LOL...I don't expect to be hearing from Shooter in here Roughneck.
Think they mighta been off on that #1 reason though...
Mets fans don't seem to suffer from 'sour grapes' syndrome and handle defeat with a lot more grace than fans of that 'other' NY team do.
;D
Had to laugh...most of the other sports page headlines celebrated the
SWEEP ;D with things like AMAZIN'!...but the poor biased Daily News just can't seem to handle it at all when the Mets do well...their headline was 'Bitter Sweep'
Laughed my a$$ off at this one- makes for some pretty funny stuff when the shoe's on the other foot... ;D
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Feisty Yanks May be No. 2 But They Try Very, Very Hardby CHUCK CULPEPPER
July 5, 2004
Just because the Yankees aren't quite the Mets doesn't mean you should go around belittling them.
Show some perspective. The Yankees, whatever their status as the kid brother in town, have a scrappy little team that might just inflict some serious damage down the line in the long baseball summer.
Of course the Yanks are overmatched at Shea, but just look at their effort yesterday in their uphill climb. Your ordinary baseball prey might have looked intimidated out there facing the Mets and all, but the Yankees proved exemplary in the arts of no quit and no "I" in team and the old college try.
They rallied from 3-0 and 4-1 and 5-4 deficits yesterday before sustaining valiant defeat.
We have a complimentary baseball adjective for teams such as this.
We call them "pesky."
Afterward, manager Joe Torre scaled the heights of propriety when he said, "Well, there's more good than bad. The bad is the result. The good is watching my players play as hard as they can and battle tooth and nail."
His promising starting pitcher, Javier Vazquez, cowered slightly in the mystique and aura of the Mets - and in fairness, who among us wouldn't? - but did Torre cast aspersions on his impressionable 27-year-old?
No way.
"Had no command," the manager said, "but I give the kid credit because he battled his tail off. He doesn't quit. That's why we love the kid."
That's the spirit. You cannot while away the afternoons sulking at the window just because you're No. 2 in town. As catcher Jorge Posada was telling us of the weekend, "Oh, it matters, but you've got to look forward."
It is just such wisdom about which direction to look in life that keeps us repeatedly carrying pens and notebooks into athletic locker rooms, and it is just such wisdom that will behoove the Yankees in their plight to remain pesky.
Small-ball teams like the Yankees require such vision going into games such as yesterday's. For example, the Yankees know full well they don't possess a slugger the caliber of Ty Wigginton, so they have to scratch out their living in other ways.
Gamely, nobly, they peppered the towering Mets with 16 hits of earnest effort and darned near made off with the win in a 6-5 loss.
Yes, in fairness, sometimes the Mets did help out with some fielding that demonstrated a rather estranged relationship with the baseball. On several occasions, they showed an indifference that left them far enough from the ball, or close enough to banging into a teammate to prevent the catching of the ball, that the official scorer went ahead and granted the Yankees a hit.
What the heck, it was the Fourth of July.
So while the Mets almost benevolently gave their crosstown punching bag a chance, the Yankees, bless their beating hearts, ultimately failed to comply, but so go the breaks sometimes, and as Derek Jeter reminded any worriers, "It's not football. You don't have a week to think about it."
Again, that's the spirit.
If there's one legitimate quibble with the Yankees, though, it's that occasionally their thinking doesn't quite match their exertion out there.
In the eighth inning, the baserunning Posada let a batted ball strike him, which by rule counted as an out. In Posada's defense, you could say he ran - hard - between first base and second behind Mike Piazza as Piazza attempted to field Miguel Cairo's grounder, and he figured he'd better hustle because Piazza would field the grounder.
A craftier player might have realized straightaway while standing on first base that the Mets' first baseman was Mike Piazza, and that therefore, any baseball hit in the first baseman's direction would stand a more-than-reasonable chance of traveling on through without touching any part of the first baseman's body, particularly the brown part on the end of his left hand.
Indeed, the baseball did rush under Piazza's glove without meeting any human resistance, surprising Posada and leaving him lonely among the surprised.
But that's just the kind of nitpicking this upstart Yankees club does not need from wise guys such as us. Disadvantaged in personnel and élan from the Mike Mussina start long ago on Friday night, this brave bunch showed yeoman grit on Saturday and yesterday.
If anything, they're underpaid. But they'll get back to the Bronx and they'll roll up the sleeves and they'll get to work and one day, off in the distance, they might even end up equal to or maybe even superior to the Mets.
Just you wait and see.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.