I spent the night at Coney Island watching the Brooklyn Cyclones tear apart the Hudson Valley Renegades 16-5, check out Amazin’ Avenues recap of the game.

I’m loaded with work today so the post will be brief but this was the third game Cyclones game this season and Wally Ball is something else. The best part of watching the Cyclones is that Wally Backman coaches 3^rd base and he has this team running the bases with aggression.

Backman got his first ejection from a game as a Cyclone in the top of the 9th inning as he questioned a called HR but that looked foul but the umps called it a fair. Now you say, the Cyclones were up 12 runs what the hell was Wally doing arguing? Well earlier in the game the base umpire (there are only 2 umps in NY-PENN games) called a Brooklyn runner out at first where he looked safe, by a lot that ended a Cyclone rally. I guess the umpire knowing Backman’s rep didn’t want to hear him, so he jogged out to the outfield grass after the call as Backman jogged across the field to the home dugout staring down the official. Wally wanted to go after him but the ump just kept jogging further out to the outfield. It was quite funny to watch.

But Wally filed that play away in his head until the 9^th when he used the botched home run call as an excuse to let the young umpire know he can run but he can’t hide from him and it’s best to take your ass kicking from the manager like a man.

It was “Let’s Go Get A Beer Doc” moment for Wally.

  I always point to the death of Hodges on April 2,  1972 as one of the two darkest days (the other was June 15, 1977 and is you don’t know what happened on that date you are reading the wrong blog asshole) and the day the promise of the Mets organization died.

I also remember as an 8 year old Mets fan/Brooklyn gutter snipe, going to Hodges wake with my firends and our dads. We wore our baseball uniforms and walked past the resting Hodges and just cried like it was a family member, HELL he was a family member.

As Mets fans we bask in the fact that Hodges was not just the man that led the Mets from misfits to champions but he was also one of us, as he lived with his born and bred  Brooklynite wife Joan in Mill Basin, It’s a shame that Mets ownership doesn’t put together a campaign to get Gil Hodges into Cooperstown where he belongs.

Gary Mathews Jr has been DFA’d

Luis Castillo is on the DL

OLLIE PEREZ IS ON THE DL!!!!! I hope he gets moved to the GL (Get Lost)

Reese Havens is tearing up Double A

The Savannah Sand Gnats pitching staff is dominating the SAL

And I just got my invite to the Brooklyn Cyclones open practice a week from Wednesday

Time to do the Happy Baseball Dance!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Brooklyn Met Fan says we should not rush to judgment on Dwight Gooden’s latest arrest for DWI, BMF says that the story of what really happened will come out but Gooden is listening to attorney’s and not making a statement as of yet. As I posted in the comments section of BMF’s site, as most readers here know, I’m a big Gooden fan and having met him a few times he was just a great guy but when you drive while intoxicated I have a huge problem with you.

In much better news, Jose Reyes is back in St. Lonesome and it seems just his presences in the locker room has amped up the team. What Jerry Manuel has to watch for is Reyes trying to get two weeks of lost time into two days. Reyes is adamant about being in the Opening Day lineup, we all hope he is.

Mike Silva has posted a story on the old Mayor’s Trophy games between the Mets and Yankees which I never remember being a big deal.

Josh Levitt of Jorge Says No fame has started up another site, MLBfreeagency.com the site as you’d imagine will focus on current and up coming free agents and all around good baseball talk. It’s well worth your while to check it out and bookmark the site.

Johnny Maestro, one of he great Rock and Rollers of the 60’s first with The Crest’s (16 Candles) and then with the Brooklyn Bridge (The Worst That Could Happen “Girl, I heard your getting married/heard your getting married/you know that’s not my scene” )

Whose music was a stable of NYC, especially Brooklyn, died yesterday at the age of 70. R.I.P. Johnny

Join us tonight at 9PM ET for PRO BASEBALL CENTRAL. Our guest will be Pulitzer Prize winner, Michael D’Antonio author of the book FOREVER BLUE: The True Story of Walter O’Malley, Baseball’s Most Controversial Owner, and the Dodgers of Brooklyn and Los Angeles (published by Riverhead Books/Penguin)

From 9PM to 9:30PM we will take your phone calls so if you want to discuss the Mets, Yankees or anything else in MLB give us a call at (646) 595-4462

If you can’t join us live, you can here the show on the podcast either at Kranepool Society, Blogtalk Radio or at our PRO BASEBALL CENTRAL site.

OH BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Looks like Frank McCourt is looking to unload the Los Angeles Dodgers of Brooklyn as he can’t afford a baseball team and an ex-wife. Oh the possibilities here.

Could Freddy Skill Sets pull an O’Malley and head West to own his beloved Dodgers ? Think about it. Or how desperate is McCourt for some scratch that he would sell the DODGERS name to Freddy? Or just the trademark name Brooklyn Dodgers ?  Then he can get Jay Horowitz to legally change his name to Happy Felton

shout out to The Ropolitans for this pic

Sorry for no posts this morning but it’s been a busy day. So busy that I forget all about the David Wright sit down with the Sports Bloviator. I caught the tail end of the sit down as I traveled back from Brooklyn and I guess you could say it was typical David Wright. All positives and nothing controversial.

It looks like it’s a foregone conclusion that Bengi Molina will be the Mets #1 catcher this coming season. Again this looks to be another move where Omar was told to sit in the corner as the way the Mets have made Molina sit and stew is very un-Mets like. Same with Carlos Delgado who I think the Mets brain trust only went to Puerto Rico to see just to get away from freezing cold weather in NYC. Think about it, if the Mets were strictly an Omar Minaya Production, Molina, Delgado and Joel Piniero would be celebrating their multi year deals by now. Looks like those days are over.

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Art Rust Jr. who was sportstalk radio in this town back in the 1980’s. Rust hosted a three hour call in show on WABC and unlike WFAN he actually talked ALL sports. In fact I had called in to his show because a young Mark Messier came on to talk hockey and agreed to take calls from fans. Rust was a great baseball historian and a huge Highlander fan but his real passion was for The Sweet Science and he had all the big time boxers on his show.  R.I.P. Arthur George.

 

So the whole world of Metsdom is in an uproar due to the proclamation from the Drive Time Bloviator on WFAN that he has some major update about our favorite baseball team. So what could this major update be?

 

Well, I speculated on Twitter last night, that the team is in talks with Bombo Rivera to make a comeback and man left field. Rivera has Expo blood in him so that’s enticing to Omar.

 

Or it might be that Frank McCourt, the owner of the Los Angles Dodgers of Brooklyn, who is in a nasty divorce with Madame Jamie, needing cash will sell the name DODGERS to the Skill Sets who will finally get their wish to own the Dodgers.

 

Then again it could be that the Skill Sets have decided to have the team take a year off and cancel all plans to field a team in 2010. $iti Field will then be turned into a combination Chuck-E-Cheese/Catering hall to be rented out for birthdays, weddings and bar mitzvahs.

 

Who knows? Only the Pontiff Mike knows.

Wayne Coffey in today’s Daily News has a great two page story on Dwight Gooden and his road back into baseball and leading a life free of drugs and alcohol. Coffey zones in on Doc’ 1985 season which is one of the greatest pitching season in baseball history. I love that Coffey mentions that the Gooden phenomenon back then has not been matched in this city.  No player in any sport in this city can match what Gooden and the Mets did back then. I remember that any start Gooden made was a must see event and as hard as this is to believe where I lived in Brooklyn we did not have cable. So when any Gooden starts were not on Ch 9 the choice was either get to Shea or get to a bar that has one of those huge satellite dishes to watch his starts.

I’m glad that Doc is back in baseball as he is working for the Newark Bears but with this new found thinking of management bringing back players who actually have a winning pedigree with the Mets in coaching positions, you would think there would be a spot for Doc.

I know I’m late with this but kudos to Mike Silva and Joe DeMayo over at NYBD for breaking the story on the hiring of Wally Backman by the Mets to manage the Brooklyn Cyclones. Not only is great to have Wally back in the family but to manage Brooklyn makes it even sweeter.

By the way all of the folks who are attacking Mike and Frank Russo over his report that Carl Crawford has asked out of Tampa need to grow up. What, you think Crawford is going to retire a Ray?

To me the biggest question of the off season is still how much power does Omar Minaya have, Joel Sherman shines some light on the subject:

Rival executives and agents described a man not fully in charge of baseball operations regardless of what Mets ownership says. One NL official said that lag time between discussing business with Minaya and the time it took him to respond suggested he had to run the information through a committee.

An agent said, “You might not like what Omar had done in the past, but he was always aggressive and decisive. He looked old, beaten and without a plan this time.”

Executives and agents said they thought Minaya has yet to be told a true budget by ownership, and that is leading to the belief that the Mets do not want to spend big. A second agent said, “The Mets are not a destination spot right now, especially if you are a hitter. You would be going to a questionable team playing in a huge park. So if you’re Jason Bay, why would you leave the Red Sox for the Mets unless you were blown away (financially), or if you were Matt Holliday, why would you leave St. Louis for the Mets unless you were blown away?”

If this info is right then the Skill Sets fucked up again by not firing Omar and not giving the job to either John Rico or going out and hiring a younger more aggressive GM. This is what bugs the living shit out of me with Jeffey Skill Sets, all along he states that Minaya has “full autonomy “ over the baseball ops but according to Sherman’s sources he has to run his moves though a committee so in effect you’ve cut Omar’s balls off. Great move Jeffey, you little shit.

Rumor has it, that Freddie Skill Sets has been begging The Used Car Salesman to order the Trolly Dodgers to play their home World Series games at $iti Field.