Mets and Stuff - Jeff Francoeur, Ray Knight, No-hitters, Valley Fever

Mets and Stuff  - Jeff Francoeur, Ray Knight, No-hitters, Valley Fever

Danger ahead? The Mets are 9-for-54 with runners in scoring position, a .167 average … The Mets are off today. Tomorrow at Citizens Bank Park R.A. Dickey (1-0, 3.00 ERA) will facthe Phillies' Cliff Lee (0-0, 1.50) … Ike Davis snapped his season-opening slump with a sixth-inning single after going 0-for-18, the longest drought by a Mets position player to start a season since Todd Pratt went 0-for-19 to start 2001. link

Royals right fielder Jeff Francoeur cemented his bond Wednesday afternoon with the “Bacon Tuesday” group of A’s fans who populate one section along the right-field wall at the Coliseum by popping for 20 individual pizzas. Francoeur also sent an autographed bat to the group. “Baseball is fun,” he said. “We can take it too serious sometimes. This is something more than just baseball. The (fans in that) right-field section are here every game. They cheer for every (Oakland player). They are diehards. I just enjoy them out there.” link

1986 Met Ray Knight said in a radio interview he has felt shunned by the organization, according to the Daily News. "I’ve never been able to get anybody from the Mets to really call me," Knight said, the newspaper reported. “I get invited to the big events, but the Mets have just never treated the players the way the other clubs do. Detroit, Houston, Cincinnati, I always get notes, cards, stuff from them. I never get anything from the Mets. I don’t know what I did to the front office. I always tried to be a professional and comport myself with class. But I’ve never had anybody act as if it mattered.” link

I never understood the old wives tale of “never say someone is pitching a no-hitter or you will jinx him.” Is there anyone that really believes that there isn’t a person on earth that mentions something about a pitcher that is at least six innings into a hitless game? Are 40,000+ people in the stands just looking at each other, raising their eyebrows, and smiling while turning around.  Played in a game once that a pitcher was five innings down and his third baseman decided to taunt the batter like many of us old third basemen do. He yelled out “no hitter, no hitter…” instead of the routine chant of “no batter, no batter”. It pissed the rest of his infield off and the team called a  time out so the shortstop could tell him to shut the hell up. Jinx him, indeed. Oh yeah… the next batter hit a triple in the gap.

Mike Vaccaro‏ - @MikeVacc - David Wright can play "as tolerated" -- which sort of explains the way #Mets fans watch games the past few years, right?

Mark Healey‏ - @MHealeyBaseball - Did Bobby Clarke get a special sendoff from the Rangers at MSG? Did Dam Marino get a bouquet from Jets?

I spoke to Jim Meenaghan about the disease. Meenaghan is a friend of Galgiani’s, and when Galgiani opened the Valley Fever Center at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, Meenaghan donated $250,000. Meenaghan, a 70-year-old businessman, became interested in the disease after he was struck by it a few years ago. He’s still in good shape, a former athlete who played for a Class-D affiliate of the Yankees back when he was in college, who remains a frequent hiker and runner. But he was laid flat. “I can tell you firsthand,” Meenaghan said, “Your temperature goes up, you lose weight, depending on how big a dose you have in your lungs, night sweats, you lose appetite. You’re fatigued and tired most of the time.” After he was diagnosed with the disease, his doctor forbade him from any strenuous activity for nine months. “My doctor said to me, with this medicine, your body is trying to heal the lung, kill off the cocci. The enemy here is fatigue,” he told me. “At one stage, four or five months into it, I was feeling better, and I was thinking of going hiking. My doctor exploded. ‘What’s wrong with you? I’m not going to let you go 6,000 or 7,000 feet up! I told you fatigue is the enemy.’” After nine months, Meenaghan was fully recovered; he didn’t develop any further complications, and he told me that doctors called it “a mild case.” link

Boy… anybody writes about Josh Edgin these days…