All That Needs to be Said

Credit goes to Chris for thinking to find this gem online:

Say it Ain't So, Joe

"Super" Joe McEwing has retired.

It's hard to believe that he only played 9 seasons in the big leagues, 5 of them with the Mets.

If you ask me, now would be a good time to offer him a coaching job. We know David Wright would be happy, and maybe he's just the guy to keep Jose on the straight and narrow too.

If not, so long Joe.

Mr. Met Has a Gambling Problem

Hold all the Johan Santana talk!

Fred Wilpon may not have any money left to pay the world's greatest pitcher if someone doesn't cut off "Double-Zero's" credit real soon.

I just happened to be at the Trop last night and luckily there was enough money in my pocket to sit the kind of limits the big guy was playing. Mr. Met played fast and drank even faster, but the women he had with him were by far the fastest.






Actually these are pictures from my Dad's surprise 60th birthday party, at which Mr. Met was a huge hit.

We have been and always will be commercial free, but as a friend let me recommend looking into booking him for your next event. I know Chris would agree with me.

We'll get some photos from both of our parties up real soon.

Giants Playoff Talk with Mike Garafolo

Last night, we had Giants beat reporter Mike Garafolo from the Newark Star-Ledger as our live guest.

The very first time Mike joined us was from the side of the road in the Bronx 2 years ago, so he's always been most accommodating, to say the least.

We had a good time on the call and even used some James Lipton questions at the end.

I've put the interview up at
http://hosted.filefront.com/patchyfogg

or you can just click here

(I hope to have it up on Switchpod, as well)

It's 33+ commercial-free minutes of nothing but Giants talk, and is in MP3 format.

As always, thanks!

Missed It By That Much

It's been a good week for me on the Newsday Blogs. First, I made the Sunday edition with my "Methinks that B12 is the new poppy seed bagel" You see, for the last 20 or so years, everybody I know has been warned that poppy seed bagels could make you fail a drug test. So, reflexively, people have been filling out "poppy seed bagels" on the drug test forms to cover all bases.

Then, Neil Best almost gave me Comment of the Week. After Neil wrote that he took an elevator with Gisele Bundchen the night of the Giants/Pats game, I opined that "As a reporter, you should have asked her if she was coming back from Gate D." Unfortunately, in siding with political correctness, Mr. Best could not give me the honor, as it would "give the impression I find the abuse women have taken from drunk Jets fans at that location to be funny, which I definitely do not." Instead, it went to Bob Glauber.

Here was my response:

Sportscaster Cliche Coming in 3,2,
Talk about snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory!
I did give you the Out with the "As a reporter" preface. You could have been asking her for her thoughts on the subject, as a New Yorker and as a woman. Heck, she used to date DiCaprio--you could have even asked her about Global Warming!
I'd also like to point her that one of her nicknames is "The Body" and she's been well paid to do in pictures what the Gate D'ers do for free/when most inappropriately coerced. So, with apologies to George Bernard Shaw, we're really just haggling over the price.
But, it's nice to see the Watch Dog take the High Road. Well-deserved Congratulations to Mr. Glauber. Perhaps, someday, we can get a live phoner out of him.

That last line about the phone interview is true. Unless it's a paid interview, Bob will not cut into family time to do a media interview, so it would have to be pre-taped. Because we're not paid, my wife won't let me down to the station for any pre-taping. So, we'll probably never get around to having him on.

Knicks Talk with Alan Hahn

When we first started having media people as guests three years ago, the very first writer to join us was Newsday's Alan Hahn. That was back when he was the beat reporter covering the Islanders. For the past two seasons, he's been on the Knicks beat. No matter what team he's covering (even 4 or 5 different ones during the NHL Lockout), he always makes for lively--and honest, verrrry honest--discussion. Just check out his Knicks Fix blog for samples of his no-pulled-punches style.

Last night, Alan was kind enough to join us again. Please go to http://hosted.filefront.com/patchyfogg or simply click here for the audio of the 39+ commercial-free minute interview.

Welcome Yankee Fansites

I've posted links to the interview on the following Yankee websites of which I'm a member:



Pinstripes Plus/Scout.com


ProSportsDaily


The Yankees Board


The Yankee Zone


On The Bench


Baseball-Fever.com


Behind the Bombers


If you know of any others, please feel free to post the link to the article and we will list them here. (We're completely commercial-free, so we've got nothing to sell)



Thanks!

Kat O'Brien Interview Now Up on the Web

First off, we want to thank Ms. Kat O'Brien for joining us on Sports Talk tonight. It was her first appearance with us, and she was an absolute natural. She even gave us verbatim quotes from an interview that she had conducted with Hank Steinbrenner just before coming on with us.

The interview is now up at http://hosted.filefront.com/patchyfogg

You may also listen to it by clicking here.

The interview is 28+ commercial-free minutes of nothing but Yankees talk and is in MP3 format.

Newsday's Kat O'Brien Joins Us Live Tonight

We will be joined by Newsday's Yankees beat reporter Kat O'Brien tonight at 10:15PM on Long Island's 90.3FM. And, get this, she'll be coming to us live from Nashville (site of the GM Meetings, for those keeping track at home)!

For those in the listening area, we do hope that you'll give us a listen. This will be Kat's first appearance on our show, and we hope it's one of many to come.

The interview will be available at http://hosted.filefront.com/patchyfogg or by clicking here very soon after the show has concluded.

We thank Ms. O'Brien for the generosity of her time.

P.S. Kat and I share an alma mater--except I'm old.

2 Worthwhile Charity Events This Weekend

Two of our listeners have asked us to mention some charity functions with which they are involved this weekend. And, as you know, we at Sports Talk are all about giving back to the community. Heck, we don't get paid one red cent to put on our show, so you know that volunteering is in our lifeblood. And, most importantly, 'tis the season.

These events are both on Saturday December 8th:

Over at Fuzzy's in Bellerose (right on the Queens/Nassau Border at 239-21 Braddock Avenue), you can catch the band (I've heard them play and they're awesome) "Cobra Snake Necktie" and support Fuzzy's Annual Toy Drive for the Queens Children Center.

And, in Westhampton (5 Tree Lane, to be exact), East End Interiors is hosting the "Hamptons Holiday Showcase" to benefit the charity "We Care for Kids" which helps underprivileged children on Long Island.

Deal of the Century?

The Tigers just positioned themselves to head back to the World Series for the second time in three years, and the Marlins have once again bagged themselves a goodie bag full of prospects that should make them a competitor within three years.

While neither club has confirmed or denied anything as of yet, MLB.com and the rest of the baseball world are reporting that the Florida Marlins have traded Miguel Cabrera AND Dontrelle Willis to the Tigers for SP Andrew Miller, CF Cameron Maybin, C Mike Rabelo, and THREE OTHER pitching prospects.

What will trouble most people right off the bat is that none of the players the Tigers are giving up will seem familiar to anyone, and I myself must admit that of the three named players I only know Miller specifically, Maybin vaguely and I have no idea who Rabelo is.

But's let's focus on what I do know. Andrew Miller is widely regarded as one of the best young pitching prospects in baseball. As far as I'm concerned he is the "Hanley Ramirez" of this deal, and could pay similar dividends for the Marlins. Maybin is an OF prospect with a cathedral high ceiling, but never got much chance to play in Detroit with Granderson setting season records and Magglio making a run at the MVP. And like I said, I have never heard of Rabelo before in my life. And then there's the matter of the THREE OTHER pitchers yet to be named. I'm sure the Fish did their homework on those guys, as they are the masters at acquiring minor league talent.

In Miggy and Dtrain, the Tigers have given themselves one of the most lethal offenses in all of baseball AND potentially one of the most well rounded rotations as well, depending on how quickly Willis can adapt to the American League and bounce back from a down year in general.

By combining Willis with Cabrera, the Marlins were able to turn what would have been a monster return for Miggy into a Global Thermonuclear package of 6 prospects. Not a bad idea, considering Willis' trade value is the lowest it's ever been.

And of course, scratch off one more starting pitching option for the Mets, who seem to be more desperate than ever.

Say G-Bye to L-Millz

Lets just say I didn't see this one coming.

The Mets have traded Lastings Milledge to the Washington Nationals for C Brian Schneider (Their 3rd catcher in a month) and OF Ryan Church, a 29 year old 4th outfielder.

Now it's no surprise that the Mets were still looking for a catcher, and there are a number of people who feel that all Church needs is a chance to play everyday, but what seems to have caught everyone off guard is the apparent lack of Milledge's value that this trade clearly implies.

With young outfielders being the Mets strongest trading chip, to deal the most established of their prospects to plug holes that aren't leaking simply doesn't make sense to me. Within the next few days I hope to read about how no team with a frontline starter would go near Milledge, or see Church get sent to Oakland, Minnesota, or Baltimore.

On the "bright" side, at least now the Mets will get some attention from the back pages again, and this trade in no way adds to the "Los Mets" debate. Yippee!

Audio of Ralph V. Interview

Thanks to our very good friend Ralph Vacchiano for joining us last night and for directing his Blog readers here.

The audio of the interview can be found at http://hosted.filefront.com/patchyfogg or by simply clicking here.

It's 45+ commercial-free minutes of nothing but Giants talk. And, it's in MP3 format.

Big Blue Beat Reporter Ralph Vacchiano Joins Us Tonight

Lately, we haven't been doing a good job of promoting our upcoming guests here as well as we should. But, we will make up for that today....

Tonight, King of All Giants Media (our term for him) Ralph Vacchiano from the New York Daily News joins us to talk all things Giants--and believe me, there's a whole lot to talk about. (though I still think 7-4 beats 4-7 any day)

Ralph will be joining us live at 9:10PM on Long Island's 90.3FM.

In the past, Ralph has been kind enough to describe our show as his "favorite show to do." We take this as high praise indeed, given Ralph's gigs with MSG, Sirius, and SNY, just to name a few.

And, thanks to the good people over at Big Blue Interactive, the Giant Insider, Giants.com, The Yankee Zone and On The Bench for posting interview questions to be passed on to Ralph.

We're not yet webcast, but we'll put up the interview as soon as humanly possible tonight--both here and at the Filefront site.

Thanks, and please tell some friends!

P.S. Please feel free to pass along this news to other Giants websites, and please send their links to us.

Night of 100 Brusstars

When I was a kid, I collected baseball cards for fun.

There were 2 ways of "flipping" and only 1 card company (that mattered, anyway)--Topps.

In 1978, I had 23 Warrem Brusstar's. I counted. It got to be that every time that I bought a pack of new cards, there was the curly-haired, mustachioed Phillies pitcher staring me in the face.

Today, I went to Wikipedia and looked up Mr. Brusstar for the heck of it. Guess which card is on his page?!?!?

You will note that neither of my co-hosts was even alive in 1978.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!?

Two Days.


Two Venues.


Three Steinbrenners.


Four Executives.


One Son in law.



All this and NOBODY can decide what to do with a sure fire Hall of Fame manager who was already told he would be fired?


This must all be some big gag. Brian, Joe, the Steinbrenner's and co. must have spent the past two days smoking cigars and sipping cocktails while laughing hysterically at the media circus surrounding these meetings. Either that or George has hired "The Bobs" from Office Space (Pictured above with two of the funniest facial expressions I have ever seen) to make all the personnel moves. Otherwise I don't have any other way of explaining how these two days have past without getting anywhere with this issue.

During last night's show I speculated that the decision had already been made to keep Torre, and the only thing left to figure out was how to get around the Boss's ultimatum without the Steinbrenner patriarch losing too much face. Not even that would take this long.

What I find even more insane is this comment made by Brian Cashman, which he just happened to make while he was heading for the airport to go back to New York, since the meetings will apparently continue via conference call. Anyhow, he said "We hold Joe Torre in the highest regard and obviously that's why we are taking the time, and this process is in place to decide what's best moving forward." While I can obviously accept the fact that the more respect you have for someone the more care you would take in deciding their future, but not if it means embarrassing them on a national stage in the process. Let's face it, as crazy as these TWO days with no answers have been it has been a full ELEVEN days since George's threat, and NINE days since the Yankees were sent packing.

There's a growing sentiment that Joe Torre should just tell the Yankees where they can go and what they can do with their meetings and just walk away, and I'm now firmly in agreement.

Run Joe, run as fast as you possibly can. If this is any indication of how big decisions are going to be made in the Post-Boss era, then you don't want any part of it.

OH MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS!!!

I know that I am nothing but a worthless, pathetic Mets fan and therefore have no business whatsoever poking fun at ANY playoff team, so I will try my hardest to stick to the facts and refrain from any excess humor or sarcasm.

With that in mind, here it is plain and simple:

The hopes of the 2007 season, and more importantly the future direction of the greatest sports franchise in history all rests in the hands of Mr. Mercenary, the Rocket roger Clemens.

While it's true that Roger could pitch the game of the century and lead the Bombers to victory, or the bats could simply pound the Tribe into submission only for the club to fall short in games 4 or 5, but that's hardly important now. This is what Roger was brought in here for, this is the game that is supposed to justify the ridiculous salary and Suzyn Waldman's even more ridiculous reaction to his arrival.

Sunday can't come fast enough!

Not Just Your Letters...

For anyone who was not lucky to receive this little piece of correspondence, here was the Mets official response to their fans in the wake of the season's horrible finish:



Dear Mets Fan:

All of us at the Mets are bitterly disappointed in failing to achieve our collective goal of building upon last year's success. We did not meet our organization's expectations -- or yours. Everyone at Shea feels the same range of emotions as you -- our loyal fans -- and we know we have let you down. We wanted to thank you for your record-breaking support of our team this year.

Equally important, Ownership will continue its commitment in providing the resources necessary to field a championship team. Omar will be meeting with Ownership shortly to present his plan on addressing our shortcomings so that we can achieve our goal of winning championships in 2008 and beyond.

You deserve better results.

Many thanks again for your record-breaking support.

Letters, We Get Your Letters

Since I'm going to be pontificating on air at great length tonight from 9PM to 11PM, I figured I'd solicit opinions from our "Friends" on our MySpace page and use them here:

Christine from Syosset writes:

I think it's just sad that they went from 7 games ahead on Sept 12 to losing out on the playoffs completely. It is like they half got so confident they thought it should just be handed to them and then bc of that they just stopped trying. All season long we heard "your season has come" "the team the time" So our season has come to make history for the biggest collapese ever? The team the time to choke? They need to make some major changes though I have no idea what they should be. Watching sundays game was just sad bc after the first inning of 7 runs you watched the mets stop trying. they could have easily comeback and scored 7 or more runs in the game. But they did not they gave up and instead gave the last place Marlins another win, secured phillies spot in the playoffs, and disappointed every single met fan.

Sean from Levittown writes:

The clubhouse had a arrogant attitude that began with Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado. Carlos Delgado must exit from the franchise. His time is up and he is bad for morale.

I'll be updating this posting, as I receive more letters from angry Mets fans.

DANGER!!!

There are countless observations to be made and questions to be answered stemming from what is now officially the worst collapse in regular season baseball history, but maybe the most important one is also one of the simplest:

HOW LONG WILL THE FALLOUT LAST???????

Before I try to figure out what kind of half-life the aftermath of this disaster will have, I want to share a few observations I had made during and immediately after the final implosion. I did happen to be at Shea as part of the "sold out" crowd of around 45,000 strong, but I was gone as soon as the 5th inning came to an end, so I will have no insight into the very bitter end at the scene of the crime, but as for everything else:

-"Sold out" This was not a joke on my part. As you pulled into the parking lots every booth had a "Game is Sold Out" sign. All that the signs meant to me was that 3/4 of all the people like me who had tickets to this game in advance would not show up, and devoted fans scurried to buy the remaining tickets as soon as it looked like this game would mean something. From the looks of the crowd I feel like I was very close.

-"Bullpen Willie?" No one sitting around me could understand it, no one could explain it, but there it was. Tom Glavine was clearly having a melt down and yet hit after hit there was no action in the Mets bullpen for what seemed like an eternity. Sosa was finally brought in and was able to limit the damage to two more runs, and then went on to strike out the side the next inning. Of course you would then lift your long man after 1 2/3 innings work since you just HAVE to pinch hit Sandy Alomar Jr. in that spot. Really Willie? But it's OK, you still have El Duque, right? Wrong. Now you can't blame Randolph for pinch hitting for Hernandez with the bases loaded the very next inning but you can blame him for putting himself in a position where he would end up burning his two best long men in the span of just two innings. Then again who needs long men when your starter gives you 1/3 quality innings.

-"Pop the Clutch" Face it Met fans, there is not a single clutch offensive player on this team and you know it. There were eight men left on base after the first three innings, and the biggest threat the Mets ever had was Lo Duca's Willie Mays Hayes check swing ground out with the bases loaded. After that they never threatened again.

-"Media Blackout" One of the most inexcusable aspects of yesterday's debacle was the fact that SNY, the network that prides itself of being the source for ALL New York sports did not have a single minute of post game/season/collapse coverage and instead went right on with their regular programming. Yes I know the game was on CW11 but SNY produces those games as well, but even if they didn't how could any "All NY Sports" network not cover one of the biggest NY sports stories of all time? **Correction** Thanks to Neil Best's Watchdog I now know that SNY finally DID air a post game interview with Willie Randolph, albeit over an hour after the game had ended. Thanks Neil!

-"Seeya Next Year" What the Mets were lacking on their TV network they made up for on their website, only not in a positive way. Before the body was even cold on '07 Mets.com already had a banner up thanking the 3,850,000 fans for setting an attendance record for the second straight year, which is certainly an appropriate gesture only it serves to drive home just how high expectations had been all along. What wasn't such an appropriate gesture however was that directly below the thank you was a link to make 2008 ticket deposits. 2008???? I know I was the guy in the back of the room shouting "TOO SOON!!!" I will also add that while the Mets have offered information on how to take more of your money, there is not a single piece of information on the entire website on how/when playoff ticket money will be refunded.


So what now? The construction site beyond left field is the only reminder needed of just how little time the Mets have to fix this thing and get back on track. The Mets have just one season on the field and two winters spent on the phones to turn this year's disaster into a team worthy of stepping onto the grandest stage in the team's history. If they are to fall short and allow the bad karma of this melt down to carry over to their new home they risk alienating their fan base and returning to the laughing stock of the league. Do I think it will happen, no. But this year has certainly made it a possibility when over the last several years it had been unthinkable.