text:
That's a 29-year swing in the standings right there, going from worrying about the second-place Mets of now to shuddering over what became of the second-place Mets of then, but baseball is a time machine that way, whether you desire to connect to its services or not; it comes with the package. I saw Pendleton and I was transported to the infamous home run he hit off Roger McDowell and the shoe I threw at a nearby wall once that game went final.
Not longer after the present-day portrait of Terry Pendleton at Turner Field dissolved, Adonis Garcia was batting with one out in the bottom of the eighth, the Mets leading, 3-2, Freddie Freeman on first. Freeman landed there after lining a Jerry Blevins pitch to right as the inning's leadoff batter. You don't think of Blevins starting eighth innings with one-run leads, which gave me pause, considering the Addison Reed–Jeurys Familia combination has been functioning without serious glitching in sealing off the final two frames, but it wasn't ludicrous. Blevins is, in the parlance once applied to Gene Walter (speaking of 1987), death on lefthanded hitting. Freeman, though, is death on Met pitching of all stripe.
Blevins struck out his next lefty, Nick Markakis, so half harm, half foul, I suppose. The next batter was Garcia, a righty of slight track record, which motivated Terry Collins to scurry like a puppy dog to the mound to remove Blevins and insert Reed. Reed's rap is he's not as reliable when entering in an inning already in progress as he is when the canvas is his to paint. Last year, after joining the Mets at the edge of September, he inherited seven runs and allowed five to score. He's improved in this area when asked to take over for a fallen bullpen comrade. Heading into his encounter with Garcia, he'd inherited eleven and stranded all but one.
Garcia, though, I perceived as daunting. It was not seeing Adonis Garcia at the plate that bothered me, but Wilson Betemit. I looked at Garcia and Betemit crossed my mind. Betemit, a utility type who played for seven teams — more with Atlanta than anybody — in parts of eleven major league seasons (none since 2013), was beefier than Garcia but a comparable power threat. According to Baseball-Reference, Betemit hit a home run once every 27.9 at-bats, Garcia, to date, once every 26.6. His numbers were unremarkable, but, according to my selective memory, Betemit homered off Mets pitching every chance he got.
It turns out Betemit hit only six home runs versus the Mets: two as a Brave, including his very first in the majors; two as a Dodger; one as a Yankee; and one as an Oriole. It's the one as a Yankee that stays with me, struck June 29, 2008, the final Subway Series game at Shea Stadium. It was a truly lovely Sunday afternoon for eight innings, devolving, as those things would in the ninth, into a marshaling of survival instincts when Derek Jeter produced a leadoff single against Billy Wagner. The Mets hung on to their 3-1 lead, despite Jeter scampering to second on a wild pitch and Alex Rodriguez flying to Endy Chavez at the track. Betemit happened to strike out looking to end the game, but that's not why I thought of him while he batted against Reed.
Betemit infiltrated my mind because in the seventh inning of that 2008 affair, with no runners on and Oliver Perez in shutout mode (Ollie was actually quite solid in the situations when you absolutely could not stand the idea of losing to certain clubs), Betemit launched a missile that, without resorting to more than a modicum exaggeration, probably reached the World's Fair Marina. It was seriously belted. Even though the home run had limited impact on the outcome of the game — none, really, as the Mets were winning when he hit and went on to win — it lurked in the recesses of my subconscious for eight years. It came out to play last night.
I thought of Wilson Betemit hitting a home run, I literally muttered to myself that I sure hoped Adonis Garcia didn't do to us what Wilson Betemit did to us, and, within a matter of seconds, Garcia did exactly that.
Except worse, because the Mets had been up by three when Betemit let loose with his solo blast, while Garcia was up with a man on and his team down by only one. It wasn't the same type of home run. It wasn't pulled so dramatically and it didn't clear the wall with acres to spare, but it counted the same. The Mets went from leading, 3-2, to trailing, 4-3.
Too Betemitesque for comfort. Too Pendletonian, too, except in 2016, it's June, whereas in 1987, it was September, and the Cardinals were in first place and the Braves, despite displaying excessive amounts competence of late, are in last. Still, it stung enough that when the inning was complete and I had to dash upstairs from the living room for a moment, I looked at the steps ahead of me and flashed back to that Barney Stein photograph of Ralph Branca sprawled face-down on a similar staircase in the visitors' clubhouse at the Polo Grounds on October 3, 1951. Branca wasn't in a good baseball mood and, 65 years later, neither was I.
I came back downstairs, but the Mets didn't come back in the ninth. Just one game, as we say when there are 91 of them remaining on the schedule and only four separating us from the top of the division, but what a shame. There were several things to like before Reed got that fastball up in Betemit's zone of delight. There was Matt Harvey being effective if not dominant (if neither when it came to A.J. Pierzynski) over six innings; Harvey even picked a runner off first for the first time since his maiden start of 2013. There was Alejandro De Aza making a very nice grab in center to rob Jace Peterson in the third after having doubled in his first run since Harry M. Stevens decided sticking a sausage in a bun was a capital idea. There was Michael Conforto not disabling himself when he ran into the padded left field side wall making a catch to end the fourth. There were even two close calls that went our way, no matter the damage it did to Mr. Snitker's decorum.
In the seventh, Conforto threw out Emilio Bonifacio at the plate from fairly deep left, which was a surprise, given Conforto's accurate but average arm, and a shock, given that Travis d'Arnaud had to catch the ball, hold the ball and legally block the plate while not reinjuring his perpetually vulnerable body. Td'A did it all, and it was a revelation…even though I was sure Bonifacio had gotten a toe in ahead of the tag. Replay review "confirmed" the call, Snitker's ire be damned. In the eighth, which could have gotten worse after Garcia went yard, Travis fired a bullet to second to cut down Erick Aybar stealing, which nobody challenged or suggested challenging, but the umpires asked the home office in Chelsea to weigh in on. It, too, stood.
Never mind the Mets getting two calls (if, ultimately, for naught). Conforto has had little go swimmingly since an April when the game was as easy as floating on an inflatable raft with a frozen cocktail in hand. Sophomore turbulence has turned tough, but Michael's still on the field, still learning, still succeeding intermittently. D'Arnaud's been absent from behind the dish for too long this season, but what a shot in the arm it's been to see his arm having recovered its zing in the small sample size we've observed since his return from the DL.
Earlier Thursday, I filled out my All-Star ballot — hardly the most consequential vote in the world yesterday — and abided by my rule of not selecting any Mets who in no way deserve election, while definitely voting for any Mets for whom a remote case can be made. Also, I have a whole bunch of teams in both leagues whose players are automatically by association on my no-fly list, so it's a pretty narrow needle I'm threading while voting. I wound up punching the electronic hole for three Mets: Cespedes (the only one on track for election), Walker and Cabrera. I considered Conforto, based on his first month, but decided I didn't want to send him the wrong message and make him complacent (don't worry, kid, I'll take care of you over the next fifteen summers). I looked longingly at d'Arnaud and recalled telling somebody in spring that this season would be the one when Travis, 27, makes his All-Star debut, backing up Buster Posey.
That's not gonna happen. No year has happened in full for d'Arnaud yet, who's at the outer perimeter of being considered a young player (except in life) without ever having participated uninterrupted in a big league season. You get used to certain guys not being around that you forget what they mean to a team. Due respect to Rene Rivera and the since-demoted Kevin Plawecki, but it's a sharp drop from d'Arnaud to the alternatives, provided Travis a) plays and b) takes a deep breath to facilitate his development. I very much want to believe he has an All-Star date in his future, if not the immediate one. Those two plays — tagging out Bonifacio, throwing out Aybar — gave me faith.
Which is a good thing to hold on to after Adonis Garcia ruins everything.
No Mets game Saturday afternoon, so come spend an hour and change with me at the Queens Library in Briarwood, where I'll be discussing Amazin' Again and sharing some related baseball/book thoughts starting at 3 o'clock. Details here. Hope to see you there.]]>
(Let's take a moment to observe that while the Mets aren't out of the business of needlessly belittling Jay Horwitz, they've at least found better internal nicknames for him.)
Exit Terry again, this time for real. And cue a sudden U-turn to the familiar confines of Panic City.
Collins's annoyance was understandable, as was his attempted dodge. (Which isn't to say either was appropriate.) The rollercoaster Mets had looked robust and feisty against the Pirates, then inept and inanimate against the Braves. So of course they then swept an abbreviated two-game series against the Royals, last seen at Citi Field doing things that need not be spoken of.
The Mets had secured the sweep — and a win in the season series, to extract a positive that hits all of us like a negative — with a tidy, taut 4-3 win. Syndergaard wasn't his electric self, which is to say he was merely really good, and the two teams battled back and forth, looking for a breach in the other's defenses.
Asdrubal Cabrera scored the first run in the fourth, racing home on a little dunker by James Loney and getting past the mitt of the redoubtable Salvador Perez through a moundward scurry and a quick reversal to slap the outer margin of home plate with his hand — a run that somehow didn't involve the apple going skyward.
It wasn't to last, though: in the top of the inning, Kansas City's Cheslor Cuthbert stepped to the plate against Syndergaard. Let me take a moment to observe that "Cheslor Cuthbert" is not just a ridiculous baseball name but a ridiculous name, the kind of thing an overeager young D&D player would come up with, spending four hours crafting an intricate backstory for a cleric with four hit points. (Time for a lesson, thinks the DM; this roll for wandering monsters won't be the last.)
It may be a silly name, but the player rolled a natural 20, and a moment later Cheslor Cuthbert was trotting around the bases to tie the game. Three batters later, Whit Merrifield checked that his boater was at a jaunty angle, buttoned his cardigan and stroked a ball just past Neil Walker for a 2-1 Royals lead. Hip-hip! declared his chums, breaking into valedictory song.
(Seriously, what is it with the Royals and names?)
Ned Yost trued to coax a sputtering Danny Duffy through the fifth inning, only to run afoul of Cabrera, who crashed a two-run homer to return the lead to the Mets' possession. (Cabrera had a really superb game, helping the Mets win with his bat, glove and baserunning smarts.) The Royals tied it immediately in the top of the sixth, but Matt Reynolds — pressed into service as a left fielder — untied it just as immediately in the bottom, smacking his first career home run off Joakim Soria.
That lead held up, and there you had it: scoring in five consecutive half-innings, three lead changes, plenty of excitement, and a victory for the forces of light and good.
So yeah, no wonder Terry Collins didn't want to talk about injuries. He's been manager of the Mets long enough to know that Syndergaard's elbow flaring up would mean a question from every reporter in the room — he'd just endured a round table of inquiries about Yoenis Cespedes's wrist, and been asked about Zack Wheeler's elbow. He's been in baseball long enough to know that none of those questions would be answerable. He's seen the thinking around the game change enough to sense he'd have to start answering questions about, say, the wisdom of leaving a young pitcher to go north of 100 pitches with an 11-0 lead.
Terry tried to duck the question; Horwitz knew the cover-up would lead to more howling than the crime and didn't let him.
A few weeks back, I emerged from a college-reunion dinner to see Syndergaard had exited with 2.1 innings under his belt and no earned runs allowed. My first thought was simple and awful: he's blown out his elbow.
It wasn't the case, thank goodness. But when Collins scurried away from his parting stink bomb on Wednesday, I had the same thought: he's blown out his elbow.
It's not the case this time, either — as Syndergaard himself let us know via Instagram. (What a world!) But I wasn't shocked to have that thought again. And I won't be shocked the next time Syndergaard turns away from his delivery with a look of annoyance, or needs something checked out, or seems to be missing a couple of ticks on that ungodly fastball.
Because odds are that sooner or later, this won't be a false alarm: that little ligament will go, undone by the superhuman feats it's been witness to. And then Syndergaard will spend a year in a cameo role, followed by a return that will involve a roll of the dice. Just like happened to Matt Harvey and Jacob deGrom and Zack Wheeler and Steven Matz — which is to say, every member of the presumed September rotation except Noah Syndergaard.
I devoutly hope that won't be true this year or any year. I hope Syndergaard will be one of the outliers, a Tom Seaver or a Nolan Ryan who won the genetic lottery. If so, I'll even forgive him when he comes back to old-timers' affairs and grouses that pitchers were a different breed than today's cosseted, milk-fed semi-athletes, having followed Seaver and Ryan's lead and mistaken his good fortune for moral fortitude.
That would be better for the Mets and better for Syndergaard, needless to say — even today, slicing open the elbow of a pitcher is no routine thing. But it would be better for us, too. Noah Syndergaard is a dream: simultaneously a videogame played by a kid who's mastered the cheat codes and a cerebral athlete determined to master the mechanics and tactics of his craft. The problem with dreams is that you wake up and are left facing mundane reality; so far with Syndergaard we've been able to shake off the interruptions, hit the pillow and pick up where we left off. We'll get up soon … but not quite yet, please. Just give us a little longer.]]>
We'll know more about Colon's condition in the days ahead. Of necessarily immediate concern Wednesday was there was one out, there were twenty-six to go, there was no starter on the mound and there was no obvious long reliever in reserve to take on the defending (bleech) world champions.
Who ya gonna call? Hansel Robles? Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
Robles sure did, breaking out of his twin molds of fairly brief appearances and often shaky relief. Hansel kept the game a game when you would have wagered it would be a fiasco. He took the Mets to the fifth without giving up a run, by which time the Mets had posted a pair, each the way you'd expect, via solo home runs. Asdrubal Cabrera popped one just over the left field orange line in the first and Yoenis Cespedes blasted the black that surrounds the Apple in the fourth.
Robles couldn't pitch forever, though Terry Collins likely thought about it. He let Hansel keep throwing into the fifth, which facilitated the first Kansas City run. Exit No. 47, enter No. 62, also known, if you don't have a scorecard handy, as Erik Goeddel, approximately the fifteenth man on the Mets' twelve-man pitching staff. If it felt a little like Terry stared up at the video board and saw INSERT INTERCHANGEABLE RELIEVER HERE where Ray Kinsella once read Moonlight Graham's lifetime statistics, it's only because which one is Goeddel again?
Wednesday night, Goeddel was the pitcher who got the Mets out of the fifth with no further damage and put up another zero in the sixth. Way to go, guy I had completely forgotten was on the active roster. Way to go as well to Travis d'Arnaud, who was catching his first major league game in ages while being thrown a figurative curve. Travis probably thought handling Bartolo would provide an amenable path for easing back into his routine. With the Mets, of course, little is routine.
Following Erik (and the Mets' nightly offensive nap), the characters on the rubber grew more and more familiar.
• Jerry Blevins, who impishly replied to fan questions during SNY's pregame show, answered Terry's prayers with a clean seventh.
• Addison Reed, mostly unhittable in 2016, was completely unhittable in the eighth. As is his peculiar trait, Reed walked off the field with his cap brim pushed back on his head in such a fashion that I wouldn't be surprised if he's filming Bowery Boys shorts in the offseason.
• Dillon Gee…oh wait, he pitched for the other team, but nice to see him again.
• Finally, with Alex Gordon and Lucas Duda both on the DL, Jeurys Familia finished off the Royals as you'd expect a lockdown closer to do. Familia has converted 23 consecutive save opportunities if you took your World Series amnesia pill.
It's never too late for such an ending. I believe it's called happy. It wasn't Game Eight of the 2015-16 World Series, exactly, but it was an enormous 2-1 win, the specific opposition vanquished representing the least of it. We just lost three to the Braves. Losing Colon, hopefully not for very long, was a blow. Giving up this game before it got going would have been detrimental to the Mets' mental health. Good for Collins for extending those arms he had to stretch. Good for Robles (65 pitches) and Goeddel (31) in particular for responding. I wouldn't anticipate seeing Hansel again until July, but the game of June 21 was the one that had to get won.
Every possible pro and con argument for the Mets signing imminent free agent Jose Reyes has been made in the past 24 hours. I have nothing original to add that you haven't heard lately. To me, the most compelling aspect of a possible bargain-basement reunion between our erstwhile All-Star shortstop and the club for whom he plied his trade brilliantly in his innocent youth comes from listening to how those pros and cons are put forth.
Any statement that begins with a solemn nod to the severity of the domestic violence charge made against Reyes — the one that ultimately turned him into an ex-Rockie — is an endorsement of bringing Jose, even the physically and perhaps morally diminished version, home since a) it won't cost much; b) the Mets' depth is as thin as Bartolo Colon isn't; and c) everybody deserves a second chance, particularly those persons who might capture lightning in a bottle from the leadoff spot while learning to play third base on the fly.
Any statement that begins with an acknowledgement of how great a player Reyes was between 2003 and 2011 and how much affection one felt for him at his peak leads to a rejection of the potentially prodigal infielder, either because he's probably not capable of contributing very much anymore or because who wants to root for a man arrested for allegedly hitting his wife?
Opposites attract. Or people just prefer to imitate Reyes in his prime and motor all the way around the bases to make their point.
Last October 27, during Game One of the aforementioned World Series, Jose Reyes tweeted an image from his Hawaiian vacation. It was of the game his original team was playing, airing on the TV above the bar at whatever resort he was staying. "Mets all day," he typed, adding a string of flexed-muscle emojis for emphasis. How sweet, I thought, he still loves us. I'd given up on the idea that he'd return to the Mets anytime soon, but I hadn't stopped adoring him in the baseball sense.
A few days later, on the same vacation, he allegedly used his own muscled arms against his spouse, which will cool your ardor for anybody from a distance.
The Mets have played 69 games in 2016. After they'd played 69 games in 2011, Jose Reyes was slashing at a rate of .348/.390/.531. No Met had ever been as exciting as Jose was in June of 2011, unless it was Jose Reyes in June of 2006. Those Junes were five and ten years ago. Jose Reyes this June is locked in at .000/.000/.000, or pretty much what the Mets have been getting out of everybody since April turned to May.
Worth a shot from a baseball perspective? Yeah, why not? At worst, he's Rick Ankiel, and if he has nothing left, you sign his release. At best, you remember the uptight M. Donald Grant Mets picked up Lenny Randle off the Texas Ranger scrap heap after he punched his manager, Frank Lucchesi, in the face, and not only did Randle produce a banner season for an otherwise dreadful Mets team, lovable Lenny is certified in retirement "the most interesting man in baseball".
Worth a shot from a sentimental perspective? You're asking a preternaturally sentimental fan, someone who heartily applauded Bobby Bonilla upon his ill-conceived return to the Mets because there was a minute chance everything would work out and wouldn't that be a wonderful story, so of course, yeah, as long as you take another amnesia pill to forget why Jose is so incredibly available.
Worth a shot from a "baggage" perspective?
You had to ask that part.
What Jose Reyes is hauling is not baggage. It's an entire cargo plane, even as it's understood charges were dropped (when Mrs. Reyes chose not to cooperate with authorities), an apology was issued and a suspension was served. I've overlooked all sorts of miscreant and/or illegal behavior in Mets over the years, partly because shades of gray tend to tinge my view of most everything, partly because I will get behind virtually anybody who can help my team win ballgames. Knowing a player has allegedly assaulted his wife, however, is a whole other ballgame. That I can't think about one of my all-time favorite Mets without thinking about what he was arrested for…that I can't bring myself to picture myself cheering him vigorously in his theoretical first Met at-bat in six years despite never replacing him in my heart as my favorite Met of the more or less current era…that I feel ridiculous for even worrying about such sports consumer transactional niceties in the face of what he is alleged to have done to his wife in Hawaii last fall…
I didn't say I wouldn't take him back if it were somehow left up to me. But I didn't say I would.]]>
It was 1978 and, trust me, it was very on-point. There was even talk of a movie, albeit most of it between my friend Joel Lugo (who recently reminded me of the entire ninth-grade episode) and me.
The not-so-subtle subtext of my Saturday Night Fever parody was a good-natured ribbing of those who theoretically preferred a trip to the library over anything else in the world. I mean, c'mon, who would want to spend their Saturday afternoon in a library?
You will, I hope.
Everything that comes around goes around, or something like that, for this Saturday afternoon, Amazin' Again Fever will burn like a disco inferno at the Queens Library's Briarwood branch. That may be an overstatement, but the nice folks there have asked me to talk baseball in their building and I am looking forward to doing so at 3 PM, June 25.
You can find the Briarwood branch at 85-12 Main Street, accessible via the Briarwood (formerly Briarwood – Van Wyck Blvd.) stop of the E and F trains; the 168th St. exit off the Grand Central (turn left onto Main); and four bus lines that begin with the letter Q: 20A, 20B, 44 and 60. I'll bring some books, I'll share some thoughts, we'll solve the Mets and we'll be done in time for that evening's 7:15 first pitch from Atlanta.
I hope you'll join me. I can't think of a better topic to discuss, indoors or out, on a Saturday afternoon.
For those of you in New Jersey who have asked for an Amazin' appearance on your side of the Hudson, mark Thursday, July 28, 7 PM at Little City Books of Hoboken, on your calendars and other appropriate date-marking apps.]]>
How presumptuous.
I can't tell if Atlanta is building something formidable based on their having swept this trio of contests from the Mets. Maybe they're better than we were led to believe. The Mets, based mostly on their recent sample of baseball, don't appear to be particularly able at all.
It's not so much the loss of three games to a last-place club as it was the pulselessness that was displayed one through eight from Friday to Sunday, particularly Sunday. The Mets' trademark starting pitching was good enough to compete if not overwhelm in all three games, but the Mets' starting hitting, save for a handful of swings, never really began.
Sunday dreadful Sunday was the worst, which is saying something after how Saturday night went down. You can accept with grace one loss to a rebuilding entity like the Braves. You can rationalize away a second loss defined by a third base coach's ill-advised green light. But the third, for which your batters produced one hit and no other means of reaching base?
That's not gonna get it done, if you'll excuse my using technical terms. It's not much of answer, but on Sunday, the Mets didn't look like much of ballclub. The real victims were all the kids who were looking forward to the Mr. Met Dash. Without their heroes setting an example, these boys and girls were left completely clueless as to what one does when one encounters basepaths.
I heard "shakeup" mentioned in the postgame press conference. If possible, I'd treat the current roster like a snow globe and, after swapping out Kevin Plawecki for Travis d'Arnaud, send down any four guys and bring back any four guys who aren't named Eric Campbell. There is a handful of Mets who are performing to expectations and several others who don't seem to be doing so badly yet also seem to be doing nothing.
Fix that, would ya?
During Saturday night's game on Fox, one of the announcers I didn't want to hear referred to the Mets as unathletic. How could that be? I wondered. They're athletes. I take it that "unathletic" was intended as a synonym for slow. They are slow…but they're also a little creaky, they don't proceed with fluidity, and they're not exactly nimble on their feet.
Fandom often boils down to older, unathletic men expressing dissatisfaction with younger, athletic men for not being less like them. I can be slow, creaky and look pathetic on my own very well, thank you. The Mets went 1-for-28 versus Julio Teheran. I can honestly say I couldn't have done a whole lot worse.
For all the mostly justified kvetching, the Mets carry the exact record they held after 68 games last year and remain in position for a Wild Card spot this year, but now it's the second one and they'd be traveling to frigging Marlins Park to face elimination. You'd like to believe the statis will cease and instead of "remaining in position," they inject themselves with some dynamism. I swear these aren't terrible players, as long as one of them isn't Campbell.
I'd also like to believe I'm a better fan than the Mets were players on Sunday. I'd like to think that if I'd been at the game, I would have tepidly applauded Teheran when he came to bat in the eighth. Appreciation for the other team's starter's excellent outing is a dying art, just like standing for the seventh-inning stretch (a timeless ritual that mystified my section last week). Though it's difficult to comprehend that anybody can pitch worse than his record indicates against these Mets, Teheran had been throwing his heart out all year and had two wins to show for it. A giveaway cap can be tipped lightly in his direction.
Granted, one-hitters are useless to have thrown at you, whereas no-hitters are historic. On Channel 11, given that Sunday was Father's Day, we were shown the last pitch from June 21, 1964, Jim Bunning's perfect game at Shea Stadium. Between Bob Murphy's enthusiastic call of and the Mets fans' supportive reaction to that 6-0 whitewashing, you understood a great performance had transpired and you might as well appreciate it. I thought the Mets should have acknowledged the no-hit successes of Chris Heston and Max Scherzer last season on the Citi Field scoreboard (they didn't) and I thought posting "CONGRATULATIONS ROYALS" wouldn't have been out of line at the end of the World Series, as painful as it was to come out on the short end of that little get-together.
The return of the Royals to Flushing this week will elicit several regrets, and the paucity of institutional sportsmanship demonstrated by Met management will be pretty far down the list, but if a championship is captured in your midst by a worthy opponent who isn't from across town, it really wouldn't hurt to give the ol' "good game, good game" before turning out the lights. Watching the Cavaliers accept their NBA hardware Sunday night on the Warriors' home court, I really had to hand it to Golden State fans who sat and absorbed the scene implicitly commemorating their team's demise without wadding up their yellow t-shirts and firing them in the general direction of LeBron James. Admittedly, it's a tough line to toe without tripping on your emotions.
Listen in as Mike Silva and I dissect a below-average weekend and recall the chaos of seasons past on the Talkin' Mets podcast. I join Mike at around the 20:00 mark.]]>
While the Snickers people set up to film their next "Not Going Anywhere For Awhile?" commercial, I guess I have time to share some thoughts regarding today, Father's Day. Our Father's Day celebration, if that word can be used, was yesterday, which felt appropriate. I identify Saturday, its late afternoon and early evening, with my father more than any other part of the week. I think of how he and I would "go around the corner" to "take a haircut" at George's Madison Avenue Barber Shop, which was conveniently located on Park Street, nowhere near Madison Avenue. Park Street in Long Beach was alternately known as Park Avenue, so I wondered why George didn't just call it George's Park Avenue Barber Shop. Either one would have communicated the classiness to which George seemed to be aspiring.
George didn't cut my hair. Leo did. George had his chance. He freaked me out when I was two years old and taking what was apparently my first official haircut. George used that electric razor device on my burgeoning sideburns. George pinched me on the cheeks. I jumped out of the chair and ran in circles screaming and crying in objection to each act of aggression. That was it for me and George. Leo was given explicit instructions on my next visit.
"No machine," I demanded. "No pinch on cheek."
Leo played ball. I don't know if his haircuts were Madison Avenue-worthy, but I put up with them. I think a lollipop might have been involved in quelling my anxieties. Over in the adjacent chair, Dad would take his haircut from George. He was a lot lower-maintenance in those days.
I don't know why Dad would say "take a haircut". The rest of the world would get a haircut. I said "get a haircut". I didn't get or take many haircuts. I was considered the family radical at an early age. Taking or getting a haircut seemed to be giving in to the system — plus the lollipop never made up for all those damn scratchy hairs down my neck and back. Also, I really wanted to let it grow long enough to effect a David Cassidy look. It never took.
But when there'd be haircuts, my dad and I would take them together. I'd chat as much as I had to with Leo, who wore glasses and spoke in a German accent. Dad would chat as much as he had to with George. Truth be told, neither one of us was much for chatting with barbers. If I had to wait my turn, I'd sit and thumb through magazines that had been sitting out since Leo didn't need glasses. Sometimes the Saturday Newsday would be there, back when Saturday's Newsday was essentially the Sunday Newsday, since Newsday didn't yet publish on Sunday. I have a very clear memory of sitting in George's and reading Newsday's coverage of the Knicks' instantly historic comeback victory over the Cincinnati Royals from the night before. The Knicks, trying to set a record for longest NBA winning streak, were down five by with sixteen seconds to go, yet prevailed. We thrilled to it on Channel 9 on Friday night, November 28, 1969, and here I was reliving it at the barber shop on Saturday afternoon.
I also remember that every time I had to use the bathroom at George's, I'd see a calendar on the wall turned to the page marked JUNE 1968. The years would change, George's calendar wouldn't. I don't remember there being any kind of racy picture that would make a barber reluctant to move on from it. As with the whole Madison/Park thing, I don't think I ever asked.
How long the haircut visits would last I don't know. They felt long. They probably weren't. My current barber has me in and out in ten minutes if there are no other customers and he's not too distracted by his phone. His magazines are old, too, but there's usually a fairly recent Newsday lying around if I have to wait.
Haircut done, back and neck scratchy, there might be other errands awaiting my dad and me on Park Street. We might pick up his shirts from the dry cleaner. My father's father was a dry cleaner, so I imagine he took that stuff pretty seriously. We might need some small grocery item from East End Dairy, which was later known as East End Deli, but I always called it East End Dairy. If my parents were going out on Saturday night, and they usually were, there might be a trip to pick up dinner for my sister and me at the Lido Deli, which did not serve dairy, because it was kosher.
None of this was exactly a ritual or a routine. Sometimes Suzan (then spelled as Susan) would be with us to get the two burgers and two French fries — which came in tiny brown paper bags like they sell you a can of Heineken in at Penn Station. At least once, Dad and I met my sister and my mother at the Associated, colloquially known in our house as Murray's, for Murray the gonif, who earned the nickname out of accuracy for his business practices. We usually walked, since it was indeed around the corner. Or maybe we drove to Island Park or Oceanside conduct our other affairs. Maybe we took the haircuts and just went home. We never talked about anything of substance. I learned no great life lessons, other than the kosher Lido Deli did not serve cheeseburgers.
A week consists of 168 hours. The one or two that constituted whatever it was I recall doing with my father on Saturday grow in stature like my hair tends to grow between haircuts, even to this day. At my mother's urging, because she didn't think Leo was a very good barber, my head would eventually be taken to others who were handier with a pair of scissors. Once they opened a McDonald's in Long Beach, we didn't need the Lido Deli. My father eventually opted for a different dry cleaner. Our Saturday trips to Park Street ceased.
I missed them without realizing it. They may have been the first element of my young life that I developed nostalgia for. On the Saturday prior to Father's Day when I was sixteen, I went into the East End Dairy/Deli and had the bright idea to bring home a six-pack of Perrier. Perrier was a very chic beverage at the moment, Madison Avenue George's kind of quaff, no doubt. My father had mentioned having it at some business lunch and deciding it lived up to the hype. That's all I needed to hear to end my Father's Day shopping. I gave my dad the Perrier and maybe a plastic lime filled with lime juice. He seemed to get a kick out of it and opened a bottle.
Five bottles sat in the back of the fridge undisturbed for the next decade, but I stand by my decision. A late Saturday afternoon in 1979 brought me back to an idealized late Saturday afternoon in 1969 or whenever. I could've found the Perrier at the Associated (albeit at Murray the gonif prices), but going into the East End Dairy for something vaguely exotic for my father is what hit the spot. My sense of who we had been as father and son bubbled up like naturally sourced sparkling water from my subconscious. Those Saturdays on Park Street, me and him, had already evaporated. I just wanted a taste.
Father's Day never seemed like something my father particularly embraced. I don't think he cared for the attention. I also have come to believe over the last year — as I have watched him withstand brain surgery, physical rehabilitation, cancer treatment, two or three bouts of pneumonia and a general diminishing of his being to the point where his ability to move and communicate are close to non-existent — that he has viewed the best part of his life as the part long before my sister and I came along. I don't take that personally. He just obviously preferred being a kid.
Within a couple of days of his beginning to recover from the operation that removed his tumor last May, he began talking regularly about growing up in Jackson Heights, about his grandmother, about FDR. Some of the stories I'd heard before. Some were new to me. Over the months that followed, they'd elbow out the present. Lately he's taken to speaking, when he does speak (softly), almost exclusively in Yiddish. Yiddish is all he spoke until he was four, according to family lore. He learned Yiddish from his grandmother. She was a great lady, he told me on multiple occasions last year and this; "It's a shame you never knew her," he lamented repeatedly.
Dad has been confounding longevity expectations for quite some time now. Since May of 2015, I've been ready for him to go at any minute. The minutes passed. He didn't. He went downhill, but he didn't cease. He is, despite being confined to a bed in a palliative-care facility, the Energizer bunny. He's still going. Every trip I've made to see him since winter I more than half-expect to be my last. In March, I was pretty sure it was. I'd gone up to bring him my book, which he had been looking forward to seeing. He was, within the confines of his condition, pretty lucid, letting me know that he knew what was happening to him and that if I wanted to say goodbye, this would be a good time to do it.
He had gone sporadically melodramatic during various phases of his illnesses. "Say goodbye to me," he'd wail. I think he was a victim of too many movies in which it appears people are about to die and then they die. It doesn't work that way in real life, I have learned. But on this afternoon in March, he explained that he always regretted that he'd never had the chance to say goodbye to his mother, my grandmother (who I also never knew). He and my mother were out to dinner and came home to receive a message. His mother, who kept the books for the family dry cleaning store, suffered a stroke while working She died immediately.
Now I finally got the subtext of "say goodbye to me" every time he didn't want to get his blood pressure measured. All right, I figured, I better give him what he wants. He wants a goodbye scene. I gave it to him. It was simple but emotionally satisfying. I said what I needed to say, he heard what he wanted to hear and we watched the Mets lose a Spring Training game to the Red Sox.
Which, incidentally, bequeathed me one final baseball memory between us, thanks to rampant commercialism.
DAD: "Why does it say Nixon?"
ME: "Nixon?"
DAD: "It says Nixon there behind the batter."
ME: "That's Nikon. It's an ad for the camera company."
DAD: "Oh."
There was peace and finality in that visit. There was a goodbye.
And then he kept living. Still going. There are no more conversations. There is virtually no English. His eyes don't open much. Feeding him a fully puréed supper takes about as long as it's taken Wilmer to round second on Loney's extra base hit. But he still eats, and as long a person still eats, a person makes like the branded battery rabbit.
That meant one year after what we all assumed was our last Father's Day with him, there was another Father's Day with him. Stephanie and I opted to go see him yesterday because it was Saturday and Saturday is where I like seeing my father in my mind. We had a Father's Day card sitting unused on a pile of papers — from one of those Junes when we each bought one, hence a leftover. It had Mickey Mouse on the front. I probably selected that one out of all the other at the CVS because I remembered being fascinated to learn that Mickey Mouse and my dad were born within a year of each other.
The printed message had something to do with his being the "No. 1" dad, as if the AP and UPI took a poll. I signed it with a little more emphasis than usual, and slipped it into the envelope, stopping to mark it "Dad," and then realizing this is probably the last time I write that on a greeting card envelope.
But I probably thought that last year, too.
He wasn't going to be able to read the card, let alone open an envelope, but it was Father's Day and I still had a father. This is what we do. Assuming Perrier is not on his list of approved foods and beverages (I know where five bottles can be had cheap), we stopped at the Dollar Tree to pick up three balloons to brighten his room. We had brought a balloon for his birthday in January. It inevitably deflated, but nobody had the heart to toss it, so it had just remained tacked to his bulletin board, all saggy, these last five months. Time to bring festive back to balloons, we figured.
I went to the cashier to pay three dollars for three balloons (generic star-shaped balloons, because they'd run out of Father's Day models), accidentally letting one slip out of my hand to the Dollar Tree ceiling. No personnel came forth with a ladder. So it became two balloons for two dollars. It's the thought that counts.
We showed up in time for dinner. That's the best hour to visit him. Or hours. It takes a while, just as it's taken a while for Wilmer to reach third, for him to be fed. He's as alert as he'll ever be in the course of a day. When we arrived, his latest early-evening companion, a buoyant woman named Theresa, sang his praises.
"Charles is such a nice guy!" she testified. "He doesn't call you names, he doesn't hit you." I'm pretty sure she meant he's cooperative, because when you visit these places enough, just walking down the hallways you notice the residents not at their best, and with good reason. Yes, I said, my dad is a sweetheart. I wanted to say "you should have known him when," but knowing him now, despite his lack of everything, told Theresa all she needed to know.
We presented the card, read it aloud and tacked it to the bulletin board that was crowded with cards from past occasions. We presented the two balloons, which Stephanie secured to the board as well. I opened my iPad and turned on Metromedia Radio for him. It is a recreation of the old WNEW-AM to which he listened regularly when I was growing up. In my youth, I both couldn't stand it and came to adore it. The Internet version is positively Proustian, playing not just the standards and the big band numbers that defined the terrestrial WNEW, but the jingles and station IDs of yore. Stephanie, who works with the elderly, said music has a way of infiltrating the brain when nothing else does, even at this stage of life, so I keep tuning in faux AM Eleven Three Oh when we're there and I keep hoping it makes an impression or at least sparks a little joy.
Me, I got mine when, after Theresa loudly announced that, "Charles, your son is here!" Suitably prodded, he opened one eye fully, the other eye a little, stared out and said, "Hi Greg."
That was more than we got out of him on our last visit. That was all the English we heard from him yesterday. The music played on, Stephanie now and then asking him if he recognized this artist or that. We're almost certain he nodded when asked about Tony Bennett, his favorite singer of all time. Dad, I said, this is the station and the music you were always playing in the car and in the kitchen. I couldn't wait to go up to my room and listen to my station and my music, but thanks to you, I really came to appreciate this, so thank you for that.
I saw evidence that suggested this got through as well, but the only sentiments he expressed vocally were for more water, or vaser. One Filipina health aide after another is getting to know Yiddish.
For a while, I did the lifting of cup and spoon and napkin to his lips. It's never too late to bond, I suppose. Eventually, Theresa the professional took over, continually reminding him his son and daughter-in-law were there, continually informing us what a nice guy he is, how he never hits or calls names. On the fifth or sixth mention, I was tempted to add these skills to his LinkedIn profile. Given his small sips and what we'll generously refer to as bites, I thought dinner would meander into breakfast, but Theresa had her ways and before we knew it, his plate was clean. He wasn't what you'd characterize as highly engaged, but the lady swore that he was, in fact, quite excited to see us. His eyes were more open than she'd ever seen them and he wasn't falling asleep mid-chew. This is the new normal for excitement.
We stayed a while after dinner. I had flipped the TV to Fox in hopes that a pregame show would be on, but they had the U.S. Open. I know nothing about golf, but I know this tournament always ends on Father's Day. Every third Sunday evening in June, we'd all be waiting for a table at some restaurant near where he and Florence — his significant other of almost a quarter-century — lived and, over the bar, was the 18th hole. Golf and Father's Day went together in my mind like Saturday and taking a haircut with my dad. My dad never cared for golf, but having it on in his room at least lent the concept that were once again sort of going out for Father's Day dinner a thin veneer of reality. We had brought sandwiches from a 7-Eleven, so it really did kind of work.
The golf didn't put him to sleep. Making it to 87 with too many things to keep track of wrong with him took care of that. The WNEW tribute channel played on. I waited until the U.S. Open closed for the night and Steven Matz threw strike one to Chase d'Arnaud to depart. I kissed him goodbye on the same head that was shaved to facilitate the operation last year, the same one that was subject to radiation and chemotherapy…where at least in the back and down the sides, hair has been coming in plentiful and dark. If he were up for it, I'd say he and I should take a haircut next Saturday. I don't really need one, but I'd go with him for the company.
Oh, there's Wilmer Flores, coming very slowly around third. Teufel's sending him? Really? Ender Inciarte, who's been killing us all night, grabs the ball, relays to Aybar, Aybar throws home …yeah, Wilmer's out by ten feet. Mets lose to the allegedly lousy Braves again.
Ah, whaddaya gonna do?]]>
One young Met pitcher would be dispatched in 1969, righty Steve Renko. Steve had been in the Met system since 1965, chosen in the 24th round of the very first June amateur draft, and was struggling at Triple-A Tidewater. Murphy apparently didn't mind giving him up, since what Renko — along with Kevin Collins, Jay Carden and Dave Colon — brought back from Montreal was the kind of bat the general manager had been seeking all along: a real power hitter. The man who came to New York on June 15, 1969, was Donn Clendenon. Four months and one day later, Clendenon was accepting a 1970 Dodge Charger, his reward for being voted World Series MVP.
That trade worked out. It would always work out. When Renko and the Expos defeated McAndrew and the Mets at Jarry Park on June 26, 1970, it worked out. When Renko started a game at Shea that July in which Montreal eventually topped the Mets, it worked out. When, in the September heat of the 1970 pennant race, Renko threw a complete game in Canada to beat Seaver and the Mets, it never stopped working out.
Trading Steve Renko to the Expos for Donn Clendenon was a major step toward the Mets winning a World Series…toward winning the 1969 World Series, an achievement that forever defines this franchise for the good. Renko pitched through 1983 and won 134 big league games, nine of them at the expense of the team that drafted and traded him. Yet there was never a second of regret at having dealt 24-year-old Steve Renko away. It gave the Mets Clendenon. It gave the Mets a championship.
Friday night, John Gant, 23, won his first major league decision, a very effective 5-1 victory for the Atlanta Braves over the New York Mets. Gant is a Brave because the Mets sent him and Robert Whalen south last summer to obtain Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson. At the time, the Mets had plenty of young starting pitching in the majors and too many minor leaguers filling their bench. They had to have Uribe and Johnson to push forward in a highly competitive pennant race. Gant was a 21st-round Met pick in 2011, taken three rounds sooner than Renko. He was at Double-A Binghamton in 2015, posting numbers no more eye-popping than those registered by Renko as a 1969 Tide. Never having seen Gant (or Whalen), I had no opinion of their prospects when Sandy Alderson opted to ship them off to the foundering Braves.
Within weeks, it was clearly the right trade for its time. Uribe and Johnson were exactly what the Mets needed in the moment. The moment would extend into November. The Mets won a division title and league championship. How we think of the Mets, as a team that is supposed to win ballgames, was utterly altered by what they accomplished in 2015. We are in a different space because of what all the players who steered the Mets into August and September did, few any more vital to the cause than the two erstwhile Atlanta utilitymen who chipped in big hit after big hit. That pennant is forever.
Just keep that in mind should Gant drop another six-and-two-thirds innings of two-hit ball on the Mets in the near or distant future. And when the play Detroit later this season, please refer to all of the above should we face 23-year-old Michael Fulmer, he of the current 7-2 record, 2.43 ERA and just-snapped 33⅓-inning scoreless streak. Fulmer, as you are no doubt aware, was the Met pitching prospect dealt to the Tigers to acquire Yoenis Cespedes. Yoenis Cespedes was the biggest reason the Mets roared into their first postseason in nine years. Fulmer might do wonderful things for Detroit and terrible things to our psyche in the years ahead. If Gant's allegory is Renko, Fulmer's might be Matlack, the first-round pick who was in demand, except Alderson, unlike Murphy, let him go for the bat the Mets desperately needed. Matlack was destined for a sensational career, most of it with our team. Fulmer has begun his run in spectacular fashion away from us.
We got Cespedes for him. We got to the World Series for the first time in fifteen years. It was worth it. It always will be.
By sheer coincidence, I'll be at the Briarwood branch of the Queens Library, Saturday, June 25 at 3 PM to discuss Amazin' seasons past and present. Hope you'll join me.]]>
Wow, I said, that's really something, though it wasn't as something as it once might have seemed. We have seen Colon double. We have seen Colon homer. Granted, seeing Colon run each of the bases — taking third on a single that fell in front of Andrew McCutchen, tagging up and scoring on Yoenis Cespedes's deep fly to right (I thought a couple of strong relays could have nailed him at the plate, but perhaps Gregory Polanco forgot who would be sprinting home) — was both a treat for the eyes and a dagger to the heart of the DH rationale. Yet the idea that Bart can contribute offensively is no longer absurd. Thus, it wasn't the shock it might have been when he first became our cause.
We are not without the capacity to emit surprise. It was surprising that the second-inning hit-by-pitch that eventually sent Wilmer Flores out of Thursday night's game versus the Pirates resulted, according to x-rays, in nothing more than a contusion. It was surprising to have Neil Walker and Michael Conforto back in the lineup. It was surprising to see the slumping Conforto (his dark forest now in its second solid month of bloom and gloom) homer directly after Walker. It was gratifying to watch Michael rob Jung Ho Kang of a run-scoring extra-base hit in the first, just as Curtis Granderson's franchise-record 17th leadoff home run kept our cockles warm in the bottom of the inning. If you step back and realize Grandy has done more powerwise in approximately a season-and-a-half worth of leading off than any Met had done before him, his feat is kind of surprising. He's a more accomplished home run hitter than those directly behind him in this particular procession — Reyes (16), Agee (8), Dykstra (8) — but I could swear Curtis only just got here.
That Colon would pitch well into the eighth, albeit after running strenuously in the third; and the Mets would homer thrice; and they'd withstand a bit of late-inning turbulence to hold on to defeat Pittsburgh, 6-4, was overall all very rewarding, but not that surprising. You shouldn't get jaded, but when you follow your team closely, you do learn to detect patterns.
If you've been keeping tabs on the Mets long enough, you knew the news that came down Thursday regarding David Wright was on its way. Our Captain, after trying rest and rehab, went in for surgery on the herniated disk in his neck, confirming that his absence of a few weeks will extend into multiple months, possibly knocking out the remainder of 2016 and placing in question his Met future beyond.
Somewhere in the distant Met past, say before Colon and Granderson joined the club in 2014, the idea of losing David Wright for at least a hundred games would have been jarring and flooring. How do we get by without our Captain? It remains a valid question (especially after Flores had to exit), but not one that crash-lands from out of the blue. Unfortunately, we are skilled in David-deprivation. He missed much of 2015 with an ailment that has remained chronic and, pre-stenosis, had to absent himself for chunks of other seasons due to various maladies.
David Wright out for maybe the season, maybe longer, is not as surprising as a Bartolo Colon double that itself wasn't totally surprising. That's not an ideal state of affairs. But we get used to these things.
There is a temptation to fast-forward to whether David's career is in jeopardy of being completely over. It's a reasonable source of speculation, but can you imagine David Wright deciding, in so many words, ah screw it? Neither can I. He'll give it his all because — and this isn't a pang of romanticizing as much as it is a statement of fact — he's a ballplayer. Playing ball is what he does. It doesn't matter that his contract is lucrative and guaranteed. It doesn't matter that he's no doubt capable of spending his hopefully pain-free days pursuing other endeavors. He plays baseball. He has not voluntarily ceased doing so. Prior to the neck becoming too much of an obstacle to push through, he worked, by all accounts, as hard as he could so he could play. In his most recent (let's not call it his last) game, he homered. He was hitting with power again. He was throwing better. Even physically compromised, 2016 David Wright presented a convincing facsimile of vintage David Wright.
I don't picture David Wright, unless his post-surgery recovery literally kills him, not attempting to return to what he was doing before the pain overwhelmed him, what he has done since before any of us ever heard of him. Whether he'll be able to succeed is a whole other issue, but for now, he's on the disabled list, not the deceased list.
David is a helluva ballplayer. I speak in the present tense until further notice.
Not a career obituary by any means, but a touching appreciation — written before the surgery decision was announced — comes from James Schapiro of Shea Bridge Report. I recommend reading a gifted young writer paying tribute to the Met he's grown up loving.]]>
Imagine that. Imagine Thor going the distance. You had to imagine it in advance of Wednesday night and, alas, you still have to imagine it. That sort of achievement, so prevalent in the heyday of Shea, has grown remarkably uncommon in the yard the Mets now call their own. A Met pitcher sticking around to bookend his own evening is a rarity anywhere, but it really gets your attention when you realize how little it's happened at Citi. The 42 in the Rotunda dwarfs the number of complete games Mets pitchers have thrown in the ballpark's eight-season history.
How many CGs for the homestanding NYMs since 2009? The answer lies not within the monument to Jackie Robinson, but is implied at the joint that grills burgers in the name of Keith Hernandez. The number is 17, or approximately 2.9% of the 595 regular-season home games the Mets have played since shuttering Shea. I've been to 218 of those games and witnessed nine completed by our starters, or roughly 4.1%. A person really has to hit his spot to see one these Flushing Routegoers in flight.
As endangered species go, they're almost as rare as the Gunnison sage-grouse. My Citi Field complete game life list encompasses Livàn Hernandez and Nelson Figueroa in 2009; Jon Niese, Johan Santana and R.A. Dickey in 2010; Miguel Batista in 2011; Dickey in 2012; and Matt Harvey and Niese in 2013. Neither I nor any fan has seen one in ages.
Niese, a Pirate watching from the third base dugout as his old teammate thoroughly throttled his new teammates, holds the distinction of being the last Met to throw a home complete game. His came twenty days after Harvey's, the same week Matt went on the shelf that eventually led to Tommy John surgery.
It's probably not a coincidence that in a Met era defined by young, imposing starting pitchers, the current administration shies away from letting them complete their own business. It took four months of an absolutely dominant 2013, when Harvey was presumed healthy, before Terry Collins allowed his undisputed ace to go all the way (though there was an earlier nine-inning effort in game that went into extras). It wasn't until the final game of 2015, the postseason edition, that we saw another Met — Harvey — given such a chance again…and that took quite a bit of histrionic lobbying on the part of the pitcher. Matt hasn't come close to nine full innings since.
Jacob deGrom has never pitched a complete game. Steven Matz has never pitched a complete game. The only two of the past two years were from Zack Wheeler and Bartolo Colon, each in Miami. Wheeler is only now preparing to make minor league rehab starts. It seems safe to wager he will not be throwing any major league complete games for the Mets in 2016.
Colon better fits the profile of starters the Mets might let finish with limited qualms: he's someone whose future they're not immensely invested in. If Bart can get to a ninth inning, sure, knock yourself out. Dickey was a knuckleballer, so his length in any given game where he was rolling along was subject to effectively the same school of thought. Batista's complete game versus Cincinnati on September 28, 2011, made total sense. It was the last game of the year, he was 40 and every Red's back foot was planted squarely on the bus to the offseason. Before Collins, it wasn't as if Jerry Manuel was handing out passes to the ninth, either. Hernandez and Figueroa (another Closing Day performance) were permitted to go extremely deep because what was there to lose in the club's eyes? Same could be said for the August 2011 night journeyman Chris Capuano mysteriously mystified the Braves.
When a Niese or a Mike Pelfrey (in one of the eight Met CGs at Citi Field that I was not on hand to observe and applaud) got on a roll, they were just pretty good pitchers having very good nights, more power to them. Santana, his bouts of fragility notwithstanding, was from another time to begin with, when aces were aces and it was ludicrous to remove them from fierce competition. It's fitting that Shea Stadium stayed vital to its very last game because of how far Johan went into its next-to-last game.
But the current Fab Four is treated with kid gloves and René Rivera's mitt. Harvey appeared Olympian in 2013 and it was inferred he was indestructible, as long as he was handled with care. The Mets didn't care to extend his innings any more than they had to. When he had a shutout going after eight against the Rockies on August 7 of his breakout year, and his pitch count wasn't dizzyingly high, he couldn't be denied. Not even a two-out line drive off his knee in the ninth would budge him. After subsequently having to miss the last month of '13 and all of '14 to have his right elbow repaired, you can imagine a helicopter being summoned to swoop in and remove him if he didn't budge from the mound in a similar situation these days.
(Game Five of the World Series was different. It was Game Five of the World Series.)
Harvey remains the last righthander among Mets to throw a complete game at Citi Field, and that was nearly three years ago. Syndergaard, a towering figure even within the community of larger-than-life Met pitchers of 2016, had gone eight innings three times in his brief career prior to Wednesday, including one start at home last year. To look at Thor, whether standing or pitching, is to understand why he came to the majors with a Norse god nickname already attached. What could possibly hurt Thor? He has the powerful repertoire, the offbeat temperament, the fire of a thousand kilns, the physical stature…if this were 1916 or 1976 or maybe 1996, you would assume a substantial percentage of his 36 starts prior to Wednesday would have been complete games, not to mention shutouts.
In 2016, even with all his successes, both categories yielded zeroes on Thor's ledger through June 8. But on this Wednesday, June 15, he was the one assigning nice, round nothings to just about every Pirate batter he faced. There was a leadoff single and then there was total silence, punctuated only by our cheers for his strikeouts (eleven, enough to keep Subway on its toes) and, not to go unnoticed, tons of Met hits.
You know how the Mets almost got no-hit on Tuesday night and we all assumed — because we retain absolutely no memory that what happens in our worst games isn't necessarily destined to occur in all our games — that the Mets would never hit again? Consider our assumptions rent asunder. Every Met (except Syndergaard, somehow) hit and hit forcefully. Left fielder Kelly Johnson homered. Third baseman Wilmer Flores homered and drove in four. Rivera was as lethal at the plate as he was nurturing behind it, contributing three hits. Matt Reynolds showed signs of being ready to challenge Ichiro Suzuki for the title of most prolific hitter the world has ever seen.
It was exhilarating to watch the Met offense cut loose on a night the wrist of Michael Conforto, the back of Neil Walker and the thumb of Juan Lagares made each of them invisible. An early version of Collins's lineup, before Lagares had to be scratched, listed Asdrubal Cabrera as his cleanup hitter. Cabrera has batted cleanup in his career — he socked 25 homers for Cleveland five years ago — but a Met shortstop in the four-hole was cognitively dissonant to the eye. Howard Johnson filled that dual role now and then in 1991, but he was Howard Johnson, 30/30 man extraordinaire and never quite the full-time shortstop. Flores batted cleanup as shortstop twice in 2015, during the injury-ravaged mangy mutt days of May and June, but Wilmer wasn't retrofitted into a major league shortstop to get his glove in the game.
The only Met shortstop to bat cleanup in the starting lineup between HoJo and Wilmer? It wasn't anyone you'd picture of as you scroll the shortstop spreadsheet of your mind. It wasn't Jose Vizcaino or Rey Ordoñez or Mike Bordick or the incredibly available (if not overwhelmingly desirable) Jose Reyes. According to the Baseball-Reference Play Index, it was John Valentin, twice deployed by Bobby Valentine that way in 2002. The Baseball-Reference Play Index needs to come with smelling salts for those instances when information such as the Mets batting shortstop John Valentin cleanup twice knocks you out.
"Bobby is not looking for me to hit home runs or anything like that," Valentin said the first time the unorthodox tactic was tried, making one wonder whether John opted for a white flag over a Louisville Slugger when he stepped in to face Darryl Kile.
Back in the makeshift present, Cabrera wound up batting second, recording two hits and scoring two runs. That's what more or less everybody in the Met lineup did. With it adding up to eleven runs, you only noticed a little that the Mets made twelve outs with runners in scoring position and left ten men on base.
For that matter, you only noticed the eleven runs a little, because all your focus was on Noah Syndergaard. Over eight innings, he registered as many strikeouts as the Mets plated runners: eleven K's to go with no walks and no runs. There were three Pirate singles scattered, one in the first, two in the sixth. By the sixth, when Syndergaard shrugged off the mild threat by fanning Andrew McCutchen looking for Strikeout No. 8, the Mets led, 7-0. There was no danger. There was only Thor, tossing what could be best described as a Thor-hitter.
Come the bottom of the eighth, Syndergaard batted, an excellent sign of what he'd be doing in the ninth. Sure enough, in the ninth, we got what we stayed for. We got Thor on the mound for another inning.
All he needed was three outs to add to his previous 24. If he could proceed in mussless, fussless fashion, we'd be telling each other on the way out that we had just seen Noah Syndergaard's first complete game and Noah Syndergaard's first shutout. We already talk of Thor so much we need new material.
We wanted it like he wanted it. We would have accepted simple groundouts or pop flies, though if it were put to a text poll, we would have entered "K" for another round of emphatic door-slamming, Pirate-pounding strikeouts. We wanted him to go out in blazes of glory and flourishes of phenomenal. We wanted Rivera cradling that last 97-MPH fastball, leaping to his feet and embracing his pitcher. We couldn't wait to tweet that perfect-partnership image and hashtag it #Thorvera.
That would have been something, but it will have to be something for another game. Noah ventured into his very first ninth inning, but there was a leadoff double to John Jaso, a ground ball that advanced him to third, then a double to David Freese. There went the shutout and, with it, the eighteenth Met complete game in Citi Field history, not to mention the tenth I could have Logged. With opportunity eroded, Terry approached the mound and Thor departed it to a standing ovation. Jeurys Familia came on to protect a ten-run lead in what we shall refer to as a non-save situation. To service his own narrative properly, Jeurys gave up a difficult ground ball that Flores made a nice play on but threw away. It allowed Freese to score (how could Terry use him in a non-save situation?) and reduce the Mets' lead to 11-2. That's not terribly significant to report, except for the delight inherent in noting the Mets had a ninth-inning lead reduced to nine runs.
There it stayed. Familia got the next two outs. Syndergaard got the win, going a career-longest eight-and-one-third innings. One of these days we'll see him go nine. Several of these days, you'd have to think.]]>
OK, while I actually am leaving the country for six days in Iceland, the trip doesn't actually have anything to do with the sad JV version of our team's and their somnambulant performances of late.
Still, it won't exactly break my heart to play a Get Out [...]]]>
OK, while I actually am leaving the country for six days in Iceland, the trip doesn't actually have anything to do with the sad JV version of our team's and their somnambulant performances of late.
Still, it won't exactly break my heart to play a Get Out of Unfun Baseball Free card for nearly a week if it means I miss games like the weekend's grisly crapfests against the Brewers. I won't mourn that I didn't see our starters' faces fall if they dared make a mistake pitch or looked up at the scoreboard and saw they're two runs behind. I won't be sad to miss watching Mets run the bases like they've prepared with an hour of the dizzy bat race, or fielding like their gloves have been replaced by lawn darts, or trying to do whatever it is I dimly recall players wearing blue and orange are supposed to do when they swing a bat.
The starting lineup has been much reduced by injuries — the latest news is the revelation that Michael Conforto is struggling with cartilage damage in his wrist, which means he'll have to go on the DL for a few weeks grimly plow along as if nothing's wrong. Add in David Wright's herniated disk, Neil Walker's back, Travis d'Arnaud's shoulder, Lucas Duda's back and Juan Lagares's thumb and you've got 2/3 of a lineup replaced with Mayberry-Muno irregulars, whose effectiveness you may remember from last June's unwatchable baseball.
Granted, last summer turned out pretty OK — there's a book about that. The Mets came disturbingly close to getting no-hit by Jameson Taillon Tuesday night, but in 2015 they got no-hit twice — oddly, I was in the house both nights — and were still allowed to go to the World Series. Now as then, as long as they can ride their solid starting pitching they ought to be able to hang around all season, and there are three playoff slots available to teams that can do that.
But the highlight films sensibly reduce the Summer of Loathe to a montage before getting to the good stuff; nobody wants to lovingly recall fidgeting as Clayton Kershaw dissected a Triple-A lineup. Since that's what we're back to, I'm OK with skipping a week of it.]]>


text:
St. Peter's 64, Iona 62
JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- Blaise Ffrench hit a jumper with 4 seconds left to help Saint Peter's beat Iona 64-62 Wednesday night in Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference action.
Darius Conley gave the Peacocks (4-4, 1-0) 62-60 lead on a three-point play with 48 seconds left, only to have Lamont Jones tie it for the Gaels (3-3, 1-1) with a jumper 8 seconds later.
Saint Peter's held the ball for the final shot, which ended up being Ffrench's game-winning jumper.
Ffrench finished with 17 points and eight assists, while Conley had 17 points with nine rebounds, and Desi Washington had 15 points.
The Peacocks trailed 31-21 at halftime and didn't take their first lead in the second half until Chris Burke's three-point play put them up 54-53 with 5:23 to play. Sean Armand followed that basket with a 3 for Iona, and the Gaels led until Conley's three-point play.
Armand paced Iona with 19 points.
NCAAM News
Hawaii to play in Pearl Harbor invitational, marking anniversary of attack
Hawaii will play in the Fox Sports Pearl Harbor Invitational in December, part of the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Mateen Cleaves' attorney wants prosecutor's office off sex case
An attorney representing ex-Michigan State basketball star Mateen Cleaves wants a judge to disqualify the Wayne County prosecutor's office from Cleaves' sexual assault case.
Big East, ACC, A-10, CAA form officiating alliance
The Big East has joined the ACC, Atlantic 10 and Colonial Athletic Association in forming a men's basketball officiating alliance.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Deal advisers are dragged into US computer giant's bust-up with 'Britain's Bill Gates' as HP-Autonomy row explodes
A host of investment banks and accountancy firms were last night dragged into a potential legal showdown after computer giant Hewlett Packard accused executives at British software group Autonomy of a £3bn accounting cover-up.
Prosecutors on both sides of the Atlantic have been passed details of the claims, and any ensuing investigation threatens to engulf a range of banks and auditors that worked on the deal.
Accountants Deloitte and banks including Barclays, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan were involved in the £7.1bn sale of Autonomy to HP in August 2011.
Tech giant: Hewlett-Packard has been caught in a storm over its Autonomy purchase.
Autonomy was seen as a great British
success story and the sale netted founder and chief executive Mike Lynch
(pictured), often feted as 'Britain's Bill Gates', £500m.
yesterday HP accused executives at Autonomy – believed to include Lynch
– of 'serious accounting improprieties, misrepresentations and
disclosure failures' stretching back for two years before the deal.
The US group claims a series of accounting tricks were used to inflate Autonomy's revenue stream, its margins and its growth rate – all of which massively inflated the price HP paid for the business.
has passed details of 'wilful' financial cover-ups by management to the
UK's Serious Fraud Office and the Wall Street equivalent, the
Securities and Exchanges Commission, 'for civil and criminal
HP had
been expected to write up to £5bn from the value of the Autonomy
business, as reported in the Mail last month. But the yesterday's
accusations against the company's former management, who have all since
left HP, came as a shock to the City.
chief executive Meg Whitman, who was not at the helm at the time of
the buyout, yesterday said that the company would 'aggressively pursue
... some former members of Autonomy's management team'.
said the accounting techniques 'appear to have been a wilful effort to
mislead investors and potential buyers, and severely impacted HP
management's ability to fairly value Autonomy at the time of the deal'.
Autonomy's former management team last night said they were 'shocked to
see this statement today, and flatly rejects these allegations, which
are false'.
They added:
'HP's senior management has also been closely involved with running
Autonomy for the past year. It took ten years to build Autonomy's
industry-leading technology and it is sad to see how it has been
mismanaged since its acquisition by HP.'
The SFO refused to comment on whether it would launch a probe.
- Mortgages to get EVEN CHEAPER: Brexit vote will keep...
- Stocks that will soar from Brexit: Don't panic! Keep calm...
- What could Brexit mean for UK motorists? A rundown of the...
- What Brexit means for your finances: Savings that can be...
- What does Brexit mean for your money? Six ways finances...
- 'Independence Day' disaster: Financial markets face another...
- Mortgage rates set to fall as a cut in the base rate is...
- Seven-hundred grand for that? Aston Martin covered in...
- Holidays will cost more, but you can limit the damage: Some...
- Life's going to be more expensive: Fears that wages will...
- Rolls-Royce shares boosted by cheap export hopes as 20...
- Gold surges 6% as investors seek safe haven: Four ways you...


text:
Wood Group PSN has been awarded a new five-year contract, with an option to extend for a further five years, from Talisman Energy (UK) Limited, a subsidiary of Talisman Energy Inc, to provide Operations and Maintenance Services on all 11 of Talisman's UK offshore assets and at the Flotta Oil Terminal on Orkney. The contract will be worth £90 million per annum and will begin 15th November 2011.In addition, Talisman Energy (UK) has also extended Wood Group PSN's existing Engineering & Modifications Services contract, worth £50 million per annum, until the end of 2012."We are delighted that Talisman has chosen to continue its long term relationship with Wood Group PSN. This decision reflects the company's successful delivery of Talisman's requirements over the last eight years," said Bob Keiller, CEO of Wood Group PSN. "We will build on this success by supporting Talisman in delivering its Operational Excellence strategy to assure both our long term futures in the North Sea".Wood Group has approximately 1,400 personnel working under the contracts with Talisman, with 1,100 based on Talisman offshore assets and onshore sites and 300 based onshore in Aberdeen and Glasgow. Across the UK, Wood Group PSN has a workforce of almost 7,000 personnel. With offices in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Runcorn and Hull the company has over 2,900 onshore and approximately 4,000 offshore personnel.Geoff Holmes, Senior Vice President of Talisman Energy (UK) Limited said: "This is a significant piece of the jigsaw in terms of delivering improved safety and operational performance at our 12 Talisman UK sites.Wood Group PSN's expertise is providing highly competent maintenance and operations personnel and the award of a contract of this duration demonstrates the confidence we have in Wood Group PSN's proven capabilities.Coupled with our recent decision to transfer 170 offshore supervisors from Wood Group PSN to Talisman, which significantly strengthens the site leadership team, this contract will help deliver our long-term strategic goal of safe, efficient production over the next ten years."
Article Tags
Wood Group
Talisman Energy
United Kingdom
West Europe
North Sea
This article is for information and discussion purposes only and does not form a recommendation
to invest or otherwise. The value of an investment may fall. The investments referred to in this
article may not be suitable for all investors, and if in doubt, an investor should seek advice from
a qualified investment adviser. More
Related News
Brexit & Oil: Buying Opp or Start of Bear Market? S&P Global Market Intelligence Analysis
EU shock wave: Latest from London as market upheaval continues today
Brexit and the energy equation
Brexit is Now a Reality… Or is it?
Petrotechnical Data Systems announces exclusive licencing agreement with the Fluvial Research Group at the University of Leeds for FAKTS
Oil Industry and Markets React to UK Vote to Leave European Union
Join 80,000 oil and gas professionals who receive our weekly newsletter.
SapuraKencana Energy signs upstream gas sales agreement for B15 gas field
Gran Tierra Energy announces executive appointments
Europa Oil & Gas announces extension of PEDL 143 Licence, Weald Basin, UK
Technip and FMC Technologies announce successful early conclusion of US antitrust review
Ecopetrol offers 20 production assets to oil and gas companies
Pine Cliff Energy announces $25 million disposition of royalty assets
Woodside announces approval of Greater Enfield oil development project
Rig Count Matters: Separating The Signal From The Noise in Oil Market Opinion Art Berman
EU shock wave: Latest from London as market upheaval continues today Paul Harris
Brexit and the energy equation Kurt Cobb
Brexit is Now a Reality… Or is it? Steve Robertson
Oil Industry and Markets React to UK Vote to Leave European Union Paul Harris
Decommissioning and asset valuation: a complex relationship Iain Poole
Saudi Arabia Sets 2030 Oil and Gas Targets to Achieve the Transformation Plan Akansha Arora
Implications of structural changes within and across industries on oil ... Dr. Salman Ghouri
Oil and Gas Producers in North Carolina Now Need to Get a Surety Bond Todd Bryant
Permian Basin Break-Even Price is $61: The Best of a Bad Lot Art Berman
China: Is peak coal part of its problem? Gail Tverberg
A Bridge from Black to Green? Mark Adeosun
BP 2016: Global Energy Production at a Glance Euan Mearns
Canadian Upstream O&G M&A Picking Up in Q2 2016 Mark Young
This is What Happens if Producers Only Spend Cash Flow (Hint: Bullish) Keith Schaefer
North Sea Oil and Gas - an industry averse to change David Wilson
A Brexit would hit UK Oil and Gas Joshua Raymond
Network with others, build your profile, and receive the latest oil and gas news in your inbox. It's free!
General Manager / Operations Manager
Rigsite Drilling Engineer
Regional Quality Manager
United Arab Emirates
Contracts Manager
Senior Procurement Specialist
United Arab Emirates
Ingénieur process
Port Operations Manager
360 Digger Drivers - Dunblane
CNC Programmer
Ireland - Process Engineer - CCGT Power Gen MUST - 6 Months
Republic of Ireland
Mechanical Designer - Revit
HR Consultant
12671 - Admin Assistant III
Financial Accounting Supervisor
Implementation Analyst
Perth CBD
Director of Projects
We have thousands of oil and gas jobs for you to browse.
Or let the recruiters come to you!
OilVoice, established in 2002, is your leading source of upstream news, jobs and industry information.
Each week we send our weekly industry round-up. Why not try it? You may unsubscribe at any time.
Rig Count Matters: Separating The Signal From The Noise in Oil Market OpinionArt Berman
EU shock wave: Latest from London as market upheaval continues todayPaul Harris
Brexit and the energy equationKurt Cobb
Brexit is Now a Reality… Or is it?Steve Robertson
Milton Keynes
United Kingdom
Contact Us
2016 © OilVoice
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service .
Oil Careers .
Advertise with us


text:
There are no items in your cart at this time.
Celebrating 30 years of providing fashionable comfort footwear and excellent service— Footwear etc. • Established 1986 —
Foot Petals feet cushions use a unique patented material called PORON urethanes. This material allows the product to bounce back to its original state after every step, as if you're wearing them for the first time, every time.
Sign up to receive new arrival, sale & special event info from us.
Note: we do not share your personal information with anyone. Period.
"I love MBT shoes, they are the only kind I can wear due to foot injury."
©2016 Footwear Etc. All Rights Reserved. For any questions or assistance call 1-800-720-0572.


text:
новости на русском
azərbaycan dilində
Main page
Latest News
Arts & Entertainment
World news
Weird / Interesting
Photo Galleries
Voice of Diaspora
Your Corner
Producer prices in Azerbaijan decrease by almost four percent over 2013
21 January 2014 [13:40] -
In December, 2013 the producer price index (PPI) rose by 1.6 percent, but decreased by 3.9 percent as compared with the same period of 2012, according to a message from the Azerbaijani State Statistics Committee.
Over that month, producer prices in metal ores extraction decreased by 3.4 percent, the price of stone, sand, gravel, salt and other mining products increased by 0.1 percent and the price of production of oil and natural gas went up by 1.7 percent.
In December prices in the production of plastic and rubber goods declined by 6.3 percent, food production by 2.3 percent, electrical equipment production by two percent, furniture production by 1.3 percent and production of leather, leather products and footwear by 1.1 percent. Prices in the weaving industry also went down by 0.3 percent and in the steel industry by 0.1 percent.
Oil production prices rose by 2.2 percent. The prices in the chemical industry increased by two percent, in the production of tobacco products by 1.5 percent, drinks - 1.3 percent, building materials - 0.5 percent and in the installation and repair of machines and equipment by 0.2 percent.
Print version
Views: 538
Connect with us. Get latest news and updates.
Follow @TRENDNewsAgency
Recommend news to friend
Your name:
Your e-mail:
Friend's name:
Friend's e-mail:
See Also
28 June 2016 [16:13]
EIA says Shah Deniz 2 to more than double Azerbaijan's natural gas exports
28 June 2016 [14:45]
Local insurance market to stabilize by mid-2017
28 June 2016 [13:36]
Azerbaijan to support developers of domestic software platforms
28 June 2016 [11:21]
SOFAZ prefers to invest into most matured companies, rather than start-ups
28 June 2016 [10:32]
Azerbaijani currency rates on June 28
28 June 2016 [10:00]
Qatar Airways offers special fares to amazing destinations around the world
27 June 2016 [15:23]
ASAN Visa system to improve work on developing tourism in Azerbaijan
27 June 2016 [14:00]
Azerbaijani oil prices on June 20-24
27 June 2016 [13:39]
Weekly review of Azerbaijani currency market
27 June 2016 [11:04]
Rai 1 channel hails Azerbaijan as new tourist destination
Most Popular
Qatar Airways offers special fares to amazing destinations around the world
Turkmenistan offers UAE satellite TV services
Azerbaijani Armed Forces turn 98
Azerbaijan's SOCAR plans to increase light oil products' output
'Number of tourists from Iran to Azerbaijan increased'
Official reception marking 98th anniversary of Azerbaijan`s Armed Forces held in NATO headquarters
Baku to host gathering of CIS Interstate Council for Standardization, Metrology and Certification
Contact us: firstname.lastname@example.com
Copyright © 2005-2014 Today.Az


text:
Central banks around the world are standing by to intervene amid fears that the global fallout from Britain's exit from European Union will escalate in the coming days.
The Bank for International Settlements - known as the central bank of central banks - is warning of a "period of uncertainty and adjustment" given Britain's status in the global economy and the impact of it withdrawing from the EU.
The bank's general manager Jaime Caruana says "extensive contingency plans" are in place by central banks and the private sector to limit market disturbances such as the shock Brexit decision.
"Central banks have already communicated that they are closely monitoring the situation and stand ready to take the necessary actions to ensure orderly market functioning," Mr Caruana said at the Bank's annual general meeting in Basel, Switzerland.
"Central banks have acted swiftly in the past. They stand ready to act again, and they have the tools."
The Australian sharemarket is set to open 0.1 percent higher tomorrow (Monday) after losing $50 billion in value as part of a global selloff.
The Bank of England moved swiftly after the Brexit outcome and announced it was ready to provide A$460 billion in liquidity to help calm currency and equity markets which went into free fall.
Bank of England governor Mark Carney - who had previously warned a "leave" vote would have serious economic consequences - declared he would take "all necessary steps" to ensure financial and monetary stability.
In Australia, the Reserve Bank provided a briefing to both the government and the opposition under caretaker conventions in the leadup to the Brexit referendum.
In its annual report released on Sunday evening Australian time - but written before the Brexit shock - the BIS pointed to "the declining impact of monetary policy" on domestic economies eight years after the Lehman Brothers collapse.
The BIS calls for "stability oriented monetary policy" and that policy makers should take financial stability into account at all times "during both booms and busts".
"We need policies that we will not once again regret when the future becomes today," the BIS warns.
The BIS message comes against the backdrop of slowing global growth, low inflation, falling commodity prices and concerns that traditional central bank tools like quantitative easing are not working.
In comments made with the release of the annual report, Jaime Caruana said despite deleveraging in the private sector problems were building elsewhere.
"Signs of unsustainable financial booms began to appear especially in emerging market economies," Mr Caruana said.
Mr Caruana urged a global rebalancing to deal with what he called a a pattern "similar to that of previous boom episodes".
Main Street with the ABC's Peter Ryan
Follow the ABC's Peter Ryan. Analysis of global and Australian business, finance and economics.
Sunday, June 26, 2016
Saturday, June 25, 2016
Brexit market turmoil but EU ambassador says little impact on Australia
Britain's shock decision to exit the European Union should have little impact on Australia's diplomatic and trade relationships, according to the EU's ambassador to Australia.
Speaking to the ABC's AM program, Sem Fabrizi said despite global financial fallout from the Brexit vote nothing would change immediately.
"Until the new agreement for the separation from the UK takes effect, rights and obligations under the treaties will continue so there will be no immediate change," Mr Fabrizi said.
"Certainly Australia is a stronger partner of the European Union and we will continue to work with Australia as we will continue to work with all our partners."
But Mr Fabrizi said the Brexit outcome was not a shock to the EU and that said "war gaming" had been under way to manage the unexpected.
"Certainly not. We were expecting a close call and the people of Britain have decided. A democratic decision has been taken," Mr Fabrizi said.
"So we're now in a period where clarity is needed more than ever. But there's a procedure in place and we would like to have this process started as soon as possible."
Earlier today on WallStreet, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 3.4 percent lower or 611 pointsin the red.
Analysts estimate US stocks lost US$700 billion contributing to global losses of around US$3 trillion.
The banking sector was hardest hit with Citigroup down eight percent and Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase five percent weaker.
The losses on Wall Street follow plunges across Europe in the wake of the Brexit vote with Paris down 8.6 percent, Frankfurt 6.2 percent weak and Madrid plunging 12.3 percent.
The Chicago volatily index which measures market anxiety surged as much as 48 percent given the unknowns about the process for Britain's exit from the European Union.
But Sem Fabrizi told AM that while there was complexity ahead the EU would not seek payback with Britain.
"The spirit is always to find the best solution. I don't think we need to enter a conflict mode."
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Brexit "leave" vote to spark UK recession, economist warns
The polls might be tipping a tight outcome in the Brexit referendum, but behind the scenes experts have been war-gaming the potential impact of a possible "leave" vote.
Research by the London School of Economics in "Life After Brexit" is warning Britain would most likely fall into recession if it leaves the European Union as a myriad of agreements unravel over several years.
The report's co-author Professor Swati Dhingra is the latest to agree with warnings from the British Treasury that a "leave" vote would be a shock to the UK economy and rattle global financial markets.
Professor Dhingra speaks with the ABC's Peter Ryan
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Low inflation, rising dollar, moderating jobs. August rate cut firming?
The outlook for low inflation and a rising Australian dollar could lay the foundations for another cut in official interest rates, the Reserve Bank has signalled.
In the minutes from its June meeting when the cash rate was kept on hold at 1.75 percent, the RBA says measures of both short term and long term inflation remain below average.
Low inflation and fears about deflation drove the RBA to deliver an interest rate cut in May, coinciding with the release of the Federal Budget.
Reflecting on a world of low inflation and the potential impact here, the RBA says "monetary policy was very accommodative in the major economies and was expected to remain so given that inflation was below most central bank targets."
Consumer inflation in Australia is running at 1.3 percent - well below the RBA's target range of 2 to 3 percent over time.
The RBA says while the Australia dollar had depreciated around four percent against the US dollar, a recent recovery "could complicate the adjustment of the economy to lower terms of trade."
The central bank is also watching the labour market and says despite strength seen at the end of 2015 there had been "some moderation" in employment growth this year.
While there has been recent evidence that the transition out of the mining investment boom is occurring, the RBA is seeing "a further sharp fall in mining investment and a decline in non-mining investment in 2016/17."
On housing, the RBA noted that while residential building approvals increased strongly in April, this could be balanced by a flood of apartments coming on to the market in the next two years.
The RBA says there continue "to be indications that the effects of supervisory measures" have strengthened lending standards by major banks.
The RBA also cited the coming "Brexit" referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union as a factor increasing market volatility.
On China, the RBA says measures by Chinese authorities to curb speculation in commodity prices had led to recent falls in spot iron ore prices.
While money markets are factoring in a small chance of a rate cut in July, expectations are growing that the RBA will cut again in August after fresh consumer inflation data is released in late July.
Follow Peter Ryan on Twitter @peter_f_ryan
Monday, June 20, 2016
Brexit fears to rattle markets this week; I go to lunch and find "uncertainty" on menu
Nerves are running high on global financial markets with this week's vote on whether Britain should stay in the European Union only days away.
Polls on the Brexit referendum are now pointing to a lineball outcome when the poll is declared on Friday afternoon Australian time.
But in an already edgy world of slow growth, financial institutions and fund managers are working overtime to brief investors on their potential exposure to Britain leaving the EU.
The ABC's Peter Ryan goes to lunch and finds plenty of uncertainty on the menu.
Polls on the Brexit referendum are now pointing to a lineball outcome when the poll is declared on Friday afternoon Australian time.
But in an already edgy world of slow growth, financial institutions and fund managers are working overtime to brief investors on their potential exposure to Britain leaving the EU.
The ABC's Peter Ryan goes to lunch and finds plenty of uncertainty on the menu.
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)


text:
Monaco Government Tourist and Convention Office
7 Upper Grosvenor Street
London W1K 2LX
Tel : +44 (0)207 491 4264
Fax : +44 (0)207 408 2487
To celebrate its 5th anniversary, the Novotel is joining forces with the artist Szczesny and presenting "Golden Sculptures and Paintings"
"Golden Sculptures and Paintings" is an ode to beauty. Diamonds may be "a girl's best friend" but gold is a more powerful symbol.
In his works, Stefan Szczesny seeks to portray a sense of the beauty that underlies life. His sensual feminine figures and his representation of the bounty of nature are typical of his view of paradise on Earth.
His golden paintings make reference to an evocative tradition that fits well with his artistic programme. He borrows from this tradition to create, or reinforce, an aura of splendour and abundance.
Szczesny created his first "Golden" paintings in the early 1990s. These works often represent maternity, and make reference to Christian paintings of the Madonna and Child, reinterpreted in a non-religious way as a symbol of life and vitality.
To date, fourteen golden sculptures have been created. They symbolise the concrete embodiment of the golden paintings, and are a complement to these paintings.
Number of views : 176
Italy is Coming to the Sporting Monte-Carlo with the PIT STOP Bar & Lounge
La Marée Restaurant in Monaco Celebrates International Women's Day
The Méridien Beach Plaza Monaco's "Couronne des Rois" ("Kings' Cake")
Presentation of the Princess Grace Theatre's 2016 – 2017 Season
Launch of the 7th Monaco Clean Beach Campaign on Saturday 18 June 2016
7 Upper Grosvenor Street
London W1K 2LX
Tel : +44 (0)207 491 4264
Fax : +44 (0)207 408 2487


text:
2008 All Over Again
Donald Trump Frees Us to Vote as We Wish
Betraying Progressives, Democratic Platform Panel Backs Fracking, TPP and Israel Occupation
Politicon 2016: Sarah Palin Hails the Rise of 'Golden Wrecking Ball' Donald Trump (Video)
The Great American Story of Asian Immigrants and Politics
Tom Engelhardt $9.42
By Richard Ford $27.99
János Balázs (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Inside your mobile phone and hidden behind your web browser are little known software products marketed by contractors to the government that can follow you around anywhere. No longer the wide-eyed fantasies of conspiracy theorists, these technologies are routinely installed in all of our data devices by companies that sell them to Washington for a profit.
View the most popular tags overall?
View all tags?
Posted on Jun 27, 2016
A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion
Publisher Zuade Kaufman | Editor Robert Scheer
About Us | Contact Us | Advertise on Truthdig | User Agreement | Privacy Policy | Comment Policy
© 2016 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.
Website development by Hop Studios