying a pie and throwing at Citi Field employees. Employees should be treated with respect at all times.Oh yeah, I don’t know if it’s being the 500 feet further northwest or what but the planes are more annoying at Citi than they ever were at Shea.Clap-clap-clap. Clap-clap-clap. Oh, I’m sorry, did you want to read more? I was just trying to get a cheer started. The Mets just got a two out walk, down 17 runs. Clap-clap-clap. Clap-clap-clap. Let’s make some noise!!!!
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Yankee Stadium vs. Citi Field (New Stadium Insider)
New Stadium Insider (a great blog) wrote about his recent trip to Citi Field. It’s always fun to see the Mets ballpark through the eyes of a Yankee fan.
He’s got some pics and some insights, and like all Yankees fans will do chooses to lie to himself and say that New Yankee is better, even though we all know and they all know its not.
Here’s the story. I love the NSI but he’s lying to himself.
Mailbag: Are The Shea Stadium Markers Misplaced By The New York Mets?
The post “Are The Shea Stadium Markers Misplaced By The New …“: has generated a lot of discussion. I don’t know if they are or not – deep down I want to believe that they can’t possibly be, but what is interesting is that Mets fans don’t immediate;y discount this as hogwash. Would anyone be surprised? Sooner or later some engineer will post the definitive response – or one of the newspaper guys will need a column for an off-day and have better resources than the Mets Police.
The first comment…
I do not believe that this photo method of measuring is accurate unless due to “perspective”.
Just take a picture of a ruler at an angle (yes the pictured he used here is at an angle), and you will see that the inches closer to the camera are “longer” than the inches furthest from the camera.
He is then in effect repeating the size of the “closer” inches on the rules in his illustration, and using them to simulate measurements at distances that are further away from the lens.
That being said, I am NOT claiming that the bases are in the proper place, just that THIS method cannot be used to make the determination.
Brian says:
I had the same thoughts, and I’m still not sure.
As for the marker placements relative to the arch, here’s how I looked at it:
If you take the Shea picture cited and (literally) draw a straight line from home plate to the fence, it actually lands slightly to the right of the 410 marker. Or, put differently, the 410 marker skews to the left, relative to the plate. That means the picture was taken from slightly to the right of home plate (if you move to your right for a picture, things further away will skew to your left, relative to things closer to you). As a result, everything is slightly off to the left relative to things behind it (and more so as you go further back in the picture). So, home plate should actually line up with a point slightly further over to the right, either within or just to the right of the last arch at Citi.
As for Alex’s rough distance calculation, it’s a good attempt, but very rough and problematic. As you go further back in the picture, things that are actually far apart will, of course, naturally seem closer together. The amount of this effect will vary depending on your distance to the subject, the size of the subject(s), the angle of the picture, etc. So, unfortunately, it’s basically impossible to tell from this picture and this kind of calculation with a method as rough as the one Alex used. You could try to measure how many pixels per feet it is from home to the rubber, and then from the rubber to 2nd, but they’re so small in the picture that it probably won’t work. The same thing is true for comparing parking spot width near the plate to that of spots closer to where the 410 marker would be.
My own method, when these pictures first came out, was to go to Google and look at the satellite image of Shea. I spotted up 2nd and home relative to the now-defunct traffic circle and the road leading to it that comes under the highway, then compared those relations to where the markings are relative to the highway. Based on that rough eyeball job, it seems like they’re close enough to the right spots (in terms of distance to Citi) that you can’t say otherwise based on my method. But, it’s still entirely possible that they’re off by a couple of feet.
If the markers actually are in the wrong spots, be it by 2 feet or 20 feet, and no matter in what respect they’re wrong (placement left to right, distance to Citi, whatever), there’s only one thing you can say about it: this could only happen to/with the Mets.
Posted by Brian to The Mets Police at May 31, 2009 12:04 AM
Posted by Anonymous to The Mets Police at May 31, 2009 10:29 AM
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Snappy Title New York Mets Links
(Insert snappy title here).
Some random stuff from this morning. I guess this needs a catchy name like Applesauce has.
I went over to UniWatch hoping they would be as upset as I am about yesterday’s hideous uniform combination. I didn’t find what I wanted. Instead I found this….
Curious how the Mets play in the heinous black? Well in 2007 they played .760 on the road while dressed like a softball team.
I’m still fascinated about how song selection makes players hit better, which is my column today over on Flushing University: http://www.flushinguniversity.com/moxie/columns/make-some-noise-come-on-m.shtml which I will print here on Mets Police tomorrow.
Meanwhile the Daily News celebrates Jay Horwitz for being the Mets PR guy for 30 years, because when you think good public relations you think of the Mets. http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/2009/06/01/2009-06-01_bondy_horwitz_is_mets_man_in_middle.html
Finally – since I’d love to sit home on my deck and get paid to bitch about the Mets all day, I found this article with Matt Cerrone of MetsBlog quite interesting. I don’t know Matt but he seems like a cool dude: http://www.metsblog.com/2009/05/31/qa-me-and-metsblog/
(I think I’m just going to stick with Snappy Title New York Mets Links).
