Does Anyone Want the NL East?
"Appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair." --Thomas Hobbes

Being a pragmatist more than a dreamer, at least where the New York Mets are concerned, it would have been quite a stretch, even with the several second tier offseason acquisitions the Mets made, to imagine them in a pennant race this year. Maybe 2005, maybe 2006, but 2004, with the defending World Champion Marlins and the unfulfilled potential of the Philadelphia Phillies and the 12 consecutive NL East titles of the Atlanta Braves ahead of them, winning the NL East seemed frankly, out of the question.

Yet although the Mets have surprised few by continuing to maintain one of the most torpid batting lineups in the entirety of Major League Baseball, (ahead of only the fainéant batsmen of the Montreal Expos), and although they are tied with the lowly KC Royals and the Detroit Tigers for the worst fielding percentage in all of baseball, (leading the Major League in errors with 71 in 79 games thus far), and have had virtually nothing from the Kaz Man or Reyes the Human Hammy, these same Mets have beaten the Yankees two in a row and now stand a mere two games behind the Phillies, tied with the Marlins and here it is, July 4th already. Hell, last season at this time the Mets were hopelessly mired in the dregs of a moribund season and wondering what and who they could dump faster, the $11.75 million contract of Jeremy Burnitz, or the choker-a-go-go closer, Armando Benitez. For the record, it isn't just the Mets who have improved. Armandogeddon is 2-0 with a 1.11 ERA and has converted 26 of 28 saves possibilities for the Marlins and Burnitz now scraping along on a salary of only $1.25 million, is hitting .280 with 16 homers and 50 rbis in the rarified air of Blake Street for the Rockies. But unlike Armandogeddon, he is not really experiencing a renaissance. Away from the friendly confines of Coors Stadium, Burnitz is hitting a more Burnitz-like .223 with 6 homers and a mere 16 rbis.

Even with what could charitably be called a weak back end of their rotation and a questionable set-up to their closer, the Mets have the best ERA in all of baseball. Yet despite an impressive front 3 in their rotation and a heart-stopping closer, how and why they are still in the race for the NL East cannot precisely be explained by anything in particular the Mets have done, other than not flounder horrifically like their counterparts in Montreal. Instead, it is the collective mediocrity of the Marlins, Phillies and Braves that have them where they are.

This just may very well change quickly over the next 30 days.

The Marlins will play 17 of their next 23 games (after today's last interleague struggle against the unbelievable Devil Rays) against NL East opponents, whom they currently sport a .625 winning percentage against and those other 6 games will be against the Pittsburgh Pirates so there is the chance that the Marlins will begin their move toward securing the NL East very soon.

The Phillies, like the Mets, immensely handicapped by the mediocrity of their manager, will face NL East opponents 19 out of their next 22 games after they close out against the Orioles today and the only non-NL East opponent will be the Chicago Cubs. The Phillies are currently being mugged by their own division, the only team of the four to have a losing record (14-18) against their NL East opponents. July just might be the month we finally see the last vestiges of Larry Bowa swept away as the Phillies perform a quick fade.

The Braves have a little less interdivision pressure. After this last game against the Red Sox today, they will face NL East opponents 18 out of their next 24 games and those 6 outside the division will be against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Braves are 20-13 in the NL East thus far and like the Marlins, stand a good chance of widening the disparity between the running and the also-rans.

And the Mets, 13-12 against NL East opponents, will face nothing but NL East opponents until August 3rd. This will indeed, be the telling month for the NL East and it looks from here like that the Marlins and the Braves will begin to pull away as we head into August. Of course, the only certainty is that the wildcard will not come out of this division and someone, no matter how bad they are collectively, will have to win the NL East eventually. If you have a very vivid imagination, you could imagine that the Human Hammy not only stays healthy, but begins to hit once again, that third base phenom David Wright gets his call-up and injects more fuel in the Mets batting tank, and that the Mets are able to get a fourth or fifth starter to add to the back end of the rotation. This would put them on par with their rivals but with the month of July needing that sort of inject now, not later, the chances of it happening whilst it still matters, remains slim.

Shortstops

Some four months since the fateful trade that saw A-Rod and the Yankees snatching defeat from Boston's gaping yawp of certain victory, the contrast between last season's three top shortstops couldn't be more pronounced.

First you have arguably the best shortstop in baseball, A-Rod, not only learning a new position at third base, but making one of what should be many starts as an All Star third baseman in the future with nearly triple the amount of votes of last year's All Star MVP, Hank Blalock. Fortunately for the Red Sox, he is hitting only .225 against them whilst against the other four top competitors in the AL he's played against to date; Anaheim, Chicago White Sox, Texas and Oakland, he's hitting .309 with 6 homers and 16 rbis.

Then you have Derek Jeter performing baseball's play of the year Thursday night against the Red Sox when he nabbed Trot Nixon's popup at a full sprint before hurtling headfirst into the metal and hard plastic lower box seats of the stands and emerging bloodied and wounded in the 12th inning before New York then rallied past Boston 5-4 in the 13th for a stirring sweep. More amazingly, he was able to play the next day against the Mets.

And finally you have Garciaparra, who, after three errors in the first two games against the Yankees already, finally gave up and sat out the game on Thursday. Fair play, the guy's coming off an Achilles injury, he played in the first two games and didn't really help much. But at the end of the game, in a massive contrast to captain Jeter's contributions, while all his teammates climbed to the top step to witness the epic battle, there sat Garciaparra in the dugout as though he couldn't care less what happened to his team.

Garciaparra's perceived apathy was somewhat reminiscent of Holland's Edgar Davids standing idly by in the goal mouth during Portugal's opening goal in their 2-1 victory over Holland last Wednesday. Slow motion replays revealed that Edgar Davids, patrolling the near post of the orange goal as the fateful corner flew over, was not exactly alert. The Dutchman stood with one hand on his hip as if surveying events from the bar of his local pub.

"Look, he's having a kip," suggested BBC sports analyst Alan Hansen at the half.

In any case, a half dozen months after he was almost traded, you've got people clamouring yet again that Garciaparra be traded immediately. Although it is frightening that the Red Sox are already 7 1/2 games behind the Yankees, perhaps more frightening still is that Lou Piniella's Tampa Bay Devil Rays are only 2 1/2 games behind the Red Sox for second place.

On the other hand, despite three All Star shortstops in the American League, the National League has the tightest shortstop vote in history with St. Louis shortstop Edgar Renteria leading Houston's Adam Everett by a mere six votes after nearly four million votes (3,910,897) cast.

Patriots and Baseball

In a paen to blinding patriotism, the Minnesota Twins announced they will present Duke, "the calm and determined battlefield commander of the G.I. Joe team," to the first 5,000 children at Monday night's game against the Kansas City Royals as a way of honoring local military personnel, becoming the first team in baseball to promote war to children, hand in hand with baseball.

Lest you think the Twins organisation to be a heartless collective of war-mongering swine promoting war to small children, it should be noted the team asked Duke's maker, Hasbro Inc., to remove the customary gun from his side, bringing him in accordance with the Metrodome's no-gun policy. Hoho, haha. As though GI Duke's gun would actually fire real bullets. Apparently, the kids should not only embrace soldiers of war but believe they're dumb enough to think these heroes go off into battle unarmed. Oh wait, it should be noted that perhaps in an effort to promote reality, the hand grenades of the GI doll are still visible.

Now, it's important to remember that this noble gesture has nothing to do with dragging extra kids to the ballpark to boost attendance, nor does it have anything to do with promoting the imagery of war and killing. No sir. "I was looking for something unique that would pay tribute to Minnesota soldiers," Twins marketing vice president Patrick Klinger said. "I thought G.I. Joe was perfect for that."

To be fair, there doesn't appear to many people the Twins aren't willing to promote in order to induce ticket sales. Among others, the Twins also celebrate Fan Appreciation Day, Kid Appreciation Day, Hispanic-American Heritage Night, Asian-American Heritage Night, African-American Heritage Night, and Spider Man 2 Night. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any similiar giveaways and celebrations for teachers, policemen, firemen, civic volunteers. What sort of message does that send to the kiddies of Minnesota?

A slightly different and wholly more acceptable form of celebrating his citizenship, Boston Red Sox closer Keith Foulke wanted to don a Boston cap that featured a patch of the American flag. This was nixed by Bud Selig for fear that allowing such an alteration would tragically destroy baseball's standard uniform code.

"I agree with and admire the patriotic sentiments expressed in your letter," Selig wrote. "While I cannot imagine anyone having an objection to our American flag on a player's hat, we feel it is crucial that we maintain this across-the-board policy.

"Unfortunately, if we allow one player to add the flag, our ability" to enforce the rule will be diminished, he added.

Aha, but if all players wear the flag on their cap, as they will today as part of baseball's Fourth of July celebration, it will magically be ok.

The logic between allowing a franchise to sanction the giveaway of soldier dolls (without their guns) to children in Minnesota yet to disallow a baseball player to wear a little American flag on his cap unless everyone is doing it, is disquieting, to say the least. Here's hoping that the doll is disallowed and that Foulke rebels against the idiocy of Selig's logic and wears the flag-on-cap anyway, even after the 4th of July.

Euro 2004 Final

A tournament like the European Championships tends to whittle you away, match by match as your favourites fall. I came into the tournament routing for Holland, England, the Czechs and the Danes to make it to the final and keep my interest alive. First, in the Ruzyne airport in Prague, with our ears still clogged from the flight, we and about 50 other Brits from the flight watched England go down thanks, in part, to the cowardly, choking Beckham as he sent yet another penalty shot badly off the mark and Portugal advance. Ok, we think. It's sad, but not the end of the world. My other three teams are still in it. Of course, two of them were facing each other in the quarterfinals, but that guaranteed at least one of my teams making it into the semifinals. Greece defeated France, both a miracle and a blessing to see the French go down. Not bad: when you've got no team you are rooting for in particular you hope for a team you hate to go out and there it was, adieu mes amis. Then Holland managed to knock out Sweden in penalties to advance and the Czechs demolished the Danes, 3-0 in a match we watched with thousands of fanatics in the heart of Staromìstské námìstí. So far so good. From here we could see the possibility of a rematch of the best match of the tournament so far, Holland versus the Czechs, in the final.

But disaster came in full this week as first the Dutch reverted back to their familiar apathetic and lethargic performances of the past to lose 2-1 to host Portugal followed by the Greeks inexplicably defeating the Czechs 1-0 with mere seconds remaining in the first overtime.

So what we've got now is what you might call outside of Portugal and Greece, a bullshit final, a rematch of the bland and pathetic opening match of the tournament which the Greeks won 2-1, owed more to the Portugese choking before their own fans than to any stylist nuance on the part of the Greeks. On the one hand, you want to admire the Greeks and their German manager for overcoming all odds to get to the finals. Yes, I did have them in an upset making it to the quarterfinals but frankly, I never expected them to beat France and well, losing to the Czechs I thought was a foregone conclusion. The Greeks play an inspiring, yet ugly brand of football which is frequently interspersed with painful displays of overacting and drama as they dive for penalties, feign injury and generally play in a form most would criticise as being the type of form that gives football a bad name.

With little else to go by and fighting apathy, I will root for the Portugese, since they defeated both the Dutch and the English, to finally vanquish the pretenders by a 2-1 margin and disallow any chance of the Greeks celebrating straight on into their disasterous Olympics.