Baseball Place No. 1: Cooperstown

The glorious shrine that is the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is the logical place to start our trip down Josh Pahigian’s 101 baseball places to see before we strike out.

I’ve been blessed to make three pilgrimages to Cooperstown, and, of course, there were adventures along the way.

The Hall of Fame was once a rather low-tech operation, as you can see from this meager Seaver shrine, complete with elements of the display falling off the background.

The first time was a family road trip in 1983, another example of being spoiled by my parents.

Cooperstown was a very different place, then, and so was the museum. It was very small-town, much like the picturesque village.



For some reason, the Hall felt obligated to note Casey's Yankee years along with his more notable time with the Mets.

We could tell that some changes were taking place, and the upper levels looked like a modern museum. But the older areas looked like something you’d see in a high school display case.

Not that we minded. Because the artifacts like Gil Hodges’ jersey are awe-inspiring whether they are placed on a simple shelf with a typed label or in a grand display.



The three or so blocks that made up downtown had some evidence of the Hall of Fame down the street, but it was along the lines of a luncheonette with a baseball name. A souvenir store next to the museum had amazing and ancient items that you know had been on those shelves for years.

I returned in 1988 with my wife to celebrate our first anniversary. She, too, spoiled me. Obviously.

We went in October when Cooperstown and its hills were beautiful with fall color. Sadly, we had to go all the way to Utica to find a hotel. And beautiful was not a word we used to describe it.

A ball from Tom no-hitter -- mounted on peg board. Clearly the Hall had not learned how to properly display such glory.

And we were there at the time the Mets were in the playoffs against the Dodgers. You can imagine that if my wife was willing to spend our first anniversary vacation days at the Baseball Hall of Fame, she was not going to be willing to watch the Mets on television.

I was able to slip the hotel TV on for a portion of Game 4, and saw that the Mets, already up 2-1 in the series, were in the lead, 4-2, with Dwight Gooden cruising.

I snuck the set on one more time in the top of the ninth — just in time to see Mike Scioscia become Mike "Bleeping" Scioscia.



All was still good in the world. We were at the Hall, and Mike Scioscia had not yet ruined Dwight Gooden.

We returned to Cooperstown again in fall of 1992 for several reasons.

1) Tom Seaver had been inducted the Hall earlier that year, and I knew there would be special exhibits and merchandise in the gift shop.

2) My son was born in July. Clearly, the duties of responsible parent are to take a newborn to see the Tom Seaver exhibits, even if the child is three months old at the time.







The trip did not start well, as the newborn was having some digestive issues and you will thank me for sparing you the details. Let’s just say we hold it over his head to this day.

But I had learned from the Utica mistake, and found a hotel that was a block from the Hall. Keep in mind, this was before the days of the Internet, and this was not easy. We had no idea what it looked like.

We pulled up in front of the Lake Front Motel, and discovered it to be a mom and pop place, an old building right on the water and shaped like a boat. It looked like something right out of the 1940s.



This was shock to our Hampton Inn-conditioned world, but once we got settled in we decided it was really cool in an odd retro way and liked it.

The next morning we pushed the stroller up the street to the Hall and found that it had changed dramatically from our earlier visits. It was now a very modern museum experience, with theaters and fancy exhibits.

Tom's jersey is clearly from 1983, but we shall not complain.

The village had changed, too, filled with memorabilia shops and other touristy places.

Which is not to say we didn’t have great fun.

The newly minted Seaver plaque naturally made us all weepy, and there was much to enjoy.



I parked the stroller in front of a photo of Rickey Henderson, and he promptly let out a window-rattling burp, signifying both that his digestive issues had passed and that he had already formed strong opinions of ex-Yankees.

Knowing both of those things made for a much smoother ride home.

Our scoreboard:

1) Baseball Hall of Fame. Visited 1983, 1988 and 1992.

"101 Baseball Places" a good way to work through these tough times

This week I purchased what is probably the third-coolest book ever.

The first, of course, is “Mets by the Numbers” by Jon Springer and Matt Silverman.

Second place goes to “Faith and Fear in Flushing” by Greg Prince, though I suspect he will vault into a tie for first place when the book is published this spring and I get a chance to actually read it.

But third is “101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out” by Josh Pahigian, which came out last year. I discovered it at the Gerald Ford Museum, which just wrapped up an awesome baseball exhibit.

Pahigian has written several books about baseball road trips, and this tome seems to be a list of the top 101 places he discovered along his various treks.

They’re not just stadiums, and not just museums, though there are plenty of each. But he also has an eye for the quirky, off-the-beaten path kinds of places that only a true obsessive must see and experience.

In other words, he’s one of us. Actually, he’s a Red Sox fan, so he’s not quite one of us. But he probably hates the Yankees, so he’s fairly close.

Flipping through the book, I realized that I’ve been to bunch of these places. I haven’t added them up, but I bet I’m closing in on half of his list, usually with a pretty good adventure along the way.

So why haven’t I given some examples?

Because I want to use this space to work through the book place by place, sharing some of those adventures and photos along the way.

And there are some glaring omissions. Dude is a Sox fan, after all. And sometimes he appears not the hate the Yankees as much as he should, though that might be pandering to appease the Yankee fans who can read. But I can fill the gaps with those places.

Why take this path?

Because it’s a long way to Opening Day, the Mets roster is pretty much set and I’m really tired about hearing about Yankee books, Scott Boras shenanigans, Citi Field naming disputes, Shea’s destruction, Olympic bongers, Barry’s legal woes and the never-ending snow in these parts.

In short, we need to celebrate all that is good in life.

We’ll start tomorrow with Baseball Place No. 1. Here’s a hint. Tom Seaver gets in for free, Bat-chucker will have to buy a ticket, if there is any justice in this world.

If it works for Obama, it works for the Mets Guy

This is all Greg’s fault.

No doubt inspired by this week’s inauguration, he introduced me to a cool Obamicon.me Facebook application — found here -- to show a nice photo of his pet cats.

His activity and all that followed kicks off this week’s Deezo Friday Five.

1) No doubt you saw Barack Obama’s iconic "Hope" campaign posters. The program allows you to use any photo and turn it into a mock Obama poster. You can even pick the word on the bottom, since "Hope" is now so ...cliché!

Being a presidential junkie, I quickly created one using my own photo, then created a special Mets Guy version.

My only regret is that I couldn't adjust the colors to use blue and orange.

Then I started exploring the possibilities — for both good and bad. Cousin Tim, a known bad ass, got one from our day at Shea.

Speaking of Shea, Greg offered a version that certainly would have garnered some votes.

Tom would win in a landslide, just as he did when he was up for the Hall of Fame.

My cat, Tug, would get more votes than Duncan Hunter. So would Gene.



Then, once you start speaking the truth, you can’t stop.

Sorry, Derek F. Jeter. But deep down you know it’s true.

So I figure now that I have a cool poster, I can start campaigning for president, or at least a spot on a local school board.

2) I’ve come full circle on the Citi Field Inaugural Season patch.

Clearly, this is a Mercury Mets moment.

For the unaware, most teams several years ago participated in a "Turn Ahead the Clock" promotion that featured playing a game in futuristic uniforms.

Some were pretty cool. But the Mets created an odd Mercury Mets persona that wasn’t just bad. It was shockingly awful.

And I was reminded that when the Mets screw something up, they don’t just do something that kinda sucks.

No. When the Mets mess up, they seek to define the bottom. Paul Lukas of Uniwatch fame called the patch the worst ever.

Of course it is.

There have been plenty of dull, lifeless patches that are quickly forgotten. But now, any time a bad patch is revealed, it will be compared to the Citi Field patch. And it will fall short.

We must embrace this. It is our destiny.


3) Speaking of destiny, when we kick ass on something, we aim right for the top.

Now I shall refer to the glorious new Home Run Apple.

No team in baseball shall ever attempt to hoist massive celebratory fruit once this new Citi Field Apple rises for the first time.

Published reports say the new, fiberglass Apple is 6 feet tall and 18 feet in diameter — far bigger than the 9-foot-tall original. When a Met hits a homer, the apple will rise 15 feet.

It’s being made in Minnesota and will be installed in the new park sometime in February.

And once it rises, every Phillies fan that used to be content with their bonging Liberty Bell outline will reflect upon their inferiority.


4) The McFarlane people turn out some sweet baseball figures, and I especially love the Cooperstown series, expect that it tends to have A) too many Yankees, and B) players who are not in Cooperstown.

Occasionally, they have C) players in the wrong uniform.

I saw the new figure of 1969 Met Nolan Ryan and wondered aloud why anyone would want him in a Rangers uniform when he could be depicted in his glorious Mets pinstripes.

Seriously, does anybody remember Ryan pitched for the Rangers, Astros or Angels?

Plus, the new figure has him all bloody. I thought this might be from the day when Nolan got a little snotty with future Met Robin Ventura, and Robin had to run to the mound and teach him a thing or two.

But no, Nolan apparently cut his lip because he had trouble fielding his position in a late-season game against Kansas City.

Would have been so much better to show him mowing down Orioles in the 1969 Series.

5) There’s a chance I was a bit of a wise guy in college. That leads us to the strange case of the Three-Pronged Adapter.

You need the background. I worked as a desk aide in the dorm while I was at the University of Missouri, a job that included handing out keys to people who lock themselves out of their rooms, calling maintenance and other tasks devoted to keeping Floyd Cramer Hall a happy place.

Part of this entailed writing in the daily log anything that happened that people in the following shifts needed to know about.

There were about six of us, and one was deemed "head desk aide" which was as important as it sounds.

Except that the person who held this post took it very seriously. And she spent much time developing policies and protocol that needed to be followed.

Then came the new vacuum.

It had a three-pronged plug, and all the outlets in the dorm had outlets with two slots, making it hard to use the vacuum.

This was not an issue for the two guy floors in our four-story building, since guys didn’t think about vacuuming their floors until the over-sized mice fed on Domino’s pizza droppings started to carry out what limited furniture we had.

But the residents of the two women’s floors cared about such things, and someone was dispatched to the hardware store to buy an adapter.

The HDA, as we shall now call the head desk aide, then distributed a long list of rules pertaining to the three-pronged adapter. Let’s just say no one was going to walk out the door with that thing without signing their life away. Closing on a house was easier.

The point was that the three-pronged adapter was too precious to let out of our sight, and we would be held responsible should be go missing. One would think that it would have been easier to just spend another couple bucks and buy about 10 of the tools, but that’s not how we did things.

Writers view an empty page as a challenge. And after reading this missive, I spent time I should have spent studying to create a whole back story for the three-pronged adapter, noting that it was too dangerous to be let out of our sight.

The people manning the desk on the following shifts only added to the story, and by the end of the next day, the three-pronged adapter had a prison jumpsuit, a Jason mask and a bloody knife extended from little paper arms.

The HDA, predictably, hit the roof. So did her boyfriend, who was a fellow desk aide, and, as far as we could tell, was the only one of us who actually read the policy manuals and was her chief defender.

The HDA’s calls for more order and respect for authority went unheeded, and the legend of the three-pronged adapter grew.

When I graduated in December, the remaining desk aides smuggled the three-pronged adapted out of the office without filling out the forms and presented it to me as a farewell gift.

And I’ve kept it these 22 years as a playful reminder of my Missouri years.

This year, we were setting up some Christmas decorations and, amazingly, needed a three-pronged adapter and pressed him into service.

I filled out none of the forms. Always fight The Man!

Shamwow, walking tacos and other things Rickey might like

Absolutely crazy week, which explains why we’re getting the special Deezo Pre-Inauguration Friday, er, Monday Five.

1) Apparently I make a mean "walking taco." Rachael Ray would be so proud.

As the father of a high school athlete, I am assigned assorted duties, among them working in the concession stand during meets.

We sell a steady stream of popcorn, candy, popcorn, soggy bun hot dogs, popcorn, warm pizza slices, more popcorn and walking tacos, which I believe are a Michigan thing.

Basically, you take snack-sized back of Fritos, carefully open the top and spoon in taco meat, cheese, and a little bit of sour cream. Hand the kids a fork and a napkin, and off they go.

Only I decided to shake this up a little bit, adding cheese first, then the taco meat, then a lot more cheese before a generous spoonful of sour cream. This allows some of the cheese to melt over the Fritos.

I didn’t think this was too revolutionary, but one of the other parents was impressed and declared I make the best walking taco.

Sports parents, I learned, are very competitive, because one of the other parents overhead this and wanted to know why my walking tacos earned such a distinction.

Thinking this was a joke, I held up one of her earlier attempts, where she accidentally split the Frito bag, making it un-walkable.

This, however, was not deemed funny.

The rest of the shift was spent rushing over to the crock pot with the taco meat as soon as the order was placed, me defending my title and the other parent trying to top me like the Phillies in the last week in the last two seasons.

Unlike the Mets, I prevailed.



2) From the Department of Things I Really Shouldn’t Care About, But Do anyway, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced it class of 2009: Metallica, Run-DMC, Jeff Beck, Bobby Womack and Little Anthony and the Imperials.

So, in review, the guys who sang "Shimmy Shimmy Ko-Ko Bop" about 50 years ago are enshrined, while the guys who sang, "Sultans of Swing" are not.

Bobby Womack, in. Rush, not.

It’s a rock and roll hall, right?

Will knows I vent about this each year and had a response ready when the news came down on Wednesday.

"I’ve decided to refuse to care about the RNRHOF until the following are inducted (all of them): Rush, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Chicago, Kiss, Yes, ELO, Robert Plant, Pete Townshend, Dire Straits and ABBA. And I hated ABBA, but if you're going to include Madonna, then ABBA totally belongs."

Spot-on, as always, except that I like ABBA.

Meanwhile, we can all sit back and wait for that induction ceremony when the guys from Metallica jam with Little Anthony.



3) The Baseball Hall of Fame did a little better, adding another former Mets to its ranks, along with Jim Rice, who we spanked handily in the 1986 World Series.

Sadly, the Veteran’s Committee elected another dead Yankee. Joe Gordon died in 1978 and has not played since 1950 — pre-dating even Little Anthony!

Can someone explain to me how a guy can be not Hall-worthy for 47 years and suddenly earn a place beside Tom Seaver, Willie Mays, Richie Ashburn, Duke Snider, Warren Spahn and other Mets of note in year No. 48?



4) Grand Rapids has become a large enough city that two guys can show up at an outdoor event dressed as Scooby Doo and Under Dog and attract hardly any attention.

This was New Year’s Eve, and Grand Rapids was dropping a lighted ball, like in Times Square.

The difference was that our ball was dropped by a crane instead of down a flag pole atop a building and the people in attendance were actual area residents who went home with their wallets instead of the tourists who flood the homeland hoping to appear briefly on New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.

But ignoring a couple guys dressed like dogs was a very New York thing to do. I was impressed.



5) I’m strangely fascinated by the guy in the Shamwow commercials.

Clearly he’s a freak. The hair, the headset microphone, the ‘tude and the fact that he almost makes me believe that a yellow rag can soak up a Diet Coke spill and arrange a cease fire in the Gaza Strip. His delivery reminds me of a three-card monte dealer.

Did some research and it turns out Shammie’s name is Vince Offer and he wrote and directed the 1999 film "The Underground Comedy Movie" that a New York Post review gave zero stars, said it "may be the least amusing comedy ever made."

Ouch. But that explains why Vice is hawking miracle rags.

Proper bagels and Dee Snider could lure Lowe

My brother and parents are back on Long Island for a sad occasion this weekend. But it’s nice to know they were thinking of me. And their thoughfulness is appreciated in this week’s Deezo Friday Five.

1) Apparently they came across a bagel store right next to a post office, and had the idea to fill up a box of glorious poppy seed bagels and overnight it to Michigan.

As you know, Michigan bagels, even from stores that have a New York theme, are no match for an authentic slice of the homeland.

Eating a Michigan bagel is a bittersweet experience. It’s better than, say, some cinnamon roll or McGriddle as a breakfast treat. But you know how it’s supposed to be, and that there are people in New York at that very moment eating a proper New York bagel, some of them Yankee fans who don’t deserve them.

So I can assure you that no mail carrier has ever seen someone happier to meet them at the door.

There were 16 of those beauties, and it was down to 15 within moments.

I thought briefly about taking one of them to the two places I usually get bagels from, to inspire them and show them exactly what they should be baking.

I also thought about bringing some to the newsroom so my colleagues can understand why I turn up my nose at their inferior breakfast edibles.

But that would require sharing, and I’m just not ready to do that.

Later in the day, my daughter asked if she could have one. Now she knows how much I love her. Down to 14.



2) Apparently Braves are making a run at would-be Mets hurler Derek Lowe, and made a pretty elaborate pitch for his services this week.

According to David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Braves pitched woo to Lowe for five hours, complete with a video presentation and a recorded message from country music artist Toby Keith.

Toby Keith? Is that the best they can do?

Think of the kind of talent the Mets could tap if they wanted to go down this road.

After serving Derek poppy seed bagels, Long Islander Dee Snider could burst into the room and — like in the video — scream, “Derek Lowe! What are you going to do with your life?”

To which Derek can only reply: “I WANNA ROCK! See you in St. Lucie next month.”

Soupcan at the Crane Pool Forum was alble to take off the Citi logo atop this alternate logo -- for items sold at the stadium -- that would have made a much better patch.

3) The Mets’ new Citi Field patch has now been mocked by just about everyone. And with good reason.

But I hate it even more now that I know the team actually has a decent City Field logo, but it’s using it only on merchandise sold at the ballpark next season.

The logo shows the famed Jackie Robinson Rotunda, as it should. It also has the Citi Bank logo, which is a no-no for Major League uniforms. But you’d think it could easily be replaced with the Mets wordmark or outright eliminated for a patch.


As if times aren’t tough enough for the Bush family. The family cat of 18 years died recently.

The black American shorthair was named “India” by the Bush daughters, after near-Met Ruben Sierra, going back to the days when the President ran the Texas Rangers instead of the country.

I had no idea Sierra’s nickname was “El Indio.” Nor can I figure out why.

The Houston Chronicle reported that in 2004, some students in Thiruvananthapuram, India, burned an effigy of President Bush because they declared that naming his cat India was an insult to their country.

I’d be more upset that Ruben Sierra was named after their country.

But those kids are probably in a suspended state of crankiness because they have to fit “Thiruvananthapuram” across the front of their road jerseys.

As the owner of a black shorthair named after a baseball player -- "Tug" -- I feel a close bond to the Bush family and offer my sincere condolences.




5) OK, say you were a big free agent preparing for your coming out press conference.

You know someone is going to hand you a cap and a jersey, because they always do. It the case of Mark Teixeira here, an extremely ugly one.

And you know that as soon as you put it on, you’re going to pose for photos. And is there anything that looks dopier than a guy wearing a jersey with a tie and dress shirt sleeves showing?

Since you know those things are going to happen, wouldn’t it better to wear a mock turtleneck under a sports jacket, hopefully one that matches the team colors?

Searching for Seaver and Starbucks

I hope this new year finds you happy and healthy. We celebrated by heading to downtown Grand Rapids to see the Plain White T’s play outside in sub-20-degree weather and had a blast.

We came back in time for cheese fondue, a warm fire and watching the balls — plural, one in Grand Rapids and the other in Times Square — drop on television.

The waning days 2008 also required some searching, as you’ll see in the first Deezo Friday Five of 2009.

1) I was searching for a shirt to help my sister celebrate her Tom Seaver birthday and came across this slice of glory.

I’ve never seen a Tom Seaver shirt like this, and promptly declared it to be the Greatest Shirt Ever.

The photo was from an eBay listing, and the shirt is a medium, which wouldn’t even fit my son anymore. So I searched and searched online to find a store or site selling it.

None. The only place it would show up was that same eBay posting.

Greg suggested I contact the vendor to see if he has more, or if he could tell me where he got the shirt. Again, a strike out, as the vendor said he had only the medium and didn’t know where got that one.

His listing said the shirt was produced by Majestic, and I scanned the company’s web store, but didn’t see the shirt. Then I fired off an e-mail to the customer service department complete with an attachment showing the design. No word back yet.

So, if anybody has seen this design and knows where I can find one of these beauties, please let me know.

While searching, I came across this orange Seaver shirt that also is really cool, though doesn’t have the retro look of the other design.



2) Speaking of things that are hard to find. Mrs. Mets Guy is a knitter and fell in love with Starbucks’ Christmas decorations, which included shiny red balls with green balls of yarn used to make wreaths.

We’re in Starbucks enough that I know far too much about the baristas and baristos — is that what you call a guy who works there? — and one day I mentioned her appreciation of the wreaths and asked if I could buy one after the holidays.

The manager said he’d be happy to save one for me. And the day after Christmas I was in there and noticed that the wreaths were down, and assumed the manager had one in the back waiting for my all-to-frequent arrival.

Alas, he said he was confronted by a customer as soon as he opened the doors, and she was very insistent. I think he forgot.

But it’s not like there’s only one Starbucks in the area, or even on that street.

So Monday I went to another, noticed the wreath was still there and inquired. The manager said there were a number of people interested, and she made a rule that they would go to the first person who asked for them on New Year’s Day. And they opened at 7 a.m.

So I set the alarm for 6:15 a.m. despite watching the ball drop and staying up late the night before, and was in the Starbucks parking lot by 6:45 sharp.

I jumped out of the car as soon as the manager turned the key. And she said she doesn’t know what happened, but the wreaths were gone. But I was welcome to a free coffee as a token of apology and some of the other decorations.

I walked out disappointed, but with a tall caramel frappuccino and some other ball and yarn decorations.

Then I realized that there were still more Starbucks, and went across town to another, and saw that not only was a wreath in the window, but there were three in the store!

“About the wreaths,” I asked.

“Stop,” the barista said, cutting me off. “They’re already claimed.”

I predict that next year, Starbucks will come up with a scrapbooking motif to continue tapping into the lucrative craft and latte market.



3) Johan Santana can kick Derek F. Jeter’s butt in baseball bocce.

I know this because I got an awesome Wii baseball game for Christmas — MLB Superstars — that has real players and mascots doing everything but play baseball.

Santana, David Wright and Jose Reyes are among the guys playing bocce on a baseball diamond, dodging gophers and lawnmowers.

They also shoot snacks into the stands using those hot dog-shaped guns mascots use. Mr. Met, in fact, is seen roaming through multiple games, sometimes causing trouble, like when he kicks the ball around in baseball golf.

Some of the gaming sites are wailing on the game. They don’t get it.

There are plenty of games where you can play baseball. But most of us obsessive types notice that the sport bleeds into all the other things we do.

If I’m going to play golf — and you can create your own person in the game — of course I’d rather play it with David, Jose and Johan, and I’d rather play it by hitting the ball with a bat and it would be great fun for all of us to gang up on Derek F. Jeter.



4) My in-laws have a suicidal mailbox.

Or, I should say they had a suicidal mailbox.

We visited last weekend, surviving a challenging, five-hour trek through some of the densest fog ever. We pulled up and debated whether we passed the house, backed up a little and felt a big THUD.

Turns out the mailbox somehow hurled itself into the path of my Vue. It’s not like I could have possibly backed up the driveway and into it. Can’t be my fault.

But we went to Lowe’s the next day and happily picked out a new one -- the Mail Master -- and installed it.

I say happily because this could have been worse in two ways.

First, the wooden pole that goes into the ground and supports the box could have broken, which means we’d have to somehow dig out the old one and get cement to set in the rain-soaked ground. No telling if that would have worked, or how long it would have taken.

Then, it could have been the neighbor’s box. If you think it’s hard to explain to a relative how you ran over their mailbox, image doing it to a stranger without them calling the police.



5) Tuned to the MLB Network debut Thursday night.

Have to say there was much fear when the first thing they do is show an old Yankee game, then roll out Phillie big mouth/shortstop Jimmy Rollins for the “Hot Stove” show.

But, despite Rollins, the show was pretty neat. And next week they’re showing the Ken Burns Baseball epic.

That first aired in 1994, the year of the strike. I was covering the All-Star Game FanFest and was invited to a media breakfast to talk about the documentary.

We were seated at round tables, most with a retired player. I was at a table with former Brooklyn Dodger Joe Black and several people who had no business getting a press pass and, based on their indifference, had never heard of Joe Black.

I knew he was the 1952 Rookie of the Year, and had spent eight years in the Negro Leagues before getting a crack at the majors. I think I impressed him when I correctly pronounced the name of his team, the Elite Giants, which sounds like e-LIGHT Giants.

“I think you’re the first white guy to pronounce that the right way,” he said with a smile. He then patiently allowed me to pick his brain, and I listened to all kinds of neat stories about the Jackie Robinson and playing in Brooklyn.

A person who I believed to be a former player walked around the room with a beaming smile, shaking every hand and introducing himself. I had never heard of Buck O’Neil until then.

Of course, by the time Burns’ masterpiece was finished, O’Neil had become baseball’s newest ambassador and a national treasure.

The perfect tree for the perfect day

We had a wonderful Christmas, opening presents, enjoying family time, listening to music and, with the help of Rachael Ray, cooking a glorious turkey.

It’s been a pretty eventful holiday season so far, not even counting the arrival of the K-Rod and JJ in the Mets bullpen. So we present a special Deezo Christmas Friday Five.

1) We cut down our own Christmas tree every year. Usually this involves the kids and me marching through acres of snowy fields until we can mutually agree on one. That can take hours, especially since we go pretty late in the month and most of the best ones have been turned to stumps.

But this year we walked to the section of Korean firs -- our new favorites – and I saw it. Rising above the rest of the trees like a church steeple was a perfect cross, formed by the branches at the very top. It was beautiful and it was perfect.

We have a wonderful Waterford crystal tree-topper, but this year it’s staying in the box. I decided nature created something better.

2) One tree that’s always perfect is the one in the Baseball Room. Long ago my wife bought me an artificial tree for the basement, the first step in banishing all my baseball ornaments and others she didn’t like from the main family tree.

I have a punch of generic baseball decorations including most of the non-Yankee Hallmark offerings.

It’s tough to get Mets ornaments, but through the magic of the Internet and generosity of relatives – two from my sister this year! – I’ve been able cover the tree.

But this was the first year I could limit the tree to the Mets and New York designs, with just a few others that are just too special to leave in the box.

3) My wife found a neat story about the WPIX Yule Log.

I had no idea there was such a wild history behind the thing. I thought they just set a camera in front of a log each year and called it good.

Here are some cool Yule Log facts from the official Yule Log Web site.

-- The original was filmed in 1966 in black and white at Gracie Mansion, the home of New York’s mayor.
-- The crew removed the protective gate to get a better shot, and a stray spark damaged a $4,000 antique rug.
-- The show was a 17-second loop that ran for several hours.
-- When WPIX wanted to reshoot it in color in 1970, the mayor wouldn’t allow it after the rug incident. So the producers found a mansion in California with a similar fireplace and shot it on a sweltering August afternoon.
-- The second version is a six-minute loop.
-- The station stopped showing it in 1990, with much protesting from the devoted. The station brought it back in 2001, thinking that New Yorkers would want the video version of comfort food after the terrorist attacks.

After reading all this, I was excited to see that WGN was showing a Yule Log on Christmas Eve. Alas, it wasn’t THE Yule Log, but just cheesy gas fireplace. So we changed the channel and turned on our own gas fireplace.

4) We have a new household catchphrase. You have to know that I like battery operated, singing and dancing Christmas decorations. We have a couple that I think are pretty cool, but I might be alone in thinking that.
One of my favorites is a moose with bells on his antlers that shake when he sings “Sleigh Ride.”

The 16-year-old likes to sleep, and doesn’t like the moose, so it’s become the preferred method of waking him up.
Nevertheless, one of my co-workers was alarmed when she overheard me talking to my daughter on the phone, saying “At 10:30, go moose your brother.”

5) We also have new family lore. Church can be dangerous. My son, probably still groggy from his moosing, was an usher at the 8 p.m. Christmas Eve service, so we were there early.

There were wooden poles attached to the end of every third pew, holding a candlestick and a glass cover similar to the glass in the photo. Usually, they’re attached with a thick band in the middle and another at the base. But this year, for some reason, they were attached only at the middle.

We sat in the pew, and I don’t know how it happened, but as soon as I sat down I saw the white pole in the corner of my eye and heard a thunderous crash that echoed throughout the sanctuary, which had only handful of families at the time – several of them with children now shrieking.

Just so you know, there is no way to pass this off on someone else when there isn’t another person sitting within five pews. Also, relatives and friends will quickly disown you.

Someone found the broom and dust pan, and I will say that the debris field was pretty impressive. We were finding glass about four pews away.

The most embarrassing part: After church a friend who came in later was discussing the service and said, “I head some little kid knocked over one of the candles and broke the glass.”

“A big kid, actually,” was the only way to respond.

From the Mets Guy family to you and yours, we wish you a wonderous and joyous holiday season.

Federal car czar? Why stop there?

Lots of talk this month about the federal government naming a “car czar” to go along with the “drug czar.” Then you have old Joe Biden announcing he’s going to be the “working families czar” in addition to vice president.

Truth be told, the real czars tended to be an unimpressive and ineffective lot, so I might want to come up with a better title. But that’s what we’ve got to work with.

And since we’re adding new czars, here are several that we suggest for the new Obama administration to consider. We’d even volunteer for some of these jobs.

Holiday television special czar: My daughter, then in elementary school, last year had endured enough holiday shows to realize the modern ones all boil down to the same tired plot line: Somebody’s going to discover the True Meaning of Christmas. She’s both dead-on and dead wrong at the same time. The cranky central character in need of redeeming does indeed discover The True Meaning of Christmas every time, at least what the True Meaning is in the eyes of the script hacks. Usually this translate into something along the lines of “I should be nice to people and give them stuff.” But they never take the next step, which would be “I should be nice to people and give them stuff because I want to share the joy that comes with recognizing the birth of the Savior.” Don’t even get me started on the Rankin-Bass specials with their Bumbles and Burgermeisters and Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkeys.

As czar: I’d invoke the Charlie Brown Rule: A special can do whatever it wants as long as there is at least one reference to the actual reason for the season.

Comics czar: I recently saw that “Beetle Bailey” paid tribute to “Gasoline Alley’s” 90th anniversary. Naturally, the guys who started that strip aren’t around any more. And as the mastermind behind the brilliant Comics Curmudgeon blog point out, “legacy” strips abound. Far too many of these guys have retired and passed the franchise along to one of their kids or a flunkie. Most of them weren’t even funny when the guy with the original vision was around, much less the people just trying to keep the strip afloat. Then you have Lynn Johnson, of “For Better or Worse” fame who recently retired, changed her mind, and pretty much started the strip all over again, this time with the husband being a jerk. I stopped reading it

As a czar: I’d demand that once an artist dies, the strip dies with it. And if a strip that is supposed to be funny goes an entire month without prompting even a faint smile — Ziggy, I’m looking at you — it goes, too! If your strip is so painful to read — “Family Circus,” perhaps — that you start screaming, “No! No! Make it stop! Damn you, Little Billy and your evil ways,” then you lose your space on the comics page. And, Lynn Johnson, if you’ve botched things up so much that you feel the need to start all over with the same characters, you’re done, too. Every time one of these dinosaurs goes away, it opens up space for good, new strips like “Pearls Before Swine” and “Frazz.” And goodness knows, we need more good, new strips.


Derek F. Jeter hype czar: If there’s ever a problem that needs federal intervention, this is it. I fully expect Verducci, Klapisch and their ilk to come out and say that Jeter is so worthy of the Hall of Fame, that the five-year waiting period after retiring be waived because the Hall is less complete without a Jeter plaque. Heck, if those guys get worked up, they might demand that Jeter be enshrined while he’s still playing, and a new wing be added to the building just to house all of The Captain’s glory.

As a czar: I’d mandate that the word “over-rated” be inserted every time Jeter is introduced while walking to the plate. “Now batting, No. 2, the over-rated Derek Jeter.

Football talk czar: I like following the Jets and listening to sport talk radio on the way in to work each day. But unlike baseball, which is a part of our daily lives, there just isn’t a lot to say about football since they only play one game a week. We are subjected to three days of rehashing the previous game followed by three days of hype for the upcoming game. Enough, I say!

As a czar: I’d limit the rehash to two days, and just in the case of the Lions, because you can only say “They suck” in so many ways and they seemed to run out of those ways around Week Seven. And I’d limit hype to two days as well, and don’t get me started on the two weeks before the Super Bowl. This leaves Wednesday and Thursday as football-free days, devoted to Mets hot stove discussion, which just never gets old.

Another nightmare before Christmas

The Mets did a nice job with last year's final season at Shea patch, and promptly used it to adorn anything and everything coming out of Queens last season.

But that won't be the case this year if this is the official Citi Field inaugural season patch.

To be fair, the team hasn't released anything, so we don't know for sure. But the folks at the Chris Creamer boards posted this screen shot from the MLB 09 video game, which shockingly in a good indicator if recent history holds true.

Then, Eric from StadiumPage.com worked up this design based on the screen capture.

Paul Lukas from uniwatchblog.com has seen the design, and said he can't reveal what he knows. But he posted the screen capture on his stite, and didn't say it was wrong, either. He has been saying for a while that the patch design is not, well, good.

Part of the problem is that the Citi Field Logo includes the Citi Bank wordmark, and such things are prohibited from appearing on uniforms. But given all the neat design elements of the new stadium -- the routunda, the bridges, the lack of Scott Schoenweis -- you'd think there would be something nice there to design a patch around without what we see here.