Ask Dr. Morbius

nope, don't know the name.

Ah, OK. He's a theatre prof who directed me in a couple of plays in college. Kind of an old-school working-class lefty type, so you might get along, but he's also a Yankees fan.

Dr Morbius, I will be in New York at the start of May and am thinking of going to see a Yankees baseball match. Please keep in mind that I know almost nothing about baseball beyond the basics when I ask the following:

How easy or otherwise is it get tickets on the 'day' of the game? Is there a better way of getting tickets? How much should I expect to play for an OK seat?

I see from the Yankees schedule that they play the same opponents for three or so nights in a row - is that one loooong game, or three different games? What times do games start and finish? And is it possible to travel by subway to the Yankees stadium?

Thanks very much for any advice you might offer.

lol baseball 'match'. i am not the fabled doctor and cannot really speak to the ticket situation (it depends on the opponent, and stubhub.com is a good place to seek tickets), but:

three different games. starting at 7:05pm, ending between 10 and 10:30 typically (always later against the red sox). subway is the preferred method of travel.

and if you'd like company, we can probably arrange it.

what mook said. Buying tix directly from the Yankees must be avoided.

I am not sure I can ever set foot in the new Yankee 5-Star Hotel tho

Thank you mook and morbs.

Company would be v welcome (I shall be on my own) - will try not to overdo it on the Britishes tourist asking dumbo questions front. Looking at the Yankees' schedule, the best bets for me are either of their matches against the Astros on Tues 30th April or Weds 1st May. Shall investigate tix further.

LOL saying 'matches' is obv a v ingrained soccerball habit

against the Astros

ooooh, that's unfortunate

tell me more, WC!

think the Yankees are playing the Oakland As on the Friday, who obv I know from Moneyball etc, but that kinda clashes with my plan to go for the free late entry at MOMA on Friday

MoMA is horribly overcrowded at all times, but I could get you in cheap if I knew my going-out status for late April.

The Astros were the worst team in baseball last year and are moving into a tougher league this season.

Astros are comically bad, though perhaps sufficiently so for a baseball noob to find mirth in their brand of inept slapstick.

Yeah, Oakland might be a more entertaining game. On the other hand, if you want to see the equivalent of a 16-year old beating up a 2nd-grader on the playground and taking his lunch money away, the Astros might be the way to go.

xpost

Thanks Morbs - I can of course afford the entry fee, though it would be a delight to go with you, if/when you know yr plans - and it might free me up to go see a better team rather than these Astros losers (tho' quite often I find that seeing something done badly helps you better appreciate/understand the good)

Ward, here's a taste: http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/blog/eye-on-baseball/19938647/gif-the-astros-do-it-again

looks like they haven't got their hussle together yet, as lucy van pelt might say

Morbs,

What do you remember about the Mets trading Seaver to the Reds in '77? Was there more to it than just a contract dispute? Free agency was new and maybe the fans didn't know exactly what to make of it, so were Mets fans mostly on Seaver's side or did they turn on him for being "greedy"?

I think most fans were disgusted and turned off by ownership, and the attendance for the next 6 years showed it. Apparently Seaver had essentially reached an agreement with the Mets, but Daily News columnist Dick Young, who'd been waging a "greedy bastard" vendetta in print vs Seaver, wrote something about Nancy Seaver being jealous of Nolan Ryan's contract that Tom believed had been fed to Young by the front office. So Seaver called the Mets and said "Get me out of here."

I heard about that fake jealousy thing re: Ryan. The Mets more or less cratered from '77 until the Davey Johnson years, but they'd been mediocre for a few years (including '73 which was a bit of a fluke) and they were a losing team in '77. Some people must have turned on Seaver and blamed him for all the losing, and then blamed him again for asking for a new contract (whose value must have seemed astronomical at the time) in the midst of a losing season. Or was it more like "give him whatever he wants, he's Tom f'n Seaver!"

This feature in the Daily News from the 30th anniversary seems fair:

The seeds of the ugliest episode in Met history were planted on July 12, 1976, when a new Collective Bargaining Agreement was reached, following another bitter and protracted labor dispute in the wake of arbitrator Peter Seitz's strike-down of the reserve clause, and the dawn of free agency was ushered in. Four months earlier, the Mets had locked Seaver in with a three-year, $675,000 deal, making him baseball's highest paid pitcher - temporarily - with a base salary of $225,000....

But in the spring of '77, Seaver, who had been the Mets' player rep in the labor negotiations, was elated over the riches suddenly being reaped by others. He was upset, however, that the Mets, who had finished third, 15 games out of first place, in 1976, had made no effort to sign any of the new free agents. He made note that despite a glaring need for offense and a significant financial advantage over their competitors, Grant and general manager Joe McDonald had failed to make a bona fide offer for center fielder Gary Matthews, who looked like a perfect fit for the Mets but wound up signing a five-year, $1.2 million deal with the Atlanta Braves.

"How can you not even try?" Seaver had asked in an impromptu session with the writers at the Mets' spring training complex in St. Petersburg on Feb. 26, 1977.

As for his own contract, which had been finally settled after a lot of public acrimony with (board chairman M. Donald) Grant, Seaver said: "I was made an example of. I was pictured as the ingrate after nine years with the club. I was to be punished. And even now, a year later, I still resent the way they did it."

Thirty years later, Seaver still feels nothing but contempt for Grant, who died at 94 in November 1998.

"There are two things Grant said to me that I'll never forget, but illustrate the kind of person he was and the total 'plantation' mentality he had," Seaver says. "During the labor negotiations, he came up to me in the clubhouse once and said: 'What are you, some sort of Communist?' Another time, and I've never told anyone this, he said to me: 'Who do you think you are, joining the Greenwich Country Club?' It was incomprehensible to him if you didn't understand his feelings about your station in life."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/true-story-midnight-massacre-article-1.224970

bump!

still hoping to see the Yankees/Oakland game on Friday 3rd May - can I just buy a ticket on the day?

if you know you're going then get them in advance from http://www.stubhub.com/new-york-yankees-tickets/yankees-vs-athletics-5-3-2013-4168610/

/gabbneb

Thanks caek, will do that - any particular place I should sit?

to answer that would be truly gabbnebian, but the one time i went i sat in 420A

behind first base (413) is good too. Try not to sit in the first row of a section, you have assholes walking past for 3 hours.

morbs i did not like my visit to the yankees. didn't particularly like the mets either. are the any nyc minor league teams you recommend for drinking in the sunshine?

well, the Brooklyn Cyclones play in Coney Island if that's your tourist-friendly destination. Always plentiful tix for the Staten Island Yankees too, right by the ferry dock.

thanks morbs

upthread you wrote this, and am wondering how you are fixed now:

MoMA is horribly overcrowded at all times, but I could get you in cheap if I knew my going-out status for late April.

thanks morbs i will be there from june, let's go to some games

hello yankees fans, i am typing this from an internet cafe on 8th avenue - probably won't see the interweb again before i return to the UK tomorrow

anyway, i have bought a ticket for tonight's 'match'. section 413 was sold out, but i am in 412, row 13 seat 3. if any of you are in the same area, say hello to the john-peel-looking dude sat there.

go yankees!

no yankees!

Sorry I didn't see that last MoMA post, and you paid $20 if you saw the full museum... I wound up not going yesterday.

Yankees lineup is bizarre.

no prob morbs, in fact moma entrance is $25 bucks now, but i did get to see the avant-garde films for that, too, so didn't feel short-changed.

yankees experience was pretty bizarre - wasn't prepared for the guy playing 'i'm a yankee doodle dandy' on the organ intermittently throughout the game! - but i'm glad i went. yankees lost!

hey dr morbius, what's up?

also, this is awesome and i bet you would like it: http://scouts.baseballhall.org/

thx Z, i'd heard about it. Didn't realize it was that exhaustive tho.

Hey Dr Morbius (and everyone),

Fell in love with baseball last year so I am newbie.
What is the best stats/metric for judging a pitcher? Seems like win/loss isn't working.
Is WHIP reliable?

"How do I convince my occasional friend and would-be baseball nerd that Jeff Karsens is not a good pitcher and that these two starts are outliers in an otherwise unextraordinary career? He seems to think that the Yanquis got snookered in the Nady/Marte trade.

-- Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved, Sunday, August 10, 2008 4:16 PM (0 seconds ago) Bookmark Link"

everything is awful

xp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_independent_pitching_statistics

VHS, I do not think there is *one* metric if that's what you're asking.

I look at WAR now and then, and BB9, SO9, HR9. Or just the raw stats and maybe do some rough adjustments in my head.

For any single year, a hits allowed rate can be too flukey, I think.

Do you have any idea what is wrong with Lincecum?
It's surely a tired subject but once again I'm late on the whole sports.

I don't watch him or read enough about the Giants to say definitively, but I believe it's been documented that he's lost a substantial amount of velocity -- and movement as well, presumably?

I guess the general consensus is that his mechanics weren't sustainable. Still hoping for a comeback.

tbf he ran into a buzz saw last night amirite

do you want me to pick one of these up for you while i'm in little rock?

http://distilleryimage4.ak.instagram.com/377107dc078211e39de722000a9e5e38_7.jpg

echhhhhh

(the one time I laid eyes on Billy Blythe was about ten years ago; he was on the field during batting practice at Shea Stadium)

favorite ylt song?

favorite fmu dj?

langella, hopkins, cusack: who played the best nixon? or, alternately, marry, fuck, kill?

franco or la beef?

favorite met?

favorite phillie (non-ironic)?