The Rafael With It

Can't add much to the “good defeat” concept except that there's no such thing even though I get what you mean.

There's nothing to overreact to from Friday. I came reasonably close to calling Glavine “Tom” for the first time when he escaped one jam or another. Despite that unlikely flirt with familiarity, I wouldn't overreact that he's come around once and for all, but he did his part in this Brave-on-Brave pitchfest and for that I am grateful. I noticed after he had an easy first, he stopped to ask the home plate ump something. Was he told, “No, we're not giving that outside strike anymore”? If that's what he learned, may he continue to use that knowledge for good.

Gary Cohen called David Wright a Brave killer after he hit his homer. He has nine in his one-year career against them. He and Howie were all “about freaking time we have one of those.” When he launched his deep fly ball in the ninth, I thought it had to go out. He's a Brave killer, right? If it were Chipper or Burrell or Preston (hello, hello again) against us, it would have. We just don't have our intradivisional killer instinct up to speed yet. It will come. Wright?

We should, however, fire the entire grounds crew. Pebble? A pebble!? Let me get this straight: You have one job — to make the field playable. This isn't “your job is to go out and try to hit a 95 MPH heater from Brad Lidge.” You could try your best to do that and likely fail. That's acceptable. This is dozens of men versus an minute but visible inert object. How could the pebble emerge victorious? Why are we buying dirt with pebbles anyway? How can an organization paying $100 million in salaries and taking in who knows how much from us eight different ways not be assigning an intern to pick out pebbles before they nearly kill our shortstop?

On the out-of-town scoreboard, Ex-Met, Ex-Brave and Eternal Yankee Mike Stanton balked in the losing run for the Nationals in Milwaukee. Hasn't been a particularly good month for the lefty law firm that used to run our clubhouse.

And in the there's no need to embellish it department, the MLB Game Break Thursday night on DiamondVision wasn't an update on Marlins-Phillies or Yankees-Red Sox but Tigers-Royals.

With nothing left to curse at except the standings, let's turn our attention to one name that encompasses three men of the moment. The Password is Rafael. Betty White, why don't you start us off?

Furcal: Why isn't he in jail? Doesn't drunk driving mean anything in Georgia? There's a debt to society that he still needs to fulfill. I'd suggest 19 days a year of community service, two of those days this weekend. Somebody at least cuff him to the bench because he is, all due respect to Andruw Jones and Johnny Blue Jeans and Old Man Franco and Kelly Johnson (he should really see a urologist about that), the most dangerous Brave in their lineup and on the field. He's Jimmy Rollins, Alex Gonzalez and Jamey Carroll bundled into one explosive, bite-size package. He is Beyond Chipper as a Met menace. To use a Jim Hainesism, boy is he hateful.

Palmiero: Congratulations to the most obscure apparently great player of this generation on attaining his 3,000th hit; I'd say that in the second-person but I'm thinking he's not celebrating his milestone with a late-night surf of Mets blogs from a hotel suite in the Pacific Northwest. If you were to airlift his numbers and deposit them in the middle of the 1920s and '30s, we'd just assume he was one of the greats of all time — unless he wasn't a Yankee, because they define baseball. 17-1 twice in the same season! That's hysterical!. That it never occurred to any of us that we were watching a living legend these past two decades is our problem. Palmiero's Cooperstown-bound even if it's a crime that he's not joining Gil and Keith in the first basemen's wing.

Santana: The Mets' ever helpful e-mail bombardment has notified us that Lenny Dykstra and Rafael Santana will be rocking FanFest Saturday night. I imagine only those who can't hack the queue for Nails (who will autograph all currency you win from him via impromptu games of chance) will seek out Ralphie. To anybody who's going, do me a favor and show the day-in, day-out shortstop of the greatest team in franchise history a little love. My family adored Rafael Santana. My mother named a stuffed dog after him. When the Mets unveiled their most Amazin' Moments in 2000, the only two players for whom I couldn't contain my glee beyond mere standing ovations were Willie Mays (who must've gotten paid a fortune to attend) and Rafael Santana. In a foreshadowing of things to come, the very first phone call Howie Rose ever took on Mets Extra, before the 1987 title defense began, was “the Mets need to replace Santana.” Howie and I each had our sensibilities ruffled. I just liked the guy and the way he didn't screw up across parts of four seasons and one post-season. It was a big deal when he was traded to the Yankees after '87 (opening the door for all-hat, no-cattle Kevin Elster to disappoint greatly) and of course I mourned his new business address. But even that worked out well because a young intern who worked in the Yankees' front office in the summer of '88 obtained a game-used Rafael Santana model Louisville Slugger. Through the actions of my very thoughtful friend Richie, that very bat sits inches from my desk at all times, including now. The pine tar that's dried along the handle, I've been assured, was applied by Ralphie himself while he was still Met property. I don't believe it for a second, but I appreciate the assurance.