10 Days Until Heading North

What's that weird high number of .706 next to the Mets name in the standings? Screw the whole spring training means nothing crap. Darryl Hamilton's hex is on vacation and the Mets are, if nothing else, building some good vibes to roll into the season with.

The entire make us first bit scares me. I'm keeping the faith here, but the Mets are surely looking desperate. Dombrowski is sticking to his illogical proposal of someone absorbing Urbina’s entire contract and giving a top prospect or major leaguer in return. To make matters worse and me more scared, the Cubbies are likely to be heavily involved in any negotiations with the Tigers. Their farm system is in much better shape and with the young starters they have at the major and minor league level, they can afford to give up a guy like Bobby Brownalie and not blink. If the Cubbies push hard for Urbina, will Omar get into a bidding war? Dombrowski has got to be salivating right now with two teams geared up and highly interested with possibly more jumping into the negotiations.

"There's still two weeks to see what we have. I see no reason to make a trade," general manager Omar Minaya said. "We're still evaluating our players."

Omar is playing his game and Dombrowski is playing his. Dombrowski says they are not in a position that they need to move payroll, but not many teams have a set-up man making $4,000,000 outside the Yankees. Detroit is not exactly large market and has some hefty contracts to deal with, so it seems Dombrowski is not being 100% honest.

One highlight of the bullpen has been Heath Bell.

"I feel like I'm on the team until somebody out pitches me this spring," said Bell, who began spring training by using Rollerblades to travel to the Mets' facility to get in better shape. "Everything I tried to work on this winter has fallen into place. I felt like if I had a really good spring, they would see that I deserved to be in the big leagues, or I'd make it a really hard decision on them to send me back to Triple A."

Peterson said: "Heath didn't throw one low strike with his fastball in the 25 innings he had for us last year. He's pounded the bottom of the strike zone this spring. It's not just the fact he's had a lights-out spring. He's doing things he didn't do last year, like he's more effective with his changeup. He has made a huge case for himself."

* * *

John Franco is selling his Staten Island Mansion for $8.3 million. According to Baseball Reference, Franco has made $46,762,499 in his career.

Not that I need to feel more feeble than I already do, but reading this mind boggling.


All this could be yours for $70 million. As Forbes points out, if you put down a $14 million down payment, and obtained a 30-year mortgage at 7% on the apartment, your monthly mortgage payments would only be $372,569.40.

I got this from a link in the article above:

Greta Van Susteren, an Appleton, Wis., native, has dipped her toes in the big city real estate market. The Fox News host of On the Record with Greta Van Susteren purchased a one-bedroom pied-à-terre in the Essex House on Central Park South, according to the New York Observer. The apartment is 850 square feet, and she is said to have bought it for $657,000.

Yeah, 850 square feet for $657,000, but if I'm a millionaire, I'm not going to be holed up in 850 square feet.

I was going to the bathroom at work and walked into the luxurious handicapped stall. What do I notice on the sink? An empty snack wrapper. Now, I know people take this valuable downtime in their busy day to read the paper or a magazine, shoot a message on a blackberry, or even a nap for those narcoleptics out there. However, eating is something that should not be doing while you are sitting on the bowl. I guess it can be viewed as efficient, but it's pretty gross. To make matters worse, this person was eating a pack of raisinettes! That is a really, really bad choice of snack if you must eat on the crapper.


They certainly look like something, but I cannot put my finger on it.

I'm not sure whey people do the things the do sometimes. Maybe they should have washed the rasinettes down with cool glass of lemonade...mmmmmm.


If that was me who was eating raisinettes in the bathroom, I would have kept the wrapper and left about five or six of them on the floor leading out the door. If you are going to satisfy your need to eat in an unsanitary manner, you might was well have fun with.

Does anyone think Barry Bonds will retire? With the likelihood of him being out for half a season, if not the entire year, and him getting older while trying to get the all time homerun record, he may need to play through 2007. With all the scrutiny of him having done steroids and going for the most coveted record in possibly all of sports, will Barry give everyone the proverbial middle finger and "punish" us by going away? He's sick of it all right now and as close as he may be to that record and Babe Ruth for 2nd place, he is one guy I think could simply walk away from everything right now.

Why can't the Mets just admit that Matsui's back is a big concern?

"I'm not concerned at all," Randolph said. "I'm just being a little overly cautious, that's all. It's spring training. It's early. I know he's had some problems in the past.

Had some problems in the past? How about having some problems in the present. Omar, you've done well getting Cairo and it looks like Miguel will be earning every dollar of that $900,000 and then some. Willie says he would have played if it was a regular season game, but his back problems certainly look like they have an opportunity to be nagging problems.

Mike Jacbos gets demoted for what I presume to be a roster crunch. The guy is turning 24 this year and already crushed AA in 2003 at 22. Why move him back?

Banco Popular said it was not precisely the Mets' signing of the Latino stars Carlos Beltran and Pedro Martínez that led to yesterday's announcement that it would be the team's exclusive bank sponsor through 2009.

Banco Popular loves the new Los Mets despite what they say.

Banco Popular and the Mets declined to divulge the value of the sponsorship. But Jim Andrews, the editorial director of the IEG Sponsorship Report, a trade publication, estimated that the agreement was worth $750,000 to $800,000 annually, a tier below what beer and soft drink sponsors pay.

"This is a significant statement for them to make," Andrews said.

Jason Phillips has drawn the ire of The Metropolitans before. As a remembrance, let's take a look back.