Tonight’s Mets game is brought to you by the letter “W” and the number “300”

Tom Glavine goes for career win #300 in tonight’s game against the Brewers. Connive as I did, there was no way I could sneak off and get to Milwaukee for the game. I really hate it when work gets in the way of life.

300 wins is the Holy Grail for pitchers. (Well, so is 4000 strikeouts, but not everyone gets to be Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, or Steve Carlton.) I really want Tom to win tonight. It would be good for him to get #300 out of the way on the first try; I think some of his recent struggles are a reflection of the stress — conscious and subconscious — surrounding the milestone. It would also give the team a lift. And it would be good for his family. One of the hardest things to do is to cheer for a loved one to win. As loud as you yell and as much as you hope down to the very strands of your DNA for victory, you are sitting on the sidelines and there is not one dang thing you can do to help. The most stressed out person in the state of Wisconsin tonight will be Glavine’s wife.

I read a few Mets blogs and message boards and I’m a bit disappointed that more Mets fans don’t seem excited about Tom’s 300th. I suppose it’s because they have been die-hard fans longer than I and they remember all those L’s that Tom hung on them when he was with Atlanta. 242 of his 299 wins were achieved when he was with the Braves. But aside from being a Mets fan, I’m a fan of baseball. Seeing someone achieve a record is a great moment. And seeing someone like Glavine — who sounds like a genuinely Good Guy — do it makes it better.

I’ve been apathetic about Barry Bonds’ pursuit of the career home run record. At first I just hoped he would retire so that Aaron’s 755 would be safe. But Bonds is so close now, you just know he is going to break it. It leaves me with an empty feeling. I think he cheated. And there’s nothing I can do about it. But I trust history will reveal the truth — eventually. There’s no question that Bonds is a great talent (not as much now, in the declining part of his career), but he is surrounded by that cloud of suspicion. Plus he acts like such an a-hole. Although I guess it might not be an act. And he doesn’t even run out ground balls! I’m very old school and big on Playing The Game The Right Way. I’m happy every time I hear about Ken Griffey, Jr. hitting another homer (closing in on his 600th — and glad that he didn’t hit any when the Reds faced the Mets at Shea earlier this month). I’m even happy when A-Rod hits another dinger, as it looks like he’ll make the next charge towards the all-time record and perhaps snatch it out of Bonds’ chemically-induced grasp.

It’s easy to cheer for Junior, and even A-Rod — although there was that little thing with that blonde in Toronto …. It’s very easy to cheer for Tom Glavine. He gives interviews on the day before he pitches, he gives interviews after he pitches — even after a stinky performance like the one against the Dodgers last last week. He doesn’t take it out on the media when he has a bad game. He doesn’t put himself above the team. He basically strikes me as a pretty normal guy who happens to throw a baseball real well.

Tom Glavine says he’s a father and husband first, then a baseball player.

“That’s who I am,” he said. “Baseball is what I do.”

From Glavine gets praise from all corners on eve of first shot at 300

That’s not a very ESPN-ish quote. That’s not the kind of thing that makes SportsCenter. They probably wouldn’t have considered him Who’s Now even when he was “now,” 10-15 years ago.

Which is just fine with me.

Let’s Go Mets.

Dan Patrick: The Farewell Tour (xvi) — Free at last, Free at last …

Stephen A. Smith will be on in the 1-4pm ET time slot for the entire week.

I give thanks to ESPN.

Thank you for helping me make clean break. I’ve been hanging on — desperately clinging to a relationship that was over — hoping for some tidbit of entertainment to be thrown my way in the weeks since DP left the air. Trying to recapture the magic.

Stephen A. for the whole week?

All rightie, then ….

It’s over.

After the initial shock, I find this strangely liberating. Exhilirating, actually.

The old flames who say “I want us to still be friends” are just looking for a way to make themselves feel better for having dumped you. Well, f*ck ‘em. A clean break is always best.

So now instead of checking in with the radio several times each afternoon to see if there is anyone/anything worth listening to on ESPN I can simply enjoy my New Reality. Yesterday afternoon I went out for lunch and read a not-very-recent New Yorker and an article about the very odd and very interesting Waugh family. Not exactly ESPN-y stuff, but there you have it.

Thank you, ESPN, for setting me free.

Smith is the final nail in the coffin. The final nail in my heart.

Wow, I’m already at the Acceptance Stage.

Dan Patrick: The Farewell Tour (xv) — The Unbearable Emptiness of 1-4pm ET

Scoop comments in ESPN: Not Waving but Drowning:

A lot of what Mushnick has to say seems to tie in with what we said earlier about the ESPN guys always being expected to chew over the latest listing of “hot chicks” as deemed by some magazine or other, with Dan enjoying the task to a frightening extent for a married man and Keith recusing himself to a ridiculous extent for a (still) single man. Hello?? I thought this was a sports network??

Then again, many people would tell you that ESPN has been going downhill for a long time. If you ever have some free time with nothing better to do, read the comments about SportsCenter alone at JumptheShark.com (http://www.jumptheshark.com/topic/sportscenter-general-comments/1849). You’ll be pleased to note that Keith’s departure ranks as the second most popular “jumped” moment for those who believe it jumped, but many other reasons are given, and not all of them have to do with the Dan-and-Keith successors’ lame attempts at filling their shoes. Lately the complaints about “Who’s Now” seem to be taking center stage, to join the complaints about too many sponsors for every little feature, painful graphics and too much focus on personality over news.

Not that style is bad, but ESPN is getting way too heavy on the style and increasingly weak in the Department of Substance. They are getting away from their meat and potatoes (sports news) and serving up too many marshmallow desserts (e.g., “Who’s Now?”). I like marshmallow dessert, but I don’t want to have it at every meal. (And only in America would anyone have the balls to call it a “salad.”)

I watched Meet the Press yesterday morning; in the discussion of the presidential campaign it was reported that Hillary Clinton made an appearance before a hairdressers’ convention and that a related ad featured the various hairstyles she has had over the years. (Meet the Press transcript, page 4.) Lady, I don’t care what’s on your head, I want to know what’s going on between your ears. It’s kind of disconcerting that some voters have such a great need for marshmallow desserts. Which is why we keep getting stuck with marshmallows when what we really need is a good, hearty main dish.

For me, DP had a good balance of entrée, side dish, and dessert. The meal wasn’t always perfect, but it was for the most part quite satisfying. Most of the replacements that have filled in for DP the past two weeks (it’s only been two weeks, but it feels like two years) have given me some burnt main dishes, soggy vegetables, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts (sickeningly sweet, I can’t stand them). I want the old menu, but it is gone. Darn it.

Charmed?

From Ben Shpigel’s Mets blog in the Times:

She’s the Boss

The actress Alyssa Milano (you may know her as Samantha Miceli from Who’s The Boss or as one of those witches from Charmed) is at Shea Stadium today to promote her MLB-related women’s clothing line, but that’s not how I know she’s a huge baseball fan. Nor is it her season tickets at Dodger Stadium (she attended three of the Mets’ four games there last weekend) or her blog, where she ruminates on baseball, or her past relationships with Carl Pavano, Brad Penny and Barry Zito. This is how I know: She is spending her Saturday watching the Mets play the Washington Nationals in a day-night doubleheader, and yes, she said, she plans on staying the whole time.

“I prefer the National League,” Milano said. “When the Dodgers aren’t playing, I root for the Mets.”

This left me with a bit of the Yikes! feeling, but we did win the first game. And Alyssa’s ex Brad Penny won his 13th game of the season against just one loss this past week. So maybe she’s reversed the curse.

Karl wrote:

Now we know why Glavine’s stalled out. Great win for your guys yesterday. What’s with the Jacket’s no-jacket look? You also lucked out in the Cards-Bravos game.

The Jacket-No Jacket win-loss record is mixed. We won last Sunday’s game against the Dodgers in the No Jacket orientation, but lost against the Pirates on Thursday when he again went jacketless. I’m not sure if Peterson was sans or avec during today’s day game; MLB.TV was blacked out so I just heard the game on WFAN and haven’t yet seen video of the game. The second half of the doubleheader starts soon. A night game, Peterson will likely be fully clothed. More than fret over the pitching coach’s attire, we need to hope that Mike Pelfrey continues his steady ascent to major league status and pitches a good game.

And Barb added:

You have to give Alyssa some credit, though, as she is a real fan of the game (she has season tickets for LA). Barry and Carl are cute. Brad is another matter.

Well, he’s not ugly. And he probably has other — ahem — attributes.

America Held Hostage: The Michael Vick Dogfighting Saga

It goes on and on and on ….

Kind of like the Energizer Bunny.

(According to the Washington Post, Vick has been under investigation since 25 April.)

I can’t be the only one who has started to feel this way about the Vick story. Perhaps it’s because I listen to a fair amount of sports radio, where they are beating this story to death. But it is also getting a lot of play on tv. ABC might need to bring Ted Koppel back to anchor the story on Nightline. Or perhaps they’ll pass the baton to Nancy Grace on CNN. I’ve heard that she’s gone all nutzoid over the Vick case.

Dan Patrick: The Farewell Tour (xiv) — DP Wannabe’s

Karl, in Dan Patrick: The Farewell Tour (xiii) – the Karl Ravech and John Kruk edition:

Agreed, they were good. But I don’t think two baseball analysts can fill the time-slot; they’ll lose the people who want to hear about NFL, NBA. Gottlieb and Eliott (??) today; not bad but nothing to write home about. I hope DP’s new show will be on in the same time-slot so my afternoon routine can be the same.

I have a confession to make.

I did not listen to the the show yesterday. The Mets had a day game, so I blissfully watched that on MLB.TV. At least it was blisssful until the 6th inning when Oliver Perez melted like a Popsicle in Death Valley, surrendered 5-count-’em-5 runs, but interestingly lowered his ERA (the 5 runs were unearned). He also struck out nine and walked only one. So his stat line looks good, except for the added loss in the Win-Loss column. Pitching coach Rick Peterson was sans jacket, which I thought was a good omen and ensured a stirring comeback like the one we had against the Dodgers on Sunday, the last time he went jacketless. But our bats melted along with Ollie’s confidence, and we went meekly on to an 8-4 loss.

Still, this was better than listening to DP Wannabe’s.

I listened to some of the podcast this morning. Gottlieb was OK; I was more impressed with Elliott. And I’m not even that interested in the Michael Vick story. I thought he covered the issues well and wasn’t as shrill as Gottlieb. But then he said something that made me turn off the podcast. He said:

“We need stuff to talk about.”

And then he and Gottlieb yada-yada’d about the evil 24-hour news cycle that makes them slaves to covering stories like the Vick case. As if there is absolutely nothing else going on in the world of sports for them to discuss.

Oh, please.

Gosh, guys. If you’re going to cover a story to death (which seems to be the case with Vick), then just do it. Don’t give me the “O woe is us!” act. It’s just as bad as KO complaining that his producers force him to cover Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan stories. I think most of the audience — whether we’re interested in a particular story or not — understands that you have the business-driven need to keep your ratings up and to keep the dollars flowing into the network coffers. This is why television gives us “Access Hollywood” and not poetry readings.

So just spit it out. Don’t make excuses. If the discussion is good, then the radio stays on. If I can’t take it, then the radio goes off.

Dan Patrick: The Farewell Tour (xiii) – the Karl Ravech and John Kruk edition

On Dan Patrick: The Farewell Tour (xi) – Doug Gottlieb, this one is for you:

Barb: I’ll bet KO would have fallen out of his chair, too, if he heard that deadball era remark. Double methadones today: Gottlieb and Kusilias. Two for the price of one? DP beats them all.

CP: I didn’t think they were bad, but the two of them together gets loud. Not as loud as Smith, though. I’d give them a chance, but you’re right about the shoes.

Gottlieb may have corrected himself on that deadball era gaffe, but I couldn’t bear to listen to the show after he said it so I turned the radio off.

So far DP’s replacements have been adequate, but that’s about it. They give me the sports news, but lack the side dish of oomph that DP and KO regularly brought to the table. (I can’t believe I’ve been writing about them in the past tense; I think this is a good sign re The Stages of Grief.) I still haven’t found a new lunchtime/early afternoon routine, although spending a solid hour reading a book has been rewarding and maybe it’s something I should do instead of filling my head with sports chatter.

That being said, Karl Ravech and John Kruk were very good on Wednesday’s show. Of course, I’m biased towards baseball talk, and they are two of the mainstays on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight. (The other being Peter Gammons, who qualifies as a Holy Man as far as most baseball fans are concerned.) Their discussion was thick with baseball and many of their guests were baseball guys. They discussed the Big Three topics that have been dominating the sports news: Michael Vick, Tim Donaghy (the NBA referee accused of gambling on games), and Barry Bonds’ pursuit of the career home run record. But they did it without all the wailing and whining and hand-wringing that has colored the discussion by other hosts.

I’m not sure if the high muckety-mucks at ESPN will put Ravech and Kruk in DP’s time slot, but their stint on yesterday’s show gives me hope that Good Things are possible for the 1-4pm ET time period.

Video – .ram file requires RealPlayer (Basic RealPlayer available here.)

ESPN: Not Waving but Drowning

On Dan Patrick: The Farewell Tour (x):

Barb: So sad. Is that DP or ESPN sinking into the ocean?

Jenn: Clearly it’s ESPN that’s sinking.

rrgirl: this is my favorite so far, though I can say that every day. and I’m with Jenn.

Scoop: Just as long as we don’t have to hear Celine Dion sing.

I’m with you on Celine Dion, but I really did think the Dan Patrick Show would go on and on and on ….

(If anyone out there watched the Pirates-Mets game last night: Doesn’t Freddy Sanchez look a little like Leonardo DiCaprio?)

I like ESPN. I can’t compare the current version to that of the “old days” — the prehistoric era when KO and DP roamed Bristol doing SportsCenter. I’ve only been paying attention to the Worldwide Leader for the past six years or so, mostly via espn.com. It fulfills my need for a one-stop shopping place for sports news. I like it better than the Sports Illustrated site.

Still, my interest in it has been on the wane, and not just because DP has one foot out the door and I’m not sure when the next Big Show fix will come. Part of this has nothing to do with ESPN. I’ve gotten more and more into baseball, specifically the Mets, over the past three years. After I hit the baseball news on ESPN I’m not all that interested in the rest it has to offer. Page 2 is pretty funny, but I haven’t looked at it in a while. Page 3 was lame — an attempt to create buzz around news that spanned the sports and entertainment worlds. It didn’t last. Now they have this dopey Who’s Now? contest going. I haven’t paid it any attention (comparing athletes across different sports is stupid, plus I don’t really care who’s now in sports, all I want is for the Mets to be Now come October), but I did read Phil Mushnick’s article, Self-Loving ESPN Is No Longer In The Now (full text of article is at the end of this post), in the New York Post a few days ago, and he captured my increasing ambivalence towards ESPN.

I’m not bothered by the self-promotion stuff — I ignore most of it — but the fact that so much non-sports news has infiltrated the sports page. I enjoy a good discussion when the issue of sport and society intersects, but sometimes ESPN seems to be turning into People magazine. Perhaps some of this is because professional athletes are now seen as celebrities than simply as sports figures. The public wants to know more than just how Matt Leinart is playing, they want to know who he’s dating and how much he’s paying in child-support to his ex-girlfriend/mother of his child (one of the Topics du Jour on Colin Cowherd’s show today — $6K a month sounds pretty decent, for $30K a month Mom must want to get the kid gold-plated Huggies). I can deal with some of that fluff; I’m a sucker for those “Up Close and Personal” features during the Olympics. But when sports news veers way off from the X’s and O’s and OPS and WHIP I’m looking more for thoughtful commentary than for gossip.

This is what I miss most about the Dan Patrick Show and the Big Show. DP and KO illuminated a topic. They gave you the story and then added their unique je ne sais quoi to it. They didn’t tell you how to think; they presented their opinion and left it there for you to chew on. They weren’t spot-on 100% of the time and I didn’t always agree with them. But they usually brought good arguments to the table. (Except when Keith played Yankee Apologist.) Plus they didn’t yell, at least not that much. (I guess if I can excuse Keith for being a Yankee Apologist I should be able to forgive Stephen A. Smith for being president of the Michael Vick Fan Club. Or, maybe not ….)

Alas. DP and KO are gone, at least for the present time. I need to let go. I think I’ve progressed to the Depression and Testing stages. I’m thankful that Dan’s doing the Big Aloha during baseball season so that I at least have the Mets to lean on. If he bailed out during the winter I’d really be at sea and Drowning not Waving (.mp3 file, by Madame Blatavsky Overdrive, very cool).

Self-Loving ESPN Is No Longer In The Now
By Phil Mushnick
July 22, 2007 — Theorst thing ESPN could do to itself, it has done to itself. It has made itself a too-easy target.

The secret’s out. Last week, alone, ESPN took a beating for what it has become in both Newsweek and Sports Illustrated.

And on WFAN/YES, Mike Francesa delivered a long, sarcastic and accurate holler about how ESPN’s value to sports fans has been lost to endless self-promotion – “ESPN has learned that it’s Tuesday!” he shouted – and ridiculous concoctions, such as “Who’s Now,” another lame excuse to remove sports from “SportsCenter.”

“Who’s now,” Francesa bellowed, “Shaq O’Neal or a polar bear?”

“SportsCenter,” once a cherished and conditioned stop, has become SelfCenter, unconscionable and unwatchable. And everywhere you look and listen, ESPN talent is being forced to do embarrassing things in service to an ESPN/ABC/Disney sales plan that ensures nothing better than ridicule.

Everything that once held promise at ESPN has been compromised and corrupted. And that’s a shame.

Tuesday morning I tried – several times – to listen to ESPN Radio’s “Mike and Mike” show. But every time I switched back – and this was over 20 minutes – Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic were still discussing “Who’s hot” and “Who’s even hotter” – as in hot babes and hunky guys.

And that isn’t something that either would normally or proudly do in public – unless they were just following orders, both direct and implicit.

Tuesday morning, they chose to focus on Jessica Biel. Well whattya know, she’ll be joining Greenberg on a panel to choose the winners in ESPN’s beyond silly “Who’s Now” competition, the one in which Steve Nash nosed out Serena Williams, Reggie Bush defeated Danica Patrick and Peyton Manning crushed Amanda Beard. Seriously.

Who’s Now? Nelson Riddle or The Who?

And the worst thing ESPN could have done to itself – make itself such a dignity-barren garbage mill that you feel sorry for the good people who work there, especially those now forced to make clowns of themselves in exchange for their paychecks – is exactly what ESPN has become.

Friday, an ESPN news crawl reported that “sources tell ESPN” that David Beckham may not make his U.S. debut as scheduled, the next night, due to an injury.

Given that Beckham had made that clear to all, days earlier, those who knew better could only read such a thing with contempt for ESPN. ESPN could only fool those didn’t know better, and those were people who didn’t care about Beckham to begin with.

So what was ESPN’s net gain? More viewers who are disgusted by what ESPN has become. Brilliant strategy.

Dan Patrick: The Farewell Tour (xii) — Michael Vick, feel free to join the tour

Contributed by rrgirl, this is the Andrew Lloyd Webber version:

Dan Patrick: The Farewell Tour (xi) – Doug Gottlieb, this one is for you

At the end of the first hour of Monday’s show Doug Gottlieb said that Hank Aaron played in the deadball era. I almost fell out of my chair.

(Like I almost fell out of my chair when I saw Rick Peterson sans jacket during Sunday’s Mets-Dodgers game. Wow, talk about a disturbance in the Force. I’ve been trawling the Internets searching for a photo; I can’t believe no one captured this event for history. Peterson without a jacket during a Mets game is an extremely rare occurrence, something on the order of Halley’s Comet visits to earth. It was a real shock to MetsNation to see Peterson that way — practically naked — although the way the team came back to win that game give us pause to consider that perhaps he should go au naturel more often.)

The deadball era in baseball was from 1900-1919 according to KO’s pals at SABR, although others consider it to be the period from the very beginnings of baseball until around 1920. Basically, it was a really long time ago. OK, so Doug’s not a Baseball Guy, but he is a Professional Sports Broadcaster Guy. I’d think he’d know a pretty basic fact like that. It’s one thing to not like Stephen A. Smith’s over-emotional on-air persona or Colin Cowherd’s nasally whine. But a misstating a basic fact is outrageous. I won’t hold it against you forever, Doug, but for this transgression you get a song on DP’s Farewell Tour.

(Click on the video player image — but not on the “Play” arrows — to access this video directly from YouTube.)

Come on, Doug. You’re better than this. You’re one of my picks to replace Dan. You have big shoes to fill.
(Though maybe not as big as KO’s ….)