(above : not Keith Hernandez. Probably)

I watched some of yesterday’s Mets/Pirates make-up game, but apparently not the right parts. In what I watched, the Mets were hitting singles and Keith Hernandez was shit-talking the ineffective, soft-tossing Paul Maholm — “where was this guy in the 1980s,” he said after Nick Evans hit something like the fifth straight single off Maholm in the fifth inning — and then the Mets bullpen was wearily slouching towards a K-Rod breakdown. Sadly, I missed the part in which Keith Hernandez and Gary Cohen discussed the fact that the Mets were staying in the same hotel as a bunch of attendees from this week’s Furry Convention in Pittsburgh. Thankfully, UniWatch’s Paul Lukas was there to catch and transcribe the discussion.

Gary Cohen: There’s the Pirate Parrot, entertaining. One of many, uh, animal figures in town today.

Keith Hernandez: Saw a few around the hotel, didn’t we?

Cohen: The strangest convention I’ve ever seen is at our hotel here in Pittsburgh. You know, you travel around the country and you see parts of our society and our culture you never would’ve encountered anywhere else. There is a group of people, about 4,000 strong, convening in Pittsburgh this week. People who dress up as stuffed animals.

Hernandez: They’re cuddly bears. They like to cuddle.

Cohen: Bears, birds, dogs…

Hernandez: What are they called..?

Cohen: …wolves…

Hernandez: Ferriers..? All’s I know is I got in the elevator with four of them and the odor was horrific. [Camera shows the Pirate Parrot again.]

Cohen: Not the Pirate Parrot. He’s a natural mascot.

Hernandez: I had to get off. I’m not lyin’. I was on the 17th floor, goin’ down. I had to jump off on the 10th floor. I almost passed out.

Cohen: Guess those costumes don’t breathe very well. But it was, it was something, we walked into the hotel last night, comin’ from Milwaukee, and there was a, a, person in a wolf’s costume. And another person in a dog costume.

Hernandez: I saw a guy with, with his pet beaver. He had his hand, he was stroking it, he was petting it. [Long pause.] I’m serious! It was a, like a stuffed animal, and he was comforting it. Very bizarre.

Cohen: It’s a different world.

Lukas sees Hernandez’s language — “gettin’ off,” “goin’ down” — as pro-plushy semaphore. “Just come out and admit you’re a total perv who fantasizes about banging the Philly Phanatic and then we can all move on with our lives,” Lukas advises. And while this may well be the case, I prefer to think that the reliably mustachioed Mex was just bummed not to be the furriest guy in the building.

Jose Canseco (above, right) didn’t take part in last week’s 20th Anniversary reunion of the 1989 Oakland A’s World Series Champs, and in the wake of considerable bashing of one half of the Bash Bros., former Sacramento Bee beat reporter Susan Fornoff stands up for Canseco in today’s SF Chronicle. “On steroids or not, selfish or not, antisocial or not,” Fournoff writes,  “Canseco played a pivotal role in the success of the late-1980s A’s, their manager and his players. Why make the retro-face of the team Stewart, who pitched only every fifth day? Why make it Dennis Eckersley, who pitched only when the team’s bats had already given it the lead?”

Tony La Russa has never cared about whether a player is a good person or a bad person or whether he is, as he said of Canseco, “into his contract and his celebrity.”

La Russa cares only about a player’s contribution to the success of the team. He has always had a reputation as a veterans’ manager and for good reason: La Russa does not mentor. He considers the main part of his job to be filling out the best possible lineup every day, which is why America’s hotel bars are littered with napkins containing his scribble. He fathered daughters, not sons, and has not been a father figure to his players.

This is by no means a flaw. La Russa has been successful, and so have his teams, which is what matters in the world of sport. After Dave Kingman embarrassed the A’s organization by sending me a gift-wrapped rat in 1986, La Russa wanted to bring Kingman back in 1987 because he felt Kingman’s bat would have lifted the A’s record. The A’s did not sign Kingman, and neither did anyone else. But La Russa would have; it wasn’t about character, it was about home runs.

it is neither fair nor classy, 20 years later, for La Russa to say Canseco was not a team player when it mattered not a bit to the manager as long as the slugger, the 1988 Most Valuable Player, was hitting 17 home runs in 1989 despite missing all but 65 games that year with a broken wrist.  If Canseco was good enough for La Russa to put in the lineup every day he was healthy in 1989, he is good enough to share in the celebration of that season 20 years later.

OK, this looks kinda tawdry.  But I’m told Jerry Jones gave Wade Phillips a case of this stuff for Xmas and it goes really well with Ed “Too Tall” Jones’ Charcoal Briquettes

“Nick Swartz needs to be fired. Immediately.” So declared Rainy On The Royals’ Rany Jazayerli (above) of K.C.’s trainer of some 19 years. “If there was an award for worst training staff in the majors, the Royals would be the runaway leaders at this point in the season.” Despite providing rather compelling evidence that makes the Mets’ Ray Ramirez come off like a medical magician compared to Swartz, Jazayerli’s reward for such constructive criticism was an announcement from the Royals that he’d no longer have access to players for his radio show. You’d think if K.C. was really hellbent of stifling negativity about the team they’d ask the local paper to stop running the AL Central standings.

I confess to being surprised that after years of being critical of the Royals when criticism was warranted – which, as their win-loss record shows, is most of the time – my last post should have set them off like that. I must have overlooked the rules of decorum that go with evaluating the record of Supreme Court Justice Nick Swartz. Criticize a player, liken the manager’s intelligence with that of a farm animal, call for the GM’s head: these are all acceptable things. But suggest that the trainer might need to be upgraded after 19 years – well, that’s beyond the pale.

In the short run, maybe no one’s to blame for the fact that Coco Crisp tried to play through an injury that ultimately ended his season. In the long run, when there are stories like Coco Crisp’s year after year after 19 freaking years – someone needs to be held accountable. It is astonishing to me that not only do the Royals not see that, but that they would take offense at anyone who might dare to suggest that the same rules that apply to players and coaches and managers should also apply to trainers.

Look, if the Royals want me to concede that I’m not completely sure that Swartz is the problem: fine, I’ll happily concede that. Without access to medical records - which I will not and should not have access to - I can’t be completely sure. Just as I wasn’t completely sure that Buddy Bell was a bad hire, or that Tony Pena couldn’t hit, or that spending $1.8 million on Horacio Ramirez was a waste of money.

But I am certain – as certain as I’ve been of anything related to the Royals since the day they traded Jermaine Dye for Neifi Perez – that THERE IS A PROBLEM. If the Royals don’t think that Swartz is the problem, then by all means, keep him – but figure out what the problem is.

GM Andy MacPhail isn’t throwing down the gauntlet, but he didn’t volunteer a vote of confidence either. He knows there are things a manager and his coaches can control and things that they can’t. It’s not as if first base coach John Shelby could have reached out and grabbed Ty Wigginton and Aubrey Huff as they motored mindlessly around first base in a couple of crucial game situations recently.

“I think that’s progress on one level,” MacPhail said. “What I would say is, that’s one of the separators you have to determine. If it’s an organizational issue, it would manifest itself in the younger guys and not the guys who have been in the big leagues for eight years.”

I’m sure all of CSTB’s gambling degenerates readers are already aware the Toronto Argos defeated the Hamilton Tiger Cats last night, 30-17. You might not, however, be aware that Argos WR Arland Bruce III found himself under CFL scrutiny with the above TD celebration that’s being called a tribute (?) to the late Michael Jackson. Is the moonwalk really that hard to do? From the Globe & Mail :

After scoring on a 21-yard pass from Kerry Joseph to put Toronto ahead 6-0, Bruce removed his helmet, shoulder pads and uniform top and laid down in the end zone. Bruce said he was simply honouring the memory of Michael Jackson by pretending to be buried.

Bruce received two objectionable conduct penalties.

“I made the mistake of telling him in camp that once he got to the end zone I didn’t care what he did,” Toronto coach Bart Andrus said later. “But he’s straight with it now and I think next time around he will celebrate in an appropriate manner.”

Leyritz is accused of dragging his ex-wife out of bed and pushing her to the floor because she wrote a check without his permission, police say. Broward County Judge John Hurley set bail at $1,000 for that offense, but another judge revoked Leyritz’s bond in a DUI manslaughter case stemming from a fatal 2007 crash.

His lawyer on the DUI case, David Bogenschutz, said he will ask Broward Circuit Judge Marc Gold as early as possible next week to reconsider keeping Leyritz in jail. Bogenschutz said he will argue it has not been established that Leyritz violated the terms of his pretrial release. “That’s the question: did he commit an offense, not that he was arrested for one,” Bogenschutz said.

In the domestic battery case, Leyritz said his ex-wife, Karrie Leyritz, hurt herself to get back at him — all because he wants to evict her from the house they share in the 9800 block of Ridge Trace.

“That’s ridiculous,” Karrie Leyritz said today. “Now all of a sudden I’m lying?”

Karrie Leyritz called police from a neighbor’s house where she fled after the alleged argument, a police report said.

Police found streaks of blood on a wall at the Leytriz home, according to the report.

But police said in the report that the victim gave two “totally different” accounts of what happened.

First, she said she argued with her ex-husband in the foyer, then he hit her and pushed her to the ground.

Later, she said he dragged her out of bed and rammed her against the bedroom wall, the report said.

Karrie Leyritz denies giving two different versions of the story and says she was “misunderstood.”

Police woke up their three children, who apparently slept through the incident.

The two children they spoke to didn’t hear anything strange early this morning, the report said. One child said he heard his parents argue earlier that evening, but that his mother was drunk and likely hit herself.

Karrie Leyritz said she’s not surprised her son told police she made it all up. “He’s constantly hearing his father bad-mouth me,” she said. “I can’t control what my ex-husband says.”

In May, Jim described hanging around the house with his ex wife and new girlfriend as “my Jerry Springer moment”. Perhaps he spoke too soon?

(Quintron, carefully monitoring any instances of incongruity)

A friend who works in radio emailed me a couple weeks ago to ask about organ music at baseball games — if it still exists, which teams use it, whether all organists can get down as hard on “Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog” as former Shea Stadium organist Ray Castoldi. (Yes, I know Jane Jarvis is the Shea Stadium organist, forever and ever, but I was a year old when she retired)

Except for the third, “Jeremiah”-related question — to which the answer is ‘no, they cannot get down that hard’ — I was pretty stumped. I knew the Cubs stayed with the organ. I know about Quintron’s brief, ill-fated stint as the New Orleans Zephyrs organist (note: not true). But I kind of didn’t really know anything, and had to admit as much. Which is sad, because today Idolator’s Maura Johnston was kind enough to link to this enjoyable, service-y piece from Making Music Magazine on Busch Stadium organist Dwayne Hilton, one of the last stadium organists still slinging keys.

Nerves didn’t get the best of Hilton on his first “at bat” behind the organ in the Cardinals’ press box. Rather, it was the timing that was a bit tricky to master. “Once a pitcher steps on the mound, or a batter is in the box, the music has to be totally killed,” says Hilton. “One has to be aware of the game at all times and what’s going on.”

Hilton also has to coordinate with the DJ, video board, and game announcers, as well as calculate what songs can be played comfortably through a commercial break without being cut off in the middle. Another challenge is reading whether or not a base hit will be a single or a double. “I have to watch and see when the cutoff man gets it before I start the fanfare, so I’m not playing while the action is going on,” says Hilton.

Before the game, Hilton plays songs that appeal to all ages, including classics from the ’40s and ’50s like “Rock Around the Clock,” disco songs, upbeat Beatles tunes like “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” and ’70s rock classics. To top it off, Hilton will sprinkle in some fun ’80s jams like Van Halen’s “Jump” or some pop tunes from the radio. “I definitely keep things upbeat and happy,” says Hilton. After the game, depending on whether it was a win or a loss, Hilton will play songs like U2’s “Beautiful Day,” or Garth Brooks’, “Friends in Low Places.”

And here I am already having used my Quintron joke. Anyway, the follow-up I did for this post also led me to this not-an-article webpage, which features some truly amazing Nixon-era pics of stadium organists. Shay Torrent (real name!) and Nancy Faust have the best pictures, in my opinion.

Franco refused to accept that injuries — the Mets have nine players on the DL — are totally responsible for the club’s slide into third place in the NL East.

“I don’t know what it is the last couple of years. Watching them almost every day, there’s no leadership there. Nobody wants to step forward and be a leader. Something is missing, and it’s hard to put your finger on it.

“They got some great, talented players — [Jose] Reyes and [David] Wright and [Carlos] Beltran, now [Johan] Santana’s there — but I just can’t put my finger on it. It seems like, to me, they’re not having fun, even when they were winning.

“Playing in New York, the pressure cooker here, so I’m sure there’s a lot of pressure on them, but they need to relax a little bit and look like they’re having fun. It kind of looks like they’re not having fun and everybody’s on their own page.”

“once the game starts, I think they have maybe too much individuality, where guys are worried about their own stats instead of worrying about getting the guy over, not stealing third base with two outs, which is really meaningless.”

“And if they don’t win, guys pack their bags and they go home for winter and they say, ‘OK, I get my paycheck and that’s it,”’ Franco said. “So something’s not right there, and hopefully they’ll get it right soon because otherwise it’s going to be a long summer.”

Two of the four “great players” Franco cited are out of the lineup, and a third only factors every five days. While David Wright told Hubbach that Franco “doesn’t know what’s going on in this clubhouse”, the portions quoted reveal a washed-up loudmouth who has even less idea what’s happening on the field. Of course, if the Mets had the benefit of an inspirational guy like Captain Fucko, the likes of Nick Evans, Fernando Martinez and Argenis Reyes would magically transform into savvy veterans. But at least we’ve finally figured out what’s really wrong with the team — Jeremy Reed is only concerned about his own numbers!

Despite whiffing 12 times against Milwaukee starter Yovani Gallardo earlier today, the Mets ended a four game skid with a 1-0 defeat of the Brewers. If Brian Schnieder, F-Mart and Daniel Murphy going a combined 0 for 10 isn’t a sign of team unity, I don’t know what is.

Clark told McGraw Milhaven, the morning host at the station, that the mutual hatred ran so deep that he purposely snubbed the Mets when they played together in All-Star Games.

“It’s kind of funny, because in my most productive years, I used a model that he gave me, an M253,” Johnson said in Milwaukee, where the Mets were playing the Brewers.