Happy Opening Day

At least I think it's Opening Day. The Red Sox and A's played a week ago on the other side of the planet, and the Nationals and Braves kicked things off last night, so things are a little sketchier than when I was a kid. The modern definition of Opening Day is the day your team plays its first game. I'm a Mets fan, ergo today is Opening Day. So allow me to share a few things with you...

• If you haven't already, go to Fire Joe Morgan. The guys at FJM don't necessarily want Joe Morgan fired. But they have declared war - well, not war exactly; something funnier than war - on the sportscasters and sportswriters who believe that winning baseball is all about chemistry and grit, as opposed to things like getting on base and not making out. Here they are mocking Rob Dibble:

"There's too much movement now," former Reds reliever Rob Dibble says. "Chemistry is a big deal. You need to come up with the same guys, stay with them, get to know their tendencies and their inside jokes. Otherwise, it doesn't work."

Exactly. How am I supposed to field a ground ball when f*cking Gomez over there doesn't laugh when I say "Do I make you horny, baby?" It's from Austin Powers. Jesus, Gomez. Santana understood me. Santana laughed every time.Oh shit, the ball got past me. F*ck. Well, it's my turn to bat. I'm so depressed I guess I'll hit into a triple play. I hate Gomez. He told me he never even saw Meet the Parents. How am I supposed to do my "I have nipples, could you milk me?" routine?I just struck out.

If you're the kind of person who wants to pull your hair out when Rick Sutcliffe goes on and on about David Eckstein means so much to his team because his uniform gets dirty, check out FJM.

• The Rock Star, who played some college ball, once had a great line about Eckstein: if I was pitching, I'd throw at that guy in the on-deck circle.

• Mets-Marlins are on as I type this, and as if on cue Keith Hernandez just had an FJM moment. The Mets have scored 3 runs in the bottom of the 4th, have men on first and third with one out and Luis Castillo up. 3-1 count. And Hernandez says "I'd love to see Luis swing here." Now look, Keith Hernandez knows more about baseball than I'll ever know, but isn't it F*#+ING OBVIOUS that Luis should do anything but swing? The pitcher is struggling, David Wright is on deck, and Luis isn't exactly an RBI machine. Thankfully, Luis takes ball 4 in the dirt to load the bases for David Wright, who hits a 3-run double into the gap.

• The thing about Keith is, he says stuff like this all the time. Gary Cohen, the Mets play-by-play guy, who has never played ball on any level, is always artfully correcting Keith on game strategy. The odd thing is that Keith, like Joe Morgan, was an incredibly intelligent on-field guy. It's a mystery...

• I just did a google image search on Gary Cohen, trying to find a picture of him that showed how obviously non-athletic he is, and instead found a blog called The Mets are Better Than Sex. It's worth a peek.

• The Mets' opening day left fielder is named Angel Pagan. The moral implications are staggering. And it got me thinking, Hispanic culture has more overtly religious first names than Anglo-American culture. I mean, you don't see a lot of guys Anglo-American guys named Jesus, as you do in Hispanic culture. What about other European cultures? Are there Dutch guys named Jesus? French?
  


• Maybe I'm a little OCD, but it drives me crazy that the AL West has 4 teams, the NL Central has 6, and the other four divisions have 5 teams. Isn't that unfair? Everything else being equal, an AL West team has a 25% chance of winning the division, whereas an NL Central team has a - um, hold on, let me get my calculator - shoot, I dunno, a 17% chance. Something like that. And it's not like this is a hard problem to fix. You simply take the Brewers, who used to be in the AL anyway, and move 'em to the AL West. Voila! Six teams with 5 divisions each! Why don't they do that? Oh wait, I remember...

• Had my Fantasy Draft last night. We've been doing the Madisox League since 1992, and of the 230 guys drafted last night, only 4 of them were drafted in the inaugural draft in '92, and all of them were pitchers. Mussina, Glavine, Smoltz, and Johnson. I won't be surprised if somebody picks up Maddux at some point.

• Also, we drafted 3 Ians last night (Kinsler, Kennedy, and Snell). Seems like a lot of Ians...
  

• Mets are up 6-2 but the Marlins are threatening. Gotta go. Happy Opening Day!