How many Mets does it take to screw up a blight lobe?
Though it hardly seems an unreasonable demand to make of major leaguers on behalf of patrons paying a lot to watch in ballparks and on TV, if Terry Collins is unable to convince the 2011 Mets the importance of running to first base, he has no better chance to succeed than did Art Howe, Willie Randolph, Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya before him.
One wonders if Collins and Sandy Alderson are familiar with the strain of virus that almost daily, this century, has afflicted the Mets, diminished their chances to win, cost them base after base, run after run, win after win and almost certainly cost them two consecutive postseason appearances, 2007-08.
One wonders if Collins and Alderson are as aware as, say, you and I, that the Mets regard the application of winning, childhood-learned fundamentals — starting with running out batted balls — as optional.
If the Mets were subjected to Lemon Laws they would have been relegated to the Citrus League, then miss the playoffs, there, too.
Since 2000, it’s difficult to imagine that there’s another team in pro or amateur sports — and all those college teams in between — that has cost itself more glory and won itself more scorn by abandoning the get-to-the-next-base rudiments than the Mets.
This is a team that lost Game 1 of the 2000 World Series (to the Yankees, no less) because a base runner — an odd title for a fellow who didn’t run — chose to watch a home run that wasn’t. Timo Perez was thrown out at the plate.
For $25 million the Mets can’t get Luis Castillo to run to first or catch game-ending fly balls with two hands (against the Yankees, no less).
It would seem that we already know something about the “culture” of the Mets that Collins and Alderson don’t know — not to the game after game extent that we know.
After all, if the Mets’ owners felt that running to first base or the next base were important, they would have insisted on it from the first time Mike Piazza posed a double into a single or made it only halfway to first when a popup was dropped.
So if the fellas who pay the Mets to play don’t insist that their employees at least do the least that they can — if they didn’t make that demand of the Mets through Howe, Randolph and Manuel — why would they start with Collins?
Gruden not as grueling as he used to be
Jon Gruden, on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football,” is getting closer to being an analyst who provides genuine and applicable analysis as opposed to piles of platitudes and talk of being “caught in a Cover Two defense.”
On Monday, Gruden praised Chargers’ QB Philip Rivers for having “two hands on the ball” while setting up in the pocket.
That was an almost. Gruden next needed to say was that two hands firmly on the ball, as Rivers raises it to throw, minimizes blind-side perils that can cause fumbles.
While two-handed quarterbacking seems like a simple and sensible concept, too many NFL QBs — perhaps even most — raise the ball to throw with only their throwing hand.
➤ It seems as if the sacking of Marv Albert by MSG Network six years ago still puts the chill in MSG game announcers.
Monday, third period of Flames-Rangers, Calgary forward Matt Stajan was nailed high by Rangers defenseman Marc Staal. As Stajan hit the ice, knocked silly and helmetless before he even landed, the rush from the TV booth to defend Staal had begun.
Although replays showed Staal cutting across the front of Stajan before apparently trying to connect with Stajan, left shoulder to left shoulder, Staal first connected with Stajan’s head, snapping it straight back.
But Sam Rosen and Joe Micheletti seemed eager to have us believe what they said and not what we saw.
“Left shoulder to left shoulder,” said Rosen. Then, after both claimed that it was “a legal hit,” Micheletti added, “That is just a good, solid hit.”
But common sense tells us that a same-shoulder hit would have spun or pushed a skater to one side — first contact would not have snapped Stajan’s head, followed by his body, straight back. Rosen and Micheletti had to see and know better.
Dan is dandy without partner
Dan Patrick, on NBC’s Sunday night NFL pregame studio show, seems stronger now that his old ESPN partner, Keith Olbermann, has been removed from both the show and Patrick’s side.
Unlike Olbermann, Patrick has been amusing without talking down to us, without being smug. On Sunday, with Patrick anchoring the afternoon games’ highlights, NBC showed Terrell Owens at a postgame media conference describing the Bengals’ loss at home to Buffalo.
“Terrible, terrible,” Owens said. “I have no answers for you. I have no sound bites for you. All I know is that right now we’re terrible.”
“Well,” Patrick quickly said, “at least he said ‘We’ — and thanks for the sound bite.”
* So how “inside” are Mike Francesa’s “inside” sources if they told him, the day before Terry Collins was selected, that Bob Melvin will be the new Mets manager? Or, by “inside sources,” did Francesa mean he read it inside a newspaper?
* Memo to CBS pregame show staff: 1) The weekly “Should Brett Favre Start?” debate is old, tired, irrelevant and a turn-off — literally. 2) Despite all the belly-laughing, the show would be a lot funnier if it were funny.
* Saturday, ESPN posted this “Score Alert” from a women’s World Cup qualifier: “USA 0, Italy 0.” That score alert wasn’t designed to alert us to a scoreless game, it was to advertise that the game is on ESPN3.
* The NASCAR season is over, thus ESPN/ABC football voices, in the middle of games and even at halftime, no longer will have to fake excited discussion about the next car race on ESPN or ABC. Not that anyone could see through such clever promotion. ESPN is very cagey that way, ya know?
