How is it every time I look up I'm immersed in high batting averages? Even if the batting average has been devalued as a key determinant of offensive effectiveness, you'd figure a lineup in which six of the regulars are over .300 — Beltran and Castillo ranked 1 and 2 in the entire National League […]

One of my signs of spring is that I have to figure out once again how to work my portable radio.

No, I'm not an idiot. (Or perhaps I am, but this isn't the thing that proves it.) It's that my portable radio is a little lozenge of silver plastic whose various buttons had writing explaining […]

I sense those who really, really love Citi Field off the bat are, in essence, Homer in the episode of The Simpsons when he angered at the high prices and crappy merchandise he continually encountered at the Kwik-E-Mart. But it was all Homer knew, so he put up with it. “If he discovers the discount […]

After we lost that mildly disgusting 2-1 game to the Marlins, a friend offered sympathies. My response: “I don't know if you do this, but for me early April is Baseball Honeymoon — I'm so happy that my nights and days have normal structure again that losses don't particularly rattle me. And then it's April […]

Johan games are different from any other Mets games, very different. For instance, in most Mets games, the other team scores earned runs; in Johan games, the other team earns nothing. In most Mets games the ball is put in play by the offensive team after it is pitched by a Met; in Johan games […]

Sorry, Luis Castillo's singles don't look like line drives in the box score. You can pretty much reverse-engineer whatever the number in the H column is back into little slap jobs or worm killers or humpbacked liners. But sometimes they're enough. Sometimes they wind up in the western side of J.J. Hardy's glove, too far […]