Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Julio Did That?


Boy, that game sucked. The error above happened before we could even sit down. It may be the worst Mets game I've ever been to. Once the Johan Santana no-hitter was broken up, Brian, Dave and I got around to talking music (I found another Young Fresh Fellows collector--yeah!) until Julio Franco came up as a pinch hitter in the eighth. Dave mentioned that the sneaker collector had a long list of interesting credits in his career, which I didn't believe until we used Brian's superduper-not-quite-as-cool as-an-iPhone phone to look it up on All Everything Guide. I mean, look at this list:

2378 B.C. -- Fire (inventor of)
1 A.D -- The Birth of Jesus Christ ("Wise Man # 2")
1286 -- Guttenberg Bible (executive producer, Spanish translator, bench coach)
1608 -- The Mayflower ("Cook # 2")
1878 -- Transcontinental Railroad (cameo as driver of golden spike)
1933 -- The Jazz Singer ("Dancer # 2)
1965 -- The Kinks "You Really Got Me" (assistant engineer to Shel Talmy)
1969 -- Gimmie Shelter ("Hell's Angel guard #2")

Damn, this guy gets around!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just gathering up random thoughts in the absence of (1) Keith and (2) non-sucking Mets baseball


I have to admit, I watch baseball because of the things in it that make me feel good-- in that sense, I suppose it's a kind of addiction. And there are times when even losing baseball can provide those things. Those are the cases where you see teams losing in a valiant effort, or where you see less-than-stellar players show a lot of grit and play above themselves. Over the years, the Mets have provided a lot of both-- I think otherise, nobody would have watched this team for most of their history, when the Yankees are available.

I've been thinking about this in the wake of the gruesome Yankee series, and of course, all the losing of the past 12 days.

I've always been a Mets fan, when a relatively reliably winning Yankee team was available to me all that time. So I suppose for a lot of that time, that meant that winning was not all there was for me. And it's really not-- I guess. But I can;t handle losing in the ways the Mets have been losing. AND I think there has been a change in me -- post 86-- which of course is a long time ago. Since then I haven't been able to sustain watching the Mets lose (although they have certainly lost a lot since then). The eighties fundamentally changed my expectations of this club, and made it much harder for me to accept losing. I guess I became more like a Yankees fan, without actually becoming a Yankees fan.

The thing that has made it harder since the '80s, I guess is this. Pre-'86, when they won, it was a kind of treat, because they lost so much. And they lost so much because they were basically a ill-conceived, mediocre team that simply was not run as if it was supposed to win. Except for the pitching, they seemed to win by accident, or resourcefulness, or by sheer force of will-- which is endearing. It makes the guys easy to root for. I've been watching the reruns SNY has been showing of the 1969 World Series, and it was absolutely amazing, literally, in a non-cliche'ed or tongue-in-cheek sense. That Oriole team was AWESOME, in a literal, non-cliche'ed sense. That was one classic, scary AL lineup, and with incredible pitchers. Same goes for '73, but the team was even worse. 1986 was great because for once, the play really seemed to match an elusive character that kept so many Mets fans hanging on for all those years. Not the Dave Kingman Mets. The players and the play itself finally lived up to the hunger. That's what a lot of people who hate the '80s Mets, AND their fans didn't understand. It was the fruition of a lot of long-frustrated longing. We were all overjoyed-- again, in a literal, not cliche'ed sense.

And that came back in flashes over the years, like in those rat experiments, where they keep the rat pressing the button by feeding it intermittently. And most emphatically for me in the '06 season-- more, for some reason, than 2000-- and in the early part of this season. I got to love this team. But I'm not the fan I was thirty years ago. I can't be a Yankee fan, that's just not me. But I gotta have some wins, guys. I've gotta have my Mets AND the wins. Too much to ask?

Mets Guy in Michigan said...

Young Fresh Fellows are on an awesome Christmas CD I have called "A Lump of Coal." Good stuff!