Attention Mets Fans: Today is Primary Day for Howard Megdal’ run for General Manager of the NY Mets. This is an unprecedented run for office but then again no one of with the impeccable credentials of Howard Megdal has ever thrown his blue Mets cap into the ring.

Think of the some of the former GM’s of the Mets, George Weiss and Johnny “Grandma” Murphy have the taint of Highlander blood, Joe McDonald who lacked the guts to stand up to the Plantation owner M. Donald (HOCKKKKKK-TOOOOO) Grant when Tom Seaver was run out of town, Bing Devine who could have made us a contender but ran back to St. Louis like a homesick summer camper, the late Bob Sheffing, who was dead even when he was alive, Frank Cashen who couldn’t handle the Wild Mets of the 80’s as he got all bent out of shape when a little bit of champagne was spilled on a airplane ride back from winning the NL Pennant in Houston, Joe McIlvaine who was and still is a terrific scout but was never around when Freddy Skill Sets whistled (that may be a badge of honor instead of scorn) Al Harazin who I think sold aluminum siding for Bill-Ray before he was given the keys to the Mets castle, Hound Dog Steve Phillips who taste in trollops was as bad as his eye for ballplayers, Jim Duquette who didn’t fight hard enough to sign Vladimr Guerrero when the ex-Expo was laying out on a silver platter for him, and then of course we have the incumbent Omar Minaya who at the end of day, you know what I mean, has been pushed to photo copying and fax duty in the Mets front office as Jeffey Skill Sets and John Ricco run the baseball ops.

None of those men have put in the time, effort and passion into the New York Mets like Howard Megdal has. He has sat through the rain delays at Shea Stadium when it was just us, a few hundred fans (maybe a few homeless folks too) and the soothing sound of Jane Jarvis playing Rain Drops Keep Falling On My Head. He has eaten, Schickhaus, Kahn’s, Ball Park and Nathan’s Hot Dogs at Shea and Citi Field. He’s wash those dogs down with an RC Cola and Coke and now that swill that call Pepsi. His parents banked at Manufactures-Hanover and sat around deciding which Plymouth dealer to visit NY, NJ or Fairfield County? Howard wore a Lindsay Nelson style jacket for his Bar-Mitzvah. He went to Banner Day, Old Timers Day, and all the Sunday doubleheaders. He’s vacationed in the Catskills with Mr. Met, Lady Met and Baby Met.

The fact that a man like Howard Megdal has put aside his writing and broadcasting career to run for GM of the Mets to restore what is missing from this organization, which has lost it way. Do not let this recent run of prosperity sway your thinking. Howard will restore everything that has been missing for years in the Met front office, LOGIC, TRANSPARENCY, PASSION.

So vote today in the first primary which will be held at Amazin’ Avenue and NY Baseball Digest. Voting starts today and runs through this Friday.

There is nothing easy with these Mets. Johan Santana was vintage Santana last night but no Mets game is complete until we have the late inning Relievers on Parade with your Grand Marshall Jerry Manuel. Instead of a warm up jacket and Mets cap, Manuel should wear blue and orange tuxedo with tails, a top hat and sash.

I won’t say J-Man manages scared but this is the problem when you have a lame duck manager, every game is a referendum on his job. Mets beat Highlanders and I expect Ryan Seacrest to pop up on SNY to say the “the votes are in, and Jerry you are safe to advance to the Phillies series” which of course is 100 times more important than the played out Subway Series . Sure it’s good to beat the Taliban of Baseball but the real enemy is making its way up the Jersey Turnpike for three big games.

You have to be encouraged by the pitching match up for the Mets in this up coming series. First, no John Maine or Ollie Perez as R.A. Dickey and Hisinori Takahashi are both upgrades over those two stumble bums, as Dickey will go against Jamie Moyer and Takahashi gets Joe Blanton, then on Wednesday Big Pelf takes on Sissy-Boy Hamels.

There’s no question the Mets need another starter (Mark Buehrle anyone?) but just the fact that Maine and Perez are out of the rotation is a plus as Dickey and Takahashi can not be as bad or worse than the later two.

I hate talking bad about Joe Morgan, as he is one of my favorite players of all time but between him, John Miller and Orel Hershiser they could make you hate watching baseball. Morgan with his “the more runs you score the better your odds of winning the game” analysis reminds me of Chauncey Gardiner. Maybe if John Miller took time away from looking in the mirror while working on his exaggerated pronunciation of Latin surnames (he had to bring up Carlos Beltran just so he could say Bel-TRAN) he’d have gotten the ground rule right on the overly annoying Francisco Cervelli’ 335 ft single, the orange line is just for show John Mi-LLER. The Bulldog doesn’t annoy me but after Morgan and Miller my head just goes numb.

Could the Mets being getting another break with Luis Castillo sore heel? With Ruben Tejada playing well at Buffalo, trip to the DL for Castillo could force a promotion of Tejada to step into the 2^nd base position and free up Alex Cora to do his leadership thing.

Nice to see Mike Piazza wants to go into the Hall of Fame as a Met and quite frankly he should. Even though I’m not a big Piazza fan (I’ll still take Jerry Grote over him forget the offense Grote was a real leader and was second only to Johnny Bench who I consider the greatest catcher ever, in his era) but it would be nice to see a Mets cap on his HOF plaque.

Just to let you know the Mets are the talk of the town once again. Yesterday before our Babe Ruth game there was more talk of the Barajas walk off than their was about who we were playing. !4 boys some Mets fans some Highlander fans all agreed on one thing, just once in their lives they’d love to hit a walk off homer, not a Little League homer but a real over the fence win the game homer. Same thing last night when I went to a father-daughter dinner-dance at my daughter’s school, the dads some Mets most Highlander were talking about the Mets back to back, catcher to catcher walk off home run wins.

Wayne Coffey has a great story on Highlander trainer Gene Monahan and his fight with throat cancer. Put your fan allegiance aside and pray for Geno.

Hank White takes a pie from Alex Cora after his walk off blast. Who will be the hero today (I Like Ike)

LMillz got caught again with his head down the other night thinking he had a home run when it hit off the wall. Milledge thought it was a grand slam his first in the bigs,  the Pirate and Cubs announcers thought is was gone, the guys who sets off the fireworks and play the music at PNC  Park thought it was gone, but as Milledge styled around second base Alfonso Soriano threw the ball in from left field to shortstop Ryan Thierot which stunned Milledge, as he ran back to 2^nd base Thierot threw to Jeff Baker who tagged Millz out.

I wonder who Mother Nature was more sick of, home plate umpire Mike Esterbrook or the inane droning of Joe Morgan but whoever it was, Mets fans thank her for the heavy rain that ended last nights Mets game and Big Plef’ heavy lifting pitching performance with a rain shortened win over the struggling Braves. For the Mets it’s about time they got a positive break and lost in this awful game was the fact the Mets swept the Braves, which should be big time news around these parts.

Pelfrey was not as bad as his line indicates; he was mostly the victim of Esterbrook’s tight as a fly’s asshole strike zone. If the game was on SNY instead of the steady in decline WWL (ESPN’s 2010 NFL Draft wasn’t even public access quality) we would have gotten the overhead view of home plate to see just where Pelf was missing. On the ESPN telecast it looked to me he was hitting the corners consistently.  

Of his 106 pitches, Pelf threw 61 of them in the first two innings, from the third to fifth it took him only 45 pitches to get through those frames. The ability to locate his fastball low in the strike zone and mix in the slider as well has been key for Pelf in getting ground ball out after ground ball out.

I haven’t verified this yet, but the rumor is when the game was called last night, Jerry Manuel sent Fernando Nieve to the bullpen to throw a simulated game. J-Man said he wanted to keep Nieve “sharp”.

A tip of the solid blue Mets cap to Caryn Rose (a/k/a Metsgrrl) for not only going to the game last night but for letting us know though her Tweets on Twitter, that the game was well attended even though on TV it looked like there was a major evacuation in Flushing. Seems now that we have a new fancy pants ball park, there are plenty of places to get high and stay dry. Whereas Shea, during a game in the rain your choice was get wet sitting in your seat or get wet standing in the concourse. I give anyone who went to the game last night a ton of credit as it was so cold and misserable last night in NYC, that I broke down and put the heat back on last night.  

The Hollywood Bums come to town starting tonight and the very hittable Hiroki Kuroda will start the first game of the series tonight against Ollie Perez. This game has the potential for both teams to hit double digits.  The Dodgers are statistically the best team in the NL but fall to the bottom in just about every pitching category in the league. The Mets have smacked around Kuroda every time they’ve faced him (0-2 one no-decision 10.1IP 23H 10.45 ERA) Ollie Perez has been OK Ollie so far this season but lets hope the outstanding pitching the starters have shown this past week or so rubs off on OP.

I hope you can join me tomorrow night at 10PM ET for THIS CALL TO THE BULLPEN on BLOG TALK RADIO. My guest will be Steve Slowinski of the DRAYSBAY site as we talk about the Tampa Bay Rays and their surge to the top on the AL East. I’ll have a recap of the Mets-Dodgers game as well and a look ahead to what is now a big weekend series with the Phillies. If you can’t join me live you can hear a replay of the show right here at Kranepool Society or at my show page on BLOG TALK RADIO.   

Trying to write something creative this morning and it’s just not happening so I’ll just throw some shit on the wall see what sticks:

If Jose Reyes is 100 % healthy then why not let him start on opening day? Why is it even a question? His legs don’t seem to be any problem so if his thyroid levels are fine then why wouldn’t Jose be at shortstop on Monday?

I would love to be in the room when soon to be Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov and Jay-Z sit down and talk to LeBron James about joining the Brooklyn Nets. Mr. Prokhorov is going to be the most newsworthy sports owner this town has seen since a big blowhard ship builder from Cleveland rolled into town.

This Monday has been renamed Monumental Monday. Opening day at $iti Field. The NCAA Final and two hour episode of 24.  I’m busting sweat just thinking of how the Jack Bauer, Dana Walsh  interrogation scene will play out.

Major tip of the BLUE Mets cap to Shannon Shark over at Mets Police for uncovering the Fanwalk faux pau naming Sid Fernandez the winner of Game 7 of the’86 World Sereis when it was actually Roger McDowell who earned the win. At the time that game was over, we really didn’t give a rats ass who go the winner to tell the truth all I remember is pandemonium in the streets of Queens and that for one on the dozen or so times in my life I woke up the next day in my bed having no recollection of how I got home.  Ahhhhhh good times. Also Mets Police is recruiting for the Blue Cap Army to meet up Monday at $iti Field.

It’s a three man race to grab the 25^th spot on the Mets roster. The candidates are Mike Jacobs, Frank Catalanotto and Chris Carter. Very tough choices. The first one I’d dismiss in Jacobs who is a hit a home run or miss guy and a not very good first baseman. It was commendable of Jacobs to put on the catcher gear and volunteer to be the emergency catcher. How often do you need an emergency catcher? Carter has earned the name The Animal for Jerry Manuel and Catalanotto is a savvy vet who can play just about any position on a baseball field. If I had to make the choice, I’d take Frankie The Cat.

Who? Raul Valdes Who? Raul Valdes Who? Raul Valdes

Ladies and Gentlemen please welcome the new and improved LMILLZ

I don’t look at Darryl Strawberry as being a quitter for leaving The Apprentice, it’s more like he was bored and tired of the stupid tasks he was asked to do. Whoever signed off on making this show two hours should BE FIRED! Thank God for TiVO. By the way as soon as Cyndi Lauper and Summer Sanders are fired I’ll be done with The Apprentice.

So long Chris Coste, Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out!

It looks like the new McFadden’s at $iti Field is going to be THE place to be.

Craig Calcaterra’ favorite past time is bashing the Mets (he’s a Braves fan so that explains that) which should piss me off, but the does it so well and is very witty that it doesn’t. This week he is at Port St. Lonesome and had two anecdotes that well, quite frankly made me laugh out loud.

  My doctor recommended that I take extra good care of myself while on assignment, so I stopped at a liquor store Saturday night to stock up on some Kentucky medicine. Behind the counter was the friendliest and least discreet clerk I’ve ever met. He asked me if I was in town for baseball and I said yes. He then told me that Mets pitcher John Maine had been in there a half hour earlier, came up to the counter with a bottle of Grey Goose and was getting ready to pay for it when a Mets coach walked in. Maine and the coach talked for a few minutes, and then Maine walked out, forgetting to buy his vodka.  I got this mental image of him getting back to whatever social gathering he was attending and someone asking him where the booze was, only to have Maine go “Ummm, oh. Man.”

Something tells me Dr. Ed Coleman was pissed that Maine came back empty handed.

I woke up yesterday morning to get my continental breakfast on, and in the lobby was a young woman in black spandex pants, Mets fleece and Mets cap yelling at one of the desk clerks.  Seems she left her car someplace the night before — obviously not at Maine’s party, as there was no booze there — and needed to get a cab to go and pick it up. When told it would be 45 minutes before a car could get out there, she yelled “I’m from New York and this sh– doesn’t fly!!  I live an HOUR outside of Manhattan, and I can get a car to my house faster than that!”  I suppose she has a point about 45 minutes being a long time to wait, but I’ve found that one generally doesn’t get what one wants in this world by telling people that you come from someplace better and more important than they do.

 

You what I find funny about this, whenever I go out of town; I usually like to avoid my fellow bridge and tunnel-ers. My problem is as soon as I open my mouth I reek of Brooklyn and in fact I’m proud of that since it seems the great Brooklyn dialect is a dying language but when one of my fellow outer boro “brudders of sistahs” act up at an airport, hotel or restaurant, someone will inevitably turn to me with a shake of the head, “Humph, those New Yorkers” at that time I break out my Irish brogue, cultivate from years of living with parents born in County Sligo. So if I were in that hotel lobby and asked about Lady Going Ga-Ga I’d have said “Ah tis sad, she’s actin’up” Hey, sometimes it’s best to go undercover.

I rarely ever listen to Craig Carton and Boomer Esiason on WFAN but from reading a post on Mets Merized Online I read that Carton who tries to be a Howard Stern type jock but falls woefully short in the gift to be offensive and very funny, made some irresponsible about Jose Reyes and his health. If these quotes are true and I have no reason to believe MMO is making them up, how could WFAN keeps this low rent shock jock wanna be employed? Then again WFAN has become a station that can only attracted advertisers for hair plugs, hard on medicine and scams to donate cars for children so what should I expect. I’m sure a big pussy like Carton would never go into the Mets clubhouse and say to Reyes’ face what he’d say in the microphone. 

Brian Costa via TWITTER says Frankie Rodriguez is back in camp.

Who is this Nick Evans of which you speak ?

Tip o’ the Mets cap to The ‘Ropolitans for this tip

 

So Jason Marquis signed with the Washington Nats for 2yrs/$15 mil. It seems the Mets were adamant about Marquis signing for minimum of 5 yrs/$40 mil.

 

Of course if the Mets signed Marquis for the same deal it would have been very nice but let’s not make him out to be Don Drysdale, okay, he’s a plow horse who takes the ball every 5^th day and most days keeps his team in games.

 

The big problem for the Mets if John Harpers’ info is correct, the team has placed a priority on adding offense first then seeing how much is left in the bank account to go for pitching. If that’s the case, this Mets team is destined for doom.

 

Does it really pay to get mad anymore? I have no idea what the Mets plan is this off-season and I’m at the point that I couldn’t give a shit if Jason Bay signs here or not. In fact, my mindset for this coming season is of a late 70’s type mode. I see myself going to as many games as I can at $iti Field because for all the screaming, cursing and acting like baby bullshit I do here, I’m still a die hard Mets fan. I’ll be there (hopefully) on Opening Day and for a lot of other days/nights at $iti Field. So the Mets don’t have to do anything to appease me because even if they were still playing in our beloved Shea with it’s leaky toilets and broken seats, I’d still be there bitching and moaning but with cash and credit card in hand, wearing a Mets jersey, Mets cap, Mets socks (yeah that’s right I have about 5 pair of Mets socks) and standing and applauding when Alex Anthony says “And here they are your 2010 New York Mets”.  You say I’m a jerk and ass whatever but the bottom line is I love the Mets it’s the owner whose guts I hate.  Even Jimmy (Welcome to my Garden Party) Dolan laughs at Jeffey Skill Sets.

Big tip of the Blue Mets Cap to Shannon Shark at Met Police for the first released pictures of the new, old, same Mets pinstriped jersey that looks exactly as the one I bought three years ago that hangs in my closet.

Hopefully some time today I will see this jersey up close and personnel as the plan was to up and out by 9AM for Christmas shopping but my daughter has decided to engage in a marathon sleeping session so our attack of the Paramus Mall is on hold.

Oh well, with the football season done here in NY , I guess all we can look forward to is the big Elmer Dessens press conference to announce his re-signing .

{Sidebar: one of the biggest differences between living on Staten Island from living in Brooklyn is Brooklynites are much more neighborly. As a kid growing up in Boro Park, I knew everyone who lived on my block. In the summer, the people of my block all sat outside on folding chairs in front of their house and socialized. When I first moved to SI my wife and I started siting on our front steps in the evening. We always wondered why our next door neighbor gave us dirty looks. It wasn’t until a fellow Brooklyn refugee informed us that on SI you sit in your backyard not your front porch, I guess that’s why I know about four people on my block and Staten Islanders want to know why they get no respect}

headed to the parade you don’t venture into Manhatan to often as the terminal was packed with cluelesss Highlander fans having trouble figuring out the Metro Card system.

Every morning I go to the Dunkin’ Donuts on Chambers St and the young ladies at the counter see me and get my X-tra large just milk ready for me. Well today the DD was packed with parade goers who gave me dirty looks because of my Mets cap. No one made a peep though as seeing me chatting with a couple of cops and traffic agents in the store, they figured I was a cop as well, but when I walked to the front of the 10 deep line, handed the girl at the counter my Mets DD debit card to swipe for my purchase and turned to leave, I flashed my card and pointed to my cap and said “Stay thirsty my friends”