A Fine Night for Baseball and Takahashi

The Mets took two out of three from the Yankees, took the first game of the series from the Phillies and all I hear on radio and TV is that Manuel will be fired but has been given a reprieve. I hear ridiculous proposals too. What about picking up Roy Oswalt? Even more ridiculous….what about Carlos Lee? What about Cliff Lee?

The Mets are at .500. The dropping of the pouter Maine and the maniacal Ollie Perez seems to have given our Metsies a new lease on life. Now if they could just keep Darryl Strawberry out of the clubhouse, I could see the Mets going on a nice long run.

I’ve only asked one time for Manuel’s removal. That was when he benched his regulars a couple of weeks ago in a game against these same Phillies with first place on the line. Facing the Phillies with the horrendous Gary Matthews replacing Francoeur and Mr. Uppercut #1 Fernando Tatis replacing Ike Davis was just a little bit too stupid for me to take lying down.

Manuel had his reasons, of course, but they were ridiculous tactical moves that ignored what could have been and should have been a real war for first place. Manuel is prone to errors such as these because his mind is always going and he is a deep thinker. Sometimes he loses the obvious; losing the forest for the trees.

But, I still think, all things considered, Manuel is the perfect manager for this Mets team. He stays too long with non-performing veterans, he has almost no faith in rookies, and to be frank, he doesn’t seem to believe in his team. I know he didn’t believe in his relief staff at the start of the season and that has been one of the team’s strong points.

But that thinking may be changing. Bringing up Ike Davis, Chris Carter, Jenry Mejia, and then the knuckleballer Dickey, and at the same time finally putting the kibosh on Maine and Perez, seems to be portending an old dog looking forward to learning some new tricks.

We don’t see too much of Matthews and Tatis anymore. We do see Carter and Davis. We also will be seeing some more of Hisanori Takahashi and A. J. Dickey, who are now officially listed on the depth chart as the number 3 and number 4 starters. Takahashi goes tonight again, followed by Pelfrey ans Santana. After that, some resourcefulness will be needed as Niese isn’t scheduled to return until June 1st.

Now watching the Mets put another whoopin’ on the Phils, I’m struck with how good the Mets look when they get the pitching and are in the game. Takahashi was nothing short of masterful and Reyes just kept chuggin’. Rod Barajas, meanwhile, just keeps tearing it up. When there’re men on base, Barajas just gets tougher. He’s not locked in unless he sees some of his same uniform out there on the basepaths.

You can’t compare the Mets telecasts with any other. They are just too good. While this may seem like “homey” thinking, the MLB Network, that uses the local broadcast team on its live feeds and replays most of the time, has allowed me to see how it’s done in other cities. These other broadcast teams range from poor to passable. There’s just no chemistry that you get with Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling.

Mejia’s out there now in the top of the 7th and the Mets leading 4-0. There are 2 outs and a man on third. Raul Ibanez is at the plate, and why can’t I find myself worrying? It would be logical to worry. But then Ibanez hits a weak grounder that that youngster Jenry just pounces and makes the play at first himself. Ibanez looked old and feeble in comparison.

But you do wonder how long this can last. How will Niese perform after his layoff? How will the relief corps be affected by the removal of Takahashi and Valdez from their ranks? How will Valdez fare as a starter?

The anxiety goes on the back burner though when the Mets win. All those concerns take a seat on the bench. Almost every Mets player now is contributing. It’s very often different guys each and every night. Even Francoeur is chipping in which is very important for this team as Frenchie seems to be one of those positive forces everywhere, except when he’s slumping.

The other Japanese pitcher, Igarashi, is now pitching the Phillies eighth. I’m still not worried. This guy, who I’d been watching since spring training, was really very impressive in spots and was just pretty good the rest of the time. In fact, for most of the beginning of the season, Takahashi was “the other Japanese import.”

Utley’s up. I should be worried. Curiously, I’m not. Maybe the Phillies just aren’t that scary anymore. Utley gets a high hard one and swings through it. Then he pops up. Ho-hum, it’s just another Phillies out. Now Ryan Howard, he’s been looking silly all night long. I still have no worries, even with a man on first, even though Howard just took a vicious cut at what looked like a slider in. Sure enough, he swings and misses at a beautiful low and outside pitch. I’m not sure what the pitch was but it was headed down, a lot like the Phillies.

You know the Phils are killing time when they insert Nelson Figueroa, another journeyman former-Met who left the team under less than optimal circumstances. He gets Francoeur, but Frenchie hit it hard. Darling, Keith and Cohen discuss the disparity between the box score and a player’s actual performance and effect on the team. Perfect timing , as usual.

It’s over in Yankee-land. Pettite gave them eight innings. He and his cutter were magnificent and the Yanks went on to win. Nick Swisher belted a homer in the 9th to win it. Mariano got three weak groundouts to close it out.

Just Shoot Me, Peg

Being a Mets fan can be horrible. How many innings can feature Tatis, Church and Santos? Oh God!! I know it was just one game but the Phillies don’t have these problems. Everybody they send up to the plate has at least some percentage chance of getting a hit. Watching Sheffield try desperately to draw a walk was pitiful. Then there’s the return of Brian Schneider. Somebody kill me.

Of course, if you are the type who cannot obsess too much about the actual results, you’re in good shape. These two Mets-Phils contests have been baseball at its finest. And the two Red Sox-Yanks games haven’t been too shabby either. I wish I could make out what the fans in Boston were yelling at A-Rod. I couldn’t make it out but it was funny anyway. Real mean-spirited stuff. God, I love baseball.

A_Rod wound up walking in that at-bat late in the Yankee game. I thought it showed incredible poise and courage. (Damn , there I go sayin’ sumthin’ nice about a Yankee, and, horror of horrors, friggin’ A-Rod).

I have to say I’m having trouble focusing, just getting these various images of Beltran just missing that long drive to center, or Swisher diving to his right to snare somebody’s drive to the gap. Just saying “drive to the gap” makes me glad to be alive. Then, a little later, the Phils Jayson Werth made much the same catch in much the same fashion in much the same place on the field. (I was going to say “on the diamond” but the outfield is well outside the diamond, isn’t it)?

But Swisher’s a lefty and Werth’s a righty so the catch was actually quite different, but I digress.

I have to say the Mets are hangin’ in there. Pelfrey was mostly great tonight, and that was following Santana’s gutsy performance the night before. Wright was out of his mind at the plate, but geez, I wish he would’ve made the play on that bouncer and helped stop that 3-run outburst in the 7th, I think it was. And why was Pelfrey still in there, I wondered?

Then I found out. Aah! I really shouldn’t blame Parnell, I guess, but it’s difficult. The Mets reliever I had hoped would fill Putz’s shoes hasn’t quite done it yet. But then it was Chase Utley up there, right? And if it wasn’t him, it would’ve been Howard or Werth or Victorino or Rollins. Geez.

Technology is great as it applies to a baseball fan, though. I watched the complete Mets-Phils first game this afternoon as I was caulking the cracks between my house and the little side patio. (Caulking isn’t really that interesting, y’know)?

Why does the question mark follow the right paren’ anyway? It sure doesn’t exactly flow from the keyboard. But let me get back to technology. So I can just touch the “last” button on my remote and watch Jeter do his inside-out thing, then flip to watch Jimmy Rollins take out Alex Cora at 2nd base to foil the double play. It was a play that kept the Phillies alive, but K-Rod would have none of it.

The Mets games are done on the tube by Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling and Gary Cohen, and if there’s ever been a better triumvirate doing any kind of game, somebody let me know because I want to watch it. Darling is a great straight man for Cohen and Hernandez, who are a riot together, and they both are very knowledgable about the game, sharing their interesting insights on the way the game is played, or a bit of history, or what they had for lunch. And it’s all pretty funny.

Then there’s the basketball. It’s been tough to ignore this Lakers-Magic final, even if you’re down on basketball, which I have been for many a month of Sundays. If the officials don’t control the game, and if the NBA doesn’t control the officials, it really becomes a very great game, basketball.

There’re always big guys in the middle of course. And a man with the unlikely name of Pau Gasol is trying to play with the modestly-named Superman in the center of things, and so far anyway, he’s not been bad. The there’s Bynum and a couple of other bodies Phil Jackson could dream up to put against him, the big man, Howard.

Kobe Bryant’s been playing like Kobe Bryant can play, and that’s pretty darned good. That’ll eventually be the reason the Lakers will take this final, or these Finals, Kobe just taking things over when he needs to. So that’s not all bad. Let’s see if anybody can stop him.

I spent last week with a lot of people who hated sports, or just thought it was so very stupid. And who could disagree with them? They’re usually people who never had the occasion to play a game of any kind, so I can understand them not being interested. What I can’t figure out is why they seem so obsessed with stamping out anybody else’s interest. It’s really a puzzler to me.

I can’t dance. (That became obvious at this wedding I attended in the midst of our vacation). But I don’t hate dances, or hate anybody who participates, or who watches the participants with some level of enthusiasm.

These are the same people who could watch an opera or a ballet and appreciate the extraordinary talent displayed for them. So why can’t I do the same for baseball or basketball? And what business is it of theirs anyway? Maybe they’re just put off by the money it eventually costs each of us, even if the local politicos would have you believe differently.

There’s the New Yorker’s Smokers Quit Line, for example. How much are those gruesome commercials costing us? I smoke on occasion and just hit that same button on the remote within a couple of seconds. God, I do love technology.