New York, NY – Due to a series of Friday flip flops with Cookie, I’ve found myself batting behind Lori Levine in the MtM lineup. This is quite an enviable position. Who wouldn’t want to get behind Lori? But this position has put me in a tough predicament on more than one occasion since Madam Levine and I have very similar tastes when it comes to sports teams. We also have similar trains of thought when it comes to columns. I was all set to write about the Ponys parting ways with Payton, but Lori stepped up to the plate and cleared the bases yesterday with her stellar piece on Peyton’s options. I guess great minds think alike. And simple minds never differ.
So since LL pilfered my column idea yesterday, I thought I’d touch on a couple of random subjects that have been eating at me since… Well since I read Lori’s column yesterday and realized I couldn’t write about Peyton today.
We are witnessing the death of the sports argument in bars at the hands of smart phones. No longer will there be an hour-long argument as to whether Alan Henderson was in Blue Chips. Nor will people come close to fisticuffs trying to figure out who replaced Drazen Petrovic in the Super Nintendo version of NBA Jam after Petrovic got a little too fast and furious on the Autobahn. And we won’t have to think too long about whether David Cone ever won a Cy Young.
Today the answer is just a couple of seconds of thumb-typing away. The advent of mobile web browsing has shortened the interesting discussions at bars to almost nothing. Now the only thing to do at bars is watch highlights of Mavs vs Kings on ESPNews and reruns of the first round at Doral on Golf channel. This is an upsetting development. The days of the sports almanac behind the bar are gone for good. Who knows if they are still even printing sports almanacs. For the record, Alan Henderson was not in Blue Chips, Kenny Anderson replaced Petrovic (boom-shaka-laka), and David Cone won the Cy Young with Kansas City in the strike-shortened ’94 season.
I think Marty DiBergi should start working on a new documentary about the Wilpons and the Mets’ downward spiral. The film could be called Sinking in Flushing and should start with game 7 of the 2006 NLCS and Beltran doing his impersonation of the statue of David. After a series of poor signings and questionable front office decisions, attendances dwindle and the quality of the product on the field declines to the point where the Mets go from comically terrible to tragically terrible. A low point for the Mets occurs when their new alternate uniforms are deemed too offensive by Bud Selig, and the Amazin’s are forced to play in blank, all black uniforms with no writing or logo.With the Wilpons broke and the Mets drawing only 135 people for a game against the Reds, Fred and Jeff decide to exploit a niche market and move the team to Chiba City. The film could end with Jason Bay discussing how selling women’s shoes might be a good career choice since he has forgotten how to play baseball.
Thats all I’ve got today. Have a good weekend and come back tomorrow for the Public Professor.
