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Willie Home Again

G-Fafif Aug 02 2008 02:08 PM

Willie at MFYS II for the [url=http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080802&content_id=3240619&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb]massive genuflection[/url] that is OTD. Big ovation. Says his guys on Mets were David, Marlon, Damion, Aaron. Infer what you will about who weren't his guys.

Benjamin Grimm Aug 02 2008 03:48 PM

Carlos, Carlos, Jose, and Billy?

batmagadanleadoff Aug 02 2008 05:43 PM Re: Willie Home Again

G-Fafif wrote: Willie ... [s]ays his guys on Mets were David, Marlon, Damion, Aaron. Infer what you will about who weren't his guys. Everybody else. I wonder if that statement was also a shot.

Rockin' Doc Aug 02 2008 06:06 PM

Well, Willie did say that he wanted to see the Mets do well and was pulling for them to win. I don't read this article as Willie taking shots at the Mets. Willie wasn't the greratest in game manager, but the Mets have definitely had worse. He may not have been the best with the press, but there have been far worse. I don't doubt that Willie worked hard and did the best he could to win games. It didn't work out as he and the Mets had hoped, but I have nothing against him personally.

metirish Aug 02 2008 06:16 PM

I saw him on the sports highlights , Willie had his favorites for sure but they all do. I tell you who i am sick and tired of seeing , that Goose fucking Gossage , a prick if ever there was one.

John Cougar Lunchbucket Aug 02 2008 07:12 PM

I was wondering what took them so long. Kay of course laid it on thick. "Once a Yankee, always a Yankee!" Yeah whatever.

G-Fafif Aug 02 2008 07:48 PM

Though this isn't the least nausea-inducing quote of all-time... ]"I've been away for a while, but I think my heart and soul have always been here," he said. "I've got a lot of Yankee blood in me, and I always will." ...this seems classy enough: ]Part of Willie Randolph still is in his last job, with the people he used to manage. "That's my team," he said of the Mets Saturday... This is [url=http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/yankees/ny-spwillie0803,0,6960937.story]Mark Herrmann[/url] typically being a tool: ]...before going on the field in his Yankees uniform and being reminded that Yankee Stadium still is his home. He put his hand to his lips and then to the logo on his pinstriped jersey. He bowed and he tipped his hat to the fans in the bleachers and he soaked in Yankees fans' loudest, longest ovation during Old-Timers' Day The MFY will invite anybody to their ceremonies: ]"They were giving him a hug," said Al Leiter, a fellow Yankees old-timer and former Met. Anybody: ]"The two of us have been through the same thing," said Jeff Torborg, at Old-Timers' Day as a former Yankees coach 15 years after he was let go as Mets manager. They won't do it, but if they brought back Willie on the final weekend at Shea and introduced him as manager of the 2006 National League East champions, I'd stand and ovate. Someday, at Citi Field, should they have a reunion, same thing. And I'd overlook Leiter's easy-switch reaffiliation, too. I'd probably sit and look away if Torborg came back.

metirish Aug 02 2008 07:56 PM

I can imagine how vomit inducing it must have been to watch that rubbish , was Paul O'Neill in the booth , he was last night when I tuned to check the score, him and his golf voice. I loathe him.

SteveJRogers Aug 02 2008 08:38 PM

I miss Met OTG. NYT article from someonelse who misses Mets OTGs Op-Ed Contributor No Game for Old Men By BRIAN BIEGEL Published: August 2, 2008 THIS afternoon the Yankees play their final annual Old-Timers’ game at the old stadium, but I won’t be there. That’s because I root for the team on the other side of the Triborough Bridge. Unfortunately, I won’t be going to a Mets Old-Timers’ game either — they don’t have an annual one. It faded out in the early ’90s and hasn’t reappeared. So while Yankee fans get to commune with the likes of Don Larsen and Graig Nettles, while they get yet another opportunity to gloat about their storied past — beers and hot dogs in hand — those of us who are Mets fans will have to resort to watching our 1986 Mets collector’s edition DVDs. It wasn’t always this way. I remember going to Old-Timers’ Day at Shea as a kid with my dad. This was back when the stadium had orange and blue squares framing the outside of the structure — just like cedar shingles on a house. My dad, a former minor-leaguer in the Washington Senators’ system, would gush: “There’s Mays ... Look at Tommie Agee ... Al Jackson’s curveball would buckle your knees.” I didn’t know exactly what he was talking about, but it sure sounded cool. The players looked like gigantic superheroes to my 11-year-old eyes. Thinking back on those sun-drenched Saturday afternoons in the ’70s, I realize just what Dad was doing, aside from protecting his comb-over from gusting stadium winds. He was teaching me about tradition. Even though I was too young to have seen the men on the field play for real, I wasn’t too young to learn what they meant to the game and the city, according to Dad’s gospel. Which brings me to this: How are fans born after 1976 ever going to appreciate the Mets of the ’80s? Anyone who lived in New York at the time knows that those guys ruled the city. They created a frenzy, one that children today could get a taste of if they had a chance to see these local legends saunter onto the baseball diamond once a year — no matter how many hair plugs or extra pounds they have. For the Mets, Old-Timers’ Day is a lost art. Two anniversary celebrations for championship teams aside, it’s been almost 20 years since the organization gave the fans an afternoon to dote on their favorite players. My 15-year-old niece, who follows the team obsessively, doesn’t think of Ron Darling, Keith Hernandez and Lee Mazzilli as New York baseball greats — she sees them as TV announcers. She has no idea about the excitement they ignited in New York a decade before she was born. So what’s going on with the Mets? A team spokesman told me that having an Old-Timers’ game just didn’t make enough money for the club. I find it difficult to believe that a franchise that pays Johan Santana more than $130 million to pitch can’t afford to fly Tom Seaver from his vineyard in Napa Valley to New York and put him up in the Grand Hyatt for a night or two. The Mets, a once-proud organization with quirky, irreverent players like Gary Carter, Lenny Dykstra, Roger McDowell and Mookie Wilson, seems no longer to honor that irascible tradition. Not paying homage to players who brought such past success reeks of ingratitude. I know baseball is a business, and no one’s in business to lose money. But it’s a stretch to think a ball club that can draw an average of more than 40,000 fans a game and has two World Series victories in its short history can’t drum up the scratch to honor the past. Heck, let the sponsors pay for the party. They pay for everything else — from Build-a-Bear Workshop Day to Delta Airlines Fleece Blanket Night. The Mets move to a new stadium next year. Why not start a new Old Timers’ tradition at Citi Field — and then keep it going? As a Mets fan, I’d like to find a way to keep pace with the Yankees. I’d also like to go to the ballpark with my old man to see the old men again. And this time, when he waxes poetic about a player, to be able to say, “Yeah, Dad. I know exactly what you mean.” Brian Biegel is the author of the forthcoming “Miracle Ball: My Hunt for the Shot Heard Around the World.”

G-Fafif Aug 02 2008 08:42 PM

Welcome back to the 5% club.