Only because it's Saturday morning, and I know none of you are reading this anyway, I'm going to write about Ramon Castro trying to hit a green pepper with a loaf of French bread. There. Deal with it.
Sure, make fun of this entry. But now you're dying to know what I'm talking about, aren't you? Well, I showed up a little early to the clubhouse this morning and as my reward, PR guru Jay Horwitz ushered me through the super-secret, no-reporters-allowed hallway for what I thought was the scoop of spring training.
Instead, I wandered into the Making of the 2008 Mets Cookbook. Yeah, I know. Not exactly like uncovering Watergate. But it was funny and for a good cause, so what the heck. While most Mets went for the frying pan and mixing bowl as props, Pedro Martinez, of course, went for the 10-inch chopping knife and started acting like Mike Myers -- the Halloween killer, not the reliever.
Johan Santana enjoyed himself tossing changeups with apples and oranges, but the show-stopper was Castro with the loaf of bread. He missed, by the way. Badly. And the loaf broke in half, like Castro just got sawed off by a cut fastball. It drew some pretty loud laughs.
On his way out, Orlando Hernadez summed up the experience: "I throw the banana."
Last year's cookbook raised $70,000 -- the money was distributed to two food banks -- and it's still available on Mets.com. This year's version will be out in mid-May.
For those of you who have made it this far, here's your reward: actual Mets news. El Duque was supposed to throw batting practice today, but he wasn't listed on the schedule. Maybe it's no big deal. Or maybe he's done for the season. Never can tell with him.
Oh, almost forgot. Antonio Pierce, the linebacker from the lucky Giants team that somehow beat the undefeated Patriots, joked around with Billy Wagner this morning as the Mets closer did his football-throwing routine. Pierce's fiancee, Jocelyn, is the new host of Mets Weekly.
There you go. As El Duque would say, "Enjoy the Day."
Comments (6)
lucky? you should really watch a tape of the superbowl sometime....
Hopefully El Duque doesn't slip on any bannana peals, this guy is a walking injury!
What happend to the old host of Mets Weekly Julie Donaldson? If SNY got rid of her they would be making a huge mistake, she's by far the most attractive thing SNY has to offer.
Hey G ... Julie Donaldson left SNY and now works for a TV affiliate in Boston. She's in Ft. Myers with the Red Sox.
100 points for getting the Swedish Chef into a post about the Mets.
Since you brought it up, I am curious as to your approach about covering the Mets from a blogging perspective. It seems like everyone is blogging this year, and that means everyone is blogging about the same things, and some of those things start to stretch my credulity about how much I actually want or need to know about what is going on in PSL at any given moment. Do you have a different approach to your blog posts than your regular coverage for the paper?
metsgrrl .. Thanks for the extra credit points. As far as the blogs go, I'm just tying to provide as much flavor as I can about the PSL scene, the stuff that people aren't getting on TV or radio. I get the sense that people who are at work, or surfing at home, want to get daily snapshots of stuff going on down here, and if that means the weather, what players are eating for breakfast or who beats who in bowling, so be it. I think Mets fans have an insatiable appetite for info about their team, and with this kind of daily coverage, as well as numerous blogs, it seems to me that the audience is getting what it wants. As you can see, the blog posts are more like frequent quick hit items, while the newspaper stuff involves longer stories and notebooks -- more cohesive thoughts really.
David, thanks for the answer. I now feel safe saying that I feel that you're doing the best job of providing color while veering away from the most inane (except, as you note, early on a Saturday morning).
I subscribed to most of the blogs at the beginning of spring training and I am pruning my feed right now. Yours stays.
No pressure or anything :)