Flipping on SNY in the early afternoon Friday, I heard myself paraphrase Bill Terry:

“Is Chicago still in the league?”

I wasn't looking to take a shot at the Cubs the way the Giants manager was jabbing the downtrodden if eventually vengeful Dodgers in 1934. I was kind of serious. Here we were, on the last weekend […]

Call it what you will, the facility in which the Florida Marlins play home games maintains one undeniable Yogiesque tradition.

Nobody goes there — it's not crowded.

The fun of a Marlins home game is guessing the attendance, which one could probably do with aid of an abacus. The figure in the boxscore says Thursday's was 12,423. […]

(For posterity: Mike Pelfrey was bad. Cory Sullivan was briefly good. Mets lost in Florida. None of this matters.)

The Mets, I fear, are about to tumble into an abyss. I fear they are nearing a horrifying period, duration unknowable but probably not brief, that will damage the franchise and fray its ties with its fanbase. […]

Ollie Perez is out for the season in deference to right knee surgery. One would like to believe it was patellar tendinosis that caused Ollie to be so godawful almost every start this year, and that when they address his tendon issues, he'll be on the road to reverting to the Ollie who was unhittable […]

“He could have fun in a stalled elevator.”
—Bob Murphy, on Tug McGraw

Inside the attic of Two Boots Tavern, I’m convinced there is a painting of the National League standings that grows grayer by the month. There’s probably also an X-ray of Dorian Gray’s right elbow up there, and every time I walk in the restaurant […]

Just to catch you up on New York Mets pitcher depletion matters:

• Johan Santana, out for the season as you might have suspected once he was scratched from tonight's start. He's going in for “minor” arthroscopic elbow surgery to remove bone chips. I know…shudder, but they fixed his knee OK, proving perhaps that every Met […]