Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out

"Hey, you know it ain't easy
Just go and ask Bobby V
The way this is going
We're gonna crucify Steve"

from The Ballad of Steve Phillips

It looks as though the Wilpon father and son Chump Consortium has finally woken up and seen the light. With a full menu of imminently tradeable roster members waiting to be dumped like chum upon shark-infested waters, the Mets will finally fire GM Steve Phillips this afternoon and replace him with interim GM Jim Duquette for the time being while, one hopes, Omar Minaya is coaxed away from the Expos.

Ever since the firing of manager Bobby Valentine over Phillips last October flying in the face of logic and clear-headed baseball thinking, Mets fans have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. A full list of the travesties of Steve Phillips is available at Fire Steve Phillips.

Now that the more important business of firing Phillips is out of the way, the Mets are ready to open the faucets and let the long list of Mets underachievers flow out of Gotham, the sooner the better. The Cincinnati Reds, provided the Mets eat some of his $8 million contract, might be interested in Roberto Alomar. The Red Sox might be the leading candidate to grab Armando Benitez and the only other player likely to net the Mets something substantial in return is starter Al Leiter. Other than these three are Roger Cedeño, Jeremy Burnitz, Steve Trachsel and David Weathers. What the Mets get in return for these players will have a strong bearing on Duquette's interim future as well as the Mets', but it better involve defense and pitching.

With the Grapple for Gotham coming up in a little more than a week, since Mike Piazza went down to injury, the Mets are 11-10 while the Yankees have gone 9-14. The Mets have finally given a chance to their youngsters like Vance Wilson, who is hitting .272 with 5 homers and 19 rbis in 38 games while giving the Mets a defensive catcher they haven't had in years. Phenom shortstop Jose Reyes is up (probably for good), Jae Seo has emerged as a starter as good as anyone on the Yankees, and Jason Phillips has developed as a solid first basemen with a .280 batting average with 4 homers and 11 rbis in 27 games. With Fat Mo and Steve Phillips gone for good, the argument could even be made that the future could, depending on what they get for their tradeable roster, looks brighter for the Mets than it does for the Yankees, who continue to wallow in an inexplicable brand of mediocrity. Even if the Yankees pull a stunning reversal of fortune, there's a good chance this is Torre's last season and Steinbrenner just might lure Lou Piniella away from Tampa Bay.

Oddly enough, there have been three interleague no-hitters all time and all of them have taken place in Yankee Stadium. Last night's 6 man effort by the Astros, David Cone's perfect game for the Yankees against the Expos in 1999 and Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

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Japan update:

Some vindication for Mets fans: Norihiro Nakamura, the Japanese third basemen who spurned the Mets at the last minute this off season, is hitting .236 with 10 homers and 29 rbis in 53 games for the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes. He was just removed from the active roster while undergoing treatment on an injured right kneecap.

Meanwhile, former George Steinbrenner punching bag, the Fat Toad, known outside of New York as Hideki Irabu, seems to love home-cooking. Pitching for the first place Hanshin Tigers, Irabu is currently 7-1 with a 2.20 ERA and won the monthly MVP award in May. In the Major Leagues, Irabu had a 34-35 career record with a 5.15 ERA.

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"Shooting," said Spurs coach Greg Popovich after last night's 77-76 loss to the Nets last night, "was a bit of a problem" A bit of a problem? Outside of Tim Duncan and Speedy Claxson, the Spurs hit 13 of 61 shots, or 21% from the field. A few more bricks and they could have rebuilt the Continental Airlines Arena. But the question that really begs to be asked is whether the poor shooting was just poor shooting or a result of the Nets defense and, if the Nets can only barely squeak out a 1 point victory while the Spurs shoot like epileptics, how much longer can they hold out before their own 38% shooting from the field comes back to haunt them?

If you want to know the insider DOPEs on the NBA Championship Series, you should check out the answers of some of the "names" asked if they owned a team, what would they nickname it:

Stuart Scott, ESPN rapper, would nickname the team "Black" because "Black is Beautiful".
Luke Walton would name his team the "Deadheads" because, well, he's Bill Walton's son, why else?

These kinds of intellectual exchanges led me to wonder who has the lamest nickname in men's professional sports so here are my Top Three Dumbest Franchise Names:

1. Anaheim Mighty Ducks: Not only does this team qualify as number one because unlike the other two teams on the list, their nickname isn't the result of an unexpected franchise move to another city, but does it get any worse than naming your team after a movie about a little league hockey team coached by Emilio Estevez?
2. Utah Jazz: Wouldn't it be much cooler to call them the Utah Latter Day Saints? If they wanted to stick to a musical theme, they might have been better off being called the Utah Tabernacle Choir, but Jazz? Do they even allow jazz in Utah?
3. Memphis Grizzlies: The only grizzly bears in Memphis are in the Memphis zoo. With all the musical history of Memphis, wouldn't it have been more practical to rename them Memphis Soul or Memphis Blues or something?



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