Snow Blows

Well, at least your recurring gripe that it's warm enough to play ball so let's play ball is inoperable this morning.

Just looking for the silver lining inside the blizzard.

Snow on a Sunday morning, especially so close to moundsmen & receivers, takes me back to April 9, 2000. We were going to that game to get our Amazin' Again (amazingly bad, as it turned out) 1999 highlight cassettes. But it snowed big, wet, chunky flakes and we got snowed out. “Aw, it's not so bad out there,” I heard myself repeat again and again. In a rare fit of marketing acumen, the Mets actually put said tapes on sale in their Clubhouse Shops. Should you be driven to watch it again, note that the many and varied contributions of Darryl Hamilton and Kenny Rogers in an August game against the Brewers are spotlighted far more than anything John Olerud did in 1999. (Speaking of recurring gripes.)

Not a lot of snow-driven baseball memories otherwise. The '71 opener got cut short by a blizzard the Mets and Expos managed to play through…at Shea, not Parc Jarry. M. Donald clear wanted to hold on to his M. Oney. The doubleheader Tim Corcoran got to play in June '86 was made necessary by snow that wiped out the second game of the season in Pittsburgh; Doc said that was the first time he had seen snow. Gads, I wish it had been his last. When the Yankees opened their home schedule in flakes in April '96, I have a middling recollection that we got snowed out that night in Cincy. Or maybe it was just colded out.

Doesn't seem like they'll postpone a game for unbearable chill anymore. Nor would we have them do it.

Need something to look forward to besides the obvious. A piece of good news from Jon Heyman in Newsday. He reports that besides Ebbets Field, the Mets are modeling Shea's successor after my stadium crush, PNC Park. Jeff Wilpon says he'd take it whole if he could. Damn, it's not like the Pirates are doing anything with it anyway.

It's supposed to warm up late in the week when hurlers & backstops report. The temperature is predicted to rise as well.