Archive for October, 2009

Adam Rubin, Mets beat writer for the Daily News, today posted the list of players in the organization that will be participating in Winter League ball. Conspicuous by his absence, Murph’s name was nowhere to be found. Metsblog reported - sorry, “blogged” – earlier in the offseason that Murphy would be playing winter ball for the Escogido Leones of the Dominican Republic.

OhMurph explained in a previous post that Parnell skipped out on Winter Ball to provide some space between himself and Murphy this winter after hitting a rough patch late in the season.

Apparently, Murph reversed course decided against playing abroad this winter, perhaps feeling that what he and Parnell need for their relationship is just some quality time together. And there’s no more tolerant place to enjoy a bromance than in the South.

Sometimes, a staycation is all a couple of bros need

If Deadspin knocked up The Onion and the baby had Irish good looks, it’d be…. OH MURPH!

A dirty, rotten onion

Well, we at OhMurph might wanna give Child Services a call for mental abuse. Barely two weeks since Niles wrote about the Unspoken Joba Rules, a closet OhMurph fan over at The Onion done went ahead and stole his concept! The Onion published a story on Joba’s child-like handling by the Yankees organization, eerily similar to a recent concept of our own. I hereby present excerpts as evidence to our discriminating audience:

OhMurph on October 7th:

Well it turns out they were only starting the game at 8:30 and Joba’s bedtime is 9 so he was only able to come for a few minutes, after of course the location was approved and Yankee handlers accompanied him. They let him play one game and filled his side of cups with Pepsi. The 15 tosses Joba made were deducted from his pitch count and he was tucked in by 9:15, shhh don’t tell Hank or Hal.

The Onion on October 23rd:

Yankees management announced at a postgame press conference Monday that reliever Joba Chamberlain had permission to stay up past his normal 9 p.m. bedtime and would be allowed to attend Game 4 of the ALCS in its entirety.

OhMurph, again:

No pizza after 7. He  must brush his teeth with the bathroom door open because Girardi caught him just running the water and saying “All done!”

The Onion, again:

And no candy or soda after 8.

OhMurph.com has initiated proceedings to legally divorce The Onion. Besides, we prefer to live with Deadspin anyway, even if he does feed us mozzerella sticks for dinner. Whatever. Reading The Onion for sports humor is akin to going to Peter Luger’s for the salad or like going to Citi Field to watch baseball – nobody does it!

OhMurph.com Fever – catch it

Following a rough season by Mets young guns Daniel Murphy and Bobby Parnell, each will be parting ways for several weeks in a move designed to further their development as ballplayers — as well as serve as a “healthy” break from one another.  Murphy will be playing for the Escogido Leones  in the Dominican Republic while Parnell turned down the chance to pitch for Caracas in the Venezuela Winter League, where all team equipment is lined with Kevlar.

“You spend months on end with a guy and through the good times and the bad, you build a relationship,” says Murphy. “Neighboring lockers, sitting together on the plane, rooming together on road trips, the backrubs, sharing shower stalls — you know, all the normal ‘life of a ballplayer’ stuff.”

But Murphy admits that it also put a strain on his bromance with fellow young white guy Bobby Parnell as a lost season became more and more hopeless.

The official line is that Parnell is feeling “mental and physical fatigue” and wants to be in top form for Spring Training. But on the inside, he knows that if he and Murphy are to survive, they needed some distance from each other.

“We were gonna take Spanish classes together before leaving. Caracas is just a 90-min flight from the Dominican… we even had plans to meet at Hedonism in Jamaica for a few days after the season ended,” Parnell says. “But we talked about it and thought this would be a good opportunity for us to learn more about ourselves and explore other relationships. Besides, I have a serious aversion to brown people.”

Laughing, Murphy adds “Oh yeah, why else do you think he’d pass on a starting job? You think he wants to spend the four days between starts sharing a bench with all of Omar’s compadres?”

Parnell will spend most of the offseason in his native North Carol-ah-nuh doing redneck things like hunting, off-roading, and inbreeding. Murphy will be dodging venereal disease and robbery. So do the two expect any awkwardness when they meet again in Port St. Lucie next February?

“Gosh, if the good Lord gets him to Florida safely and in one piece, I don’t care what kind of sinful debauchery he learned from those heathens,” Parnell says. Murphy replies “If Jesus thinks we should be together again, then it’ll happen and the past will be the past. If kid-toucher priests can move on with their lives, we both can.”

It hasn’t been a good week for dead Major Leaguers. A new book alleges that the Splendid Splinter’s frozen head was splendidly splintered by the ghoulish folks at Alcor, the lab in which Teddy Ballgame’s carcass was frozen in hopes of a future revival. Causing a mini-outrage by the six people that care, no one’s bothered to ask why a state of the art cryogenics lab would have a monkey wrench lying around.  Regardless, it sort of makes one ask “Ain’t nuthin’ sacred?”

Apparently not. An AP report out of Venezuela now states that the body of former Mets/Red Sox/Cubs/Rays/Brewers great Geremi Gonzalez will likewise be desecrated after his family found some of his personal affects were found being sold – stuff he had with him when he was killed by lightning in March 2008 (The backstory of that incident was covered by OhMurph.com here). Despite the fact that the coroners determined Gonzalez died of “an electric shock produced by natural causes,” (you know, stuff that usually burns your clothes off, singes all body hair, and leaves human flesh kinda crispy) authorities are going to honor his family’s request to go grave-digging just to make sure he really wasn’t forcibly robbed.

A popular choice of Halloween costume for the kiddies this October

So to recap: Gonzalez was thought to have been killed by lightning; family is not so sure a year and a half later; cops digging him up just to be sure. The coroners are either (a) all legally blind, (b) paid off by someone who wanted to cover somethin up, (c) educated at the Venezuelan Coroners Institute for the Intellectually Deficient, or (d) all of the above. I’m pretty sure lightning doesn’t leave stab wounds or choke marks on its victims. Besides, how would a bolt of lightning be able to rock a fly gold chain without melting it?

This whole bizarre story just serves as an example of why it’s oh-so-easy to make fun of third-world countries! At least in a devloped country like US and A where we have Nobel laureates as presidents, our befouled corpses are scientifically frozen before being meddled with. Usually.

Joba Chamberlain has been relegated to the pen for the opening series against the Twins and he couldn’t be happier (see picture to right). They’ve done a pretty good job taking a once feared reliever and turning him into a mediocre at best starter. I’m starting to wonder if my ex-girlfriend is part of the Yankees upper management because I haven’t seen this type of psychological torture since we dated. We know you’ve all heard about the “Joba Rules” but it turns out the ones you hear about are only a fraction of the ones on the books for the hulking Cornhusker. Us here over at Oh Murph were able to get our hands on some of the other rules you might not have heard.

For instance, all the places Joba goes on his downtime must be approved. Some of the approved places are Toys R Us in Times Square for Ferris wheel rides, The McDonalds Play Place (the cool one on Lexington with the extra large ball pit and adventure castle) and selected video arcades, although they encourage he not play sports related games at all. This posed a problem for Joba the other night when he heard Johnny Damon and Nick Swisher were going to be playing beer pong with Reggie Jackson at a Midtown watering hole. Well it turns out they were only starting the game at 8:30 and Joba’s bedtime is 9 so he was only able to come for a few minutes, after of course the location was approved and Yankee handlers accompanied him. They let him play one game and filled his side of cups with Pepsi. The 15 tosses Joba made were deducted from his pitch count and he was tucked in by 9:15, shhh don’t tell Hank or Hal.

It goes on: When Joba is in the locker room he must have all his beverages in a sippy cup as his constant slippage has annoyed many of the veteran players. When riding in a vehicle to and from games his car seat must be facing the rear of said vehicle. No pizza after 7. He must brush his teeth with the bathroom door open because Girardi caught him just running the water and saying “All done!”

In all seriousness, I hope this kid has a good post season because if he doesn’t he might be a wreck forever. I mean all the restrictions and everything else has definitely screwed him up. They did a great job so far declawing this bear, and what’s a bear without claws? Pretty much a rug.

Oh Murph: Well Mr. Stengel, it’s an honor for us to speak with you. I won’t ask you how you feel since, basically, you’ve been dead for a while. 

Casey Stengel: Yup, kicked off in 1975. It ain’t so bad though, we got the dish network a couple of years ago so I’ve been able to follow the Mets on SNY. Also, the internet connection is great up here, talk about Broadband. I’m a big fan of the Oh Murph site, by the way. 

OM: Wow, who knew? We’re humbled that you follow us, Mr. Stengel. 

CS: Call me Casey, son. Don’t call me Mr. Stengel or Charles Dillon. Yes sir, love the site, RoboWright, now that stuff cracks me up. 

OM: So you said you follow the Mets? What did you think of the 2009 season? 

CS: The Ol’ Perfesser ain’t sheddin’ any tears over it. 70-92? There’s a team that didn’t try to hard. Heck, you want to lose a hunnert games you gotta put some effort into it. In ’62 we went 40-120 and it would have been 122 losses if that damn rain didn’t cost us two. 

OM: So let me get this straight, you actually were trying to lose? 

CS: Absolutely! Look son, we weren’t gonna win nothin’ that year, best we could possibly do was maybe eighth place. But hell, what would thata got me? Everybody remembers that ’62 season, a record in Futility, I’ve heard it called. See that 37 up on the wall, why do you think that was retired?  

OM: OK, so lets get back to this season. What went wrong? 

CS: Well first of all, what the hell were they doin’ playin’ in Ebbet’s field? Nobody was happier than me when they tore that place down, then they go and rebuild it. What was that about? I liked Shea, nice and round. These fellers they got playing outfield in Ebbets they don’t know what they’re gonna run into. 

OM: Actually its not Ebbets, its called Citi Field. 

CS: I’ll agree to that, it was pretty shitty there. But listen, I saw that press conference the other day with that guy that has my job now, Jerry somebody. Blamed everything on the first base coach and the old bench coach. What the heck is a bench coach anyway? Since when does a seat need a coach? That Jerry guy says we’ll have to work on this and that next year in Spring Training. Well, if he knew that why didn’t he work on it this year? Ever heard of practice? These guys get paid too much to practice during the season? 

OM: Well, they also had a lot of injuries. 

CS: You call those injuries? What the heck was that? In my day you played until you couldn’t walk. Disabled list? You didn’t get paid if you didn’t play. They kept showin’ that Reyes feller doin’ all them fancy drills, but not playin’. Heck, tape it up and get out there. Guess that’s why you need a bench coach, for all them guys not playin’ on the bench. 

OM: So Casey, you think that Jerry Manuel didn’t do such a good job? 

CS: Actually, I think he lost a lot of respect. I’m famous for sayin’ “ I was not successful as a ball player, as it was a game of skill” but you know I did play quite a few years and got the record to prove it. Now, you look up that Jerry feller’s playin’ records, a lifetime .150 hitter. You know once the players see that, all the respect goes out the window. And that Warthen feller, the pitching coach? Look up his record and tell me he knew what he was doin’ 

OM: Casey let me ask you about Young Daniel Murphy… 

CS: Not now son, I’ve been dead 34 years and I need a nap now. Good luck with the website, change that damn banner sometime, its all blurry. 

OM: Thanks Casey.

In reality, everything has been said, that possibly could be said about the quagmire that was 2009.  So I’m not going to bore you with that.  But, right now I’m sitting here watching Omar and Jeff on The Francessa show and I really can’t stand the fact that they have the nerve to sit in front of the camera and smile and say its gonna all be OK.  Even though we all hope so, and I understand they need to do SOMETHING to put a bow on this mess, how about this?  Since they have to say something I’d like to just hear how sorry they are and how unfortunate it was.  Short and sweet, to the point and then just go disappear until February.  I really have no interest in the renaming of gates coming next year or the cosmetic renovations that have already been done to Citi.  Just lay lo w for awhile guys and let us try and heal from what has been a torturous 6 months. 
I was hanging with Kid Carter the other night, and a few thoughts crossed my mind, as we wrap up 2009 this is the close for a decade of Mets baseball.   One that started with great expectations and ended in one of the worst seasons we’ve had to endure.  You see, we were flipping through the stations on the old cable box and came across a Yankee Classics game on YES.  The match up was from Game 1 of the 2000 World Series.   Turk Wendell was on the mound with his shark teeth and all his glory.  You all know how the game ended, and more importantly how the series ended but sitting there watching it unfold I realized this:  Losing that world series to the Yankees was the highlight of our decade as Mets Fans.  Yeah, its true.  Not Endy making that catch, not signing Beltran, not all the hope surrounding Reyes and Wright.  It was losing to the Yankees.  When we lost that series many were let down but many had hope that if we were playing World Series caliber baseball in 2000 that by the time the decade ended we might have added another ring.  Sadly, here we are and not much progress has been made.  The 2000’s are done.  We had 4 managers, 3 GM’s, uncountable expectations and one guy named Murph.  It wasn’t easy but we made it through this year and if there is one thing to be happy about when looking forward to the spring thaw:  It can’t get any worse, right?

I picked up a pack of baseball cards a little while back and something on the packaging peaked my interest. No it wasn’t the focused look on A-Rods face that got me, my attention was focused on the last line of the sweepstakes rules. I read the fine print on most things because I have way too much time on my hands consider myself detail oriented and this time I saw something that I found very out of place.

It’s your typical sweepstakes rules: Open to US/Canadian resident (excluding Quebec), while supplies last, send a 3×5 index card to etc. Sounds legit so far, right? Here’s where it gets fishy:

“Potential Canadian winners will be required to first correctly answer the following skill-test question: 20×2+3-10=?”

I don’t get it. I mean I got the answer (its 33, I think) but I don’t understand why the sweepstakes rules has an extra wrinkle in for our neighbors to the North. I mean if a kid in Calgary is buying a pack of baseball shouldn’t the folks over at Topps be happy instead of giving him homework? If there is some legal reasoning for this that someone has some insight on I’d like to hear it because I just can’t figure it out.

If there is no reason, I recommend this process be discontinued. if there is one place math doesn’t belong its on a pack of baseball cards.