Tuesday Rants – Farewell To Jay Leno Edition

Last night after Angel Pagan slid into home and scored, a few key players took him to side and chided him. “What were you trying to pull with that slide dude?’ Beltran asked, “We don’t slide like that on this team, If you want to fit in with this team, it’s best that you get that whole sliding thing out of your head.” Ryan Church, nodded in approval.

Seriously though, five errors? That’s way too many E’s for me. But, here’s an interesting fact I dug up this morning. Can you name a word that has five E’s and no other vowels? The answer you are looking for is Defenselessness.

Ryan Church is no longer in Jerry Manuel’s doghouse, he is now behind the doghouse. Did you see how pissed off Manuel was? He was at a loss for words much like his team was at a loss for defense. David Lennon explains how it went down,

When Church returned to the dugout steps as the appeal call was being made, Manuel, who was leaning on the rail, actually turns a cold shoulder toward him. Turns away so as to not look at Church. Wow. Then there’s this: “A guy missed third base — that’s unbelievable,” Manuel said. “I can’t explain why, how or anything. But he actually missed the base. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone miss third base like that.” And there’s this from Beltran: “I never seen anything like that. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t ask Church what happened. It’s bad.”

How long before Ryan Church finally gets shuffled out of New York? Maybe he can go back to the Nats in a package for Nick Johnson. But then we also have to kick in a first baseman which would mean we lose the services of Jeremy Reed. It must be tough being a GM.

One play that really stuck to the roof of my mouth was when Angel Pagan and Carlos Beltran almost collided (or did collide if you were listening to Howie Rose) and let the ball drop between them. I don’t know how good you guys are at lip reading, but you could clearly see Pagan shouting “I got it, I got it”, and Beltran shouting, “Outta my way, you little freaking twerp!”

Has anybody else noticed that Luis Castillo is looking a lot like, um Luis Castillo again? His batting average was .340 going into May and now stands at .275, which finally prompted Jerry Manuel to begin using him in the two spot again. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Tim Redding started and actually pitched a pretty good game. He must have felt right at home as the Mets pulled off one of the best impressions of the Washington Nationals I have ever seen. Manny Acta was so taken by the performance, he called his golfing buddy Omar Minaya and thanked him for the wonderful tribute.

Ramon Martinez just barely showed up on time after flying in and arriving 15 minutes before the game. Thank goodness… I could only imagine how much worse things would have been if Omir Santos was pegged to start at shortstop instead.

I never thought I would ever miss Carlos Delgado’s glove at first base. It’s funny how that worked out. David Wright will miss him even more than me. Who is going to catch all those bad throws to first base that Delgado saved from being errors? It looks like Ryan Zimmerman may win a gold glove after all.

After Mike Pelfrey entertained us with all his balks on Sunday night, I thought “Geez, this is as bad as it can get for the Mets”. That may have been the biggest miscalculation since John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Okay, once I start mingling Mets baseball with politics, I know it’s time for the curtain to come down. I hope my attempt at a little humor made last night’s farce a little less sour tasting.