Friday, October 17, 2008

Blogging from Arizona

Mike and the Mad Blog readers. So committed to you am I, First Time, Long Time, that out on a vacation with my wife, I have slipped away to listen to Captain Train Wreck for a few...And the first comments I heard from Mike were along the lines of "we used to remember watching a team like that...we used to remember seeing a Stadium go crazy like that." Mike added that the Red Sox have now become THE franchise. I actually agree with Mike...but here's the thing...two days ago, Evan Roberts made the same point to Mike and Francesa belittled the newbie and told him very sternly that the "Red Sox are not the Yankees." Now, two days later, Mike has essentially just said that the Sox have become who the Yankees were. That's a pretty nice about-face by Francesa. I have to add that when I read that Francesa said yesterday that the Rays winning the World Series would be bad for them, I nearly jumped off a Canyon. So here's the thing (and apologies to Bud for being harsh on Mikey), but Mike, let me quote what Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead once told the audience at Cornell back in '77, "take a step back. And take another step back." Mike, you need to step back from your throne for a minute and re-evaluate the person you have become since the divorce. You need get out of Astoria and do whatever it is you do when you're not belittling callers and guest hosts. Hug Roe. Reads the kids a bedtime story. Just clear your head. You have attacked the "prime real estate" all wrong since Chris packed up his headphones and left you. You have contradicted yourself on a daily basis. Don't get me wrong, you have always contradicted yourself, but it was never this frequent. Your whole tone has been awful. Just take a step back. You once talked about Pedro Martinez losing his fastball, but being able to figure out how to pitch with other stuff. You lost the hard stuff in Russo. So now you need to figure out what else is in the repertoire because right now you look like Josh Beckett the past two starts.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

1:40pm: Mike's mancrush on Longoria has reached a level so high that he criticized Carlos Pena for his approach at attempting to scoop a tough hop out of the dirt on Longoria's errant throw last night. "I played a little first base myself, I didn't like it..." Uh huh, I'll bet. So I should believe that qualifies you to have the same technical knowledge at first base as Tino Martinez or *gasp* Carlos Pena! I'll bet you didn't like it because A) you had to exert yourself and B) you sucked at it. Meanwhile, Longoria goes blameless? Unbelievable! Youkilis is not a speedster. A good throw would've nailed him, and Longoria is supposed to be such a top tier 3rd baseman. I bet if it was David Wright, he'd get all the blame...

Mike, I played first base myself, for many years, and I was very good with the glove. I can tell you that is such a tough play, especially for a lefty. And looking at the replay, Pena did everything right on that play, just as they teach it. He started by keeping the glove low, the ball took a tough short hop in the dirt, and he raised the glove up. He ended up being slightly late on the tough hop and the ball skipped off the heel of the glove and into the stands. He didn't make any "wild" movement, as Mike put it. That's the way you try to play a ball like that. Ask any good 1st baseman...Don Mattingly, Doug Mientkiewicz...they'd all say the same thing. If anything, that play in particular is easier for a righty to approach it on the backhand because when you come up on it as a righty, the pocket of the glove is raised into position.

But the fact of the matter at hand is Longoria made a bad off balanced throw (and perhaps even an ill-advised one at that), and he rightly got the error. Pena deserves no flack, Mike. He's not going to be able to absorb the ball into his fat like you would have.

KBilly said...

Hey, why do BOTH Mike and Dog complain that they can't watch Sat night games because of their families???
Can't they explain to the wves that live under the roofs they provide that if they don't watch sports, they don't make $3 mil a year each?

KBilly said...

Dog's bday tomorrow...

Anonymous said...

As an over the hill long time lefty first baseman let me say that is an excellent post and play breakdown bigjf!!!

I can only imagine what Mike would have said if that was David Wright making that throw.

I will say that this show is actually a bit watchable and Mike has'nt even started with Football Friday so maybe things are looking up a bit?

Enjoy the vacation with the wife FTLT!

PS-- It is funny trying to picture Mike playing first base(lol).

JD

Anonymous said...

kbilly, it's just another crock. We just heard yesterday how many Mother's Day celebrations Mike has missed because he was at the Knicks game. You can't figure them with the way they manage their personal lives, nor would I care to.

anon, thanks for the compliment...just to clear things up, I'm actually a righty. ;)

Anonymous said...

The show's unlistenable. Everything revolves around Mike and the dream world he lives in.

He started turning that great Red Sox game into a stroll down memory lane from previous Yankee games.

I turned off the radio when he started giving the listeners a lecture on fielding at the first base position.

It's bizarre, Mike acts like he was a former major league baseball player. What was he a high school baseball player?? Big deal. There's about a million men in the United States that played high school baseball.

bigjf is 100% correct on Mike's Longoria mancrush. "Zimmer told me he's gonna be an alltime great" Can the guy play one full season before we put him in cooperstown?

David Wright has put up 4 great seasons in a row and Mike treats him like recycled newspaper. "Every team has a Wright"

Rock said...

I almost fell off my chair when I heard Mike said he played 1st base.

Give me a fucking break.

His arrogance knows no limits.

Thank God for Russo.

Anonymous said...

anyone break down and get sirius?

i don't think i can stomach paying for radio, so, i guess i am stuck with Francesa.

Anonymous said...

Well, if Don Zimmer said that, then it must be gospel. Zim is never wrong. Mike just likes to name drop off the charts lately. Seriously, Mike has delusions of grandeur. He makes it sound as though he sits there at the stadiums and all these important people come up to him to tell him these things. Yet, he only goes to the bathroom in the press box and supposedly doesn't sit in any owners seats or anything. I'm starting to think all these things Mike brings up to inflate his ego are actually fantasy scenarios made up by his own mind. So we have delusions and hallucinations...also paranoia when anyone disagrees with him and he wildly attacks that person like a hungry polar bear...Mike just might be schizophrenic.

I've admired Longoria to this point, but Mike has ruined him for me. I will be rooting hard against him next year. I hope he puts up a year similar to Cano this year, just to get Mike to shut up about Longoria. You know Upton's had a fantastic postseason too, Mike.

And let's top it off with David Wright looking like Carlos Delgado in the clutch next year. Jose Reyes falls off the table, and Luis Castillo steals 87 bases.

Anonymous said...

rock, bigjf,

yeah, about Mike being a first basemen...Fatcesa has said as much before, and I wrote a mocking jingle on this site, a sardonic rendition of the Flintstones, in which I mention as much. See post "Jingle All the Way".

Big,

you're damn right. that's a 5-10 pct play with the glove. Longoria was totally lackadasical there. Maybe you can pick that one up, but that was a mistaken throw that yielded a dreadfully unfriendly and very stiltled hop; not the same as a simple "turn your head" and scoop it hard play on the very short hop...

Anonymous said...

wow, you really have no life

TheNextBestThing1 said...

I guess Mike can only spend, 30 seconds on his beloved Rays..

NBT

Anonymous said...

Big spot for Mike here. He has the story of the year perhaps from last night, one of the all-time most incredible stories (as he would word it), a major major game...and what does he lead with? The lowly Jets.

Mike, please retire already. I don't care about you yelling at the Jets for a mid-season game on a Monday afternoon following that unbelievable win last night for the Rays. You can't lead off Monday afternoon with the Jets...save them for the last 20 mins after 6:00.


Things Mike should have led off with over the Jets game:

1) Rays
2) Giants
3) Sean Avery
4) Joba's DUI
5) Jake Peavy
6) Sarah Palin on SNL
7) Madonna's divorce
8) Max Payne
9) Mike's favorite sandwiches
10) the weather