Ah, spring training. Jose Reyes gets picked off twice, Kaz Matsui makes an error (scored a hit) at second, and everybody's pleased. On February 28, sure. On April 28, no.

I know it counts for nothing, but it was nice to see the real lineup (minus Cameron) assembled. Switching Cameron and Diaz, it looks like this (sub Galarraga […]

No matter how hard I try, I can't get too worked up about Al Leiter's supposed comments to Carlos Delgado. For the record, here they are from the original Toronto Sun article, a retelling of the Delgado saga that is perhaps thorough to a fault:

“Who better to discourage him from going to New York? … In New […]

Wasn't John Shelby in our camp one particularly misbegotten spring? I remember being upset about that. Though it wasn't as bad as Jim Leyritz, which prompted Emily's funniest-ever reaction to a Met atrocity, as well as proof that she's a baseball fan of the first order, and hold any grading on the gender curve, thank […]

This is the time of year when one of two things is happening to your baseball team: Those coming back from injuries aren't doing as well as they would like (or are off getting MRI #1), or everyone is throwing well, getting along, adapting to their new positions and getting ready to hit .300.

So far […]

Here we are at the first stir-crazy point of spring training, the first afternoon that 1:30 rolls around and you think, “Can't they televise a split-squad game or something?” At least a week from now they actually will play a game. It'll even be an actual game, at least by spring training's low standards. It'll even be televised. It'll even be […]

Ah, Fonzie. You and I are never going to agree on this, and that's OK — if we wanted bloodless analysis everyone could agree with at a glance, we'd be actuaries. To me, it's pretty clear that Fonzie's bad back killed his career, or at least maimed it — his power numbers have dipped into the […]

Man, today would have been such a good day for a spring-training game.

Gray, frozen, a yawning afternoon to fill up finding something to do

besides the things I should have been doing but knew I wouldn't do. A

great afternoon, in other words, for exulting over the sight of, say,

Victor Diaz catching a pop-up or the sound […]

Not a lot to say about our boys this morning — David Wright is today's

obligatory mass profile (nice kid, drinks milk, works hard), with the

occasional side trip to see how Matt Ginter's shave went. (Randolph

says Ginter now looks cute. Really.) Chris Woodward's wife of five

years has supposedly never seen him without facial hair, so if […]

There can't be a historically minded person in Metland who didn't at

least cringe a little bit after reading Willie Randolph's rules for the

team: no beards (guy-in-the-pool-cleaning-van 'staches are OK), no

earrings on the field, 1 a.m. spring-training curfew, no booze on the

team bus or plane, etc.

Part of the hackle-rise is the reflexive little-brother rebellion

against all things […]

Spring training being spring training, the papers basically had two stories today — Mike Piazza Is Contented and Willie Randolph Is Not Art Howe. You're right — why on earth do they all write these things on the same day? If they're going to do that, why not just use a pool reporter?

Re Piazza, I […]