According to northjersey.com, John Maine and Oliver Perez attended the Knicks game on Monday, and were booed when they were shown on the Jumbo-tron. Seriously, what the hell?
I am not that happy with the Mets at this moment. On sober reflection, my initial optimism about the Milledge trade was unfounded/insane. They gave away a guy with some up-side, for two guys with zero-upside, who don’t seem to meet any immediate needs (ok, they needed a catcher. But they’re up to the eye-balls in outfielders. And Church is an unfortunate guy to replace Shawn Greene with.)
And the not-signing Santana or some other amazing pitcher thing is pissing me off. And I wish that Schoenwise had been busted for steroids and gotten the 50-game suspension just so we wouldn’t have to watch him for the first chunk of the season.
But, at a Knicks game, there are simply too many other things to boo; and in the context of Madison Square Garden, the Mets franchise is a paradigm of winning, responsibility and success.
The Mets were a huge disappointment and ought to have made the playoffs. I try not to be a mean-spirited fan, but I can understand the urge to hold that fiasco against all the players personally. However, the Knicks are so bad that I like the Met’s chances against them in a game of basketball.
Center: Mike Pelfry—dude is 6’7”
Power Forward: Moises Alou—played hoops in high-school.
Small Forward: Carlos Gomez-- 6’4”, athletic, fast as hell.
Shooting Guard: Jose Wright/David Reyes—young, in good shape, could probably make a lay-up.
Point Guard: El Duque—extremely competitive man; a state-mandated test once revealed that he had the highest basketball IQ in Cuba.
I would bet on that team to beat the Knicks. And if I saw Maine and Perez at Madison Square Garden, I would not boo them: I would try and see if there was an extra jersey lying around and if either of them could make a jump shot.
And of all of the Mets to boo, Maine and Perez are two of the worst. Both of them were pleasant surprises in 2007. Neither was anything like an ace, but neither of them was completely terrible. They both showed tons of upside. They are fun guys to have on a baseball team that you root for, because every game they start has the possibility of being either an amazing performance or minor disaster. The fact that they both over-performed in 2007 was the only reason that the Mets got to go through the worst collapse in sports, as opposed to just spending the season in second place. And, in the face of a non-Santana ’08, they are the closest thing that Mets fans have to a reason for not being completely depressed about the state of the pitching.
Basically, if you feel so strongly about the Mets that you are booing Ollie and Maine on the jumbo-tron, you better be at the Garden because you are waiting to go to Penn Station to catch an Amtrack to Atlanta, where you are going to burn down both Turner Field and Tom Glavine’s house.
Showing posts with label D-Wright. Show all posts
Showing posts with label D-Wright. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Thursday, September 6, 2007
David Wright Martini
In a Virginia Tech mason jar filled with ice, combine equal parts Vitaminwater (of a flavor/color of your choice) and Gray Goose Vodka. Stir. Garnish with Big League Chew; drink while watching SportsCenter.
David Wright or Wrong
Narrowly edging out competition like imdb.com, wikipeda.com, and sexxxvixionsofnorway.no, Davidwrightorwrong.com is now officially the coolest site on the World Wide Web. The site is a promotion put out by Vitaminwater that asks fairly whimsical trivia questions about David (would he rather be a) a member of the goonies, b) a passenger on the Millennium Falcon, or c) an intern for Indiana Jones), and then provides commentary on the answers in the form of up-beat video clips of the star. Disappointment does set in eventually when the supply of questions runs out after four or five, and returning to the site does not yield a fresh supply of questions but only the ones that you have already answered. Compensating for this deficiency is a store locator that will direct you to the nearest Duane Read based on your zip-code.
David Wright has been drinking Vitaminwater since the minors and endorsing it for almost as long as he has been in the majors; when he was given a large contract by the Mets last year, he invested a significant portion of his new wealth in the company. I always found this odd, since the only other celebrity endorser of Vitaminwater that I could think of was 50 Cent; I used to wonder if they ever ran into each other at corporate events, and if it was awkward if they did. At first, I thought that this was just another manifestation of the generally superior marketing strategy employed by Vitaminwater—by having such disparate endorsers, they manage to effectively double the appeal of their brand.
After a little contemplation, it dawned on me that there is basically nothing odd or anachronistic about a potential social interaction between David Wright and 50 Cent. The former is an ultra-clean cut, patriotic and upstanding young baseball player and the latter is a rapper whose reputation is based almost entirely on the fact that he got shot a whole bunch of times while selling crack; you could say that they represent the two poles of the American pop-cultural soul. My impression, however, is that both of them represent their pole, not out of ideological convictions, but out of something closer to accident. Their affiliations, David as the poster boy of the establishment, Fifty as the angry voice of the criminal ghetto, are at the end of the day aesthetic, not political, choices; as aesthetic choices there would be little animosity in either of them for someone who chose differently. If either of them embraces any politics at all, it is not any politics in the traditional sense, a politics based on race, or class, or ideology, but rather an almost completely un-ideological politics of success.
Fifty is from New York, so the chances are about even that he is a Mets fan—approximately the same as the chances that multiple Fifty Cent songs are among the most commonly listened to tracks on David’s iPod (or were until Fifty started to become unpopular recently); if they ever do meet, at Vitaminwater’s Christmas party, I’m sure that they have lots of things to talk about: expensive things to do with your car, the best ways to dodge the tax-bite on a two million dollar bonus, and how the refreshing properties of Vitaminwater allows them to handle the demands of their respective, vigorous, careers.
David Wright has been drinking Vitaminwater since the minors and endorsing it for almost as long as he has been in the majors; when he was given a large contract by the Mets last year, he invested a significant portion of his new wealth in the company. I always found this odd, since the only other celebrity endorser of Vitaminwater that I could think of was 50 Cent; I used to wonder if they ever ran into each other at corporate events, and if it was awkward if they did. At first, I thought that this was just another manifestation of the generally superior marketing strategy employed by Vitaminwater—by having such disparate endorsers, they manage to effectively double the appeal of their brand.
After a little contemplation, it dawned on me that there is basically nothing odd or anachronistic about a potential social interaction between David Wright and 50 Cent. The former is an ultra-clean cut, patriotic and upstanding young baseball player and the latter is a rapper whose reputation is based almost entirely on the fact that he got shot a whole bunch of times while selling crack; you could say that they represent the two poles of the American pop-cultural soul. My impression, however, is that both of them represent their pole, not out of ideological convictions, but out of something closer to accident. Their affiliations, David as the poster boy of the establishment, Fifty as the angry voice of the criminal ghetto, are at the end of the day aesthetic, not political, choices; as aesthetic choices there would be little animosity in either of them for someone who chose differently. If either of them embraces any politics at all, it is not any politics in the traditional sense, a politics based on race, or class, or ideology, but rather an almost completely un-ideological politics of success.
Fifty is from New York, so the chances are about even that he is a Mets fan—approximately the same as the chances that multiple Fifty Cent songs are among the most commonly listened to tracks on David’s iPod (or were until Fifty started to become unpopular recently); if they ever do meet, at Vitaminwater’s Christmas party, I’m sure that they have lots of things to talk about: expensive things to do with your car, the best ways to dodge the tax-bite on a two million dollar bonus, and how the refreshing properties of Vitaminwater allows them to handle the demands of their respective, vigorous, careers.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
why a mets blog?
Over the winter I decided that I was going to start a Mets blog, which was a kind of a weird thing for me to resolve on, since I generally hate the internet, and until recently was ambivalent about sports. But the Mets have always had a special place for me and they were just huge winners in the re-distribution that took place in my psychic economy when I graduated from school and set about the task of working in modern society and not losing my mind.
Recently, a friend broke off on a tangent from a pointless, repetitive, and boring conversation that we were having about the NBA, to ask me why it was that the athletic competitions between people that we did not know personally, and institutions that we had no logical reason to be invested in, took so much of our time and energy. I told him that it sports offered one of the only breaks from the degrading monotony of industrialized society; one of the few breaks from the crushing weight of the mundane. I find something about spending eight hours a day doing a job that I don’t really care for, that sends me just running into the world of professional sports; I think this is a lot because in life in general things are perpetually on going, there is never a resolution to anything, ever, or even an ability to say, with complete accuracy and confidence, what just happened. Sports provide us with a time frame during which identifiable events will take place. Yesterday, for example, I brought several minor problems to my boss, who was able to give me indifferent amounts of advice, leaving me in only slightly less confusion and ambiguity, basically to hope that things would somehow resolve themselves of their own accord, or that at least no one would notice if they didn’t; also the Mets lost 1-2 to the Indians. Of those two events, I find the latter much more comforting, even if I am disappointed in the outcome- the game happened when scheduled, after nine innings a result was obtained, and the fans were left to turn to the AM talk shows and start shrieking their deranged opinions.
I will, unfortunately, continue my observations about the relationship between sports and the deadening effects of industrialized society in a future post, but I’ll end now on a topical note. Yesterday the post ran a piece with the headline “WRIGHT: I’d move over for A-rod.” http://www.nypost.com/seven/03052007/sports/mets/wright__id_move_over_for_a_rod_mets_mark_hale.htm, the substance of it was basically that someone asked David Wright if he would move over for A-rod, Wright said yes, and also expressed the somewhat eccentric opinion that A-rod was great. Whatever- its all several light years away from happening, which they mentioned somewhere in the latter paragraphs of article, which existed only to use famous names and take up column inches. I sincerely wish, though, that they would think, for like a second, before running hideously disturbing shit as headlines. Somewhere in Queens, there is an old man who has been following the Mets since the 1960s; his kids moved away long ago, and his wife is dead- the Mets are one of the few things that keep him going; in the moment that he read that headline, all those summers of ballpark franks took their revenge on his heart, and he sinks to the floor, not to be found until his neighbor notices the smell on Wednesday. But the tragedy isn’t that he died, it is that, mixed in with the memories of his life that flashed before his eyes in those final moments there is also a crystal clear vision of what he thinks is the future: the Met’s inglorious exit from the first round of the playoffs as A-rod lines into a double play with the tying run in scoring position- and then gives a press conference about how he had to take Delgado off his list of friends on Myspace.
You know what, New York Post, that old man was all of us: you guys are jerks.
Recently, a friend broke off on a tangent from a pointless, repetitive, and boring conversation that we were having about the NBA, to ask me why it was that the athletic competitions between people that we did not know personally, and institutions that we had no logical reason to be invested in, took so much of our time and energy. I told him that it sports offered one of the only breaks from the degrading monotony of industrialized society; one of the few breaks from the crushing weight of the mundane. I find something about spending eight hours a day doing a job that I don’t really care for, that sends me just running into the world of professional sports; I think this is a lot because in life in general things are perpetually on going, there is never a resolution to anything, ever, or even an ability to say, with complete accuracy and confidence, what just happened. Sports provide us with a time frame during which identifiable events will take place. Yesterday, for example, I brought several minor problems to my boss, who was able to give me indifferent amounts of advice, leaving me in only slightly less confusion and ambiguity, basically to hope that things would somehow resolve themselves of their own accord, or that at least no one would notice if they didn’t; also the Mets lost 1-2 to the Indians. Of those two events, I find the latter much more comforting, even if I am disappointed in the outcome- the game happened when scheduled, after nine innings a result was obtained, and the fans were left to turn to the AM talk shows and start shrieking their deranged opinions.
I will, unfortunately, continue my observations about the relationship between sports and the deadening effects of industrialized society in a future post, but I’ll end now on a topical note. Yesterday the post ran a piece with the headline “WRIGHT: I’d move over for A-rod.” http://www.nypost.com/seven/03052007/sports/mets/wright__id_move_over_for_a_rod_mets_mark_hale.htm, the substance of it was basically that someone asked David Wright if he would move over for A-rod, Wright said yes, and also expressed the somewhat eccentric opinion that A-rod was great. Whatever- its all several light years away from happening, which they mentioned somewhere in the latter paragraphs of article, which existed only to use famous names and take up column inches. I sincerely wish, though, that they would think, for like a second, before running hideously disturbing shit as headlines. Somewhere in Queens, there is an old man who has been following the Mets since the 1960s; his kids moved away long ago, and his wife is dead- the Mets are one of the few things that keep him going; in the moment that he read that headline, all those summers of ballpark franks took their revenge on his heart, and he sinks to the floor, not to be found until his neighbor notices the smell on Wednesday. But the tragedy isn’t that he died, it is that, mixed in with the memories of his life that flashed before his eyes in those final moments there is also a crystal clear vision of what he thinks is the future: the Met’s inglorious exit from the first round of the playoffs as A-rod lines into a double play with the tying run in scoring position- and then gives a press conference about how he had to take Delgado off his list of friends on Myspace.
You know what, New York Post, that old man was all of us: you guys are jerks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
