Shocker! We ended up with $200 in Mets tickets for free! (And we can print them at home if we want to!)

Remember how Squawker Jon and I waited in the cold for two hours on Presidents' Day to get free Mets tickets? And how I almost froze my tuchis off, the day after running a 10-mile race in single-degree weather and getting hypothermia? Anyhow, you may remember that the Mets ended up giving us a better deal on free tickets than we expected. And today was the first day we could redeem our free ticket vouchers.

We had a choice of field-level box seats in the outfield area for most Monday to Thursday Mets games from April through June. So Jon and I chose two games: Tuesday, May 17, Mets vs. Nationals (Daniel Murphy's first game back at Citi Field!) and Thursday, June 30, Mets vs. Cubs (only time Cubs come to town this year.) The Nationals tix are in Section 130 and retail for $37 each. The Cubs tix are in Section 131 and retail for $63 each. So, yes, we ended up with $200 in tickets for waiting in the cold that day. Not too shabby!

Anyhow, there is something else I noticed about the Mets' ticket policies. You can either print the tickets at home, or add them to Apple Wallet so you can show them on your mobile phone! Imagine that! Also, we don't have to worry that we'll get kicked out of our field-level seats, or that somebody will wonder if we really belong there. Amazing.

Funny that the Mets don't seem to be worried about that massive ticket fraud problem that the Yankees are so concerned about. Or, maybe it's that there is no problem at all in the first place! Gee, ya think?

Behind enemy lines: My afternoon at the Mets' spring training sendoff

Jon and Lisa,before we were completely frozen.

It wasn't enough that I nearly froze my tuchis off yesterday running in a 10-mile race in single degree temperatures. (Click here to read my race report.) Then I spent another two hours today in the cold -- and snow -- trying to get free Mets tickets. Maybe the cold destroyed my brain cells or something. What the heck was I thinking?

Let me explain. I'm kind of known for being a maven on finding ways to have fun in New York City without spending a lot of money. So when I saw that the Mets were doing a Spring Training Sendoff (the team's version of the Boston Red Sox' Truck Day) on Presidents' Day, I figured it would be a fun thing for Squawker Jon and me to do on my day off. This free event at Citi Field was advertised as offering the following, according to the email the Mets sent out about the day:

• All fans will receive a voucher for two (2) free tickets to a select April home game 
• Tour the Press Conference Room, Mets Clubhouse and Dugout 
• 1969 Met Ed Kranepool will be signing autographs on the Mets Plaza starting at 12 noon 
• Opportunity to participate in a raffle to win 3 day/2 night all expenses paid trip to Spring Training in Port St. Lucie, FL and other great autographed prizes

Jon looking very pleased
with himself.

Oh, and Mr. and Mrs. Met were going to be there for photo ops. And again, this was all going to be for free. So I figured, let's go see what's what. At the very least, we'll each get two free tickets to Mets games out of it, and since Jon and I attend several Mets games together a year, this would save us some money. So as per the Mets' request that attendees RSVP, I did so for Jon and me.
 
We headed to Queens separately this morning. I arrived around 11:50 a.m. for the noon event, and Jon got there a few minutes later. I was thinking that the very cold weather, with snow in the forecast, might keep people away. No such luck. The place was a madhouse. They were already out of the tote bags they were handing out *before* the event officially began!

I had heard afterwards from fellow baseball blogger Michael Ganci at the Daily Stache that the team supposedly only expected 500 people, but there were over 6,000 fans there. At least! New York 1 said over 6,500 RSVPed. And that doesn't count the fans who couldn't find a place to park, or got stuck in traffic and gave up.

Just a few of the many people at the sendoff.

Anyhow, I think the Mets' organization's heart was in the right place in wanting to do something for the fans (something my Yankees did NOT do, unless you count having a $150 event with Brian Cashman last week as a fan-friendly event!) So I don't want to trash them, especially since I was a "guest" of sorts in the Mets' house. But this Citi Field event was extremely disorganized. There were a ton of lines, and it was hard to know which line was for which thing. There was a line for the stadium tour, and one for the tickets, one for the inflatable bouncy stuff, and one for the Dunkin Donuts stand. And the lines all seemed to interconnect with each other. Then there were people gathered around the DJ stand, waiting to see if they won the raffle. It was a hot mess. Fortunately, the Mets have some pretty good-natured fans, because things could have gotten ugly. Luckily, almost everybody was well-behaved and pleasant, even when they were frustrated with the lines.

We got on the ticket line, which extended all the way to the parking lot, and waited for two solid hours. And it was COLD! Because the line moved so slowly, it felt just as cold, if not colder, than it did in the race I ran yesterday. We were shuffling like penguins by the end, because our toes were completely frozen!

While we were waiting, I briefly got off the line to see what was what at the Dunkin' Donuts stand (hey, desperate times call for desperate measures!) By that point they had run out of donuts -- thanks in no small part to fans I saw walking away with three or four donuts at once! Bad fans! (They were the exception to the rule of the decency of most fans there.) And by the time we were able to get coffee, it had been out for too long and was undrinkable, in my opinion. (Jon drank his, though.) Also, there were no visible restrooms, which was not good planning.

The DJ at the event said that the Mets were giving away t-shirts as well as ticket vouchers. But by the time we got to the head of the line, both things were gone. So team employees were taking people's email addresses and promised to send them tickets. Apparently, they were doing so on laptops, and it was only when we were finally at the head of the line that somebody thought of walking around with notepads and taking people's email addresses. Like I said, extremely disorganized.

Me thawing out at lunch.
Notice that my nose is still red.

Jon and I were about frozen solid by the time we gave a Mets' employee our email addresses. And we left the event, rather than try to get to see the tours of the ballpark. (Good thing, as it turned out, as they only let so many people in.)

My hands were so cold (even with gloves) that I had a heck of a time opening my bag afterwards to get my Metrocard out! It took me forever to feel warm. I didn't feel back to normal until we went for lunch at Urbanspace Vanderbilt -- this is a new food court near Grand Central Terminal. Freaky thing -- when we got off the 7 train, we saw that there was no power for much of Grand Central! Kind of eerie.

Now that I am cozy and warm at home, I can look back at the day as fun in its own way. Whenever Squawker Jon and I meet up, we always have lots of laughs! Good times! And hopefully, we'll get our ticket vouchers soon. We did get magnetic schedules for our trouble as well.

But I've had it with the cold. Can we end winter already? I'm done with it! Thanks.

Sorry, folks, but Jorge Posada sounds like a crybaby in his new book

Oh, goody. I am in a secure undisclosed location tonight – you will hear about it in due time, but I cannot yet reveal what I was doing this evening! But when I heard that my old New York Daily News colleague Sherryl Connelly had the scoop on Jorge Posada’s new book:  The Journey Home: My Life in Pinstripes, I figured it was worth getting on the ol’ laptop and writing a Squawk as soon as possible. Guess what:  I have got a lot to say about this book!

If this article is any indication, Posada comes across even more bitter, delusional, and self-absorbed than you would have expect from the guy who had a sitdown snit and took himself out of a Yankees-Red Sox game because he was batting ninth. Here are the main tidbits from the article, and my thoughts on them:

Posada was devastated when he was no longer allowed to be a catcher in his final season. “I’ll put this as plainly as I can,” he writes, “When you take me out from behind the plate, you’re taking away my heart and my passion.”  To which I say, he was pushing 40 and could no longer throw well. Father Time gets everybody in the end. Heck, Johnny Bench was arguably the greatest catcher of all time, and even he was moved off the position – in his case when he was 32, seven years before Posada was.

“I knew that my role with the club was changing,” he writes, “but I don’t think that anyone making those decisions knew how much the things being done hurt me.” This may sound harsh, but boo bleeding hoo. If he were half the team player he had the reputation for being, he would understand why he could no longer be the catcher. At any rate, he should have been thankful he was making $13M in that last year – after he had lunch with then-Mets GM Omar Minaya at Le Cirque during negotiations for his last contract, he got that extra year as a gift. Too bad he couldn’t appreciate it!

Posada also said about him no longer being catcher that “to have even that taken away from me without adequate explanation, hurt me and confused me.” Really? That is just delusional. I imagine it hurt Joe Girardi when Posada became his successor at catcher. But that’s baseball, and Girardi sucked it up. Too bad Posada couldn’t do the same. What explanation was he expecting? One involved kissing his tuchis 10 ways to Tuesday? Good grief.

Jorge also griped that he wasn’t allowed to even be a third-string catcher, or to be in catchers’ meetings in his last season. Giving how gracelessly he handled being replaced, I can totally understand why. Posada was always called “proud,” which was a code word for “prickly.” If he had been in the meetings, imagine how much he would have sighed and whined!

As for the sitdown snit in May 2011 (the article wrongly lists it as happening in August that year), he says the following as an explanation:

“I felt like I wasn’t being treated right, that people weren’t always being as straightforward with me as I wanted them to be or treating me as I deserved to be treated, and I exploded. “I’d just put up with enough.”

Posada claims he was truly regretful and expressed that to management but “those sentiments were never returned.”

Oh, please. First of all, he was batting .165 at that point, and hadn’t had a single hit against left-handed pitchers all year. Where, exactly, did he think such a hitter should be in the lineup?

Second, he lied multiple times about why he took himself out of the game, even getting his wife involved in saying he had back spasms, after Brian Cashman revealed, to Posada’s dismay, that he had asked out of the lineup. I said at the time that I haven’t heard so many lame excuses since John Belushi rattled off a slew of them in the Blues Brothers movie to explain why he didn’t marry Carrie Fisher! (Squawker Jon and I ended up appearing on Sully Baseball to talk about this!)

So how was Posada not being treated right there? Heck, up until that game, Girardi had only batted him as low as eighth once, and most of the time had him higher in the lineup!

In the book, Posada reportedly also whines about Torre being replaced by Girardi, because Torre was a father figure, while Girardi was just a manager. Again, boo bleeding hoo. That’s life. It’s a business, folks!  (An aside: I never understood why Posada was so resentful of Girardi. It really should have been the other way around!)

The Daily News article talks about how Johnny Damon was a great clubhouse leader, but says that by the following year, according to the book:

…the clubhouse had changed and not for the better. Players sat around with their headphones on staring down at their phones. He and Jeter, his best friend and team captain, tried to talk to the guys, but “it was a case of being heard but not listened to…..

He describes lonely scenes in the clubhouse as it emptied out postgame, he and Jeter sitting around with a couple of other guys who lingered. Posada makes a pointed comparison to the days when the Core Four had major influence and won championships. Back then, the players would hang loose over beers for hours, talking baseball and whatever else was on their minds.

Hmmmm. Perhaps the common denominator was that in the late 90s teams, other people – David Cone, Paul O’Neill, Tino Martinez, Scott Brosius, etc. were the leaders, and in 2009, Johnny Damon played a big leadership role. It sure doesn’t say much for Posada’s and Jeter’s vaunted leadership skills, does it?

If you are a leader, and you cannot get people to listen to you, shouldn’t you examine yourself first, instead of pointing fingers that they are the problem? That’s Management 101. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. He should have read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People!

Jorge Posada was a great-hitting catcher who should have been grateful for his career lasting as long as it did. Too bad he couldn't show some class, instead of being a (rhymes with class!)

Tom Brady, the new Richard Nixon: Why I don't believe the Uggs-wearing football player's lies

Longtime Squawkers readers know that I have never been able to stand the smug Tom Brady, the smarmy, Uggs-wearing, pregnant-girlfriend-dumping, dopey-hairstyled phony who got outplayed by Eli Manning -- twice! Not to mention Gisele Bundchen, his smug supermodel wife, who cluelessly shamed moms for not breastfeeding their children and threw a hissy fit after Manning's Giants kicked her husband's tuchis in the Super Bowl for the second time.

But because some people are so shallow, Brady has
gotten away with murder, in no small part because he looks like the fair-haired golden boy. (Meanwhile, some people call Stanford graduate Richard Sherman a thug. Good grief.)

If it weren't for Pete Carroll's brain cramp at the end of this year's Super Bowl, we could be talking about how Brady hasn't won a Super Bowl since George W. Bush's second inauguration, and since Spygate was exposed. But instead, Brady is now a four-time Super Bowl champion. He is also a serial degenerate cheater.

It doesn't say much for Tom Brady's innocence in Deflategate that the biggest voice (no pun intended) coming to his defense is New Jersey Governor Chris (Bridgegate) Christie. It figures. They do have a lot in common. Both do ridiculous, unethical things, and hang their minions out to dry for them. Brady is also like Richard Nixon. He shouldn't have needed to do these things in order to win, but he did them anyway.

Now that the Wells Report has exposed some of the real Tom Brady that too many people haven't wanted to see, I want to point out a few things:

• If deflating the balls was no big deal, as the Brady sycophants like to say, then why did he need to have it done so many times?
• Anybody who thinks that John Jastremski and Jim McNally, the Patriots' equipment personnel involved, deflated the balls on their own, without Brady insisting they do it, has no idea how the world works (not to mention all of the text messages showing that Brady wanted the balls deflated.) Tom Brady is the biggest name in the history of the franchise. Anybody who thinks that this was not directed by him must have just fallen off the proverbial turnip truck.
• According to a Boston Globe story about the Wells Report, Brady also lied about not knowing "McNally's name, his job title, or his pregame responsibilities," but "Jastremski disputed that, saying Brady in fact knew McNally and his role."
• The fact that Brady lobbied for a rule change in 2006 to try to ensure that he could keep his cheating undetected makes this even worse.
• Too many people are hung up on the idea that circumstantial evidence isn't real evidence. Ask Brady's old teammate Aaron Hernandez about that. Circumstantial evidence counts, too.
• People are also hung up on the words "more probable than not" in the report as somehow being a defense. They act like this is a criminal trial, and that this does not meet the reasonable doubt defense. But what looks like hedging are actually legal terms. As the Washington Post notes, the preponderance of the evidence (more than 50 percent) is the standard in a civil case -- and in the NFL. That means that Brady can be punished.
• There are two reasons there was no smoking gun here: the Patriots wouldn't let McNally be interviewed a second time, after the investigators uncovered more evidence, and Brady, as the Boston Globe notes, "refused to make his phone records, text messages, emails, or any other documents available for the investigation." That doesn't get Brady off the hook, though.
• For those who say "Well, why should Brady help the investigation," they don't understand the NFL's rules, which say that "Failure to cooperate in an investigation shall be considered conduct detrimental to the League and will subject the offending club and responsible individual(s) to appropriate discipline."
• Both Tom Brady Senior and Don Yee whined that the NFL ran a sting operation on Brady and the Patriots before the AFC Championship Game. The sting defense doesn't usually work with perverts who think they are arranging to meet 12-year-olds in person, only to meet a federal agent. It probably won't work here, either. On the one hand, Brady Sr. and Yee are proclaiming Brady's innocence. On the other hand, they're whining that the NFL didn't tell Brady that they knew of his cheating beforehand. What an incoherent defense. 
• Brady was particularly smug in his claim that he wasn't able to "digest" the report. Really, Tom? There is a report that could keep you suspended for many games, and you didn't read it? C'mon now. And what happened to Jim Gray, the guy who browbeat Pete Rose? He let Brady off the hook in their puff piece of an interview.
• As my friend Staci points out, ask Alex Rodriguez what happens when there are text messages against someone, and the person involved doesn't show evidence of their own to refute it.
• Speaking of which, A-Rod gave Cousin Yuri nearly $1M and a house and a car and health insurance. All Brady gave his minions breaking the rules for him was some swag he didn't even pay for. And it was clear how much these employees despised Brady. On the other hand, Barry Bonds, the guy we were supposed to hate, got such loyalty out of his trainer that the guy went to jail rather than rat him out. Says a lot more for Bonds!
• At the risk of going "blue" in the Squawk (I usually try to keep this blog PG-rated!), I must share my friend Joe's assessment of Brady: "Be nice to the people who deflate your balls. If not, they will bring you down."
  

Note to Yankee brass: When A-Rod outclasses you, perhaps you have gone too far

I had insomnia this evening, woke up in the middle of the night, and put on the replay of the Yankee game, just to see Alex Rodriguez's home run (I missed seeing it live, as I was out running.) Not only was it a game-winner homer against the Baltimore Orioles, but A-Rod got loud cheers, a standing ovation and even a curtain call. Hitting #661, as it turns out, even got mention on Yankee Stadium's big screen. Hmmmm. And the Yankees are still claiming that he is unmarketable? Puh-lease.

Anyhow, New York sportswriters are writing not just about the homer, and the win, but about the massive support A-Rod is getting from Yankee fans. The New York Daily News' John Harper wrote about all of the cheers A-Rod received last night, calling the "affection" even "more remarkable than his comeback itself."

Yes, A-Rod always longed for this type of love from Yankee fans, and it’s a bit odd that he’s finally the People’s Choice after being suspended all of last season for his use of PEDs. These fans loved nothing more than to boo A-Rod, except for the 2009 postseason and a few big-game performances here and there. Now, it’s almost as if with Jeter in retirement, they don’t feel guilty about cheering the anti-Jeter.

As an Arodologist (and Arodapologist!) over the years, I think A-Rod got more cheers than Harper is acknowledging. Even in the worst days, he always had some fans. But I do think Jeter's absence has something to do with this. The media no longer has to worry about kissing Jeter's tuchis by avoiding running anything positive about A-Rod. And Alex's teammates themselves no longer have to worry about offending the captain, either. (Newsflash: I don't think Rodriguez only became a good teammate in 2015! I think it's just that now that Jeter is gone, A-Rod can be treated as an elder statesman on the Yankees by both his teammates and the media.)

But Harper, like Joe Girardi, thinks Rodriguez's popularity now is only due to him hitting well again, and says "I doubt it" when positing that the fans are cheering Rodriguez to stick it to Yankees' ownership about their pettiness regarding fighting the milestone issue. I disagree with that, and instead agree with ESPN New York's Wally Matthews' (yes!) take on the issue. In an article entitled "Alex Rodriguez the winner in dispute with Yankees," he writes:

Whether it's right or wrong -- and again, only the Yankees, A-Rod and his representatives really know how the contract is written and if he has any claim to the money -- the fan perception seems to be that the Yankees have behaved badly in this matter, that their actions were forged in greed and are now colored by vindictiveness. They see Rodriguez as the victim here, even with his $275 million contract and a potential $30 million more tacked on simply for doing what he is already being paid to do, which is hit home runs.

But as we know, perception is reality, and if the fans perceive A-Rod is being bullied by the big, bad Yankees, that is going to be a tough perception to shake. And as long as Rodriguez continues to hit the way he's hitting -- his seven home runs, 18 RBI and .883 OPS are second on the team to Mark Teixeira's 10, 25 and .951 -- there's no way Hal Steinbrenner, Randy Levine and Brian Cashman stand a chance of reversing the tide.

Add in the fact that A-Rod has refused to be dragged into the mud -- he has yet to take a verbal misstep, despite plenty of bait -- and you've got a clear win for a player who, about a year ago, had some very respected baseball writers saying that he would never step on a big league ball field again.

In closing, Matthews says that  Rodriguez is "more than welcome" at Yankee Stadium: "He owns the place." He adds, "Not only have the Yankees succeeded in making Rodriguez popular again, they have even managed to make him something no one could ever have believed he could be. Sympathetic."

Um, Wally, I am raising my hand here. I believed this could happen! I am frequently wrong on stuff, -- for example, the Yankees are playing much better this year than I thought they would -- but I totally called that the A-Rod accolades would happen. This spring, when I was interviewed, along with other Yankee bloggers, by my friend and colleague Daniel Shoptaw, most of the bloggers were pessimistic on A-Rod's chances in 2015. Not me! Here is what I wrote then:

I am actually pretty optimistic about A-Rod, given his glorious spring so far. He seems in a good place, both mentally and physically. He has handled all of the hubbub about his return much better than expected. And remember that his 2013 OPS in just a month and a half of a season was still better than the entire team’s was in 2014. Another thing Alex has going for him is the soft bigotry of low expectations. All he needs to do is be halfway decent, stay halfway healthy, and not embarrass himself, and many fans will be on this side. There is a real “sticking it to the man” edge to rooting for Rodriguez this year, given how much the media and the Yankees management despise him. The irony is that the team’s biggest marketing asset, as far as putting fannies in the seats and getting people to tune in, is the very person they are claiming they can no longer market in their refusal to pay those home run milestone incentives.

Yet despite the fact that Rodriguez is clearly the Yankees' most popular player, they are still claiming that he isn't marketable. How petty. How sad. How short-sighted. Matthews is right -- A-Rod has won the battle. And he will win the war over 660, too. Pay the man already!

Shocker: Derek Jeter decides to become a St. Petersburg Squawker!

Of all the things Derek Jeter could do after retirement, he is going to be a blogger? Hey, that's my territory! And guess what? After less than two days in the biz, he is already doing damage control. Good grief.

Anyhow, I read with great interest Jeter's announcement Wednesday that he was starting his own blog, or as he calls it, a "platform," called the Players' Tribune, where athletes could get to speak their minds with "no filter." He also gave sportswriters a big ol' middle finger after they kissed his tuchis for the last two decades, basically saying that he avoided saying anything of interest for 20 years to avoid being misquoted or having his quotes taken out of context. Now he says, "I do think fans deserve more than 'no comments' or 'I don’t knows,'" he said. "Those simple answers ave always stemmed from a genuine concern that any statement, any opinion or detail, might be distorted."

He also announced to the world that he is "not a robot." Who knew?

So Derek has started his own blog platform to, as he puts it, for athletes to have the tools they need to share what they really think and feel," so that they can "connect directly with our fans, with no filter."

Obviously, I have more than a few opinions on this endeavor:

First of all, this is not a new idea. In fact, didn't Curt Schilling do this, like, a decade ago with his 38 Pitches blog, way before social media? And don't athletes already have Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and their own web pages these days to communicate with fans? Heck, Richard Sherman even has his own weekly column with MMQB.com!

Second, there actually will be a filter -- the "editors" and "producers" Jeter acknowledges will be involved with the product, making decisions on everything from proofreading to choice of article topics. There will also be PR professionals involved, no doubt, to protect these players' brand and make sure they don't say anything interesting. Not to mention smoothing out those rough edges. It will be the verbal equivalent of Kim Kardashian's and Beyonce's "candid" Instagram shots that are actually Photoshopped to death.

Do you know what happens to athletes with no filter who "share what they really think and feel"? They usually get in trouble with the public. Heck, even with editors involved, athletes can get in trouble. Remember how David Wells got fined for daring to write in his autobiography that he was still half-drunk before his perfect game? Remember how Charles Barkley claimed he was misquoted -- in his own autobiography?

Heck, Jeter is already having to do damage control with sportswriters after his initial manifesto, telling Jimmy Fallon that the site "is not trying to eliminate sportswriters," and that "sportswriters are what make sports great and fun to watch." Heh.

I also would like to know exactly when/where Jeter thinks that reporters misquoted him. Because he literally received 99% positive coverage over the past 20 years. Also, thanks to televised post-game press conferences, players already have the ability to communicate to the fans directly. Yet Jeter still didn't say anything interesting in that spot.

Also, if Jeter is going to speak out now, he had better answer more interesting questions than he did in his snoozeworthy #AskJeter Twitter live chat. Maybe if I were 12 years old, I might want to know #2's favorite flavor of ice cream or whether he preferred chicken to beef. But I think people are more interested in things like how he really felt about A-Rod, a question I and many others asked him online in the chat, yet were ignored.

Something else Jeter is not acknowledging when it comes to being allegedly unfiltered is this: celebrities who talk about real issues stir up controversy and can suffer a financial hit. After Oprah Winfrey campaigned for Barack Obama for president, she lost a good chunk of her audience who never came back to her show. Rosie O'Donnell lost millions of fans and her reputation as the "Queen of Nice" when she got involved with political hectoring.

As Michael Jordan allegedly put it at one point when asked to wade into politics: Republicans buy sneakers, too. Are Jeter and other athletes going to risk potentially damaging their endorsement contracts, or their product sales, by truly saying what they really think? I doubt it. Heck, they are not even going to have a comments section on their articles!

In fact, Jeter also told Fallon while other athletes "like to share with the people, everything about them. I, personally, have not done that, and I personally will not do that." He insisted, "this is not about me, this is about an avenue for the players.” So even with his own blog, Jeter still isn't going to say anything interesting. Move over, Richard Neer. We have a new Sir Sominex!