Yes,the Giants victory over the Eagles was fun and unexpected, especially the performance of a Jersey boy named Victor Cruz, and the Jets loss was eye-opening, even if the handwriting should have been on the wall, but the nicest surprise for me occurred on Monday night when another Ryan brother coached the defense that shut down Santana Moss and the Redskins.
My fantasy opponent needed just 10 points from the Redskins Moss in order to send my team down to defeat. Moss is no stranger to the Boyz, of course, and, over the course of many years battling each other, Moss almost always had the upper hand, averaging about 15 fantasy points per contest. As the rest of my team had fared very well in Week 3, I looked with trepidation on my prospects for holding the pesky Skins wideout to zero touchdowns and less than 100 yards gained.
But Rob Ryan’s defense would concentrate on Moss that night. He would take away Moss for most of the game and, even when game conditions dictated that Shanahan’s Skins should concentrate on getting the ball downfield, they managed to do so only once or twice.
There’s no feeling better than winning the game you fully expect to lose. I had determined relatively early that my only chance in the contest relied on my opponent’s quarterback Aaron Rodgers either having a terrible day, which he never does, or throwing all his TD passes to my fantasy tight end, Jermichael Finley. As luck would have it, Rodgers threw all his 3 touchdowns to Finley. Go figure.
It didn’t hurt either that Buffalo had the day it had against the feared Patriots. My running back Fred Jackson continued his hard-pounding and elusive running while David Nelson, one of the Bills’ relatively unknown wide receivers, would gain 89 yards through the air. And Matt Ryan (you won’t see me calling him Matty Ice anytime soon) finally threw some passes to Julio Jones.
Drew Brees, my fantasy QB, ignored the fact that he was missing Marques Colston or that he was facing a newly rugged Texans defense. Mr. Brees just kept on keepin’ on. At any rate, big outputs from 3 or 4 players offset the total failure of my running back #2, one Javon Ringer from Tennesee and the paltry stats racked up by Hakeem Nicks, the Giants wunderkind whom the Eagles shut down only to watch Victor Cruz beat them.
Life is good sometimes. Just ask the Bills or Cowboys or, switching sports, ask the Tampa Bay Rays or St. Louis Cards. The unexpected can happen once in a while. The Bills came back from three TD’s down to Tom Brady’s Pats, picking him off four times in the process. The Cowboys and Tony Romo held steady against the rugged Skins and blitzed Rex Grossman into the big mistake of the game.
In baseball, Tampa Bay finally caught the Red Sox, the dream team of baseball going into the season, whose pitching went almost totally into the tank the entire month of September. The Cards still have a shot at what had been a sure wildcard for the Braves going into September.
The San Francisco Giants added Carlos Beltran but would have needed at least two more of him to prevent their unhappy demise. The Angels had a shot too for a while and still aren’t mathematically eliminated. So major league baseball is right at the forefront of sports fans’ imaginations going right into October. So much for changing the wildcard rules.
This just in. The judge trying the Mets bankruptcy case just ruled that that Pirate Picard, the snake lawyer representing the Madoff downtrodden, has to prove that Wilpon and Katz knew there was a fraud being perpetrated. That’s a huge win for the Wilpons.
I’m listening now to Mets fans calling Mike Francesa to complain that the Mets would be better off if the Wilpons were forced to sell, that it’s a setback for Mets fans that the Wilpons will prevail in this gigantic legal fight. It makes me sick. The Wilpons have been pretty good owners. They just haven’t been the brightest lights in the sky…..or the luckiest.
Think about the Mets collapses, the failures down the stretch of Glavine and Pedro Martinez, that brutal curve ball for a called strike 3 on Carlos Beltran. Omar Minaya could have been more prudent to be sure in his day but the Mets owners’ decision to hire him wasn’t that bad.
But Minaya had always worked for organizations with almost no money to spend. Minaya was like a kid in the candy store. Glavine and Pedro were too old. Beltran was just paralyzed. He should have been way more attentive.
Their latest decision on a GM was a great one. Sandy Alderson is like the anti-Minaya. He doesn’t act without careful study. He’s surrounded himself with good people, not drones. He understands that Reyes is a Mets frontispiece. He brought in Collins. Together, Alderson and Collins have brought in young talent, have shuffled the right pieces and have positioned this Mets team for the future.
What a way to end the baseball season. Not only are we provided with wildcard races down to the wire but now Mets fans can visualize their appearance in a playoff series somewhere along the road. They can also think about shorter fences and lower walls. The “half-full” crowd can even dream about a successful return of Johan Santana.
The sky’s the limit for the Mets (but that sky has been defined as from 100 to 120 million dollars). Still….
This fellow will never minimize the significance of luck. Luck shot down the baseball Giants, luck shut down Santana Moss for me, luck crippled the Red Sox and Braves in September; luck may have just saved the Wilpons in bankruptcy court even as it had abandoned them for much of the 21st Century.
They say people make their own luck. “They” can sell that bit of nonsense elsewhere.
Showing posts with label Madoff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Madoff. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
What Else Can Happen?
I kept saying, “Well, what else can happen?”
So I found out. The Giants would miss the playoffs entirely. The Jets would lose the AFC Championship and look a little stupid in doing so. The Knicks would hit a losing streak. And the Mets, prized Mets possessions of the Wilpons lo these many years, could be sold, even if just partially.
If I understand this correctly, the Wilpons invested around 520 mill, got back about 570 mill, and somehow, almost magically so, found themselves liable for a billion dollars. Only in America. Only to Mets Fans.
You didn’t see the Steinbrenners making friends with crooks. (I find myself wondering what Billy Martin would have said to that). Sure, the Yanks have their own problems, like a GM starting to feel his oats in the last year of his contract, a new relief pitcher only the GM didn’t want, and an old shortstop that only the GM wants to make even older.
But only Mets fans could find themselves in this kind of situation. The injuries weren’t enough. The bad luck wasn’t enough. The ticket prices weren’t enough. CitiField couldn’t play longer, Ollie couldn’t be sent down, Beltran couldn’t be more pissed off.
So, just when the Wilpons seemed to be getting their affairs together, for example, hiring a GM who wasn’t an idiot and a manager with some good experience, they find themselves looking disaster straight in the eyeballs.
Just when they started to fill out their starting pitching with smart savvy guys like Chris Young and Capuano, just when they re-signed Pelfrey and Dickey, and just when it looked as they had decided to keep guys like Beltran and Bay (rather than sell them now at a sure loss), we have to find out about the vagaries of the legal system….the hard way.
Not that I mind a little ownership sharing, but can the Wilpons really be the shills in this Ponzi scheme? Can you just see Jeff Wilpon rubbing his hands together, sneering “HaHaHaHa” in a smoke-filled room, and happily encouraging all their friends to give all their hard-won assets to Madoff?
I mean, maybe they did encourage people unknowingly, but that’s not what the lawyers for the prosecution are saying. They seem to think an organization with that much money has to have enough intelligence and financial savvy to know when they’re involved in something a little fishy.
Come on, guys, these are the friggin’ Mets! It was easy. This could only happen to them.
I believe the Wilpons. Sure, they’re not the brightest lights in the sky but they’ve never shown any signs of being evil. I think they invested a lot of their money with a trusted friend, somebody who’d always been reliable. I think they saw financial statements and prospectuses and spreadsheets and graphs showing everything going up, and not even dramatically up. How many of us would think there was something wrong?
I guess it’s inevitable that they’ll wind up losing a lot of their original 520 million. That would only be fair, to distribute the total losses among all the clientele more evenly, and I’m thinking all the lawyers will even agree on some huge amount, like maybe half to ¾ of the original investment. But that will be all.
I think we’ve already seen the effects on the team’s acquisitional policy, which is to say, they’re not spending a lot of money. And I have no problem with that. If they had spent big bucks on another Ollie or picked up Carl Pavano, for example, that would have gotten me upset.
But the whole thing, this whole sick Madoff-Wilpon thing, is really kind of unsettling. It brings the real world too close to my psyche. If I wanted that, I wouldn’t be a fan at all. I’d spend a lot of time reading about Egypt, and Afghanistan and Pakistan. I’d be fretting about reducing corporate taxes and making bad electric cars. I’d be ecstatic about firing the whole damned Passaic Valley Sewer Authority.
I can’t control those things. I can only vote. And look what that’s got me.
We can’t control ownership issues either. We can just hope for the best. All the question marks of last year have to resolve in our favor. Jason Bay has to hit, Carlos Beltran has to excel, Angel Pagan has to keep it going, and Reyes has to have a nice year. Ike Davis and Josh Thole have to keep developing. Pelfrey and Niese and Dickey have to keep on truckin’.
It’s maybe a blessing in disguise that this non-acquisitional period just happens to coincide with the ascension of the Phillies and the Braves. Let’s watch their expensive pitching blow up. Let’s see what bad luck they can have with expensive arms.
And yeah, we’ll concede the pennant this year, and maybe even the year after that, but that second year could yield a wildcard. And this year this team could be a real pain in the butt to just about anybody.
I mean, think about it. Reyes, Pagan, Beltran, Wright, Bay, Davis and Thole. That’s 7 of 8 spots that can hit. We can deal with a bad bat at second base, not that Luis Castillo will be a bum or that rookie won’t possibly improve a lot. There’s a lot of speed and power in that lineup. And, with even just middling luck, that lineup should produce a lot of runs.
As for pitching, forget Santana for now. And Pelfrey’s not really an ace. Who needs an ace anyway? They only really make a difference in the playoffs, an atmosphere that always seems to bring the worst out of even better than average arms. If you can boast of length in a pitching staff, that’s something in and of itself. The Mets will be in every game.
So I think we’ve already borne the brunt of the Madoff-Wilpon saga. “What else can happen” may wind up being a lot of good things.
So I found out. The Giants would miss the playoffs entirely. The Jets would lose the AFC Championship and look a little stupid in doing so. The Knicks would hit a losing streak. And the Mets, prized Mets possessions of the Wilpons lo these many years, could be sold, even if just partially.
If I understand this correctly, the Wilpons invested around 520 mill, got back about 570 mill, and somehow, almost magically so, found themselves liable for a billion dollars. Only in America. Only to Mets Fans.
You didn’t see the Steinbrenners making friends with crooks. (I find myself wondering what Billy Martin would have said to that). Sure, the Yanks have their own problems, like a GM starting to feel his oats in the last year of his contract, a new relief pitcher only the GM didn’t want, and an old shortstop that only the GM wants to make even older.
But only Mets fans could find themselves in this kind of situation. The injuries weren’t enough. The bad luck wasn’t enough. The ticket prices weren’t enough. CitiField couldn’t play longer, Ollie couldn’t be sent down, Beltran couldn’t be more pissed off.
So, just when the Wilpons seemed to be getting their affairs together, for example, hiring a GM who wasn’t an idiot and a manager with some good experience, they find themselves looking disaster straight in the eyeballs.
Just when they started to fill out their starting pitching with smart savvy guys like Chris Young and Capuano, just when they re-signed Pelfrey and Dickey, and just when it looked as they had decided to keep guys like Beltran and Bay (rather than sell them now at a sure loss), we have to find out about the vagaries of the legal system….the hard way.
Not that I mind a little ownership sharing, but can the Wilpons really be the shills in this Ponzi scheme? Can you just see Jeff Wilpon rubbing his hands together, sneering “HaHaHaHa” in a smoke-filled room, and happily encouraging all their friends to give all their hard-won assets to Madoff?
I mean, maybe they did encourage people unknowingly, but that’s not what the lawyers for the prosecution are saying. They seem to think an organization with that much money has to have enough intelligence and financial savvy to know when they’re involved in something a little fishy.
Come on, guys, these are the friggin’ Mets! It was easy. This could only happen to them.
I believe the Wilpons. Sure, they’re not the brightest lights in the sky but they’ve never shown any signs of being evil. I think they invested a lot of their money with a trusted friend, somebody who’d always been reliable. I think they saw financial statements and prospectuses and spreadsheets and graphs showing everything going up, and not even dramatically up. How many of us would think there was something wrong?
I guess it’s inevitable that they’ll wind up losing a lot of their original 520 million. That would only be fair, to distribute the total losses among all the clientele more evenly, and I’m thinking all the lawyers will even agree on some huge amount, like maybe half to ¾ of the original investment. But that will be all.
I think we’ve already seen the effects on the team’s acquisitional policy, which is to say, they’re not spending a lot of money. And I have no problem with that. If they had spent big bucks on another Ollie or picked up Carl Pavano, for example, that would have gotten me upset.
But the whole thing, this whole sick Madoff-Wilpon thing, is really kind of unsettling. It brings the real world too close to my psyche. If I wanted that, I wouldn’t be a fan at all. I’d spend a lot of time reading about Egypt, and Afghanistan and Pakistan. I’d be fretting about reducing corporate taxes and making bad electric cars. I’d be ecstatic about firing the whole damned Passaic Valley Sewer Authority.
I can’t control those things. I can only vote. And look what that’s got me.
We can’t control ownership issues either. We can just hope for the best. All the question marks of last year have to resolve in our favor. Jason Bay has to hit, Carlos Beltran has to excel, Angel Pagan has to keep it going, and Reyes has to have a nice year. Ike Davis and Josh Thole have to keep developing. Pelfrey and Niese and Dickey have to keep on truckin’.
It’s maybe a blessing in disguise that this non-acquisitional period just happens to coincide with the ascension of the Phillies and the Braves. Let’s watch their expensive pitching blow up. Let’s see what bad luck they can have with expensive arms.
And yeah, we’ll concede the pennant this year, and maybe even the year after that, but that second year could yield a wildcard. And this year this team could be a real pain in the butt to just about anybody.
I mean, think about it. Reyes, Pagan, Beltran, Wright, Bay, Davis and Thole. That’s 7 of 8 spots that can hit. We can deal with a bad bat at second base, not that Luis Castillo will be a bum or that rookie won’t possibly improve a lot. There’s a lot of speed and power in that lineup. And, with even just middling luck, that lineup should produce a lot of runs.
As for pitching, forget Santana for now. And Pelfrey’s not really an ace. Who needs an ace anyway? They only really make a difference in the playoffs, an atmosphere that always seems to bring the worst out of even better than average arms. If you can boast of length in a pitching staff, that’s something in and of itself. The Mets will be in every game.
So I think we’ve already borne the brunt of the Madoff-Wilpon saga. “What else can happen” may wind up being a lot of good things.
Monday, August 24, 2009
How Unlucky Can You Get?
How unlucky can you get? Our lovable Mets are testing that question this season and continued their inquiry yesterday as Jeff Francoeur, on what should have been a single to center (on any other team), hit into an unassisted triple play for outs one, two and three of what was looking to be a very promising inning.
The national media concentrated on how unusual the play had been in the annals of professional baseball, how it was one of the only times in the history of baseball that a game had ended on an unassisted triple play. To me, though, they missed the boat. The real question is how unlucky one single team has been in any recorded baseball season.
And now we hear that Omar Minaya is returning. I could live with that. I mean, if this guy has been the unluckiest person in the whole wide world this season, it only stands to reason that his luck must change for the better, everything in life following the natural rhythms of the universe. A new GM might begin a whole new cycle of misfortune.
The GM likes the manager and I do too. Who’d we go to? Randolph? Valentine? No thanks.
But then I hear that the team will reduce its payroll for next year. That’s not good. While it may not be as bad as it may sound, as quite a bit of salary will be coming off the books, much of it paid out for a remarkable lack of production, it could hardly be interpreted as a good thing.
I still think Madoff’s Ponzi scheme may be seriously affecting Wilpon’s handling of this team, despite statements made to the contrary. How could it not? And maybe that piece of serious misfortune was the unkindest cut of all, coming at a most inpropitious moment in time, when opening a new expensive stadium for a team that’s setting records for snake-bitten-ness. (I know it’s not a word, no letters please). Wilpon may have killed a spider, that’s supposed to bring bad monetary luck.
Call it what you will…cursed, plagued, gremlin-infested, the evil eye, this Mets team has them all at the same time. So maybe Minaya walked under a ladder while a black cat was ambling by. Maybe he spilled salt after breaking a mirror, or, even worse, he stepped on a crack. Anyone watching baseball has seen a variety of pitcher-types jump over the baseline. Oliver Perez comes immediately to mind but he’s not the only one.
And it certainly didn’t help Perez out yesterday. Once again, he stunk out the joint, lasting about 2/3 of an inning after giving up six runs. Maybe he should try digging his spikes into the line, then stomping on it. He couldn’t possibly be any worse. His pitch selection and location stink too, any nobody will be happier than I to see the back of Brian Schneider.
I keep thinking of that trade with the Nats a couple of years ago that brought us Church and Schneider, while we sent off Lastings Milledge and Paul LoDuca. We’ve had nothing but bad luck since. Church is already out of here, thank the baseball gods, and now there’s just Schneider. That may bring more good luck than you would ordinarily think it possibly could. That original trade must have been done for specious reasons totally unfair to LoDuca. And if anybody could cast a jinx, or throw an evil eye, my guess is that LoDuca would be just the one.
Besides just letting Schneider go, maybe we could do some other things that may help, like throwing salt over our left shoulders. Seriously, the Mets need a lot of help.
As this is written, for example, the Phils are kicking our butts. It’s just 5-2 now in the 4th, but things could get worse in a hurry, as it’s Cliff Lee, one of the premiere pitchers in the majors, going against our Bobby Parnell, one of the league’s least accomplished. The two runs we have on the board were unearned.
While the Phils picked up Lee to flirt with another World Series, we’re trading Billy Wagner to flirt with disaster. But that’s ok, I guess, maybe we’ll get a guy in return who can help us down the road, and for less money, as that is increasingly going to be an issue. And besides, if it makes Papelbon unhappy to trade Billy to Boston, I’m all for it. What an idiot that guy is.
And, speaking of bad luck, we just hit into another irksome double play, Sullivan having been retired after trying to scramble back to first on a hard-hit liner to Utley at second base. I thought he was safe but the umpire called him out. (I absolutely promise that a future article will deal with the total incompetency of umpires this year, for balls and strikes and on the bases).
That’s all I have to say about the Mets. Let’s just pray the bad luck doesn’t spread to the Jets or Giants, or the Knicks and Nets either. (I don’t care about hockey). I do so want to enjoy my autumn (and perhaps winter for the Giants). But there have already been articles written about the demise of the much-ballyhooed Giants defensive line.
The Giants looked awful this weekend against the Bears. Not that anything about exhibition games should be taken seriously, but the team was curiously lifeless for the period of time that I could devote to an exhibition.
The Jets go tonight, of course, and Mark Sanchez will get another chance to impress. I sure hope he does because I’m not too anxious for another year of quarterback controversy. Let’s end the controversy right here,okay. Sanchez will be the QB, Clemens will be the backup. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
(And now it’s the Mets Takahashi, a 40-year old rookie, facing Ryan Howard, whose 2 dingers and 5 ribbies have paced the Phils). An omen perhaps? Howard struck out.
The national media concentrated on how unusual the play had been in the annals of professional baseball, how it was one of the only times in the history of baseball that a game had ended on an unassisted triple play. To me, though, they missed the boat. The real question is how unlucky one single team has been in any recorded baseball season.
And now we hear that Omar Minaya is returning. I could live with that. I mean, if this guy has been the unluckiest person in the whole wide world this season, it only stands to reason that his luck must change for the better, everything in life following the natural rhythms of the universe. A new GM might begin a whole new cycle of misfortune.
The GM likes the manager and I do too. Who’d we go to? Randolph? Valentine? No thanks.
But then I hear that the team will reduce its payroll for next year. That’s not good. While it may not be as bad as it may sound, as quite a bit of salary will be coming off the books, much of it paid out for a remarkable lack of production, it could hardly be interpreted as a good thing.
I still think Madoff’s Ponzi scheme may be seriously affecting Wilpon’s handling of this team, despite statements made to the contrary. How could it not? And maybe that piece of serious misfortune was the unkindest cut of all, coming at a most inpropitious moment in time, when opening a new expensive stadium for a team that’s setting records for snake-bitten-ness. (I know it’s not a word, no letters please). Wilpon may have killed a spider, that’s supposed to bring bad monetary luck.
Call it what you will…cursed, plagued, gremlin-infested, the evil eye, this Mets team has them all at the same time. So maybe Minaya walked under a ladder while a black cat was ambling by. Maybe he spilled salt after breaking a mirror, or, even worse, he stepped on a crack. Anyone watching baseball has seen a variety of pitcher-types jump over the baseline. Oliver Perez comes immediately to mind but he’s not the only one.
And it certainly didn’t help Perez out yesterday. Once again, he stunk out the joint, lasting about 2/3 of an inning after giving up six runs. Maybe he should try digging his spikes into the line, then stomping on it. He couldn’t possibly be any worse. His pitch selection and location stink too, any nobody will be happier than I to see the back of Brian Schneider.
I keep thinking of that trade with the Nats a couple of years ago that brought us Church and Schneider, while we sent off Lastings Milledge and Paul LoDuca. We’ve had nothing but bad luck since. Church is already out of here, thank the baseball gods, and now there’s just Schneider. That may bring more good luck than you would ordinarily think it possibly could. That original trade must have been done for specious reasons totally unfair to LoDuca. And if anybody could cast a jinx, or throw an evil eye, my guess is that LoDuca would be just the one.
Besides just letting Schneider go, maybe we could do some other things that may help, like throwing salt over our left shoulders. Seriously, the Mets need a lot of help.
As this is written, for example, the Phils are kicking our butts. It’s just 5-2 now in the 4th, but things could get worse in a hurry, as it’s Cliff Lee, one of the premiere pitchers in the majors, going against our Bobby Parnell, one of the league’s least accomplished. The two runs we have on the board were unearned.
While the Phils picked up Lee to flirt with another World Series, we’re trading Billy Wagner to flirt with disaster. But that’s ok, I guess, maybe we’ll get a guy in return who can help us down the road, and for less money, as that is increasingly going to be an issue. And besides, if it makes Papelbon unhappy to trade Billy to Boston, I’m all for it. What an idiot that guy is.
And, speaking of bad luck, we just hit into another irksome double play, Sullivan having been retired after trying to scramble back to first on a hard-hit liner to Utley at second base. I thought he was safe but the umpire called him out. (I absolutely promise that a future article will deal with the total incompetency of umpires this year, for balls and strikes and on the bases).
That’s all I have to say about the Mets. Let’s just pray the bad luck doesn’t spread to the Jets or Giants, or the Knicks and Nets either. (I don’t care about hockey). I do so want to enjoy my autumn (and perhaps winter for the Giants). But there have already been articles written about the demise of the much-ballyhooed Giants defensive line.
The Giants looked awful this weekend against the Bears. Not that anything about exhibition games should be taken seriously, but the team was curiously lifeless for the period of time that I could devote to an exhibition.
The Jets go tonight, of course, and Mark Sanchez will get another chance to impress. I sure hope he does because I’m not too anxious for another year of quarterback controversy. Let’s end the controversy right here,okay. Sanchez will be the QB, Clemens will be the backup. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
(And now it’s the Mets Takahashi, a 40-year old rookie, facing Ryan Howard, whose 2 dingers and 5 ribbies have paced the Phils). An omen perhaps? Howard struck out.
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