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Wednesday, April 2, 2008

First Posts by Mister Six

I find myself wanting to write in more and more often about this little midget fuck, and I just can't help it. It's not even so much the fact that 99% of his articles are either:

A) The same.
B) Bashing the Yankees for Steroids/Spendings/Age.
C) Neglecting to mention that our cross-town rivals have all the same issues.

I think it's more because he's such an unapologetic HACK of a writer. I mean… what's with the constant string of sentence fragments man? Is that supposed to be fucking poetic? I feel like I'm reading Bill Platschke but doesn't he write on the West Coast? This has led me to an undeniable conclusion. Are you ready for this? Mike Lupica came from Bill Platschke. But not like they're related or anything. More like that Mike Lupica was spewed from Bill Platschke's fat ass after a night of Tequila and Taco Bell binging.

Onto what pisses me off about this article though.

Melky Cabrera had made two spectacular plays in the outfield, top of the fourth against the Blue Jays, the best back-to-back plays any Yankee center fielder could ever make in that outfield, the Grand Concourse of baseball.

Loopy, please… stop it, you're so poetic. I think I'm about to cry. I was wrong. I just had to fart. How old is Mike Lupica? How many Yankee games has he been to since migrating here from Boston? How many Yankee games has this man seen? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that he's seen about 7. I'm guessing the Bucky Dent game was one of them. How the fuck does this midget Yankee-basher know that DiMaggio or Mantle never made two better plays? This is a veiled fucking slap in the face of Bernie Williams, who won multiple Gold Gloves (not that they mean much, but still). It's a veiled slap at DiMaggio, Mantle, even Mickey Rivers. Melky's plays were great, but don't compare shit from April 1st, 2008 to the WHOLE of Yankee fucking HISTORY. Yankee history isn't made on April 1st Mike, its made in October.

Met history is made in April, unless they’re shitting the bed in September and choking away their playoff spot again.

First Melky had run a mile to his left in right-center and reached his glove across his body and taken at least a double away from Lyle Overbay…

Melky ran a mile and reached with his glove and sweated from his mighty brow and took away a double and Lyle Overbay cried and wailed and walked back to the dugout and sat down and Melky went back to his spot in Centerfield and adjusted his cap!!!! Hey Mike… you can write more than one sentence. Also…at least a double? Have you ever seen Lyle Overbay run? Lyle Overbay is to running, what Eliot Spitzer is to Family Values. Lyle Overbay runs like he just shit himself and he doesn't want to make it stain. Melky robbed a double. Nothing more.

"This place was absolutely awesome tonight," Johnny Damon would say later. "Jazzed," Brian Cashman would say.

Jazzed? That's the whole quote? Wow, they really save all the good quotes for Lupica, don't they? That's what a grade A, terrific sportswriter gets for his story. You're trying to tell me that the ONLY thing of value that Brian Cashman said about last night's game was, "Jazzed?" And you printed it? I'd have pretended he said nothing.

Then Melky, the kid who nearly went to the Twins for Johan Santana, hit a 3-2 pitch down the right-field line in the sixth, a high shot that seemed to go up as high as the lights at the top of the place before landing in the first row of the stands, just inside the right-field foul pole. It is 314 feet out there. Maybe this one went 315. Or 316. Whatever. It was Yankees 2 and Blue Jays 2 on Opening Night.

Cashman never wanted to move Melky. He doesn't believe in mortgaging his entire farm system for one player that he's going to have to pay an astronomical sum of money for, unlike say… Omar Minaya, the GM of the Oldest Team in Baseball.

Also… you know, had that ball gone 317 it would have been worth TWO runs instead of only one. Only Lupica knows this. Whatever. Doesn’t "Whatever" imply that whatever was said before it is unimportant? If it's not important then why did he fucking WRITE it? Why not… *gasp*… delete it! Simple! Because it's all about sentence fragments. Fragments. And. Lots. Of them. It's like. William Shatner. Is writing this. And pretending. To be Captain. Kirk.

Jason Giambi in looking for a bunt, helped keep it that way, making this amazing leap and catch of a line drive hit by Marco Scutaro.

Can't you just FEEL Lupica resisting the urge to add something like, "The kind of amazing leap and catch that a man, a man like Giambi, who's taken so much money, millions upon millions of dollars, hand over fist, and still disgraced his team by taking steroids and cheating like a damned cheating Yankee, ought to make in a big game. The kind he's never made in October for them." Doesn't it sound like something he would say? I think he said it and the editor removed it.

Now it was 9:07 at Yankee Stadium, first night of the last season on this side of the street, and the blue doors opened out in front of the monuments and here came Joba Chamberlain.

There goes Mike again. This is the kind of fucking poetry that can only be written by a certified member of the Keebler Elf crew. It was 9:07 at Yankee Stadium, and it's a good thing that it was 9:07 and not 9:09. Because if it were 9:09 then LaTroy Hawkins would have come into the game instead and fucking blown it. The monuments are coming with them. The blue doors are probably fucking coming with them. They're moving across the street, not to fucking Pango Pango! It's really not that big of a deal.

Jorge Posada was asked if he'd called for a 97-mph fastball.

Posada smiled. "Actually, I asked him to throw a screwball, but he didn't know how. And we haven't worked on the knuckler enough yet. So I just told him to do whatever felt right." Are you fucking retarded?! If Jorge Posada could just ASK pitchers to throw 97-mph fastballs and they do EXACTLY THAT, then he really should start calling for 97-mph fastballs when Mike Mussina's on the fucking hill.

Just like that, the Stadium dialed itself all the way up on Opening Night, jazzed itself up. RBI double from A-Rod in the bottom of the first, a ball that must have sounded like a police siren coming off his bat.

The kind of thing a player with a nickname like A-Rod ought to do at a big moment unless he wants people to call him F-Rod and not in the good way that people use it for Francisco Rodriguez either. In the way that you would call him F-Rod if he was a miserable failure like he is in the entire month of October and probably also in November and December but we'll never know because nobody plays baseball then but A-Rod should have to because he makes so much money. And does steroids. Jose Canseco says so. So it's true. Plus A-Rod clearly knows Giambi. So A-Rod must be using steroids between innings. Especially if he hits a home run off John Maine during the Subway Series this year.


Okay, okay… maybe Lupica didn't write that last paragraph, but admit it. You got like HALF WAY THROUGH IT before you realized it. Didn't you? No? Bullshit, you know you did.


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If I were Lupica, I'd be less concerned with the dates of birth of members of various New York Teams outfields, and a bit more concerned with how the Mets ended up with the outfield they've got.

I vaguely remember talk of a potential deal a couple of years ago that involved one Manny Ramirez possibly coming to the Metsies. Omar wanted to add him. Boston wanted to move him. There was concern over whether he was approaching decline, but the money wasn't an issue for the Mets (and their now-$140M payroll). And as for decline, here are Manny's last 2 years in Boston.

.321/.439/.619, 35 HR, 102 RBI in 130 games.
.296/.388/.493, 20 HR, 88 RBI in 133 games. (And he batted .340 in the post-season with 4 HR and 16 RBI)

So what could have derailed such a monster trade as to send a guy with a career .313/.409/.593 line and 490 homers to Queens?

Yup… you guessed it. Omar Minaya's absolute fucking refusal to trade Lastings Milledge. Giving up Milledge for Manny Ramirez was abso-fucking-loutly out of the question.

Now… if Minaya were getting back something better for Milledge… like say… a 29 year old lefty outfielder with career numbers of .271/.348/.462, 35 career homers and an OPS+ of 113, especially if that guy OPS'd a cool .723 for his career against left-handed pitching… THAT'S a deal old Omar would have to consider.

Two years ago, Milledge for ManRam was out of the question. In 2008, Milledge nets Ryan Church and if you ask me, that's a worse move than Kazmir-for-Zambrano. Nobody will kill you in the media for the "trade you don't make"… and most people forget them. But if the Mets had Manny Ramirez in their lineup, there's NO FUCKING WAY they lose that series to the Cardinals in 2006 and probably go on to win the World Series over a shitty Tiger team that couldn't pitch without pine tar. And there's also NO FUCKING WAY they blow that lead in September 2007.

So what would you rather have? Manny Ramirez and a Ring? Or the young, virile and "Under-30 for 12 more months" Ryan Church? I rest my case.

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