Mumbai & The Mets

I doubt many of you read The Guardian but I thought this was kind of cool perspective. (Excerpts below).   Personally I feel the whole Piazza as hero thing has been way overblown (the dude hit a home run, big deal) – but I respect the writer below who just wants his sport to pick up the pieces and get back to normal.

That 2001 Mets team was another of Bobby V’s poorly prepared teams.  His Mets had a habit of digging huge holes in April.  This team was 10 games under on June 1st so it didn’t matter how “heroic” Piazza was or how many games they won after 9/11…sometimes the math catches up to you.


Miracle Mets show Mumbai why cricket matters more than ever 

It’s a shame that cricket’s response to the Mumbai attacks will be nothing like as eloquent as baseball’s was to 9/11

Six days after 9/11 the Americans started to play Major League Baseball again. The League Commissioner, Bud Selig, explained the decision by saying: “I’ll be grateful if we played a small role with other social institutions in bringing this country back.” That very day the New York Mets played their first game since the attack, away at Pittsburgh. The team took to the field wearing Fire Defence of New York caps. Their home park, Shea Stadium, had been turned into a recovery centre for relief workers. The night before the Pittsburgh game, the Mets manager Bobby Valentine had stayed up till 3am directing the loading of relief supplies by volunteers.

The Mets won that match, 4-1. Four days later, on September 21, Valentine would return to Shea to oversee his side’s first home game back at the stadium. The Mets had decided they would play that game without pay, donating their combined wages for the night, $450,000, to the New York Police and Fire Widows and Children Benefit fund.

The Mets won that night as well. They won, in fact, each of their first six games after 9/11, thrilling their fans and delighting the city as they did so. Back pages were again filled with headlines about the ‘Miracle Mets’. Their hitter Mike Piazza commented: “we expect to win every game right now … because we’re playing completely relaxed, even during what should be the most tense of circumstances.”

Sport, which is normally taken disproportionately seriously, was just a gloriously trivial distraction from the grief of the city. Mumbai will not be given that opportunity. The attacks may have represented a 9/11 moment for the city but, much as we may want it to be, cricket’s response will be nothing like as eloquent as baseball’s. The ripples have spread too far across the sport. The decisions that have to be made by those governing cricket are harder still than the ones that Selig faced. The matter of England’s imminent return is only the first of many issues cricket will have to tackle.

For instance it looks increasingly unlikely that the Indian government will permit the team’s January tour of Pakistan to take place, despite the many pleas for a show of solidarity from across the border. Pakistan have not played a home Test match since October 2007. Since then the only teams to tour the country have been Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, though India and Sri Lanka did briefly visit for the Asia Cup. The Pakistan Cricket Board is understandably desperate for India’s January tour to go ahead. With Indian investigators attributing the attacks to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Kashmiri extremist group based in Pakistan, the tour seems improbable.

More Citi Field Taxpayer Rage

Published: December 2, 2008
As Citigroup grovels for a bailout from public funds, the Mets insist the name of their new ballpark, Citi Field, will not change.

For several years, I have been insisting that the Mets should name their new stadium — partly paid for by the owners, the Wilpon family, with infrastructure mostly subsidized by the city — after a legitimate New York sports hero who would not embarrass everybody down the line.

The most obvious name would have been Jackie Robinson Stadium, but if the standard were somebody who wore the Mets uniform, then what about Gil Hodges Stadium?

Meantime, I persist in calling it New Shea, in honor of the lawyer who helped bring the National League back to New York, whose name was proudly affixed to the old dump that is being torn down.

Mets Police support “New Shea” or a more proper “Shea Stadium.”  Let us not forget the man who got us this team.   “Jackie Robinson Stadium” – enough already.   Let the Dodgers honor the Dodger.

The Death of Black? (And the Apple Lives!)

I’m hopeful that the black (uniforms) might be gone.
Metsblog.com just posted some fresh pics of CitiField here: http://www.metsblog.com/2008/12/02/pictures-from-citi-field-tour/
I’m fascinated by the 6th one down from the top.  A row of seats with a Mets logo.  I don’t see any black on the logo.  My fellow Mets Policemen are telling me to calm down and that it means nothing.  
I assume the Mets want these seats to last a while (after all there is a $25 service charge to rent one for 15 games) – if they were into the black wouldn’t they have used the logo with the black shading as opposed to this traditional logo?
Maybe my eyes are just bad.  Maybe I’m just wishful.   I hope blue & orange are back for good.

In other great news the Daily News says:   Oh, by the way, the old apple WILL be inside Citi Field. It will be on display on the concourse in the outfield. A new apple will pop up just beyond the center-field wall after homers. Also, the bullpens are on two levels in center field, similar to Philly, with the visitors’ bullpen closer to the fans.


I accidentally deleted a comment when I added the Apple information.

osh41 has left a new comment on your post “The Death of Black?“:

it’s a tease, still annoyed with them for getting rid of the little ‘ny’ – one less black thing is a victory nonetheless 

Citi Field to Stay The Name (Your Tax Dollars At Work And Lame Mets Logic)

Jeff Wilpon says:

 

“The company is still an ongoing company and a vital company that is doing business around the globe.  The taxpayers are backstopping what’s going on in the global economy. It’s not really Citi’s fault that they’re in this problem. There are a lot of other banks in the same situation—with naming-rights deals, also.”

 

“We have a deal with Citi that is good for them, good for us. It’s good business for us to have the partnership and the relationship.  We think we can bring the right people to help them market their product so they can be a going concern, and that over time, the fans that we bring here will become Citi customers and that Citi will thrive and be able to pay the money back to the government.”

 

“I understand where they’re coming from. I understand that there’s some upset-ness in the marketplace,” Wilpon said. “But we don’t agree with it.”

 

…and that’s why I blog.

Stuff You Missed While Eating Turkey

Hits were low over the weekend.  Maybe the blog just sucks, maybe you were thinking about things other than the Mets.  Anyway, here’s some fun stuff from the last few days:

Top Mets Turkeys Of All Time (Part 1)

Top Mets Turkeys Of All Time (Part 2)

A look back at The Japanese Greg Maddux

Some of the Secret Citi Field Ticket Pricing Info was revealed (finally)

and a Plaxico Burress post.