I was excited to see Albert Pujols, linchpin of my fantasy team and object of my man-crush, in-person for the first time. Vanessa was excited to wear her new home whites Mets/Jose Reyes jersey. And off we went!

Well, first we had to deal with some great Long Island traffic and difficult parking in Port Washington, such that we jogged from the car to the Long Island Railroad station. But anyway.

Citi Field is a nice stadium with an appealing brick facade. I believe this is supposed to recall Ebbets Field. The historian in me gets a kick out of that, because Robert Moses, master builder of New York, blocked the Dodgers from replacing Ebbets Field in Brooklyn (leading to their departure for LA) and then had Shea Stadium built in Flushing Meadows as part of the World’s Fair complex.The main entrance is called the Jackie Robinson Rotunda. Our seats entitled us to take an escalator up to the Sterling Level (ha ha ha) and into the fancy-pants restaurant and bar. Marble bathrooms, plush seats, Stella Artois on tap–is this my fancy health club in San Francisco or a ball park?

As expected, our seats were great, right on top of the field. Citi is one of the several parks in the bigs that have installed additional netting behind home plate–the low nets–to supplement the standard tall net directly behind home plate. The net did not adversely affect our view, so seems like a good call given the screaming liners that can hit the close seats.

In the photo you can see super-plush padding on the seats. Danny Meyer, a big-time NYC restaurateur, is in charge of the food at Citi. I say, good job Danny Meyer, as my pulled pork sandwich was excellent, the fries were crispy good and Vanessa gave a thumbs up to her Shackburger.

We were pleasantly surprised to see that Johan Santana was throwing for the Mets, marking our second time (in two Mets games) that we were treated with an outing by Santana. When we saw him in San Fran, he was not very sharp, and that was how he started out yesterday as well. The key moment in the game was in the second inning, when Pujols came to the plate with two outs, bases loaded and the Redbirds up 1-0. One long fly out later, the Josh Kleinbaum-soundalikes surrounding us were audibly sighing in relief and the best threat of the game for St. Louis had passed. Johan settled down and threw great for the rest of the game.

Tony La Russa did his best to straddle the “manage the hell out of it/over manage it” line, with four pitchers used in the bottom of the 8th. Despite that, the great pitching (Chris Carpenter was outstanding for St. Louis but for one bad inning) meant that the game was over in less than three hours. Good news for my pale skin, as it was very hot when the clouds broke.

And so we departed for Glen Cove with one happy Mets fan and one happy Tigers fan (comeback win for their seventh in a row).

Slideshow from Flickr:

No Guts, No Glory: Randy Johnson’s Road To 300, Every Mullet And Mustache Along The Way

(Via Rob Neyer.)

The Fulmer (Memorial) Cup celebrates in Bronx Cheer fashion those in collegiate athletics most prone to testing the bounds of civil and criminal code with outlandish, illegal, and sometimes injurious behavior. If you’re joining us for the first time here: the Fulmer Cup awards points for programs based on charges filed against players from said programs, with the points going to a collective tally for each school.

Offenses are divided into various categories. E.g., murder is worth 5 points, the most of any offense. My favorite category:

* Fightin’ in ‘da Club/Weed Possession/Standard DUI: 2 points. Any scenario involving group fighting of a thugged-out, ‘we run this place’ variety, and marijuana possession of the nickel bag level. Possession of 100 pounds of marijuana is a totally different thing, and takes you right back up to the 4 point ‘nefarious’ level.

My favorite part of Fulmer Cup 2008 was Jimmy Johns, the Alabama player who not only shares a name with a great Michigan (Midwestern?) sandwich chain but also racked up something like 20 points by himself for a cocaine ring he led.

Naturally, I e-mailed this clip to one of my clients, a big Ohio State fan. His response?
“I see your “to catch a predator” and raise you one, “Carl Monday”.” He enclosed this link:

Outlook and Recommendations

Bad years happen to good clubs. The key for the Tigers will simply be not to panic, nor to try and save face with guys like Renteria and Willis whose projections don’t really warrant it. The Tigers need to budget somewhere between $15-$20 million for perhaps three pitchers next year, but with the contracts of Renteria, Todd Jones, Kenny Rogers, and Ivan Rodriguez all coming off the books, they can easily afford to do so without increasing payroll.

There are ample opportunities to take advantage of the depth of their position-player roster at spots like shortstop, DH, and left field. On the other hand, while the system has produced a lot of league-average talent, it is short on high-upside guys, and the Tigers must absolutely resist the temptation to deal someone like Wilkin Ramirez. To the extent that the Tigers can pull in minor league talent for Gary Sheffield, or re-flip a Kyle Farnsworth, it is past time for them to do so.

This has been a frustrating season in Detroit, but hardly a disastrous one in terms of the club’s long-term fortunes. There have been several pleasant surprises this year in Galarraga, Joyce, and Brandon Inge’s smooth transition back to the catcher position. From top to bottom, the Tigers still rank somewhere in the top ten in the major leagues in terms of their overall talent pool, and they should be on track to return to contention with some relatively common-sense fixes.

Nice win last night to finish up a strong showing against the Lakers. It’s a bit frustrating to see Boston win, though, given that I think the Pistons should have been there instead. The ‘stones have let at least a couple championships slip through their finger tips. Also, this win should settle questions of whether Western Conference has the best teams. The west is a lot stronger top to bottom, but the best two teams were in the Eastern Conference.

I looked up Gallant’s stats; he last played in Detroit in 1993. A fan put up a retrospective of his time with the Wings. Dig on 90+ points with 200+ penalty minutes!

The Wings started the game with probably their worst period of hockey since the Nashville series, although in this case the culprits were turnover-prone skaters rather than a leaky goalie. The turnover madness continued for the first two minutes of the second period, when Detroit scored on a somewhat flukey and weak goal. But hey, we’ll take it. And the Wings had to feel lucky that they were only down 2-1. They had been completely outplayed by Pittsburgh up to that point. The only thing keeping them in the game were some strong goaltending from Osgood and a number of missed nets on good chances for the Penguins.

The rest of the second period was evenly matched hockey, with good chances on both sides. From the very beginning of the third period, however, it was all Detroit. Datsyuk made an incredible individual effort to fight through some checks along the boards at the Pittsburgh blue line early in the period, showing great stick strength to maintain the puck, then made a characteristic “How’d he do that?!” move to get in on night. A great finish resulted in only a near-goal, as Pavel hit the crossbar but could not find the net. I was wondering at the time whether it was not to be last night for the Wings, but they continued to pour on the heavy pressure, outshooting Pittsburg by something like 15-2 in the period at one point. The reward was two goals and a lead entering the final five minutes, with the Stanley Cup theirs upon victory.

Right around the time the broadcast showed the Cup handler man polishing the Cup one last time in his white gloves, the Wings downshifted a bit to a more defensive style for those last few minutes. That was the right call given the circumstances, as you do not want to give the opposition a scoring chance due to a defenseman pinching in his offensive zone. Pittsburgh pulled the goalie at approximately the one-minute mark; Zetterberg was skating in center ice with 50 seconds to go and a chance to ice it with an empty-netter, but the checking was too tight and he could not convert. And Pittsburgh gained control in the Detroit zone. And then Pittsburgh scored with 34 seconds left.

Talk about deflating. I’d spent the entire third period tensed up, eyes wide open, from the excitement, the stakes, the dominant performance by the Wings. Ten years ago I probably would have thrown my remote control and then had to go search for the battery cover and the batteries to resume watching the game. After enough sporting fandom disappointments, you just sigh loudly and hope for the best.

The overtimes were entertaining and mostly dominated by the Wings. But shots on goal don’t convert to goal at some pre-determined ratio, so a 57:28 shots edge after 2 overtimes ultimately just means that the disappointment is greater if you do not wind up the winner. The second and third OTs were evenly matched for the most part, once fatigue became evident and the Wings’ spurt from the third period and first OT died out. Apart from outstanding goaltending from Marc-Andre Fleury in the Pittsburgh net, most of note in the overtimes was the horrible, inexplicable officiating. Two more goaltender interference penalties on the Wings after all the laughable interference calls against them this playoff run? In overtime of a Stanley Cup game? And yet the usual interference and grabbing goes uncalled, except for one penalty against the Penguins that was not particularly egregious and did not take place on a key part of the ice.

One hopes that Jiri Hudler is remembered more for his strong game (alongside Filpulla, Franzen and Datsyuk as the class of the Wings forwards last night) than for his lacksadaisical stick control that led to a 4-minute penalty for highsticking in the third OT. How Hudler’s gaffe goes down depends on Game 6 and perhaps Game 7 of this series. After last night, his penalty and the subsequent power play gave Pittsburgh another man advantage, and they converted on this one.

Here’s a photo of Hermann in his Charlottle uni (he was acquired from Charlotte earlier this season):