Two new transactions — and
weirdly, both involve players that were involved in run-ins with boys
in orange and blue. Hence the title of this post….
1. Joey Hamilton: Signed to a minor-league deal,
because having Scott Stewart and Roberto Hernandez didn't let us quite
corner the market on washed-up pitchers. Hamilton's crime during
his San Diego days was offending Todd Hundley somehow, after which Hundley
broke the baseball code by musing about how the Mets would have to
“buzz his tower.” Of course, Hot Rod liked tower-buzzing of various
sorts: I loved his home-plate bite-and-scratch with Gary
Sheffield most of all, in part because Bob Murphy cheerfully
noted that their mutual ejection was a good trade for the
Mets, which seemed to offend Gary Cohen. (That happened more often than
we like to remember.)
2. Brian Daubach: Also signed to a minor-league
deal. I have even less against Daubach than I do against Hamilton —
Daubach put up good numbers as a Met farmhand before vanishing
under mysterious circumstances, but he's of course remembered for his
Fenway run-in with Todd Pratt, which I thoroughly enjoyed despite the
fact that it was immediately obvious (at least to me) that Tank was the
one in the wrong. Tank called Daubach a scab, thereby also
smearing Rick Reed and Benny Agbayani, and Daubach won the point by
looking at Tank in disbelief and barking with laughter, which was
much more effective than getting offended about the whole thing.
If memory serves, that was the same game in which Carl Everett
freaked out at home-plate ump Ron Kulpa in one of the better
baseball tantrums I've ever seen. Think it went something like this:
Bobby Valentine: Hey! I keep telling you, Everett can't have his foot on the line like that! Rule 5.381.34344 clearly states that —
Ron Kulpa: Spare me, Bobby. Everett, get your foot off the line.
Carl Everett: [Miscellaneous bad words.]
Kulpa: I'm drawing lines here. See these? You can't step on either one of them. And by the way, there were too dinosaurs.
Everett: [Extremely bad words, spittle, etc.]
Kulpa: One more word and you're run!
Mike Piazza: Hey Carl, did you know scientists think dinosaurs may have had warm blood and feathers?
Everett: [Insane tantrum, head-butting, etc.]
Good times. It's a mystery how Everett's zaniness somehow remained
under wraps during his Met career, at least as far as I can remember.
(The stuff about his kids always struck me as trumped up anyway.)
3. Mother Nature: Another rainout? Good Lord. Rainouts aren't
supposed to happen until at least the point where we're no longer able
to keep stats in our heads (“That drops Beltran to .250!!! Auggghhh!!!”),
with an exemption for when we're down 14-1 and it's the top of the
second. And it wasn't even Kris Benson's day to pitch.
4. James Dolan: With the Mets heading for MetsTV in '06,
Cablevision will fight. And the Knicks are so wretched that half
their fans are just as glad the remaining games won't be televised.
This will leave me with just the WPIX slate of 50 regular-season
games. Eliot Spitzer, please take note: I have become
a single-issue voter. The road to the governor's mansion is
clearly marked.
Can I note how glad I am Sammy Sosa is not a Met? It's not just that
I never found him as cuddly as everyone else, or that we staged a day
for him while he was trying to beat us, or that when he came to
town half the stadium was rooting for him. It's that Sammy
can't manage to keep his stories straight about why he left the
Cubs' season finale, the Cubs, or much of anything else. The media
would have pounced on him for that, the clubhouse would have
reluctantly backed one of their own, there would have been columns
about rookie managers and GMs' agendas and cork and steroids and …
oh, too many other things.
Whaddya know? There are Met PUs in which worse things happen, too.
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