Wha? Grim? What is there to possibly be grim about after El Duque took a gleeful, terrible revenge on the team that just got done trading him? Why, the old man carved that lineup up like they were a bunch of El Rooques. Carlos Beltran smacked his 15th homer, putting him one behind last year's […]

I'm reading a pretty good book called A Great Day in Cooperstown about how the Hall of Fame came to be and the festive occasion its opening was. All the immortals who were still alive in 1939 — Walter Johnson, Cy Young, Tris Speaker, a recently retired Babe Ruth — came to Upstate New York […]

666 is SO 6/6/06. On June 7, it was all about .667.

Two outta three, two outta three, two outta three. If the Mets wanna do a three outta four this weekend, nobody here would argue the point. But after one hellish night, we'll take our two of three and pack for Phoenix with no complaints.

Win […]

What's larger than a gully, smaller than a canyon and feels like an abyss?

A ravine.

• Like Chavez Ravine, where Dodger Stadium was built five years after Walter O'Malley bolted Brooklyn for Los Angeles.

• Like the Chavez ravine that opened up in the middle of our lineup last night when a slap-hitter named Endy stepped into […]

So. Did we have fun?

Let's see. There was Jose Reyes getting scratched before things even started, leading to the somewhat odd sight of Chris Woodward at the top of the lineup. There was Cliff Floyd turning over on an ankle and having to be helped off the field, leading to the somewhat odd sight of […]

The New York Mets would like to apologize to the Los Angeles Dodgers for taking a series-opening win from them Monday night. It was just, they swear, their way of soothing the hurt feelings of San Francisco Giants reliever Steve Kline who was critical of Lastings Milledge's momentary lapse of accepted decorum and gauche display […]

Bravo! You have thrown around more inside-baseball dance terms in one post than I have in the decade-plus that I've been attending performances of the New York City Ballet. It's one of those things, rather obviously driven by my non-blogging better half, that I've come to appreciate without really learning a lot about. I just […]

Ah, the ballet. I watched some myself today.

For a while, the matinee between the New York and San Francisco companies seemed hardly worth saving the program. There was a fine performance from Steve Trachsel, who's not exactly a diva but known to like everything just so, and to take changes in his carefully established routine […]

There was no orange button on your new blue cap because you had to earn it Croix de Flushing Meadow style. And despite six hours of service time, you came up short. Tsk.

Of course, I get nothing for manipulating television and radio volume controls from 1:20 until 11:00 except maybe a touch of the carpal […]