 Thursday, April 19, 2007
David Wright #25
David Wright singled in the second inning last night to extend his hitting streak to 25 games, a new Mets record. Only 31 to go to tie DiMaggio. Ok, that record is most likely untouchable, but let's see how far Wright will go. A list of the great streaks are posted here, once you are over 30, the list gets pretty impressive.
"It's not a big deal at all," Wrightsaid before the game last night. "It's something that's not important to me. I just go play the game. Whatever happens, I'm not going to lose any sleep about it."
I bet he is losing sleep over the lack of home run production. Personally I will take a 40 game hit streak then lots of home runs.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Glavine 293, David Wright #24
Tom Glavine quite possibly will be the last pitcher to win 300 games. He is well on his way to number 300 by winning number 293 over the Philadelphia Phillies 8-1 last night to improve to 3-1 on the season.
David Wright extended his career-best hitting streak to 24 games, tying the Mets' club record. Hubie Brooks in 1984 and Mike Piazza in 1999 also had 24-game hitting streaks for the Mets.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Virginia Tech
I was going to write about hockey today but Steve who is traveling today and I agreed that the Virginia Tech tragedy trumps everything.
This tragedy brought me back to the fall of 1995 when I lived in DC and wanted to go to Blacksburg to watch Syracuse play against Virginia Tech in football but the game was sold out.
Why did Virginia Tech officials wait over two hours from 7:15 am to 9:26 am to lock down the campus? Granted, the campus is a sprawling 2,600 acres but at least keep everyone in their dorms instead of saying classes were still on.
As I started to write this, the name of the reported gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, wasn't released until about 24 hours afterwards. Why the delay?
Let's get the answers to these questions so we can prevent future disasters.
Since the reported gunman killed himself, we won't know why he did it unless some clues spring up.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the dead and injured Virginia Tech students and the entire community.
Posted by a mourning Tank in NY.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Don Imus
Everyone who hasn't been living under a rock over the past couple of weeks has probably heard of Don Imus' racially and sexually insensitive comments about the Rutgers Women's basketball team.
Instead of Sunday's 60th celebration of Jackie Robinson breaking baseball's race barrier taking center stage as it should, we are distracted by an odious slur.
The question isn't if Imus is right or wrong -- he was clearly wrong and even he admitted as much. The question was how to punish him.
As a so-called civil society, we struggle about how to balance hate speech versus free speech. Imus' comments belie an ignorance of the Rutgers Lady Scarlet Knights and their gifted coach, C. Vivian Stringer. Rutgers became the Cinderella of Women's tournament playing against traditional powers like Tennessee, LSU, and North Carolina in the Final Four. Would Rutgers pull it off? I watched them rout a motivated LSU team playing for their very recently resigned Coach Pokey Chapman in the National Semifinal.
I enjoy watching women's sports because they are usually play with better fundamentals -- two hand passing, defense, etc. than men's sports. Even if women make it to the WNBA or the international leagues, they receive a fraction of a fraction of their male counterparts. In essence, they are playing for the love of the game which is refreshing in this day and age. The women's tournament had plenty of positive storylines for Imus to comment on. Imus chose the low road and for we are all the worse for it.
Though I am someone who cherishes free speech, I was tempted to call for firing Imus from the FAN and MSNBC. He may get a chance on satellite radio or elsewhere on terrestial radio sometime down the road so his rights are preserved.
What Is To Be Learned From This: I hope basic human decency and respect will prevail here. Have we devolved as a society to where insults get better ratings and get ahead in the world? I have often been misunderstood and subsequently criticized for my "Passion for Compassion" (Tony Robbins), Zero Resistance Living (Dr. Maxwell Maltz and Matthew Furey), and other positive attitude philosophies. I would prefer to foster a positive uplifting world than a downward one. Instead of tearing each down in a zero sum game to get ahead, we can grow the pie of opportunity and results with hope, nurturing, and hard work.
We can constructively criticize each other without degrading one another. Political correctness popped up in the last 20 years, I believe, because how we as a society forgot to respect and love one another and had to come up speech codes and the like. Let's hope we learn from this unfortunate incident and focus on encouraging one another than tearing each other down. Our time here on earth is short, let's make the best of it.
Until Imus resurfaces elsewhere, he may literally ride into the sunset of his ranch for disadvantaged children. It was ironic listening to his wife, Deirdre, Friday morning on the FAN during the annual Radio Athon raising money for children's cancer and other diseases. One of the guests talked about how close they are to a "cure" for SIDS, God Willing. Imus' intolerant and inopportune comments robbed the SIDS and other researchers of an optimal opportunity to raise much needed funds. For that, we all lose from hate speech.
Posted by the Tank in NY.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
NY Mets Starting Pitching: Good Enough?
Now that the season is two weeks old and we got to see the rotations of the teams cycle through two or more starts for each starter it is time to address the Mets’ greatest weakness: starting pitching.
The Mets’ staff is old, Tom Glavine is 41, el Duque is in theory 38, and an injured Pedro is 36. Last year all the starters went down, and all the replacements went down at some point. To address this problem the Mets went after Barry Zito, but the price was too high. So the Mets have to rely on Glavine and el Duque as well as some young kids. The young kids are John Maine (26), Oliver Perez (26) and Mike Plefrey (23).
Mets’ fans first reaction in late spring after the amazing GM Omar did not trade or pay for arms was outrage. Sure the Mets need a young stud first starter who can give them 200+ innings and 18+ wins. But they don’t need him now!
Given Glavine and el Duque’s ages, they will have to miss a few starts in August and September to stay tuned for the post season. Our good friend Pedro should be back by then to have some starts and by September Omar and Willie can bring up some AA and AAA arms to fill in the blanks.
So what about John Maine, Oliver Perez and Mike Pelfrey? I like these names better than Victor Zambrano, Jose Lima, Geremi Gonzalez and Alay Soler. These back end starters made 20 starts last year with a combined 3-9 record. Toss in Brian Bannister and that goes to 26 starts and the record goes to 5-10. Maine proved himself this year in his first two starts with a 1-0 record and a 1.54 ERA and 10 strikeouts. He is the same pitcher who pitched very effectively in the NLDS and NLCS. Perez had an amazing first start against Atlanta, going 7 innings and not walking a single batter before he returned to his old struggle with command ways earlier this week. I believe that he can regain his control (I won’t give him a free pass due to the weather). When Perez is on, he is unhittable. When he is off, he struggles with his command and walks a lot of batters and gives up home runs. The Mets worked with him this offseason on his command and I think he now has the confidence to be effective after his heroic performance in NLCS Game 7.
That brings us to 23 year old hard throwing Mike Pelfrey. He has some nasty stuff, an overpowering fastball and according to Paul Lo Duca, Pelfrey can throw his other pitches for strikes at any time. He can force the ground balls. Pelfrey had 4 starts last year and posted a 2-1 record with an ERA 5.48. After working in the winter leagues and an impressive Spring, Pelfrey had his 2007 debut on Friday. Despite a few walks, Pelfrey pitched effectively in his debut and kept the team in the game. He forced a lot of ground balls to get him out a bunch of walk inflicted bases loaded and no out situations. Pelfrey has the guts to go after the batters and is willing to do so. Steve and the Tank expect him to be a reliable starter this year.
All teams around the league struggle with starting pitching. With the Mets’ lineup and bullpen, the starters are just fine. The nature of the game has changed, the Mets only need 6+ innings where the starter keeps the team in the game while the offence tags the inferior bullpens. I would like to see a trade deadline pickup of a young stud to lead the 3 man rotation into the playoffs as well as be a #1 starter in 2008. We don’t need him today.
Posted By Steve in New York
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Knicks Playoff Dream Dies in the Swamps of Jersey
The Knicks were officially eliminated from playoff contention by the NJ Nets last evening, 100-86, at the Meadowlands.
The Knicks lost 13 of their last 16 games due to injuries to Marbury, Lee, and others.
Good luck to the Knicks getting a good Lottery pick like Kevin Durrant or Greg Oden whose father recently leaked that he will probably leave college after one season. We can only hope. Oh yeah, that's right, the Knicks traded that pick away to get Eddy Curry. Just great.
Posted by the Tank in NY.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Sabres and Rangers Draw First Blood
The Sabres held their home ice advantage against the NY Islanders last night and won 4-1.
I watched the Rangers win 4-3 at the Atlanta Thrashers while working out at the gym. The Rangers needed to win a game on the road to win the series and did what they had to do.
The D*vils unfortunately beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 5-3.
The Sabres, Rangers, and D*vils lead their respective series 1-0.
Go Sabres and Rangers!
Posted by the Tank in NY.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Glavine 292
Tom Glavine has reached career win 292 with the Mets' 5-3 win over the Phillies. Eight more to go. The Mets took two out of three at a cold and wet home stand. Lastings Milledge played his last game for a while as he will be sent to AAA New Orleans tomorrow. Milledge failed to score Green standing on third base in a PH situation, showing his immaturity by swinging at the first pitch. This after blabbing his mouth the NY Newsday saying he should not be sent down. Steve to Omar: trade this cancer; he is not a team player.
Steve will visit the Mets at Philly on Monday to see Oliver Perez pitch. Steve is still a believer in Oliver Perez, despite his wild outing last night.
Posted by Steve in New York
The Stanley Cup Playoffs
The real hockey season, the Stanley Cup Playoffs, started last night. As great as hockey is, the marketing geniuses at the NHL have all three local teams (Rangers, Islanders, and D*vils) playing with start times of 7 pm, 7:30 pm, and 8 pm tonight.
What if you want to root for one team and root against the others? Remote control and picture in picture only work so well.
Here's an idea for the NHL suits. Start one of the three local teams on Wednesday night instead of all three within an hour of each hour.
Stanley Cup Hockey is a real two month grind that doesn't reward the best team but the team playing the best hockey starting now.
As for the locals, the Rangers have great goaltending and solid offense. The Islanders got on a roll during the last week but it will be hard to win it all with a third string goalie. The D*vils have the winningest goalie of all time, Martin Brodeur, but can they score enough goals? This question was posed by Brodeur himself in answering a question from Michael Kay on ESPN 1050 AM on Tuesday.
I have almost all of the anti-Jersey feelings out of my system except the D*vils and the Jets moving to Jersey so I can't root for the D*vils.
I can't root for the Islanders as I grew up a Guy Lafleur (Canadiens) fan and the Islanders broke the Habs Stanley Cup streak in 1980.
I think the Rangers are getting better but are a year or two away from playing for the Stanley Cup. BTW, the last time that all three were in the playoffs at the same time was when the Rangers last won it all in 1994. We'll see what this you brings.
I don't want to jinx the Sabres but cautiously optimistic that they'll win it all if they stay healthy, touch wood.
Since I went to college in Buffalo, go Sabres (and Rangers)!
Posted by the Tank in NY.
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