It really wasn’t that close until the final inning. Well, maybe it was, but with the Phillies unable to get the big hit, it didn’t feel that way after the fifth. But I’m OK with Bobby Parnell nearly blowing the game — read on to find out why, and why I’m not worried about the Mets’ closer.
Not exactly the way the Mets wanted to start off the second half.
Lately, Matt Harvey‘s been in more magazines than Gwenyth Paltrow.
His latest appearance on the periodical shelf comes in an issue of Men’s Journal. Here’s a snippet of what he had to say:
On waiting to buy a Manhattan apartment: “No matter what, New York is now my home. I could buy a place now, but I’ve gotta wait for that $200 million contract. If I’m going to buy an apartment, it has to be the best apartment in the city.”
On his social life philosophy: “I have a 48-hour rule. No drinking two days before a start. But those other days? Yes, I’m gonna go out. If I was locked up in my house all week, I don’t know what I’d be like on the baseball field.”
On living in the East Village: “I’m young, I’m single. I want to be in the mix.”
On Derek Jeter: “That guy is the model. I mean, first off, let’s just look at the women he’s dated. Obviously, he goes out — he’s meeting these girls somewhere — but you never hear about it. That’s where I want to be.”
On being a savior: “I love the idea of coming into a struggling franchise and seeing if I can help them win. First off, I hate to lose. At anything. Secondly, who doesn’t want to be the guy to help turn something around?”
It’s great that Harvey is getting PR, and I’m sure the Mets’ PR department either has something to do with it, or has given him their blessing. New York is all about celebrity – and Harvey (by far) isn’t the first Met or Yankee to appear in a magazine.
But I’d prefer it if he exhibited more of a businesslike demeanor. It’s possible that all of these off-the-field endeavors will turn into distractions if he goes through tough times on the mound. After all, the sports media loves to build up young stars, only to bring them down (see: Johnny Manziel).
Mets blogger (and USA Today writer) Ted Berg has a section of his site called “Embarrassing photos of Cole Hamels.” I wonder if a Phillies blogger is compiling the same of Matt Harvey?
Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe I’m just unwittingly becoming a curmudgeon as I slip into middle age. I’d just like to hear more of how he hates to lose, and wants to help turn the Mets around (the last quote listed above), and less about his dating life.
How do you feel about it? Like it? Don’t like it? Don’t care?
What do you think of Matt Harvey? Maybe you should ask someone who’s told Matt Harvey.
You’ve probably seen this already, but in case you didn’t, perhaps the funniest thing a Mets player has done (on purpose) in over 30 years — since John Stearns tackled Chief Noc-A-Homa before a Braves game:
This also pretty much explains why the Mets are able to get away with all they get away with — because the vast majority of the people they’re marketing to (i.e., NOT people who read Mets blogs every day) — are casual fans / observers who aren’t paying much attention. In other words, a Mets game is a social event, with Mets fandom something to help with connecting to others and/or establish an identity for themselves.
The type on this blog is styled in the Arial font. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:
Arial, sometimes marketed or displayed in software as Arial MT, is a sans-seriftypeface and set of computer fonts. Fonts from the Arial family are packaged with all versions of Microsoft Windows, some other Microsoftsoftware applications,[1]AppleMac OS X[2] and many PostScript 3 computer printers.[3] The typeface was designed in 1982 by a 10-person team, led by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders, for Monotype Typography.
The Arial typeface comprises many styles: Regular, Italic, Medium, Medium Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Black, Black Italic, Extra Bold, Extra Bold Italic, Light, Light Italic, Narrow, Narrow Italic, Narrow Bold, Narrow Bold Italic, Condensed, Light Condensed, Bold Condensed, and Extra Bold Condensed. The extended Arial type family includes even more styles: Rounded (Light, Regular, Bold, Extra Bold); Monospaced (Regular, Oblique, Bold, Bold Oblique). Many of these have been issued in multiple font configurations with different degrees of language support. The most widely used and bundled Arial fonts are Arial Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, along with the same styles of Arial Narrow, plus Arial Black and Black Italic. More recently Arial Rounded has also been widely bundled.
Hmm. I wonder what the history of the Arial font is:
IBM debuted two printers for the in-office publishing market in 1982: the 240-DPI 3800-3 laserxerographic printer, and the 600-DPI 4250 electro-erosion laminate typesetter.[8][9] Monotype was under contract to supply bitmap fonts for both printers.[5][8] The fonts for the 4250, delivered to IBM in 1983,[10] included Helvetica, which Monotype sub-licensed from Linotype.[8] For the 3800-3, Monotype substituted Helvetica with Arial.[8] The hand-drawn Arial artwork was completed in 1982 at Monotype by a 10-person team led by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders[4][11] and was digitized by Monotype at 240 DPI expressly for the 3800-3.[12]
IBM named the font Sonoran Sans Serif due to licensing restrictions and the manufacturing facility’s location (Tucson, Arizona, in the Sonoran Desert),[5][13] and announced in early 1984 that the Sonoran Sans Serif family, “a functional equivalent of Monotype Arial,” would be available for licensed use in the 3800-3 by the fourth quarter of 1984. There were initially 14 point sizes, ranging from 6 to 36, and four style/weight combinations (Roman medium, Roman bold, italic medium, and italic bold), for a total of 56 fonts in the family. Each contained 238 graphic characters, providing support for eleven national languages: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. Monotype and IBM later expanded the family to include 300-DPI bitmaps and characters for additional languages.
In 1989, Monotype produced PostScript Type 1 outline versions of several Monotype fonts,[10] but an official PostScript version of Arial was not available until 1991.[citation needed] In the meantime, a company called Birmy marketed a version of Arial in a Type 1-compatible format.[7][14]
In 1990, Robin Nicholas, Patricia Saunders[4][11] and Steve Matteson developed a TrueType outline version of Arial which was licensed to Microsoft.[10][15][16]
In 1992, Microsoft chose Arial to be one of the four core TrueType fonts in Windows 3.1, announcing the font as an “alternative to Helvetica”.[10][11][17]
Sounds like a lot of work went into the creation of the Arial font. As a result, I won’t waste a single character of it writing about Jordany Valdespin.
But if you’d like to hear how he blew up after his recent demotion to Triple-A, you can read about it here.
Mets finish their road trip 6-3 heading into the All-Star break. Is it good to finish on a high note or bad to have their momentum stopped?
The Pirates advance to 20 games over .500, while the Mets drop to 10 games below .500.
Mets come up short in extras, despite pulling out all the stops.
